Mickey with Minis
Real-life advice for touring Disney parks with littles in tow, from two sisters who've done it and lived to tell the tale.
Mickey with Minis
The Great Disney Dining Plan Debate - Episode 202
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Sorry to have missed last week, we are dying of end of school year activities! This week we're finally breaking down all our thoughts about the Disney Dining Plan, based on our experience with it on our big family trip.
Want help planning your own adventure? Reach out to Danielle today at daniellegriggs@fantasticalvacations.com to get started!
Mickey with Minis podcast outro music
Hello. Hi there. How are you? I'm very good. How are you? I'm good. It feels like it's been a minute since we recorded together. It it kind of has been. We didn't have an episode last week, unfortunately. Sorry, everybody.
SPEAKER_00Never happens.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we are being crushed by the end of the school year nonsense between our two different schedules and all of the children. We just couldn't make it happen. Um, not even to do a solo episode. Usually someone at least takes one for the team and does a solo episode. That was not a possibility last year. It's not happening. So uh the the it's basically I've got this week, I've got gym show rehearsals and a gym show. I thought I also had the dance recital rehearsals, but those are next week. Oh, but I do also have a band concert and a chorus concert on back-to-back days. Oh my goodness. And an international night, which I don't fully understand what that means, and that children had not heard about, so I feel like maybe we can skip that one.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. That would be great. I mean, you gotta kind of pick and choose this time of year. It's absolutely scheduled. There are, yeah. Ridiculous.
SPEAKER_01So but we're back.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this was dance recital rehearsal weekend, and then next weekend is dance recitals. So I'm so sad I can't come to yours. I know, I know. We just can't make it happen. No, can't be. We need time travel, so we can be in two places at once. Seriously. Although my my second person is gonna be napping, and then maybe my third person would come to your kids' stuff. I'm not gonna lie to you, right?
SPEAKER_01I know. Well, oh man. Well, what are we gonna talk about today? All right, we've been threatening to do this for some time, but we are gonna finally dissect the dining debate, the great dining debate from our big family trip. Haley has done the analysis.
SPEAKER_00We have sat on this for a while because we I feel like it's fair to say we both came away from the trip with distinctly negative thoughts on the dining plan. So I really wanted to sit down and hash out what we actually spent to see if money-wise it was worth it. Yeah. Which I have finally um kind of done to the best of my ability. I mean, I kind of had an idea of what everybody got, and um, there were a couple snacks I couldn't account for, so I just plugged those in as like five dollars each. But let's before we get into the money though, so I think a lot of people, some people like me, choose the dining plan because they sit down and go through every menu to the penny with what they think everyone will get and decide like a hundred percent do we think it's gonna be worth it. A lot of people choose it just for peace of mind. Like, so you have the food paid for it.
SPEAKER_01I'm honestly more of that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it gives the vacation more of an all-inclusive feel, and you're doing it to like reduce friction in your trip, which I feel like we had a lot of non-monetary issues with the dining plan this trip, which sort of took away from that feeling. I had to spend a lot of time on the trip thinking about the dining plan, which is not what I want to be doing. So starting with day one, we did not use um any sit-down dining credits on our first night because we landed at like eight o'clock at night. We used quick service credits at the Boardwalk Deli, but no sit-down credits. I woke up in the morning and was just scrolling through the app, and I had been refunded some credits from Trataria Al Forno. That's strange. So that was kind of the first weird thing. And then um having two tables because we had a group of how much we were rolling between 12 and 15 people, depending on the day. Yeah, yeah. And it seemed to flummox the hosts and the waiters, yeah, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that we were split up between two different that we were three different dining plans split up typically between two to three tables with dad. And then when mom came, we were th two different dining plans, one non-dining plan split up between two and three tables.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And that seemed you would think they encounter that a lot. I mean, it it was maybe more complicated, a little more complicated than what they might normally see. Maybe they have a table of six and half the people have the dining plan and half don't, but like it they seemed flabbergasted every time we went to a sit-down restaurant that we were like, oh, we're we're in different rooms, but we're all on the dining plan, or you know, two people are not on the dining plan or whatever. That seemed really hard. And then at a bunch of restaurants, they divvied up, you know, if we if we went in and said, look, we have a table of 12, we have three reservations for four people each, can you try to put us together? A few times we walked in and they had like two tables for six people each, but they had decided where the kids would sit, and that somehow mattered to them. I don't know why. Like, I don't know if they had already input like this many kids' meals or something, but like when we went to um uh specifically artist point for the Snow White meal, uh my kids wanted to sit with your kids, and the the waitress was like, No, like we already have this many kids at this table, this many kids at that table. They need to go sit over there. So that was really bizarre. I have no idea why that would be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. And it the thing, the thing about it is that it didn't used to work like this. Like this used to be absolutely no problem, and it was sort of like every room had a bucket with X number of adult meals, X number of kid meals, you know, like they it was a bucket that you were pulling from, and it was easy to say these people are coming from this room's plan, and these people are coming from that room's plan, and just get separate checks. Like, you can get a separate check, that's a normal thing to do. Yeah, but they did have just a very, very difficult time. We wound up paying for each other's meals like repeatedly by accident, and then like I think I wound up short on kid credits at some point because of that, and so it just it was all strange.
SPEAKER_00It really went off the rails after the dinner at the Yachtsman. They really fouled up the credits at the Yachtsman, and then we had to spend a ton of time on vacation untangling like, okay, how many credits have I used versus how many credits have you used? Because we had ended up using some of your credits. And it inadvertently, the waitress had like put some of our meals on your bill, and it was like we had to spend all this time like figuring it out. It was very annoying.
SPEAKER_01The other thing that was strange was the rollover of credits. So, like because that was we basically had our credits kind of lined up, like we kind of had planned to be able to use because we had a split stay, right? Yes, then multiple splits days because tech, even though we didn't switch rooms at the boardwalk, I think it was two reservations for us and three for you.
SPEAKER_00Because the first night was cash, and then it was the DVC stay at the boardwalk, and then we moved over to Boulder Ridge. So it was technically a three-way split stay, even though we didn't move that many times.
SPEAKER_01That many times, but that doesn't change how they credit the right and so and because like we had a we had allotted our usage in a way that it should have been completely fine, like we should have used up each section of the dining plan because it's attached to your your room package, not to your length of stay, right? So we had allotted to be able to use the right amount in the right number of days for each part of the split stay. And because there were there was all of this silliness with the credits being mixed up and like us using too many of yours and you or or vice versa, and then being short or having more over, it messed up the way they like I I woke up the day that we technically changed reservations but didn't switch rooms, so I wasn't expecting this. I didn't have to go do a real checkout or anything. And I woke up with a bunch of random credits and like like refunded credits, which I guess they had at a as a courtesy rolled over, but they can only see that if you're staying at the same hotel. You have to request it if you move to another hotel. And the lady at Wilderness Lodge was like very, very uh brisk with me, I would say, about how that works. And it was like, how would anyone know that this is how you're doing things?
SPEAKER_00And then didn't you have something happen on day two? Like you hadn't happened, you hadn't activated your refillable mugs from day one, and so it wouldn't let you use any of your credits from your second leg of the dining plan. Yeah, it was very, very strange.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we had to make a special I didn't care about the mugs, so like we had to make a and we had we are also got so many mugs on this trip. Right. We had to make a separate trip over and like wait in line and like just get our mugs, and then yeah, then we were able to use the rest of our credits for that.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, so so in addition to the time you and I spent working out what had happened with all the credits, I think I made at least four visits to hotel front desks to try to figure out what had happened or fixed problems that I knew had happened. Yeah. So I don't know. I I am using the dining plan on my next trip, and I'll be very interested to see if it is still this complicated. And it will be the same thing. We'll be traveling with some people who don't have the dining plan. Um, so I'll be really interested to see if it's still as annoying as it was on this trip, but it would definitely make me rethink doing it on at least on a group trip. Like maybe if it was a sister's trip or something and it made sense to use it, I would. But like on a group trip, I would hesitate to use it again just based on the number of complications we had.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think the only way that I would be recommending it to clients is with very straightforward trips. So, you know, four people in the same room who are all on the same pack, like everybody's doing the same thing. We're all doing the same thing. And uh a small enough group that you're not dealing with. Can you hear the screaming in my I can hear that? So sorry, listeners at home. Ollie next door is over, and honestly, they're not fighting, they're just like that. So I'm gonna let it slide. Um, but yeah, it would have to be something like super straightforward and a small enough party that you're not having to split up between tables. Um as far as like who I'd recommend it for at the moment, until until I can be proven otherwise.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And another thing, last thing on the non-monetary side, I for the life of me, and this is nothing new, I don't know why the receipts for the dining plan are the way they are. You know, three, I think three separate copies of the receipt, and like all I really want to know is what would the total have been if I wasn't using the dining plan, because that's what I want to tip on, and then I want to know what I owe. That's it. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And they give you these huge receipts that make absolutely no sense whatsoever to it took so it took so much legwork.
SPEAKER_01And and I that I guess that was another thing that I would say is that like we if we had not been paying super close attention to this, yeah, we would have been out a lot of dollars. Yes, like without even realizing it because the the receipts are really tough to decipher. And so we were comparing receipts to apps and like going back and forth over and over again.
SPEAKER_00Like, and I would imagine they're really getting shortchanged on tips because I think a lot of people probably look at okay, here's what I owe, which is maybe like an appetizer and an alcoholic beverage or two, and tipping on that, when really they should be making it super clear. Here's what your total would have been. You want to be you should be tipping on that, yeah. Um, and I don't feel like that is made super clear on the receipts, so they're probably getting kind of shortchanged on tips from people who just don't even realize.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, maybe, maybe so all of that to say it was not the best experience, but was it a good value, Haley?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so um this year, kids eat free on the dining plan. So if you have everyone in your room has to be on the same package, if your room has purchased the dining plan, the adults are charged money, the kids are not. So for my room, I had four kids in my room, but Luke doesn't count because he's a baby. So I had three children free in my room. Your room was a very different calculus because you had you and John, but Ella is also considered a Disney adult. So you were paying for three adults and you had two kids eating free.
SPEAKER_01And also the child eating as an adult um does not eat as an adult, she eats as a very small child, like very, very common.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I almost wish that I could have like just had Ella order for Audrey. Like if I had thought ahead about that, because Audrey's a really good eater and she eats and she'll be an adventurous thing, so like she sometimes wanted steak, you know what I mean? Like um, I should have thought ahead about that and had Ella order for Audrey and Audrey order for Ella.
SPEAKER_00And I also wonder if I know for quick service this is pretty easy to do, but a lot of what gives you value on the Disney dining plan is an alcoholic beverage. I wonder if they would have let you order an alcoholic beverage. Oh, we didn't. Oh, you did do that. Okay. Yeah, we just ordered it for it and it should be count. Yeah, because okay. So that's good. That's good to know. So I'm not leaving free booze on the table.
SPEAKER_01You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00I know, right? When we went when I was pregnant, I got an alcoholic drink with every meal and just gave it to Nick. Yeah. Um, so yeah, so the kids eating free this year changed the calculus enormously, and that is not returning for 2027 anyway. There are dates for quote unquote free dining, but you want to be really careful if that's actually the best deal for your group. But there is no blanket kids eat free for 2027.
SPEAKER_01What typically happens is they'll jack the hotel rates for the free dining. So people get enticed by the free dining and don't realize if they went a week earlier, your hotel would be, you know, 30% cheaper or something like that. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um, okay, so kind of an estimate of what our costs would have been. Um, we had dinner at the boardwalk deli. That was a quick service. That was just the adults. Um, we did quick service at Woody's Lunchbox. I did quick service um at the pool. I got a salad with a Mai Thai, a quick service lunch at Backlot Express, uh, quick service lunch at Connections at Epcot. And then I put in four remaining quick service at Roaring Fork, assuming they were lunches with alcoholic beverages, because some of those, like I knew we were gonna have some extra quick service. So if Mary or Donna was heading to quick service, I'd be like, oh, just take my band and use one of our credits. So I just I just put in an average quick service lunch. And then for our snack credits, I know we used some for ice cream, um, which at Sunset Market, they were $5 each. In Magic Kingdom, they were $7 each. Um, and then at uh Animal Kingdom, I know I got two ice cream sandwiches from Terra Treats, those ones that are like going viral right now, those are $8.29. I know I got Pop Tarts at Woody's Lunchbox that were $5.30. And then one snack I can't account for, so I just put $5. And then for our table service credits, um we did breakfast at Treceria, which was $59.50 for the adults, plus whatever, you know, drinks you got. Oh, sorry, that was not breakfast, that was dinner table service at Treateria El Forno. Um, I approximated $59.50 for like a basic meal plus a drink and dessert. Um, Topolino's the breakfast was $71.50 um for an adult meal plus an alcoholic beverage. Yachtsman, I estimated $95. That is two table service credits, um, but that's for like a steak and a dessert and an alcoholic beverage. So worth it. It was so good. Um, artist point for the adults would have been um $83 for the the meal, which is a fixed price, plus an alcoholic beverage. Whispering Canyon brunch for the adults, $42.50. And then the table service, Cinderella's Royal Table, again, two credits was $106. My caveats here, this doesn't account for I didn't in all of my calculations here. I did not account for the refillable mugs. Normally you would pay $22-ish dollars a person. We barely used ours.
SPEAKER_01We just don't use them.
SPEAKER_00We just don't drink soda. I think I put coffee in it maybe once or twice. Um, so I didn't even include that because in my mind, for us, that doesn't add any value. The other thing I would say, we would not have gotten dessert at most meals if it wasn't included. We're just not big dessert people. And this this does account for dessert because we did get it at all the meals since it was included. So it does account for that.
SPEAKER_01So I also I also this isn't a material point, I guess, but yeah, I really appreciated when we went down for the race and it was just that and we didn't have the dining plan. There was a night where like we got a quick, you know, we got the food court food. Yeah, I if I was on the dining plan, I would have felt obligated to get an alcoholic beverage. But I just I don't love the canned cocktails, I didn't feel a beer, like I didn't want wine. It was kind of like I just don't, you know, I'm kind of good. I'll just wait, I'll get a Mai Thai later or something. I feel like there's some pressure when you're like trying to do a good value. Yeah. Always get it. And so I don't I can't say that in particular were there any meals. Oh no, actually, every time we went to the deli, I didn't really like any of the drinks at the deli, but I was like canned, yeah, I'll just get this because you know it's included. And then you end up having like a sugary canned thing you don't really want.
SPEAKER_00Um same thing with like when you go to a meal, you know, maybe you wanna, maybe you're in the mood for pasta that night, but you're like, I gotta get the steak because I'm on the dining plan.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. So there is a lot of things. But I'm paying for a glass of wine, so I'm likely gonna do both, which is just unnecessary.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh so I don't know. I feel like there's definitely some kind of not peer pressure, but Mickey pressure too it up when you're on this.
SPEAKER_00Um so basically what I came up with, all of those expenses I just listed for each adult, for grown-up adults, not for Ella, not for us $737 a person. So for your for my room, the dining plan for Nick and I and three kids for nine nights was $17.74. If so, with for just the two adults, we spent about $14.74 for food, which means we spent, quote unquote, $300 for kid food. I think that for sure was worth it for us. Yeah. However, if we had paid for the kids' dining plan, we would have spent $1,162 for kid food, which was most definitely not worth it considering how picky our kids are right now. Um Cooper will often barely eat. Even for my girls who are generally pretty good eaters. I mean, Grace tried octopus on this trip, they just don't eat that much. So often we can get one kid's chicken tender and her and Emma can split it. And so it would have been a massive waste of money for us if we had been paying for the kids' dining plan. Where it was kids eat free, it was a great value for us with three kids eating. Um, but without the kids eat free, not so much. Yes. And then for you, John, and Ella for the dining plan, and then two kids eating free for nine nights was $2,661. Um I estimated, let's see, I estimated, so it's $14.74, we said, for two adults for all that we ate. And then I estimated $474 for Ella. I basically pulled out the alcoholic beverages. It sounds like you guys did get them anyway, so this is a little skewed. But um you guys would have paid seven hundred and thirteen dollars for two kids for nine nights. So that it's a lot closer, definitely. Yeah. That said, if the kids were not free, you would have paid twelve hundred and eighty-eight dollars for the two kids.
SPEAKER_01No, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Not even close to worth it. No, yeah. So with this many kids right now, I mean Mean if you're putting four grown-ups in a room and you have free dining, maybe you're coming closer to breaking even. But for us right now, with so many kids and our kids just being at pickier stages, unless the kids are free on the dining plan, the kids are weighing us down big time. The moral of the story. Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Big time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'll be very interested to see. I have not put so for 2027, just to go through real quick, the quick service dining plan will be 62.78 for adults and 2582 for kids. The regular table service dining plan will be $99.87 for adults and $31.94 per kid. And then they're introducing or reintroducing a deluxe Disney dining plan, which will be $163 for adults and $46.85 per kid. And that's going to give you each day one quick service meal, two table service meals, um, your alcoholic drink with each meal, one snack per day, and your refillable mug. I will be very interested. I have not even remotely run the numbers. I will be interested to see if that makes any sense if you're doing signature dining like we like to do. I always find us short on table service credits because we do usually do at least one, maybe two signature dinings per trip. I haven't run the numbers at all, so I'll be interested to see that.
SPEAKER_01I feel like you'd almost have to use it on signature dining if you were planning on any park time. Yes. You know what I mean? It's just a time suck to go, especially if you're doing a nicer dinner. Like that's a two-hour adventure, you know what I mean? Um, if you do that twice a day and you're having a quick service, I don't know, man. I don't know how you get that done in a day myself. But yeah. Um, unless you're really in it for the foodie experience, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So I would say for me personally, you know, for a nine-night trip, the amount I would have had to set aside for dining if I didn't have the dining plan, I think would have been very stressful to me. So for that, I think the peace of mind aspect weighed pretty heavily, even though it did wind up being worth it, right? With the kids eating free. But the peace of mind, I think, for a nine-night trip being like we're not paying for food every single moment of the day was very helpful. Whereas for our short sister trip, I put I think a thousand or twelve hundred dollars on a gift card before we went and just used that for all the food. So I wasn't constantly using like my debit card. That felt very good to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, for sure. It gave you sort of the prepaid aspect, but I was getting whatever the heck I wanted at any given time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I I appreciated not having to whip out the credit card constantly in front of my husband, who is with me unaware of what things down there actually cost because I never let him see that. Um, but I, you know, the same thing. The for the sister trip, I think I went down with like $700 on a gift card and I wound up refilling with like another 200 bucks. And we didn't say no to anything we wanted on either trip, really. We really like you could do this a lot cheaper. We were like, we'll get all the drinks, let's have brunch. Like, you know, it's just it does not have to be like that, but that's just how we were approaching it, though.
SPEAKER_00One of my favorite moments of this trip. Um, so dad flew down the day we got there. Dad flew down in the morning and we flew down at night, and he sent us a picture from the pool bar and said, Is it true alcoholic drinks are included? That was like hilarious to me. So cute. Um, yeah, so you know, there's pros and cons to the dining plan overall. This was kind of a negative experience, even though we did wind up very much in the green with kids eating free. But I would maybe hesitate next year when the kids are not free. Not free. Yeah. I would do a much closer look at the math. Um, and it most likely until my kids start eating like real humans again. Um, probably will not do it in my family, unless it's a grown-up trip. A grown-up trip might be completely different. Right.
SPEAKER_01Right. Oh boy. Well, hey, thank you for doing all of this math.
SPEAKER_00I loved it. I absolutely loved it. You know how my brain works.
SPEAKER_01Right up her alley. Her notes, her notes, her notes app is always like smoking from being overworked.
SPEAKER_00Oh, we're working on it in therapy, Danielle.
SPEAKER_01And she does these like little emojis next to everything too. You didn't do it as much on this one, but like on most of them.
SPEAKER_00I do that for you. I do that to try me. I do that for you to try to stress you out less because I know you don't love a note. I can't stand it. Oh my god. I put in the emojis.
SPEAKER_01So I can like digest a little bit more. Yes. Well, it's your work is appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. By me if by no one else, Haley. Well, hey, if you're listening to all of this and you're like, what are they talking about? Do I need a dining plan? Do I not need a dining plan? I would love to help you. One thing that I tend to do for my clients is I'll give them dining plan info up front, but suggest that we kind of get a little further down the road and figure out where they think they're gonna be eating, and then we can back into whether a whether they're the I want to get the most value out of it, or a uh, I don't want to see the bill kind of family, and then back into whether or not what they think they're gonna be eating um would make any sense for for using the dining plan. And I do that for everybody individually. So you get concierge level um travel planning. Reach out today, Danielle Griggs at fantastical vacations.com. I don't cost you any extra for most trips, and I would just love to help. So hey, if that's all for now, see you real soon.