First time using dining plan questions

I am a DVC member and our family typically heads to WDW twice each year. No matter how many times I've tried to add things up, the dining plan has never made sense for us (myself, DH and usually two young adult children). In about 10 days, just DH and I are heading down for a 4 day trip as a surprise for his birthday. I'm thinking this just might be the time to try the dining plan to see if it would really work for us. I have table service reservations at 6 restaurants, including 2 that would be signature dining on the plan (using 2 credits). If we got the deluxe dining plan, it would give us each 9 meals and 6 snacks for our 3 night stay, and we'd use those meal credits with the reservations I have, with one additional credit to use as we need it. We are not big breakfast eaters so maybe we could use our snack credits there. I have also booked the dessert party at DS for one night (I didn't even know they HAD Star Wars fireworks there now!) so that's an additional cost. My questions for those who have used the dining plan in the past:

1. It looks like with the deluxe plan you can order an appetizer, entree and dessert for each table service meal, yes? However, information I found for the signature restaurants indicated only an entree and dessert....is that correct?

2. We also have TIW card, giving a 20% discount many places, including all the reservations I have. I usually figure this covers our gratuity, making the price of the meal, the actual cost of the food. However, we'd still have to pay tax on those meals, but the tax is included with the dining plan, yes? So....tip included but paying 6.5% tax on TIW meals and paying a 20% gratuity on the dining plan meals.

3. My husband is a big soda drinker and won't hardly walk around the park without a bottle of Coke in his hand. It seems silly to use snack credits on something like that. When we buy those and use our Magic Bands to pay, do we need to say each time to the cashier that we do NOT want to use our dining plan credits, but instead want the item charged to our room?

I'm sure I'm over thinking much of this...that's the way I am! :blush: There has been so much written about the dining plans and there is lots of information out there, but maybe I'd just like some personal comments about what might have worked or not worked for some of you previously.

If you'd like to know, our current reservations (focusing mostly on places we've never eaten or haven't been to in a long time) are:
Liberty Tree Tavern (lunch)
Citricos (dinner)
Le Cellier (lunch)
Tusker House (lunch)
Paradiso 39 (dinner)
Via Napoli (lunch)

We also definitely plan to visit Ghirardelli's in Disney Springs for some sundaes and I'm guessing my husband will consume a few beers along the way. I'll be looking for a cupcake or two with lots of frosting!!

Thanks in advance, Disney friends! :mickey::thumbsup:

Just my opinion, but if the DDP has never made sense for you with the kids, it sure as heck won't make sense for you without them. If you already have a TIW, then to me, that is a no brainer: don't get the DDP. Just go with TIW and get exactly what you want, where you want. If it's a matter of you feel you'll second guess your food choices if you pay OOP, then put the money you'd spend on the DDP onto a gift card and use that for all meals. I can't imagine that you won't end up with money left on the gift card. But your mileage may vary.

Steve

Are you planning on eating differently this trip than you do when you visit with your children (more TS than CS this trip)? We usually do the dining plan & we love it but I always run the numbers to see if things have changed.

As for the soda you know as far as the non park time you can use your refillable mugs at any resort now. As for park time I would probably recommend placing a specific amount on a gift card & using that than to have to worry about whether it used snack credits or was a room charge.

It's not hard to charge but I can see wanting to avoid hassles. It's easy to verify by looking at reciept. A dollar amount is room charge. 0.00 is ddp.
You will need to be big eaters to make value out of all that food. Wife and I had basic cs plan. For a week. Ended up with 7 credits left over

Being without your kids, I think you have a great opportunity to try it out for the first time, because that is just what I did last week! I have never liked having the dining plan's use-it-or-loose-it attribute. I like a lot of snacks at WDW and the dining plan limits that for me, since I have to eat both a CS and TS each day (or loose the money if I don't). The recent relaxing of rules that allows you to trade 1 CS meal for 3 snacks does improve the flexibility a little, but all of it still remains an unnecessary complication IMHO.

That said, my wife booked a secret trip for us without the kiddos, and trying the dining plan was still on our bucket list so she made the plunge. I have not had time to crunch the numbers yet, but I am pretty certain we just "broke even", as I am sure Disney isn't going to make less money on the DDP. My wife and I had a 2TS meal at Fulton's, and the remaining days were 1TS and we paid out of pocket for the Club Villains meal. The TS credits felt like a good deal once the server brought the check, but about midway through the trip it occurred to me that we had 4 out of 8 CS credits that we had no plans to use. I spent about 10 minutes really upset with it all, we had to sit down and actively make a plan to make sure we didn't leave Disney with credits not spent. We finally worked it out but the meal plan ended up giving me a trip where I didn't eat a single Mickey Bar or bucket of popcorn, and that was something that was hard to swallow!

Despite having my feelings being reinforced on the DDP being not worth the hassle, I still enjoyed my trial run and would recommend you give it whirl. For me, I know the DDP would have been hard to work with if we had our kids with us, they "MUST" eat too frequently to go all day with only one snack, and so this trip (sans the kiddos) was a great time to test it out.

OK....I'm not going to do it. However, I'm going to save all my receipts and crunch numbers when I get home to see how things compare and to see if our eating habits really ARE what I think they are. I really think the DDP would be a break-even proposition for us and with the TIW discount pretty much everywhere, I think we'll be ahead eating what we want, where we want, when we want, including snacking around. I'll try to post the numbers when I'm done, because I'm sure there are other folks out there who are wondering how these things work out for people. Thanks for all the opinions...I appreciate you taking the time to respond. :mickey: