Disney Dining Plan

The Disney Dining Plan puts guests on a two-meal-and-a-snack per day diet for each night of their stay. There’s great flexibility. Unlike older plans that supplied earmarked coupons for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the current plans provide “credits” encoded onto a Key to the World card. One card per guest room holds all the credits for that room. For our ten-night stay we had 40 table service credits, 40 counter service credits, and 40 snack credits that we could use any way we saw fit during our stay. The big challenge is to actually use them all wisely, since unused credits expire without refund at the end of your check-out day (11:59pm), and some meals are just not quite as good a value as others. Certain Table Service meals “cost” two credits, rather than one. Generally, these reduce the value you receive under the dining plan, sometimes substantially.

We’ve often said that two full meals per day at Walt Disney World are plenty of food, and this meal plan was proof-positive. How’d it work for us? Too well (looking at my poor waistline). Each Table Service credit buys appetizer, entrée, dessert, soft drink, tax and gratuity, and each Counter Service credit buys entrée, dessert, soft drink and tax. This is more than we normally eat – we generally split or skip appetizers and desserts at table service restaurants, and don’t bother with dessert at all at counter service. It takes a bit of will-power to say no to that extra, “free” food. After a big dinner, we sometimes didn’t have an appetite for the next day’s breakfast.

Your dining receipts will list the number of dining credits you have remaining. We found that these numbers were not always accurate. Keep all those receipts in your PassPorter! At least once during your vacation, visit the lobby concierge at your resort for a detailed print-out of your dining activities, and compare those with your own records. You don’t want to be caught a meal short on your last day by a computer error!

In one of those, “Wow, I coulda had a V-8” moments, I realized that the average meal prices that we provide in the dining chapter of PassPorter Walt Disney World are calculated on exactly the same formula Disney uses for its Table Service and Counter Service meals on the dining plan – an appetizer, entrée, dessert, soft drink, tax and 18% gratuity for Table Service, and entrée, dessert, soft drink and tax for Counter Service. Do you want to know whether your meal plans deliver good value? Just add up the numbers from your PassPorter. You’ll quickly see that an average Table Service dinner at Le Cellier ($53) is worth more than the day’s cost for the dining package. OK, so you usually don’t eat appetizer and dessert? Deduct $7.50 each for the typical cost of a Table Service appetizer/dessert, and you’re still ahead. That means your Counter Service meal (average value $12) and Snack (average value $2.50) are freebies! It also explains why it’s so hard to get a reservation at Le Cellier these days.

We have also calculated the average cost of Table Service and Counter Service breakfasts, lunches and dinners across Disney property to arrive at an average value for each kind of dining credit (you’ll see even more detailed break-downs in PassPorter Walt Disney World 2007, due out in November). A Counter Service lunch/dinner averages $12, Table Service dinners average $41, and that snack credit is worth $2.50. That adds up to a $55.50 value daily. Pay $7.50 cash for a continental-style breakfast, and your daily food budget is $44.99 for meals worth an average of $63.

Before you get too excited, consider the Signature Dining “gotcha.” The value of the average Signature Dinner or Dinner Show (either of which cost 2 Table Service credits) is $61, a value of $30.50 per credit. Signature Dining at lunch drops to a $42 value ($21 per credit), and that coveted 2-credit Breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Table is worth $40 (you do the math). Those can pull your daily meal average below the cost of the dining package on the day(s) you use them, but you may still come out ahead overall when you consider the savings on other days. You may be tempted to pay cash for some of these meals, to increase the value you obtain from your dining credits, but you still have to find ways to use those extra credits before they turn into pumpkin soup. You may still prefer to use two credits for those special meals, and pay cash for a counter service meal to replace that Table Service credit. Keep your calculator handy to work out the best value for your needs.

Another “gotcha” might be your hotel room rate. We had to surrender our Annual Pass discount at All-Star Sports in order to qualify for the dining plan. The new reservation cost us an extra $20 per room per day ($40/day in our case), or $10 per adult. Add that to the cost of the dining plan ($47.99 total, in our case), and we weren’t necessarily getting a big bargain, although the way we utilized the meal credits, we still came out a bit ahead.

Free dining is offered as part of some of Disney’s vacation packages. Since the value of the meal plan is the same regardless of the resort you select, you’ll get the most bang by staying at lower-priced resorts. A good Annual Pass discount at a deluxe resort may provide greater dollar savings than the free meal plan, but be sure to factor-in the savings you may enjoy using the dining plan, not just the purchase price of the plan, since you won’t be able to combine the dining plan and an Annual Pass discount.