Tuesday, August 24, 2010

disney dining plan


it is no big surprise to admit we are big time dinsey fans. we love all things disney. if you can try try try to stay on resort. it makes such a huge difference. we have gone four times in the last three years. the first time we stayed at a condo for a decent price for the whole week. it was really nice and really fun. the second time we did the whole disney thing. we flew, we stayed on resort, we did the dining plan and all that jazz. the third time we stayed on resort, but drove because we wanted to do the beach for a few days before hand and did the dining plan, and now this last time we stayed at a hotel with no dining plan. i cannot tell you how many times we said this past week how much we missed the dining plan and staying on resort. yes it is more expensive. i say if you can do it, go later or in a non busy time and save longer to be able to really experience the real deal.

to put it into perspective, we ate at the cinderella's royal table in may and our dinner would have cost roughly 250 dollars for a family of 8. of course, you do not have to choose this place nor would would you have to spend that much, but we honestly did not spend much more than that for the dining plan for four days. there is nothing like that experience either. you go into the castle have pictures take with cinderella which are delivered to your table free of charge and it brings tears to my eyes every time we are eating with the princesses seeing my kids faces when they come up to them.

now with the dining plan you get 1 quick service which would be like a fast food visit, only in my opinion it is much better than fast food, 1 sit down service which would be like cinderella's royal table and other character dining places or just real nice dinner places. then you get one snack as well. you don't have to hear your little ones beg for a 2 dollar churro or a 3 dollar ice cream sandwich all day, you can get one! it has just been really good for our family, we really love it as you can see.

to be honest i think that the food in disney world is very good quality and lots of options. it is fresh, organic in a lot of options and very tasty too. i will mention some of our faves in later posts, but just know you are getting what you pay for.

it is important to mention that you can only use the dining plan if you are staying on a disney resort and only the amount of days for the amount of nights you stay. so if you plan on sleeping 3 nights at the resort you can only get three days worth of dining plan even if you plan on going to the parks four days.

i also have to mention that you will not go hungry on this plan. before we leave our resort we would have bagels or some other type of quick breakfast and then we would eat our first quick service around 11 if we got there when the parks open. if we aren't quite hungry yet we wait till a little after 1 to not be there when everyone else in the park is. then during the after noon parade we get a snack for every one only we get 3 snacks and share them because they are always biggie size! we eat dinner when ever we have our reservations around 6ish and then another snack that evening. we end the day stuffed. no one is ever hungry. we also end up with extra snacks at the end of the trip.

i am sure you will see many dining plan tips throughout my blog. this is just a start. it is important to note, to save on money you can bring food in the park which i think is very nice since most places like this you cannot. this past trip i made lunches the night before of pb&j's for the kids, juice boxes, carrott's and apples and special treats as well. you do save on money and then we would eat dinner there. my four youngest children would split 2 meals, partly because the meals are big and partly because they do not like to eat! andy and i would share sometimes to so our family of 7 could eat on $21.95 if we needed to.

so here you have it. just a little info on the dinsey dining plan!

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