Please, I need opinions on DDP!

[lenshanem]

Sooo, here's the scoop -

I factored in our TS meals we already have booked. I figured in entrees, drinks and 20% tip (I know DDP is 18%, but we would normally leave 20%.) and tax, plus any discounts we might qualify for. (We normally wouldn't get an appetizer and dessert.) The total was $529. The DDP for my family would be $699.

So my questions lies in is the DDP worth it for us? As a family of four (with two kids) would we spend $170 extra on other food other than our TS meals for seven nights? (Or $24 a day?)

Four of our seven meals are character meals, so you're really looking at only three TS meals that we would get an appetizer and dessert with the DDP. So the difference we'd pay - would we spend that much on CS meals (I know it includes meal, drink and dessert.) and a snack per day? And would we even buy all that anyway? I could even forget the dessert at the CS meals cause my oldest has food allergies and I can bet most of the desserts that come with the CS meals will be unsafe for her anyway.

I know snacks can be expensive. An ice cream per day alone would be $74 for the week for all of us! That would take it down to almost $14 a day for all four of us. I know CS for four would be more than that.

I dunno, it is so close really - almost a wash. I almost think the decision lies in what would be easier for us to do? (Instead of what is the real savings for us...)


I'd really appreciate any thoughts!

Thanks!

[Rozzie]

After this past trip, I have decided I much much rather do the DDE for us. The DDP is just soooo much food, especially at lunch. I like having the freedom of being able to cancel TS meals and not feel obligated when plans and energy changes. Plus we're drinkers so there is our bargain.

However, if you are doing a lot of character meals, and might share a lunch CS or two, it is a great deal. However, you did mention your daughter's allergies, and it would be even harder to have the freedom to tweek the DDP IMHO.

Good luck with whatever you decide. Do you have the DDE? I think it's a bargain. I know I saved over $200 in two trips.

Let us know what you decide! :)

[lenshanem]

I don't have the DDE, but we have had it before. We will not be back for another year since we have other trips planned so I don't think it is worth it for us at this point.

[KNWVIKING]

We did DDP in May. When I added up my Dec food receipts, I found that I paid slightly more for DDP than I paid in Dec. However, I ate a whole lot more. Would I do it again ? Doubt it, unless I was doing a 3-5 day trip.

It almost felt like during the entire trip I was a slave to the DDP.

[ghost1000]

We've done the DDP twice, but both times it was during a split trip. Personally I wouldn't want or need to eat like that for an entire week.

Because it was only three days each time, we carefully chose our table service restaurants to get the best value. And we made out well. Each time our TS meal was over $100 (for two adults).

This last time we actually ended up giving away two CS meals to the people who were joining during the rest of our trip.

DDE works better for us.

[lllovell]

I know my children are a bit younger than yours, but I have such a hard time being willing to do that many table service meals. For that reason alone, it will be some time until we are willing to buy the DDP and we stick with the DDE. Love my kids but keeping them patient, quiet and happy would drive me to the brink waiting for TS meals even with lots of nice ARDs. We will probably be mostly CS and villa meal people until they are much older.

Now - all that said. If you already have the TS meals planned and enjoy them, I bet you will get your money's worth out of the other CS meals and the snacks. Since you can use the snacks for a drink as well, I dont think you will have trouble spending them. I don't have the allergies to worry over, so I am not sure what the desserts are for the counter service meals with respect to your daughter's needs, but maybe some of this "healthier" food stuff will have filtered in and you could get a piece of fruit.


Laura

[lenshanem]

Thanks for all the opinions. We already had our ADRs in place. I usually plan one TS per day anyway, so that is a given. We have our usual favs we go to each trip, ALWAYS 50s PT and Sci-Fi with the girls. I try to plan "fun" meals when we go with them, thus I don't have any of the TS meals planned that would be considered better value.

This time I got -
Garden Grill character dinner
Cape May character breakfast
50s PT
Coral Reef
Sci-Fi
Akershus character breakfast
1900 PF character breakfast

We're going to Flying Fish one night w/o the girls, but I think we're gonna pay out of pocket for that since it takes 2 credits. I also normally would have alot of lunch and snack type items back in the room, but this time I don't think I would pack as much food if we add the DDP.

I almost think it comes down to what is easier for DH to keep up with - handling the money or just handing over the card???

[Colorado Belle]

It's possible that you have over-thought this, shan!

Whichever way you go, consider it a 'test'. If you go cash, then keep all your receipts and tally up in the end. If you go DDP, again, keep your receipts so you can tally up and convince yourself you saved money.

My 'roomie' the last 3 trips is so convinced that the DDP is great that she got it for all 4 (I think) future trips with her family...so she is sold on it.

I've done it the last 3 trips and its been great for everything but my waistline. You will eat more, you will probably eat better and try restaurants that were otherwise out of budget. With your choices of restaurants already made, it seems that you won't be using the DDP to check out some of the more extravagent restaurants; so I agree that it isn't so much a matter of money saved for you.

But it does take the time spent in 'considering all options' out of the equation.
SO if you are given to overthinking/planning...it actually might save you some time and energy because with the DDP you don't have to think, you just do it~:burp:

[lenshanem]

I promise, I'm not OCD. :headscrat :hahahaha:

Actually, DH and I did the DDP for a quick three night trip this past October. It was a no brainer for the two of us on such a short trip, but with the kids this time for an entire week...


I was gonna save receipts this past time to compare, but they actually didn't put the price on them. Everything was entered in as zero????????????

[jaysue]

Since it is your last trip to WDW for a little while, go with the DDP - it should be a wash, it's easier to deal with and you should enjoy this trip with the kids. Do not feel pressured to eat more since you have the credits - you can always give them away or just skip a meal or two

We are going to go DDP for the Poly part of our stay and then go DDE for the BCV part - since we are going back at least 2 more times over the 12 month period, the DDE will also pay for itself

Cheers
Jason

:clappingh :bowdown:

[jdvm]

I'm with Viking on this one....and I know a lot of people disagree. We use the Disney Dining Experience and love it. For us at least, we like to decide when and where we eat pretty much at the last minute. And we like to eat outside the bubble on occasion. With the dining plan we feel like our days have to revolve around food. When we tried the dining plan, we found that we constantly changed our plans because we HAD to get what we paid for. Not worth it to us.
John

[lenshanem]

I ended up adding it on. Thanks for all the opinions! :)

[gopherit]

Gopher here, with our experiences from 7 days of DDP wtih a fam of 5.


Normally we eat one TS per day, and have snacks and other meals in the room or on the go. THis requires a grocery stop somewhere (either before we arrive or once we're there.) It requires packing a fridge (and worse - cleanring it out when we leave!) It also means DH will sit there at every meal thinking, "Hmmm. That such-and-such sounds good, but I'll just get the chicken." He's so conscientious about waste-not-want-not, etc., it's hard to get him into a total "vacation" mindset!

SO on our August trip we elected to do the DDP because I thought it would be nice to "pay up front" and then feel free to choose whatever we wanted within the DDP framework. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

DId I mention that DH is conscientious? ANd me too?

In the end, what was supposed to SAVE us effort caused us MORE! Did we eat well? Yes. Did we have to worry about groceries or packing a fridge? Well, no, but then again, we did have three boxes of partially eaten meals in the fridge - does that count? We found ourselves constantly doing math - how many credits are left, how many days are left, will we use them all, is this the best place to use them, etc. We aren't typically the type to order desserts for EVERY person, nor an appetizer. And to be honest, we didn't even request it in many cases - the Disney folks seem to WANT us to be ill, LOL! It felt absolutely piggishly wasteful when the waitress insisted on bringing out appetizers for all 5 of us - and they were all ADULT-SIZED. I think we had about 35 chicken wings. It was nice knowing the kids could get their snacks and such, but the overall quantity of food was ridiculous. Plus, I should note that our oldest child is 11, so we paid adult price for him. In some cases (i.e. Beaches) he just wanted a kid's meal - do we use his adult credits on that? Do we pay out of pocket? DDP just seemed to add a whole new element of math to our travel that we hadn't counted on. We went into thinking, "How cool, pay up front, use credits to dine, all taken care of, and we will save money." We DID save money - I had tallied up what we would "normally" eat (with meals and groceries and such) and the DDP was easily a bargain - then throw in the VOLUME of food and it was seemingly a no-brainer. DH seemed so happy looking at our receipt from Le Cellier, LOL. But in the ned, we both agreed - it was a savings in dollars that ended up creating more issues. We looked at our trip and realized we were happier buying food over at US/IOA - why? Over there, I was using my annual pass to garner a discount. We ordered what we wanted, when we wanted, how much we wanted. So for us, a DDE would be the way to go. And to be honest, we WOULD have used a DDE... exxcept we didn't have Disney AP's and had no need to buy them (lots of old PHP to use up), nor did we plan to hit Disney again for another 14 mos at least, so buying an AP and DDE seemed like a bit over the top.

SInce you said DDE isn't an option this trip, I guess I'd say that if your girls are both still "kids" (not theme park "adults" yet) and the trip isn't too long (5 days or less) DDP might be an ok alternative to DDE.

HOWEVER - a warning - if you are the sort of person who likes to add things up as you go along, plan in advance, keeps a neat and tidy list of ADRs that you made at 180 days, make sure you are getting the most out of your trip - well, you might just have DDPID (DDP Impairment Disorder). This Disorder will lead you to stress out (even as common sense tells you not to) over things like proper use of credits, constant credit checking, and clock-watching (trying desperately to space out your meals because if you don't put enough time in-between them, you will most likely eat so much that you will spontaneously explode on the first bend of BIg THunder Railroad.) For carriers like us, DDP becomes a tangled obsessive web of eating, counting, timing, more eating, planning, fretting, more eating - It's not fatal (well, except for that exploding part) but it IS a vicious cycle. Consider yourselves duly warned.

[Stimpy]

Oops, sorry a little late to post this!

We just got back from a week of DDP on Sat night. We had the DDP for 6 adults, 1 child (7) and had 2 "infants" (2 1/2 yr & 11m). I still can not eat a full meal! :blech: We probably wouldn't pay for it again. If it was free dining, it would have been great and I wouldn't feel guilty having credits leftover.

For the 9 of us, we still had a ton of credits left over. We started with 49 of everything and had 25 snacks left on check-out day, 2 TS and 7 CS. In that 1 day we did manage to stock up on junk food/snacks and used all but 2 snack & 2 TS. Even sharing with the 2 little ones not on the plan, it was too much food for us.

We also like doing 1 TS a day but there is a lot of pressure not to miss that one meal if you don't feel like it LOL One night, it poured and poured. We had ADRs for Raglan Road and we just couldn't make it over there in the rain with the kids. So DH & I took our 2 kids to Beaches & Cream, DSis, DBil & their DS went to ESPN (where they said the service was horrible once the server found out they were on DDP...the only time any of us encountered that) and my parents didn't feel like going out at all (hence the 2 extra credits). Honestly, we were all a little cranky b/c we felt we HAD to go to TS so we wouldn't lose the money.

Snacks are easy to get stuck with, at least for us it seemed that way. For example, we would get 1 popcorn and 4 of us would share. But on the last day, we all stocked up on Mickey pretzels, candy, snack mixes, cookies etc at Goofy's Candy store place.

Also, something else to consider, it's also a little more time consuming. You need to figure in additional time at the TS places if you don't ordinarily order desserts, appetizers and entrees.

On the other hand, it was extremely easy to just pull out the card to "pay" for meals and snacks. Much more convenient than having to pay seperately at each place. On a shorter trip, with just me and DH, I might consider it again.

When we added up receipts, we came out far ahead of paying OOP...but we wouldn't have ordered half the stuff we did had we paid OOP. (We usually share appetizers, desserts etc)

I am glad we tried it, it was convenient and we did try a few places we ordinarily wouldn't have. But we probably won't do it again because of there being too much food and too much "stress" trying to get the most bang for your buck.

[Stimpy]

HOWEVER - a warning - if you are the sort of person who likes to add things up as you go along, plan in advance, keeps a neat and tidy list of ADRs that you made at 180 days, make sure you are getting the most out of your trip - well, you might just have DDPID (DDP Impairment Disorder). This Disorder will lead you to stress out (even as common sense tells you not to) over things like proper use of credits, constant credit checking, and clock-watching (trying desperately to space out your meals because if you don't put enough time in-between them, you will most likely eat so much that you will spontaneously explode on the first bend of BIg THunder Railroad.) For carriers like us, DDP becomes a tangled obsessive web of eating, counting, timing, more eating, planning, fretting, more eating - It's not fatal (well, except for that exploding part) but it IS a vicious cycle. Consider yourselves duly warned.


:hahahaha: Yep, that's definately what happened to us! :hahahaha:

[lenshanem]

:hahahaha: Yep, that's definitely what happened to us! :hahahaha:


Should I show you guys my spreadsheet I have made for the trip? :shhh: :jawdroppi :laughing:

[lllovell]

I feel so planning impaired :worried:

[KNWVIKING]

Should I show you guys my spreadsheet I have made for the trip? :shhh: :jawdroppi :laughing:

Doesn't this post belong on the Bedspread Thread ?

[dvcconvert]

I know this is late, but - Unless I'm mistaken, if you plan on eating at places covered by DDE, the DDE breaks even at $300. so for some it may well pay for itself (depending on where you eat, how many people, and if you buy alcoholic bev's) after only one sit down.

[mushu]

It's well worth the costs.

[dgaston]

DD23 and I are using the DDP for her graduation trip. We will have that for 5 nights worth. Our TS plans include Hoop De Doo, Le Cellier, 50s Prime Time, and Teppanyaki. Right now that doesn't seem like too much, but I've only used the Dining Plan on long weekends before. I will add more once we're back -- but that's not until January.