Deciding on dining plan- what is your food budget? UPDATED

[zarapipe]

I'm having a hard time deciding on if we should get the dining plan or not. It will be 2 adults, a 6 year old and a 2 year old. Right now I have quite a few character meals scheduled-

Crystal Palace- PPO
Akershus breakfast

1900 park fare dinner

Tusker Breakfast

Ohana breakfast on departure day.

Buffets are easier on us than regular table service because the kids get antsy waiting- the 2 year old really. Plus she can eat free on buffets. I've ran the cost on the calculator and it's basically looking like about the same do to the dining plan or paying out of pocket. How did you decide?

Also, if you didn't do the DDP how much did you spend on food?

ETA- we're going to do the dining plan. I think it will be nice not to pinch pennies because I Know I would order the cheapest thing every time.

[ilikedonuts]

I just copied this from an old post. Prices have gone up for meals at least once since December.

Okay our bill for our December trip (all food, souvenirs and extras) was 1,088 for 7 days. Not including $140 for CRT which is prepaid. Add on another $250ish in for the money we saved with our tables in wonderland card. I subtracted all the extras and souvenirs to get $881.

2 adults, 1 child over 3 and 1 child that was free.

$90 in groceries that covered breakfasts most morning and then snacks and drinks for us in the room.
$881 in sit down meals, snacks, and quick service meals.
$140 for CRT lunch pre-paid.
$250 what the discount card saved us.

Total: around $1361

7 sit down meals (1900 Park Fare dinner, BOG dinner, H&V lunch, Tusker House breakfast, CRT lunch, Akershus dinner, and Crystal Palace breakfast

[zarapipe]

ugh idk what to do.

[ilikedonuts]

Its its the same get the plan. its one less thing you need to worry about.

[alleinesein]

I go to WDW with my parents so we have 3 adults eating and drinking. We typically spend around $2000 on food for an 8 day trip. A big chunk of that cost are things like alcohol and usually one dinner at Victoria and Alberts($500+).

You know your familie's eating habits best so you need to go based off of that. If you aren't big eaters you wont spend as much on food and can probably get by on just one big meals and snacks throughout the day.

[revolution]

I prefer the dining plan. We still do a lot of character/sit down dinners. I also like having it paid for ahead of time and I don't have to worry food money while we are there, it's already taken care of.

[Deleted]

when we were a family of four we generally spent about $150-200/day on food (usually one sit down meal, one to-go meal, and breakfast is cereal from garden grocer) add in a couple snacks/treats each day

[kittycatlove]

If it's that close in dollars I would just do it for convenience of it.

[ribollita]

There are calculators you can do online. If we didn't have the Tables in Wonderland card we would definitely have come out ahead this last trip with the dining plan, but we do a lot of expensive one credit meals.

We got the free dining bounce back deal for next summer so will be trying the dining plan for the first time.

[tinkerbell]

I use www.distripplanner.com to see whether or it not it's cost effective to get the DP.

[TamiTaylor]

I budgeted $100 per person per day for food for J, Eric, and myself. We had 4 nights and 3 days at the parks. Our total bill with food/souvenirs/etc the was $757.

We did:
TS dinner at Sanaa
TS dinner at whispering canyon
Tusker House breakfast
Ts dinner at Olivia's
BOG breakfast
BOG dinner

We had a real lunch on day on because we didn't eat a big breakfast. The other days we just had snacks for lunch if we were hungry. We would have lost money getting the dining plan.

[lala]

We don't do it because it doesn't fit our eating style - like dessert but no apps, sodas with every meal - just a waste of money for us. We always come out ahead.



I also don't see the difference between budgeting $1k (or whatever amount) for good vs. paying that money to Disney in advance. We still buy treats because we're on vacation and have budgeted for it.

I dislike what the dining plan has done for Disney - I think it's increased waste & dumbed down menus.

[ohiopollworker]

What does TS stand for? Table Service? That means sit down meal with waiter/waitress, yes?