DxDDP: Exactly how do you share?

[jova]

Do you have anybody idea why they had to check with the resort on this?? We are going in Jan on DxDDP and we’re planning to share some of those credits with my parent who will only be with us part of the time. Our agent linked us as “traveling with” on our reservations.... wondering if that had something to do with needing the resort.....

I’m really worried about all I had planned!

I have no idea why they said they had to check with the resort. But when he came back and said they really weren’t supposed to do it, but since we were so nice they would, And then he said they were surprised we had no problems at the Wave, Crystal Palace or Trex.....it was obvious he checked with someone.

We said we were under the impression that we could use our purchased credits anyway we wanted to and I think if you stick with that stance, you should be alright. If they had really tried to take a strong stance, I would have said that they could just refund the money I paid to add the DxDP to my room only reservation and we would just pay out of pocket for our meals.

 

[jova]

Since I'm awake and the rest of the house isn't, I have time to look around on this. The 2015 pdf has the non-sharing language. Here is the 2015 QSDP pdf:

http://www.yourmagicalvacations.com/sites/16596/pdf/2015quickservice.pdf

See the third Mickey bullet? It was very specific. And the non-transferable is still there as well (in the blue space in the middle), so sharing and transferring are not the same.

I find it curious that the two problems I had were at the studios. I just got a survey for my time spent there, so I hope there is a comment box where I can address the fact that their literature doesn’t say anything about sharing like it did back in 2015.

 

[senadler]

I am very interested to hear more about any difficulty on sharing credits. My DH and I have a tripped planned for February using the deluxe plan. We have family joining us for two days of the trip and planned on using our credits for them. We are all adults, so I am hoping we won't have an issue. But, if we can't share, we will definitely rethink our California Grill Brunch. I can really only justify that splurge when using dining credits.

 

[4luv2cdisney]

Here's an update on how it worked for us.

https://www.disboards.com/threads/sharing-the-dxddp-dec-2018-results.3726802/

We were never questioned about using 3-10 dining credits despite only 2 of us having DxDDP. I can understand them wanting to close the Child / Adult credit loop, but think they will lose a lot of customers for the Deluxe plan if they shut down sharing completely. It's just too much food.

 

[kaytieeldr]

I think they would only lose a lot of DxDDP customers if there had been a huge upswing in sales of this plan when they stopped prohibiting sharing.

 

[Kingdome8]

So you can go to a sit down meal with 5 people and only use 3 credits and share?
Hmmmm. I can see that on quick service.
NEver thought of it for a sit down meal.

 

[kaytieeldr]

Yes (except pizza at Via Napoli) but i think people are talking about getting the Deluxe Dining Plan for one room, and using some of their credits for travel companions with no dining plan.

 

[sharonabe]

So you can go to a sit down meal with 5 people and only use 3 credits and share?
Hmmmm. I can see that on quick service.
NEver thought of it for a sit down meal.

Unfortunately, the word "share" is being used incorrectly in several posts, but yes, you can use 3 credits and share among 5 people at just about any restaurant on property. Via Napoli will not allow you to do this, so make note of it. This would be sharing 1 credit to feed 2 people.

What some are talking about is using their credits to pay for people not on their plan. That's not really sharing a credit. It's more like I have two coupons and I want to use one for me and one for you.

 

[pezaddict231]

We've shared the DxDP with my SIL's family on two trips, most recently in Nov 2018. I basically divide the credits among both families. Then I have a spreadsheet to track our meals and how many credits we are using to make sure we use them all. We don't really try to use child credits for adults, although that is allowed. We also split the snacks, but that's more complicated to manage to make sure everyone is only using their snacks. We like it because it's cheaper than doing the regular plan and we get more TS. I'm on a low sodium diet so CS can be challenging. We've never had issues with using the credits, I either tell the server we are paying for everyone or they have one of my old bands and my pin if they aren't dining with us. No one has really questioned it, we did get a "hey you're missing a kid lol" bc we put my nephew on our room but it was more a joke than anything else.

 

[thornton0511]

We have two rooms booked at POP in May, for 4 nights, and have DH in one room with the DxDDP and myself and our 2 kids (DS-17&DD-13) with the QSDP. Is the thought here that if the 4 of us go eat a TS meal that DH will not be able to use 4 of his TS credits to pay for our meal?

 

[sharonabe]

We have two rooms booked at POP in May, for 4 nights, and have DH in one room with the DxDDP and myself and our 2 kids (DS-17&DD-13) with the QSDP. Is the thought here that if the 4 of us go eat a TS meal that DH will not be able to use 4 of his TS credits to pay for our meal?

You'll probably be okay. So far, the only places that have been mentioned to giving grief are 50s and H&V. I still shake my head at that, since they are Disney owned; it just doesn't make sense.

However, what the managers at these two places have said seems to point to the using credits for people not on your plan being the thing that's going away and that doesn't make much sense either. UNLESS they haven't quite figured out that the money they're losing is from people purchasing a kids plan with full intention of getting adult meals for adults not on their plan. That's why they're losing money and that's the "problem" they need to fix.

 

[thornton0511]

You'll probably be okay. So far, the only places that have been mentioned to giving grief are 50s and H&V. I still shake my head at that, since they are Disney owned; it just doesn't make sense.

However, what the managers at these two places have said seems to point to the using credits for people not on your plan being the thing that's going away and that doesn't make much sense either. UNLESS they haven't quite figured out that the money they're losing is from people purchasing a kids plan with full intention of getting adult meals for adults not on their plan. That's why they're losing money and that's the "problem" they need to fix.

True. I was trying to remember if there was a point when it became an official change and "perk" to the plan to be able to use your TS credits to pay for other guest meals or if I've just mixed up real from loopholes at this point

 

[sharonabe]

True. I was trying to remember if there was a point when it became an official change and "perk" to the plan to be able to use your TS credits to pay for other guest meals or if I've just mixed up real from loopholes at this point

The wording that used to prohibit it was taken off the PDF. There is nothing that explicitly says you can or can't anymore. There is some small print that says credits are not transferable, but in my book, buying someone a meal is not the same as transferring a credit.

 

[DazzleT]

Transferring a credit would mean that the other person now has control of that credit- so they could go and use it without you or at a different place. When I buy 4 meals on my plan, those other people never have control or possession of the credit- it goes from my possession to Disney. There is no transfer occurring. I wouldbe curious if Disney has actually had their lawyers look over this interpretation because I don’t think it would stand up to a challenge.

 

[shaunacb]

We've shared the DxDP with my SIL's family on two trips, most recently in Nov 2018. I basically divide the credits among both families. Then I have a spreadsheet to track our meals and how many credits we are using to make sure we use them all. We don't really try to use child credits for adults, although that is allowed. We also split the snacks, but that's more complicated to manage to make sure everyone is only using their snacks. We like it because it's cheaper than doing the regular plan and we get more TS. I'm on a low sodium diet so CS can be challenging. We've never had issues with using the credits, I either tell the server we are paying for everyone or they have one of my old bands and my pin if they aren't dining with us. No one has really questioned it, we did get a "hey you're missing a kid lol" bc we put my nephew on our room but it was more a joke than anything else.

Thanks for this. We are doing the exact same thing in a couple of weeks with my MIL and my SIL’s family. They have never been to WDW and I have planned the whole thing. I have 2 questions. First how do you sort out the snacks? If my SIL is paying me for x meals, she gets 2/3(x) snacks included with this but how do you track it so that her family only uses their number of allotted snacks and my family uses ours. Second, how do you split tips? Our party is more than 6 people, so I know there will be 18% automatic gratuity, based on the value of what is ordered, so one family’s portion of the gratuity may be more depending on what they ordered. Can they do separate bills?

 

[sharonabe]

Thanks for this. We are doing the exact same thing in a couple of weeks with my MIL and my SIL’s family. They have never been to WDW and I have planned the whole thing. I have 2 questions. First how do you sort out the snacks? If my SIL is paying me for x meals, she gets 2/3(x) snacks included with this but how do you track it so that her family only uses their number of allotted snacks and my family uses ours. Second, how do you split tips? Our party is more than 6 people, so I know there will be 18% automatic gratuity, based on the value of what is ordered, so one family’s portion of the gratuity may be more depending on what they ordered. Can they do separate bills?

When you're all together, they can do separate bills, so tips won't be a problem.

Snacks can definitely be a problem. Everyone is allotted two snacks per night, so you'll have to do the math on how many each family has. Make sure everyone in the party knows how many they have. You'll be able to track on MDE how many have been used and how many are left, but you won't know who used them. There was a report a year or so of one person in a larger party not knowing how it worked and using ALL the snack credits for everyone in just a couple days. You'll need to come up with some kind of plan to keep up with it.

 

[Janet McDonald]

You'll probably be okay. So far, the only places that have been mentioned to giving grief are 50s and H&V. I still shake my head at that, since they are Disney owned; it just doesn't make sense.

However, what the managers at these two places have said seems to point to the using credits for people not on your plan being the thing that's going away and that doesn't make much sense either. UNLESS they haven't quite figured out that the money they're losing is from people purchasing a kids plan with full intention of getting adult meals for adults not on their plan. That's why they're losing money and that's the "problem" they need to fix.

Do you know how Disney reimburses the restaurants? For example, say a party of six, 4 adults and 2 kids, uses dining credits off of a room that has one adult and two children on the deluxe plan to pay for all six. What is used to determine how the restaurants are paid for the credits used? And when these restaurants do let children under 10 order off the adult menu does the restaurant lose money or does disney reimburse for the actually amount of the food items ordered?

 

[Janet McDonald]

Thanks for this. We are doing the exact same thing in a couple of weeks with my MIL and my SIL’s family. They have never been to WDW and I have planned the whole thing. I have 2 questions. First how do you sort out the snacks? If my SIL is paying me for x meals, she gets 2/3(x) snacks included with this but how do you track it so that her family only uses their number of allotted snacks and my family uses ours. Second, how do you split tips? Our party is more than 6 people, so I know there will be 18% automatic gratuity, based on the value of what is ordered, so one family’s portion of the gratuity may be more depending on what they ordered. Can they do separate bills?

What we did with this last week was each family group had a certain number of snacks allotted to them. The moms kept up with the snacks their families used and everyone checked in every night and told how many snacks they had used and then I double checked that the numbers added up with how many snacks we had remaining. It was a little bit of a hassle but not much and pretty easy to keep up with.

 

[sharonabe]

Do you know how Disney reimburses the restaurants? For example, say a party of six, 4 adults and 2 kids, uses dining credits off of a room that has one adult and two children on the deluxe plan to pay for all six. What is used to determine how the restaurants are paid for the credits used? And when these restaurants do let children under 10 order off the adult menu does the restaurant lose money or does disney reimburse for the actually amount of the food items ordered?

THAT is the question! According to some of the non-Disney owned places, they only reimburse for what the plan allows, thus Via Napoli not allowing sharing. This whole thing of letting kids or adults use kid credits to get adult meals is puzzling to me. It must not happen enough to make a difference to the Disney bean counters.

 

[brockash]

When you're all together, they can do separate bills, so tips won't be a problem.

Snacks can definitely be a problem. Everyone is allotted two snacks per night, so you'll have to do the math on how many each family has. Make sure everyone in the party knows how many they have. You'll be able to track on MDE how many have been used and how many are left, but you won't know who used them. There was a report a year or so of one person in a larger party not knowing how it worked and using ALL the snack credits for everyone in just a couple days. You'll need to come up with some kind of plan to keep up with it.

I'm almost positive last September I was able to see what band purchased what meal/snacks etc under the mde account.