The Disney Dining Plan is going to give us heart disease

Hope Soda

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 30, 2016
Today is day 6 of our Disney trip. We are on the dining plan and, so far have eaten far fewer meals than anticipated. On top of that, whenever we get snacks at the same time as entrees, we aren't charged for snacks (BOG lunch excepted). We knew it would be a struggle to use up our snack credits, but it's really ridiculous. We have joked about getting one entree and piling on the snacks to see how many snacks we can get for a single quick service credit. Even if we were those kind of people, we simply don't have the stomach space. I tried to burn one on cotton candy at Epcot, as my son really wanted it, and the cashier goes, "You know what? That one's kind of deflated, just take it." We tried to spend 4 at breakfast on pastries, and were charged for only two. We have way more snack credits and QS credits than planned for this point in our trip.
 
WE took some candy and Mickey krispy Treats home one year. They were fun to eat in the plane!
 
LOL I remember feeling the same way....yet I am still doing the plan (most likely) for our spring trip. We stayed at POFQ and I almost exploded on the beignets. But it would have been a happy explosion :)
 


The amount of food is why after 2 trips on the deluxe plan we are moving back to the basic. Meals were taking up to 2 hours and I found that on several days we were committing up anywhere from 5 to 6 hours for meals.
 
On top of that, whenever we get snacks at the same time as entrees, we aren't charged for snacks.

We spent a week on the QS plan and we noticed the same thing, in that we normally weren't charged for snacks that we had on our tray along with entrees. Honestly, I think the cashiers don't know how to ring them up properly. One time, the cashier rang them up separately, as in a completely new transaction, to charge the appropriate snack credits. Only once the whole week did a cashier ring up entrees/meals as meal credits and snacks/desserts as snack credits in a single transaction.
 
OP, that is why we stopped using the dining plan! We used to get the DP every trip, but never used all the QS credits and snack credits. We could not eat all the food on the TS menus and felt we wasted that.. We were so full on these plans that we had no room for all the great snacks at WDW, ie: Mickey bars, dole whips, popcorn, etc.

So 2 years ago we quit the plans, and go OOP. We love it, save money, can eat when and where we want, eat snacksand Save money. All good.
 


I feel like the portion sizes are just too big. I wish we could cut them in half and pay half! Since we will need to buy two meals anyway, and I share with my daughter, I've run the numbers and the plan is cost effective for us (especially with the inclusion of alcohol). But there is so much left over! My plan this year is to ask them to cut portions (likes fries) in half so at least it doesn't go to waste.
 
DH has some dietary restrictions, so the first thing I do is stock up on Mickey Rice Krispy treats at the resort! I always have couple stashed in our room and more in the park bag. Kids get ice cream, DH gets his safe treat. We also stocked up on bags of mixed nuts (think they're either Goofy or Chip & Dale).
 
I was there for 7 days last month, just me and my mom. On our last day we had 2 QS credits and 21 snacks left with about 3hours until our transfer picked us up. We exchanged the 2 QS credits for 6 snacks (3 per QS credit) and we ended up having to use 27 snack tokens running around like we were on supermarket sweep through Disney Springs! When we got on the bus we had bags full of goofy candy bags, crispy treats and prepackaged cookies to shove into our hand luggage.

Then, to make things all the more interesting as we went through security in MCO we were told we had to take all food items out of our bags and put them in their own tray. The security staff were very nice about it and actually laughed telling us they didn’t see a single person coming back from Disney without a million snacks so we’re not alone.
We gave the bags of candy to the kids in our family over Christmas, took a few bags into work and we’re still getting through them now.

Tl;dr you’ll never use all your credits. Just save room in your luggage to bring LOTS of candy back.
 
OP, that is why we stopped using the dining plan! We used to get the DP every trip, but never used all the QS credits and snack credits. We could not eat all the food on the TS menus and felt we wasted that.. We were so full on these plans that we had no room for all the great snacks at WDW, ie: Mickey bars, dole whips, popcorn, etc.

So 2 years ago we quit the plans, and go OOP. We love it, save money, can eat when and where we want, eat snacksand Save money. All good.

It's why I'll only get a dining plan if it's part of the free dining promotions. We stuffed ourselves silly and still had 15 snack credits left on our last day last month (between 2 people).
 
The fudge at the confectionery freezes really well. We use them up there and then I pop in the freezer at home for a little Dis pick me up. We don't do the dining plan very often - only on holiday weeks when we want to book a lot of dining that is connected to seatings. I don't normally like to deal with that many TS meals to work around in the schedule more than the excessive food. Was wondering if it will be the same in 2018 with the removal of dessert from the QS meal as we usually packed that out and ate it as a snack later anyway. The mobile ordering not being available is another downside - I used that every counter service meal my last trip and saved soooo much time.
 

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