Disney Meal Plans?

[Pilotbaby]

Can someone give me a quick overview of how Disney Meal Plans work? We have never done one and I find the websites and blogs very overwhelming. I am a vegetarian and very picky so we would be interested in a plan that allows us to eat outside of our hotel. Do the meal plans include the park and Downtown Disney and the hotels? TIA

[KrisM]

We didn't use it because it wasn't cost effective, but here is the brochure for it. It lists all the restaurants, including those at Downtown Disney.

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/media/wdw_nextgen/CoreCatalog/WaltDisneyWorld/en_us/PDF/2015Dining.pdf

[ray7694]

We did 3 character meals so the cost would have been more. The character meals are a huge buffet. I was sick of the buffet by the end. You can order off the menu for all other meals on the plan.

[westwoodmom04]

Can someone give me a quick overview of how Disney Meal Plans work? We have never done one and I find the websites and blogs very overwhelming. I am a vegetarian and very picky so we would be interested in a plan that allows us to eat outside of our hotel. Do the meal plans include the park and Downtown Disney and the hotels? TIA

Not sure it includes downtown disney, but does include most disney resort and hotel restaurants. Generally, it is only cost-efficient if you plan on eating mostly sit down (as opposed to counter service) and character meals. Otherwise, it is cheaper to just eat off the plan.

[klwa]

We've used it before but may not on our next trip since DS will be a Disney adult. Depending on how much he eats at that point, it may not be as cost effective as it has been in years past. Most restaurants in Downtown Disney, the Disney owned hotels, and the parks are included. The brochure Kris listed give s a good idea about that. For us, it was effective because we usually do character meals, which are a fixed price. If we were eating more at non-character meals, it probably wouldn't be because it includes dessert for each person, etc. If we were to do dessert at most meals, we'd be more likely to split one for the table, etc.

As for how it works, it's going to depend on the plan you're looking at. We've always done the standard one, with one sit down (table service), one fast food (quick service), and one snack per person per day. (We've eaten at CRT the last two times we've gone. Since that's a 2 table service meal, we save one day's table service and eat an extra quick service that day to make up for it.) Tips are not included anymore, so that cost needs to be figured in for whether it's worth it or not. (Yes, you'd pay tip anyway, but would you order as expensive of a meal/dessert for each person?) And keep in mind reservations start 180 days before.

[DualvansMommy]

We took part in a disney meal plan last May with my family of4, my parents in law and my mother. We only went for the meal plan because in laws and mum liked to have one main meal of the day to be seat down. Also we took part in 3 different character meals, so that's where I felt the money was worth it. Otherwise we would have gone off plan.

We took the second tier of the plan which was one seat down, 2 fast service meals and one snack meal. That worked for us since we ate breakfast on the run pretty early to get to the parks as soon possible, fast service was usually lunch at one of reso in the parks or back at our hotel pool bar. The seat down meal was usually also at our hotel or the other 3 nearby places.


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[Cam&Clay]

Some people love the meal plan. Others hate it. We always get it because we enjoy sit down meals and DH loves that everything is pre-paid even if we don't end up saving any money. There are no restaurants that we've looked at that weren't on the plan.

[keh602]

Some people love the meal plan. Others hate it. We always get it because we enjoy sit down meals and DH loves that everything is pre-paid even if we don't end up saving any money. There are no restaurants that we've looked at that weren't on the plan.

Yep. DH says he's willing to not get the dining plan, but he loves it because he doesn't have to think about it once we're there. The only thing we have to worry about is tipping for sit down meals. I honestly don't know if it saves us any money (would we really get dessert with every meal?), but for the convenience it offers, we'll probably continue to use it.

[Raidra]

We've planned out all the restaurants we wanted to eat at, then guessed at what we'd be most likely to order, then tallied it up. It's always been cheaper to get the meal plan. There are also websites that will calculate whether it's a savings for you - you just list what restaurants you're going to eat at when and it tells you the average price. For us, we like to eat expensive food, and when we go out to eat on our own (which is exceedingly rare, when not on vacation), we both end up saying, "Well, I'd really like to have X, but it's too expensive, so I guess I'll just have Y.." On vacation, we like to be able to order the expensive entrees and not worry about it.

As for desserts with every meal.. this is definitely not the healthiest option, but we frequently got our desserts to go and had them for breakfast the next day. We also brought energy bars to eat once we got to the parks, instead of paying for breakfast out of pocket. When you have the 1 table service, 1 quick service plan, using your quick service credit on breakfast is almost always a bad choice as far as maximizing your value goes.

[ahisma]

I'm a vegan, so have a few more restrictions than you. I suspect it was partially due to the meals that we chose, but I was very underwhelmed by the vegan options. The buffets were the worst. My best meals were at Ohana and various spots in Epcot. They had nothing that I could eat at the resort (admittedly it was a value, so not a huge surprise), although I had called weeks in advance to set up food options.

We had a lot of mistakes made with our meal plan (took off too many credits, took of adult instead of kids, etc.) and spent a lot of time getting it sorted out.

[KrisM]

I kept track last April. We would have spent more on the meal plan because we would have run out of snack credits and likely bought more. We would have gone over by $200 or so, over 8 days. We did a lot of sit-down buffets too. But, we often split meals. We stayed at POR and a large pizza was only 2 adult credits, but fed all 5 of us for dinner just fine. And another day in AK, we split 2 personal pizzas and with the salads and cookies, again it was plenty of food, since we had done Tusker House already that day. We didn't find we needed 2 huge meals a day. Even at burger places, we'd each get a main entrée and then split 2 orders of fries or something. I don't think you'll save tons of money either way, so which ever works best for you is the way to go. I liked not worrying about what I was picking and if the credit counted or not. Others like having it prepaid. We are not vegetarian, so no restrictions on what we could order.

[Cuckoomamma]

We had the full meal plan when we went. There was a special that offered the basic meal plan for free and we paid to upgrade. Our girls have food allergies and I eat the same foods that they do much of the time. Because of the incredibly limited diet that they eat, every place made a completely special meal for us. There wasn't a restaurant that wasn't able to accommodate us. To give you an idea of how specialized, they would eat hamburgers or grilled chicken breast for breakfast with a vegetable and rice. Dh and everyone else would be eating regular breakfast fare :)

Otherwise, we would have had to leave the park to go back to the hotel for me to cook each meal. I dream of going back for this reason!!

[HIU8]

We are doing the meal plan because we are doing two character meals and it was cheaper to do the meal plan. We have one sit down, one quickservice and one snack a day. We are going in 13 days, so we will see how well it works or does not work.