Hi All! Playing the Disney Dining Game

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winwin
Posts: 1
Joined: June 4th, 2020, 11:01 pm

Hi All! Playing the Disney Dining Game

Unread post by winwin »

Just a quick note to share a story. The point of this story: don't presume that the dining plans are necessary - nor will you necessarily save money. Our family of 10 has been to Disney World enough times since 2005 to allow us to try out a couple of different plans, and most recently, no plan at all. Long story short, we saved $500 on our October 2014 trip by going with no dining plan at all. This may not work for everyone, nor all the time, but it was enough of a savings to take notice - and we'll probably try things this way again.

Most of the savings came in the realization that we didn't need to buy separate meals for all of us. Obviously, this is easiest to deal with when purchasing meals at quick-service places. (Not all sit-down restaurants allow patrons to share meals - although some do.) The portions of standard quick-service meals are large enough that we simply opted to begin sharing. The savings came from sharing meals. There were us two adults, and our kids ranged in age from 18 down to 5. For the 10 of us, we simply made the decision to purchase 6 meals at breakfast, and 6 at lunch. The size of the meals made it easy to share across the 10 of us - and there was always plenty to go around.

Who really wants to walk around a park absolutely stuff? We didn't need 10 desserts - which is what we would have had for quick service lunches had we gotten the dining plan? We did the dining plan back in 2011 and was dismayed more times than not at the amount of food that was going to waste.

We followed the same policy whenever purchasing snacks - whether the awesome Mickey rice-crispy treats, or ice cream bars, etc. etc. Eat smarter, and you'll have just enough to eat - and you might save a good bit of money in the process. Our savings of $500 across a week-long trip was well worth it! Hope sharing this story helps some of you out there.

Happy dining y'all!
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