We are heading to Disney for our first family vacation, alone. My parents and siblings have already taken us once when our daughter was a little over a year. We stayed in a condo, with a car, and plenty of groceries. Now, we are going alone with our three year old. I have been to Disney many many times in my lifetime but never with a child and have never participated in their Dining Plan. We are staying at a Disney resort on property. It has a kitchen. It is only accessible by bus. To save money, we are not renting a car but relying on Disney transportation. I guess my question is, Would it be better to bring/order groceries to cook at the villa or buy into the Dining Plan. I am nervous that the Plan won't be worth it. Has anyone had any experience with this??
We've been several times and we never went with a diing plan. It didn't seem worth it to us.
We've always stayed at the Polynesian, no where else and access to everything is super easy.
If you are at a Disney resort, you'll have Disney transportation that will take you to respective parks or to the main line to get the monorail.
Have fun!
We have stayed at Old Key West twice now and loved it. We had a kitchen, basically an apartment, so we did breakfast in our room before heading to the parks for the day. It is not realistic to plan to bring all your groceries with you. They have things like frozen waffles and syrup, english muffins, and bagels and cream cheese in the store at the hotel. The prices are really not much more than you'd pay in the store at home. I usually packed a few things like the cereal assortment I knew my kids would eat, and maybe some adult snacks like nuts. The store has lunch and dinner items also, we just never used those.
We had the dining plan that gave us one counter service meal, one sit down meal and one snack. PLENTY of food!!! The nice thing about the sit down places is that you make reservations and you don't have the fight for seating like you do at the counter service places. Make your reservations ASAP.
Take Perfect's advice and don't waste any unused credits!!
Have a great time.
M.
In many respects it is going to come down to a matter of preference. For us, it was a pro to have the meals paid for in advance (*you still need to pay tips at sit down restaurants). I liked not carrying money around and knowing the cost up front. With a 3 year old, you might want to take the time to do a sit down restaurant so your daughter can recharge. On the other hand, you might prefer to go back to your hotel and cook for some unwind time.
The food on the kid meal plan definitely gets boring. However, we cashed in a lot of kid meals at the hotel where the kids could get pasta instead of chicken nuggets. So if you do the meal plan, you might want to look at quick stop restaurant choices ahead of time and try to hit some places that have more variety for kids.
Are you getting a park hopper ticket or going to one park each day? If you are only going to one park each day you might want to see if there are enough sit down restaurants that you would want to go to. We did the hopper pass and used many sit down meals in EPCOT.
Good luck with whatever you decide!
We just went this summer and did the deluxe dining plan. We ate VERY well. We didn't really need the deluxe; however, we did enjoy it. We had several character meals. I think 3. Just keep in mind, tips are not a part of the plan. I would go with a plan, but something smaller than the deluxe. If it matters, we didn't have a kitchen in our resort. If you have left over snack credits when you leave, you can get snacks to have on your journey home that way they won't be wasted. HTH.
We've done both - dining plan, no dining plan. I would highly suggest getting the dining plan! We've also done both the deluxe dining plan and the regular (2 meals and a snack). I preferred the regular one. It was PLENTY of food for us. Like another posted said, we brought groceries to eat a simple breakfast in our room but then ate lunch and dinner out. The kids meals are a bit redundant... chicken nuggets, hamburger, mac n cheese. However, we learned on our third visit, that a meal is a meal - kids do not have to order from the kids menu. They all just count as a point. Also, be sure to utilize all your points before you leave. On our last day we would cash out all our leftover snacks and meals and ended up with several bottles of water, fruit, chips, etc. for the car ride home. It was wonderful! You paid for it, make sure you use it! Regardless of your choice, you're going to love it there! Have a wonderful trip. :)
they are offering free dining plan for select dates right now . You should call and see if you can get it .
If you go to www.gardengrocer.com them will deliver groceries to your room for a small fee (they will even deliver a case of beer!!). Saved us a TON of money buying beer by the pool! Nice to just throw some cheerios into a container for the kids to munch on on the way to the parks. Who has time for 3 sit down meals in Disney???
Our first Disneyworld trip was in January and we used the Dining Plan (one sit-down meal, one counter service and one snack per day, per person.) We didn't have a car. It worked out really, really well for us and we would do it again. But here's some tips to consider:
1) The "big namer" sit-down restaurants (Cinderella's Castle, California Grill, etc.) require two credits per person. This worked out for us, because we didn't want a sit-down dining experience every single day and "stored" the credits for these bigger restaurants. Why didn't we want a sit-down meail every day? Because...
2) ...sit-down dinners (and character dining experiences) take up a LOT of time! Your 3 year old may prefer to experience the park/rides/characters over sitting in a restaurant. Sit down meals require you to stop what you are doing and get to your restaurant at the reservation time. Reservations are pretty much required for every sit-down restaurant.
3) Even with the dining plan, we still ate cereal and fruit in our room for breakfast. Once you get to the park, you'll want to GO! -- rather than using the time to search for food everyone wants.
4) My family are big eaters, but we still ended-up with tons of snack credits. One PP was right -- don't waste any credits! On our last night, we went to a Counter Service restaurant which also sold snacks and used our credits by buying breakfast and lunch items we could eat the next day at the airport.
5) The dining plan starts on the day you arrive - even if you don't have a ticket for any of the parks. We had a late afternoon flight and our plane was very late...we didn't get to our resort until after 10pm. Hence, we all had 1 sit-down meal, 1 counter meal and 1 snack that we really couldn't use. However, as mentioned above, I made sure we used all our credits by incorporating the restaurants that required 2 credits.
6) You can use your dining credits whenever you want. (i.e. If you want to use all of them on the first day, you can.)
7) In general, the dining plan with the sit-down meal is going to require a lot more planning. You'll need to pick the park you'll be at and get reservations at a restaurant in that park (because it seemed to take forever to get around. Plus, we didn't pay extra for the Park Hopper pass.)
I hope these tips help you make a decision. Some of this stuff seems really complicated, doesn't it?? Enjoy your trip to Disney!
