Is the dining plan worth it?

[tzeitel]

if you have kids (Disney kids that is ) and plan on buffets/character meals/family style (which it looks like you are from the list of places you frequent), then yes the plan is worth it. For those meals your kids get charged whether they eat a little or a lot or split meals or not. That one character meal is more expensive than a whole day on the DDP for your kid.
Once DD "aged out" we stopped getting the plan, we also cut down of the character meals.

 

[NinaBella]

So my wife and I are trying to figure out if the Regular DDP is worth it for us this time around and need some help. So usually we get the DDP but now that my son is of the age where Disney is requiring us to pay for him now is where it gets into the grey area.

In the past it’s been perfect for us because my daughter doesn’t eat a whole lot and my kids usually just split the meal. We never leave a credit unused and we LOVE to snack.

With the current increase in pricing, which my wife and aren’t huge drinkers anyways, it’s getting to point where is paying out of pocket and using our AP discount better off for us rather than paying for the DDP? Our trip is planned for May of 2018 and we are also going in December of 2018 as well so this would apply for pretty much all trips going forward. We usually go twice a year

We usually try to do places like ‘Ohana, Be Our Guest, Akershus, coupled with new places around WDW property that we haven’t tried.

Any insight is greatly and much appreciated


-Derek

So, I read your post to only be concerned with price. You have used DDP before and did not mention the normal complains of not using all the credits or that the meal portions are too large. S, it probably is still a deal for your family. I have never used DDP but I have seen people post about sharing meals. Is this still an option now that your son is older? I understand he you have to pay for his ticket, but there is nothing saying only the 3 of 4 of you have to have DDP.

 

[DisneyWife2015]

We have always used the DDP because we are big eaters but I also share your concern about the price increase (especially since we are not big drinkers either). However, we found a way to stretch the credits. There are 4 of us on the DDP - 2 adults, 2 kids. Our DDs split a QS or TS meal wherever we go. So instead of using 4 QS or 4 TS at a meal, we use 3. This past trip was a 6 night stay. That means we had 24 QS credits. Usually that would equate to 6 QS meals but since we only use 3 at each meal we can get 8 QS meals. We get 2 extra meals out of the dining plan (sometimes more)! We kept a log of all our food this past trip and compared it with the current prices and the price increase for next year. Compared to next years price increases, we would still save almost $400 on the DDP (we saved almost $500 this year). Our adults only trip this coming Dec is during free dining so we paid the increase to upgrade knowing we're doing a lot of fine dining without the kiddos. We will no doubt be saving a lot of money!