Disney World Prep: Dining

starting to follow our Disney planning process? read this post first 

At this time we stood with 2 options, Caribbean Beach Disney Hotel room and dining plan for 6 days : $1899 and Shades of Green without any dining included for $800

We took a look at the dining plan to see if it was really worth it. For Geoff, Grant and I (that would be a refillable mug for drinks, a snack, quick service fast food type meal, and a table service sit down meal EVERY day. Meals include a drink, entree and dessert. (thats 2 desserts and a snack everyday, you can't trade one for an appetizer or anything) You don't have to use each everyday but our family would have 18 snacks, 18 quick service and 18 table service credits to use over our week there.

With either lodging option we'd either be letting Carter eat from our plates or buying him a seperate Kids Meal out of pocket so for this decision he didn't really "count" (though I have to tell you, the thought of him seeing the Disney magic at that Pirate pool was almost worth $$ to me)

$1,100 difference in plans to cover food/6 days= $183 a day on food (we figured this to be $72 a day per adult and $36 a day for Grant)  

Now we had already decided that we were going to make memories this trip and one of the ways that the Disney Dining plan really makes sense is character meals or big buffets. A meal with the Fab Five or an all-you-can-eat Seafood Buffet is still a table service and takes the same credit as any other restaurant meal. We knew that Carter would get a kick out of meeting Oso, Handy Manny, and the Little Einsteins so that character meal was a "must". Grant was more interested in meeting Mickey, Lilo and Stitch so he chose that meal over the breakfast with the Fab Five that we were also considering. Both of those Character Dining experiences are $15 for Grant and $36 per adult. We also had made reservations for the all you can eat seafood buffet at the Cape May Resort for my special Birthday meal with the family and Rory. That runs $36 for Grant and $60 for us... so $330 total for the special meals we knew we were going to do regardless.

Would we spend $770 on the other meals/ $128 a day? If we ate the most expensive things on the menu maybe, if we were actually going to be buying sodas maybe, if we were going to "buy" the equivalent of 3 snacks a day to go along with our desserts after lunch AND dinner maybe, but that isn't us.
I'm fine with packing fruit snacks and nabs for the morning snack then "splurging"for a rice crispy mickey head in the afternoon, Disney snacks are so big I know the boys can easily share. We all need to be drinking water, not soda, so I bought the boys these to clip onto the stroller, and the adults each get these. Water is free. I'm pregnant and the boys don't know they have options :) I might have a steak dinner one night but have a feeling that a big ole salad will feel refreshing some days, on the Dining Plan that would be a waste...

So for us, it is not a savings. So Shades of Green and paying out of pocket it is!

I know one of the main "perks" of the Disney dining plans is that it is "all included and you don't have to think about it, you don't have to carry cash or worry about the bill"! so we have a solution, and one that saved us a bit of money. We have stocked up on $700 worth of $50 Disney gift cards and plan on carrying around 3 a day ($150) I don't think we'll use it all but I think mentally it will be easier to swipe the disney card than pay cash or give them our credit card. We got the cards as gifts at Christmas and at Target, using our one credit card, a Red Card that gives you 5% back off of each transaction and yes, $100 worth of cards was only $95. Plus any remaining balance at the end of the week can cover part of our $800 Hotel bill!

good website resources: here,

edited (Feb. 9th) to add: we JUST were quoted a military rate at Pop Century with Dining Plan for the week for $1500 but I think we're committed to Shades of Green now.