How to pay--on and off DDP?

[Merriwind]

Hello Disers-

When we go in October, we are most likely going to be on the DDP--DH, DD8 and me. We will be traveling with our old best friends from Syracuse. They will be staying at Vistana, so won't be on DDP. We plan on touring and eating together most of the time. They are a husband, wife and 9yo twins.

My question is this--how do we handle paying for meals? I'm not interested in starting a using kid credits to pay for adults thread. If a server suggests this, I'll think about it, but I am planning to use our DDP to pay for DH, DD and me.

When we sit down, should we explain the situation and ask for seperate checks?

Can I use my DDE card to defray our Dfriends' meal costs?

Do the Fantasmic meal packages have to be prepaid? If so, will our set up cause problems?

I'm sure that this has been done before, but as I think about it, I'm getting confused.

Many thanks!

 

[n2mm]

Most of the time the server will ask if you're on the ddp. We do exactly what you plan to do on every trip. We always get together with friends and locals who are not on the plan. Tell the server who is on the plan and who is not. In the past we also have used our DDE card for the additional discount for the non-ddp meals and it's never been a problem. The only time we have ever encountered a problem was just recently (early May) at Coral Reef. The server whinned several times about having to ring up separate bills. We just gave him the "get over it" look. (He was not very good and was extremely slow--we especially do not like to hear the server complain--but he did when getting our check(s).)

 

[aubriee]

The only time we've ever had any trouble was last Sept at San Angel Inn. I don't like the food there and did not want to waste a TS credit, but my D-I-L wanted to eat there. Her and my son were going to use the dining plan and I was going to use my DDE card to order just the cheese fundido. They wouldn't let us, saying that only one discount could be used per table and DDP was considered a discount. I even asked for a manager who told us the same thing. (My D-I-L and I round up sharing her meal and we still left most of the food on the plates, golng somehwere else afterwards to get some decent food.)

Every place else we went had no problem ringing up two tickets. We usually used the DDP for our meals and my DDE card for any alcoholic drinks they wanted. We were short one TS credit the night we are at Biergarten, so my ex used the DDP and I used my DDE card for my meal.

 

[Merriwind]

Thanks for the info, n2mm and aubriee. It sounds like it should work pretty seamlesly. n2mm, I think we had the same server at Coral Reef in May. Very slow, whined about everything!

Thanks again!