A Comprehensive Guide to the Disney Dining Plan

Picture this: you are booking a Disney World vacation. You’ve got your number of nights selected, the tickets are planned out, but what about that last add-on option? The controversial Disney Dining Plan.

If you’ve done any research on the DDP, you will come across every opinion from “don’t do it, it’s not worth it” to “do it, it’s a no-brainer.” There is a lot more to it than that and we are going to break it down for you. We recently spent six nights on property with the DDP and it exceeded our expectations. Let us show you how we made the most of our Disney Dining Plan:

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First off, what exactly is the Disney Dining Plan?

There are actually two different types of plans (with different costs). There is a Quick Service Dining Plan and the Disney Dining Plan. The Quick Service Dining Plan gets each member of your party one snack and two quick service meals per night of your stay. The Disney Dining Plan is the more expensive choice and gets each guest one snack, one quick service meal, and one table service meal per night of your stay. This is the one we are going to be focusing on in this article. I will also note that each plan comes with a resort-refillable mug that can you be used the length of your stay at any Disney hotel food court.

Here is a breakdown of the pricing per day and what is included for an adult on the Disney Dining Plan:

Those prices can seem pretty high, but do remember these are reflecting in-park prices and without a dining plan there is no opportunity to make back any of your hard earned money. That brings us to our next point.

Things to Consider

Let’s consider your family. Are you picky eaters or foodies? Do you have kids with big appetites or are they always leaving food on their plates? In our case, my wife and I are foodies and have an 8-year-old who also is. Our other child can or cannot be depending on the day (4-year-olds right…?). So for us this was a checkmark in our favor when choosing whether or not to get the DDP.

Now let’s consider whether or not you want to be held to the confines of getting to a reservation on-time or if you want to have more free reign when it comes to your day. If you want to not worry about getting to a table service meal at the appropriate time, then maybe getting a dining plan isn’t for you. This is especially true if you are planning to visit during a busier time of the year when reservations at popular restaurants are hard to come by, let alone change the day of.

We didn’t mind having to be at a certain location at a certain time, because we had plenty of time to enjoy the parks (seven days with a park hopper) and welcomed the time to take a break from the August heat during a meal or two every day. We had also planned on being on property during one of the lowest projected crowd weeks of the year, which helped in ease of not only getting reservations, but also changing them on the day of to accommodate where we were and what we were doing.

You are allowed to change your reservation for table service meals up to two hours before your scheduled time – this was a life saver on a couple of our days to either bump up a meal or push one back. You never know how ride times, weather, and transportation will cause you a delay during your day.

One last thing to consider is whether the amount of daily food is too much for your family and therefore would not be worth utilizing the plan. If you are going to casually hit the parks and maybe not walk as much, it is possible that the amount of eats you can get will have you dreading your next (mandatory) meal. In that case, it may be better to bring your own snacks into the park and purchase just one meal out-of-pocket each day.

But, if you plan to get the most out of your day, those 8-10 miles on your feet will certainly have you hungry at every meal! If that sounds like it might be a possibility for you, then you have the chance to make back some money…if you do it right.

*Bonus thing to consider: The ease of paying up front is super convenient and makes your vacation feel all-inclusive and less painful each time a bill is given to you.

Maximizing Your Dining Plan

So, you’ve decided to purchase a dining plan. Now what? You want to get your money’s worth, but how do you know where to go to make sure that happens?

I probably spent way too much time prior to our trip scoping out the best meals and snacks (in both price and taste). It was all worth it though because we ended up coming out around $500 on top of what we spent on the DDP.

Let’s remember that the price per day for a child is $27 and adult is $94. Those are your numbers to beat after you’ve had your snack, quick service, and table service meal each day. We aren’t even going to worry about finding ways for those child credits to add up because they just will. Children will always come way out on top with this plan, it’s the adult meals you need to plan carefully.

The average snack credit on your plan factors in at about $6. That means as long as you are getting snacks that are $6 or above, you’re doing well. Here are some of the snacks we got during our visit. You can see most of the time we found pricier options, which helped offset the occasional under $6 snack we got.

Quick Service meals are where you need to be careful! These pick-up, counter service restaurants for the most part have a bad reputation among avid Disney goers for mediocre food and if you aren’t looking, they can be “cheaper” than what you paid for up-front on the DDP. A good rule of thumb is to find adult meals that are $25 or more to stay on track for your day.

I will also say, we did not have one bad quick service meal our entire week. I was actually very impressed on multiple occasions with how delicious, fresh, and creative some of the dishes we had were. There are locations that serve up classic park food that isn’t anything special, but if you do your research there are plenty of really amazing places to grab some lunch. Below is a list of our favorite counter service eateries across all of the parks.

Table service meals are going to be your heavy hitters as far as price tag goes. These are your nicer restaurants and buffets. These meals also include dessert which helps get you closer to that daily total. We had unbelievable table service meals during our visit-the food was high quality no matter where we went and service was always on point. Here are the six restaurants we ate at:

If you are looking to really get the most out of your table service meals (and you have young ones), you can book some of the character dining restaurants for just one of your credits. Some more popular character locations or “fine dining” restaurants can also be reserved, but will cost you two of your table service credits. If that is something you want to experience, for example Be Our Guest restaurant, you can do so. But from my research, none of these two-credit options will be worth the cost of admission on the dining plan. Just don’t do it.

Here is an example day of a family of four on the Disney Dining Plan:

Using the Walt Disney World App

Once you book your vacation, you will be able to start booking your table service meals at the 60-day-out mark. Whether or not you are planning to go at peak season, it’s best practice to go ahead and make sure you get a reservation for each day as soon as you can. You can always go back and change times and locations if you want to. We changed out three of our day’s meals leading up to our trip because we had found a dish or drink we wanted to try at a different restaurant.

Be sure to take time before you leave to explore the app in its entirety to familiarize yourself with how it works. It’s also a good idea to go through and do mock-orders of things you plan on trying to get the hang of it. This also allows you to see what counts as a snack credit and what does not.

My favorite part about the app is the ability to order quick service meals and snacks. The process is crazy easy, and the app keeps track of all your credits and will automatically apply them to your purchase. Note that not all quick service locations have online ordering, but many of them do.

You will definitely want to take advantage of this when trying to get the most out of your trip. The amount of time saved by skipping the queue to order food could be upwards of 30 minutes per transaction. If you use the app, you can order what you want, set the time window you want to pick it up, and check-in when you are close so they can prepare your order. You’ll receive a notification when your order is ready and you can walk right up to the mobile order pick up spot and grab your food without any wait.

This is great, for example, when you are on the other side of a park, say at Tower of Terror, but want to have lunch at Docking Bay 7 in Galaxy’s Edge. You can order your food on your way and have it ready when you arrive! I can’t express how nice this feature was!

Other Tips & Tricks

• When ordering child-credit meals, often they will say they only come with a basic juice/milk/soft drink as a beverage choice. You can always ask your server if they can have one of the specialty drinks, sometimes they will allow it!
• If a quick service location does not have a kid’s menu, kids can use their meal credit on an adult menu item.
• Try more snacks…share! We had four in our party, which meant we got four snack credits per day. So instead of each of us getting our own singular treat once a day, we spread them out and shared them throughout the day. This is a great idea if you want to get to try a bunch of different items (which you will want to, there are SO many) and helps not fill you up on a large snack between your meals.

• The same thing goes for your quick service meals. If there are two locations you want to try at a park, order at both and share your meals. Or, like in our case, we ordered two breakfasts and split them, then later ordered two lunches and did the same.
• Your snack and dining credits are good until midnight on the day you check out. So, if you are staying 6 nights, but have 7 days in the parks (like we did), you will have an extra day in there without a food plan. This is ok! Simply save some of your credits for that last day. Believe me, you will have more than enough food on the dining plan to save a few snacks and quick service meal credits for that final day.
• Don’t overdo it on the buffets. There are so many options at these locations that it’s tempting to get several large plates to try them all. I recommend getting a ¼ to ½ a portion of each dish so you can try them all! Take for example at Boma, an African buffet, there are over a dozen dishes and five different soups to try! Remember these dinners also come with dessert and a specialty mocktail or cocktail—so save room!
• Don’t be afraid to ask a cast member for help. Some locations may say online that they do not accept your dining plan, but this is just do to those locations being more of a food “stand” and not a permanent location. More often than not, these locations will still allow you to use snack credits on items that the app says aren’t available.

I hope this helped bring some clarification to some of the questions and ambiguity behind the Disney Dining Plan. I know when we decided to try it, I had a lot of digging to do to make sure I knew what to expect and how to get the most out of my dollar. The biggest thing is to not be obsessive on getting the most expensive things. Order what sounds good to you, most of the time those items will already be the pricier option.

Have you done a trip to Disney World with the Disney Dining Plan? What was your experience like?

Tags: diningdisneyfoodplanquick servicesave moneysnacktable service