Background
The DDP was introduced several years back to help people budget/pre-pay for the bulk of their meals, and is advertised to save about 10% over paying out of pocket. Disney's obvious motivation is to encourage you to both allocate your money to their restaurants, and keep you on their property for a greater number of hours per day. Disney has never really restricted guests in terms of bringing outside meals into the park, but few people seem to know that and many will spend valuable hours trying to find cheaper food off-property. This is a waste of time whether you are interested in the DDP or not - there are plenty of reasonably priced (and tasty) meals on property, or like I mentioned, you are welcome to bring your own food in from home/the hotel.The Plans
There are something like 5 plans that Disney offers, but we're only going to talk about 2. The other 3 are an insane amount of food (and price) but if anyone would like more information, I'd be happy to share in another post. The 2 main plans are the "2015 Dining Plan" and the "2015 Quick Service Dining Plan". Each plan includes 2 meals and 1 snack per NIGHT of your stay. Yes, you read correctly - you will have your dining plan for the same number of NIGHTS you stay in a WDW hotel, regardless of how many days of tickets you purchase. And you MUST purchase tickets - the dining plan is only available with a Magic Your Way vacation package (booked through Disney Travel or a travel agent). Back to the plan - your dining package will also include a refillable resort mug that you can use at ANY self-service soda/coffee/tea/cocoa station at ANY resort for the duration of your stay. This does not include drinks in the theme/water parks.The difference between the Dining Plan and Quick Service Dining Plan is that the Quick Service plan includes 2 quick service meals/night, and the Dining plan includes 1 table service and 1 quick service meal per night. The Quick Service plan (as of 5/1/15) costs $41.99/$16.03 per night, per adult/child, and the Dining Plan costs $60.04/19.23. An adult is considered to be anyone age 10+, children are ages 3-9 (same as ticketing). Children must order off the kids menu where it is offered (more on this later).
Table Service (TS), Quick Service (QS), and Snacks
What are these things, and how do you know if they are included in your plan? A TS meal is generally any meal that you are served by waitstaff, and a QS meal is one that you order at a counter and carry to your table. Disney provides a full list of participating restaurants, by category, and I can't think of many that are excluded. A snack is generally anything on a kiosk or QS menu that costs less than $5 (but all of these item are labeled by the DDP logo, and you can always confirm before purchasing). I plan to do another post on the best uses of DDP credits, so that will contain more detailed information.There are SO MANY details for these plans, I think Disney does a great job of outlining them on the DDP portion of their site (Disney's DDP Literature), including the full lists of included restaurants. Be aware, some premier TS restaurants or dinner shows will require TWO TS credits PER GUEST - so be on the lookout for those.
Using Your Credits
Let's use an example, 6 day/5 night stay at a WDW resort. If you purchased the 2015 Dining Plan, EACH guest in your room will receive 5 TS credits, 5 QS credits, 5 snack credits, and that snazzy refillable mug. For my little family (two adults, two children but one is under 3) that equates to 10 Adult TS credits, 5 Children's TS credits, 15 QS credits, 15 snack credits, and 3 refillable mugs. I'm guessing you see what happened there - I split those TS credits up, but not those QS/snack credits. That, my friends, is because Disney's system is (currently) not capable of distinguishing those things - partly because not all QS locations have a children's menu, and snacks are, well, just snacks for everyone. So your child must order off the children's menu at a TS restaurant while on the DDP, but not at a QS restaurant.You can use any combination of your credits on any day, you are not required to use 1TS/1QS/1 snack per person/day. To redeem, simply tell the cast member that you'll be paying using the DDP, and they'll help you make sure you get everything you're entitled to. If you want to use 10 QS meals your first day - go crazy. You just won't have many left. But if you want to do 2 QS meals one day, and 2 TS meals the next - that's perfectly fine. That's also how you can pay for those TS restaurants requiring 2 credits per person, we would just be charged 4 Adult/2 Child credits from our credit balance (and likely be eating a QS or brown bag lunch another day to make up for it).
You can redeem either type of credit at any time of day (breakfast includes a meal and non-alcoholic beverage, lunch and dinner include a meal, dessert, and non-alcoholic beverage - or full buffet where offered). The default beverage at a QS location is a LARGE fountain drink, but you can get bottled water (or milk to stockpile for those kids). You'll also receive a dessert with your QS meal - sometimes they are spectacular, sometimes underwhelming. You may also get tired of two desserts per day (not me, but I'm not judging you here) - and can substitute fresh fruit items or yogurt (again with the stockpiling for later, or breakfast). You can make yourself a pretty decent breakfast between your refillable mug (just hop on down to your resort food court to pick up upon arrival, let the cast member know you're redeeming dining plan credits for them, they'll "activate" them, and then you're free to fill up your mug as many times as you want for your entire stay) and your stockpiled items, snack credits, or portable items from home.
Your credits are loaded onto your magic band upon check-in, and unused credits expire at midnight the day of check-out. So my example has us in the parks for 6 days, with only 5 days "worth" of credits. You can absolutely use credits Day 1, you can use credits until midnight Day 6 - what you do in between is up to you. You may find yourself a few credits short, but I honestly never have. On our last trip, we had 5 snack credits and 7 QS credits remaining upon checkout and we went on a little shopping spree for the ride home.
That other little one I have? She's allowed her own plate at any buffet/family style locations, or to share off plates anywhere else. The meals are huge, so this works out just fine for us - but you are always welcome to order off the menu for children too young for the dining plan.
Is The Plan Worth It?
I'm going to need an entirely separate post on whether or not the plan is a good "value" (considering that's different for everyone), and what some of the best uses of credits are, so look for those in a few days!Until then,
Susan
