DDP or Not, with a twist...

[forever a child]

Venturing into new waters here and trying to make some "what if" decisions...

For my Sept trip, I am taking my niece for her first visit to WDW. She will have turned 15 that month.

My DD will be participating in the DCP program and will already be there.

I have to make some decisions (I have time at least). Currently, I have the 3 of us on the hotel reservation. I can get approx. 40% room discount if it is just my niece and myself or 50% room discount if my DD stays with us too.

Also, we will not know for a while but sometimes the CM's can get 40% off of the DDP too. Even if they don't and I had to pay full price for the DDP, I am debating adding it. I think she can add it as a CM up to two days prior to arrival...so like I said, we have time to decide. If I keep my DD listed on the room, we will have to pay for 3 DDP's, if I drop her only 2 people but only 40% off on the room.

I am pretty sure IF they offer CM's a discount on purchasing the DDP, that I will go ahead and add it.

We have a five night reservation and we are eating at the following locations:
California Grill (signature)
Be Our Guest - Lunch/QS
Le Cellier (signature)
50's Prime Time

Not being familiar with how CM discounts works makes planning a little difficult. Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions. I realize that my DD will get dinning discounts at many places too, but she may not always be with us based on her work schedule and I am not even sure she will get to attend every meal with us we have reservations for, so I would loose the perk of any discount then.

Sorry if this sounds confusing....It is and I will have a similar dilemma for our Dec trip, LOL.

[Fangorn]

I have some experience here, as DS#2 was a CM for several years.

Typically, we would put him on the reservation as well - that extra 10% saving more than outweighed the cost of having an extra adult on the reservation. He rarely actually stayed in the room with us unless his schedule was such that it just made sense to do so.

We are not big fans of the dining plan, but the CM price made it work for us. The same DDP rules apply - everyone on the reservation has to have it for the entire reservation. So in our case, we always ended up with lots of "extra" credits since he wasn't with us all the time. But, that meant we ate more signature meals, and would usually have credits left on departure day that he would use after we'd gone (he'd take his girlfriend out for dinner at Artist Point or some such). All in all it worked out well.

The kicker to the CM deal is that the options and dates are severely limited, particularly for the moderates and standard rooms. Of course, getting a 1 bedroom at Boardwark in early December at way less than $200/nt isn't exactly something to sneeze at. :secret:

Something else that's nice: if you add the DDP to a CM reservation, it doesn't magically turn into a package. The reservation remains room only, and you don't have to pay for it until check in - just put down the deposit.

Oh. The CM does have to be there to check in if they're on the reservation. You can't check in if they're not there with you or if they haven't stopped by the front desk before you. Coming from the west coast we wouldn't get in before 5pm at the earliest, so DS would go by the resort on his way to work that day, and show his ID and get that piece done so that when we arrived all we had to do was just check in normally.

Hope this helps some.

Steve