Dining Plan vs. Deluxe Dining Plan

[Clay Ransone]

I have looked over the Info Central section about the Dining Plan but I have a few things I’m not clear on. I have gone to WDW twice on the Dining Plan but now I see that I have the option of the Deluxe Dining Plan. That would allow me three meals a day be it CS or TS right? If I were to opt for the Deluxe Dining Plan can I still trade in two of my TS, or in this case meal credits, for say the Hoop-Dee-Doo, Brown Derby, or the luau at the Poly? For a little background info there will be three adults going for seven nights. When we have done the Dining Plan in the past going away hungry has not really been an issue. After running the numbers I would save $672 by going with the regular Dining Plan and I would probably have to cover the cost of the Hoop-Dee-Doo which would not be a big deal and I would not have to go to the 9:30 show to get good seats. I guess my big question is do I need the Deluxe Dining Plan?

[mook3y]

IMHO, are you going to eat sit down meals most of the time for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner? Do you like eating at "Signature" restaurants that require 2 credits?

If so, then it could be a good value for you.

Also, dont forget to add in the cost of the gym to lose the weight when you get home from all that good eating! :D

[ljv1975]

I had the deluxe dining when I originally booked our package. After thinking about it, I called and downgraded to the regular dining plan. With the deluxe plan you can eat 3 TS meals a day and you can combine your credits for dinner shows as you said.
For us, eating 3 TS meals a day just seemed to be too much. I felt like I had to eat TS to take advantage of the plan and get the most for our money. I would rather spend time in the parks having fun rather than worrying about being on time for a reservation with the chance that we still may have a long wait before we are sat.
So, we are paying out of pocket for CRT and using our TS credits for some other character dinners and the Fantasmic package at Hollywood & Vine. After doing the math, this will work better for us and allow some freedom and flexibility in our schedule.
I guess it just depends on how many TS locations you wish to eat at and what works best for you personally! :mickey:

[Clay Ransone]

I'm not a slave to TS places. I like the TS places but I'm just as happy with a burger and fries at a CS place. Even if I did the deluxe plan I would probably still eat one or two CS meals a day. I'm taking my folks down the week after Thanksgiving and I would really like to have my food expenses covered. I guess I should probably talk to them and see how much they think they would eat.

[Janmac]

It seems to me there are two things to think about regarding the standard or deluxe dining plans. One is that with the deluxe you can use your meals any way you want to - table service or counter service. Or use two meals at one time for the signature restaurants or the dinner shows. With the standard plan your choices are somewhat constrained.

if you go to Info Central here at Intercot (tab at the top of the page) you can get info on which restaurants are on the dining plan and links to menus for the restaurants.

You can estimate how much you'd spend each day by looking at the restaurants and menus and totaling what you think your party might order.

Which brings me to the second point. We did this for our Sept 08 trip. For most of our WDW trips we've done 3 table service meals per day. Last trip we tried the standard plan and felt that we struggled with the counter service meals, as opposed to all table service.

For this trip we did the figuring, with table service for breakfast and supper and mostly counter service at lunch. When we did the math figuring out of pocket for breakfasts, we only spent $700 more than the standard dining plan cost. That $700 added to the cost of the standard dining plan was considerbly less than going with the deluxe plan.

So we opted for the standard dining plan and are going to pay out of pocket for breakfasts.
At first glance it seemed that the deluxe dining plan was the plan for us but after doing the math we had a better idea of the possible value of each plan.

Jan