I didn't listen and you were right...

epcotobsessed

DIS Veteran
Joined
May 1, 2018
the DxDP is waaaaaayyyyy too much food. And I say that as a big eater/food lover who eats even more on vacations. We struggled to use all of the credits, not to mention the snacks (lots of bottles of water, which I know are a terrible value) and to get value from what you pay you need to mostly eat TS, which takes way too much time out of your day (as you also told me, and I didn't listen). I am not new to Disney but that was our first dining plan in nearly 10 years and we will not be getting one again!
I will say - if all you want is character meals/buffets, the dining plan probably is right for you. We did the Fantasmic package at Hollywood and Vine one day - the food was absolutely awful and the bill, without the dining plan, would have been $250. For four people. I just laughed when I saw the bill - absolute robbery. Akershus was much better but again, $200 for breakfast if we hadn't had the dining plan.
 


We can only eat two meals & one snack per day at WDW. Three meals per day there is just too much food.

I always try to warn people against wasting money on the dining plan, but using it once is a good learning experience. We had it during the one trip that I didn't pay for, and yeah...Overpriced & way too much food. And that was just the regular dining plan.
 
Op... didn’t know better years back as Totally agree, oh my goodness sooo much food and worse, lost time.
Sometimes it just takes the “experience” of it to avoid another mistake.
Hope rest of ur trip was Awesome!
 


I hope you still had a great trip. Our very first Disney trip was a week with the DxDP, I was over food by the third day, and we even did signature meals every single night. There is a puffer fish as part of the decor outside of The Seas pavilion and I swear that is how I felt the entire trip (picture reference below). None of the dining plans really work for how we eat, although I do like to do a night on the DxDP if I have a split stay with a single night on the beginning of my trip booked.


This guy!!! This is how I saw myself by day 3.
images
 
I hope you still had a great trip. Our very first Disney trip was a week with the DxDP, I was over food by the third day, and we even did signature meals every single night. There is a puffer fish as part of the decor outside of The Seas pavilion and I swear that is how I felt the entire trip (picture reference below). None of the dining plans really work for how we eat, although I do like to do a night on the DxDP if I have a split stay with a single night on the beginning of my trip booked.


This guy!!! This is how I saw myself by day 3.
images

That's exactly how I felt! Been home several days now and feel much better. Our trip was great but when I stopped caring about "maximizing" our plan credits, I felt much better - mentally and physically! Never again.
 
I do think Character meals are the key for the dining plan. We do one each day, just for characters because our kids love them but we hate waiting in line for meet and greet. So we go to a character lunch and eat light (no dessert, light meats and salad, no dessert), and then signatures for dinner. So we are saving a boatload of money. If we went and had three course meals twice a day that would neither be a good value nor would we want that much to eat.
 
I trying the regular dining plan for the first time in my life. The Deluxe sounded just undoable for me from my stomach's perspective (and time!!). But in looking at the regular dining plan, in general it's how we eat when we are at Disney so I'm hoping it works out for us. Two people in my party ALWAYS order alcoholic beverages and dessert.
 
We've done DxDP several times and it has always been a lot of food.
It kinda felt like all we did was eat, and our day revolved around eating, then going to the next place to eat, etc.

I can see how having a 1 TS late breakfast or lunch and 2 TS dinner can maybe even out the pace.
 
We've done DxDP several times and it has always been a lot of food.
It kinda felt like all we did was eat, and our day revolved around eating, then going to the next place to eat, etc.

I can see how having a 1 TS late breakfast or lunch and 2 TS dinner can maybe even out the pace.

This is how we use DxDDP. Either a late breakfast or an early lunch. We generally dine later in Disney, so we are hungry by that time. This trip I cannot justify the jump for 7 to DxDDP, so I have modified our dining times to slightly earlier, and we plan CS lunch and then TS dinner. I will say that with signature meals planned, the regular plan is leaving more OOP than I am happy with, and so I have more research to be sure I do not leave money on the table. My DD and DSIL have made it their "job" to watch every vlog out there on Disney snacks.....LOL! According to them we can surely drop some meals, or at least share a few of them because they will take us to snack stations that will be "amazing" LOL!!!
 
We LOVE the Deluxe DP but we do a lot of shows/character/signatures. It is a lottttt of food with the app/meal/dessert per person...we can never eat it all. It's a waste of food. But dining at Disney is one of the highlights of our trip, so to us, it is worth it. Our oldest has life-threatening food allergies and Disney is really the only place on Earth other than our own home where we can be certain that she is safe since the chefs have sooooo much experience (1 in 13 kids has at least one food allergy, these chefs deal with them a lot!).

That being said, I wish there was a plan in between the regular and deluxe...I feel like 2 TS credits/person/day would be a much better option for most people. The regular isn't enough if you want to do special (2 credit) experiences.
 
We LOVE the Deluxe DP but we do a lot of shows/character/signatures. It is a lottttt of food with the app/meal/dessert per person...we can never eat it all. It's a waste of food. But dining at Disney is one of the highlights of our trip, so to us, it is worth it. Our oldest has life-threatening food allergies and Disney is really the only place on Earth other than our own home where we can be certain that she is safe since the chefs have sooooo much experience (1 in 13 kids has at least one food allergy, these chefs deal with them a lot!).

That being said, I wish there was a plan in between the regular and deluxe...I feel like 2 TS credits/person/day would be a much better option for most people. The regular isn't enough if you want to do special (2 credit) experiences.

The old DDP used to be perfect for us. It was one QS and one TS, however you could have an apetixser and dessert witht your TS meal. It was awesome, and the right size for us. FOlks complained it was "too much food" so probelm solved. Teh cost was reduced one dollar and the appetizer disappeared. And then the cost started climbing.
 
I'm trying out the DxDDP this year for a 2 person adult only trip. I don't think I'd ever consider it for a family vacation but for a couple of adults who enjoy spending time relaxing at restaurants, I feel like it won't really be too much food for us. The only thing I may have to do is pass on dessert at some of the meals but I'll likely still come out ahead or even value wise, though we do the dining plans mainly for convenience.

Most days the plan is an early lunch around 11-11:30am with a late dinner closer to 8pm. I feel like it will be plenty of time for us in the parks before and after lunch with enough time in between meals that we'll definitely be hungry again. There likely won't be much snacking in between. One day we're skipping lunch to do 1900 Park Fare breakfast and one other day we're not doing any TS breakfast/lunch so we can hit the F&W festival booths throughout the day until dinner. This gives us an "extra" credit so we can double up on signatures on Sunday to do CA Grill brunch along with Yachtsman with 10 hours in between meals.

I really think it's going to work out nicely for us but I'll be sure to report back when I don't ever want to see a plate of food again after a week of this! LOL
 
Ha! We did DxDP in July (2 adults) and not only did we use all the credits, we paid OOP for certain meals!

The key is that we had a short stay (5 days/ 4 nights) and we had *5* Signature meals (one daily), so we only had two meals each day: a lighter one and a big Signature one). We had 24 DxDP credits to use. Here's where we ate:

Artist's Point (4 credits)
Tiffins (4 credits)
California Grill dinner (4 credits)
Yachtsman (4 credits)
California Grill brunch (4 credits)

Sanaa (split one credit)
Skipper's Canteen (usd 1 credit, paid OOP for 1 meal)
Morimoto (used 1 credit, paid OOP for 1 meal)
Spice Road (usd 1 credit, paid OOP for 1 meal)

Total food costs were not small once everything was added up, but we really enjoyed it. We used the snack credits mostly for quick early morning food and lots of coffee beverages and other beverages throughout the day.
 

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