How We Saved 50% on the Deluxe Dining Plan
For years, the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan has been an unheralded way to save a lot of money at Walt Disney World restaurants. It’s unheralded because it can be totally impractical. For most people, it’s the equivalent of buying 30 pounds of discount mayonnaise from Costco. Everyone loves mayo, but when you buy more than you can use before it expires, your savings are illusory. (Last updated April 2, 2019.)
The same idea applies with the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan. There’s the possibility for great theoretical savings, but the practical reality is that most Walt Disney World guests cannot or will not eat that much. In fact, the high likelihood of many unused credits is a big part of why Disney prices the Deluxe Dining Plan how it does. On a per-credit basis, it’s cheaper than the other Dining Plans, but it’s extremely unlikely you’ll use all those credits, or at least that you’ll use them to their full potential if used over the course of a normal Walt Disney World vacation.
However, there are ways to get clever with the Deluxe Dining Plan. We would know, as we’ve run this same exercise almost every year, and will be doing it again at least a couple of times in 2019. For most people, the easiest route is coupling the Deluxe Dining Plan with one reservation of a split stay (which we covered recently in our How to Do a Split Stay at Walt Disney World post). This allows you to spread out your credits over an additional day, since you have your full check-in and check-out days to use them.
Perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves. If you’re unfamiliar with Walt Disney World’s Dining Plan structure, check out our Ultimate Guide to the Disney Dining Plan post. The Deluxe Disney Dining Plan includes three counter service restaurants or table service meal credits and two snacks per night, plus one refillable mug per trip.
Given the flexibility of those meal credits–you could use them at Electric Umbrella or California Grill–the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan is viewed as something of an all-inclusive Dining Plan (it’s not actually, but for most people, it’s effectively that) or the ultimate dining splurge. You even still get appetizers with the Deluxe Dining Plan!
For our experiment (we’ll call it that to make this sound scientific instead of just like us stuffing our faces nonstop), we opted for a single night of the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan. During that time, we did three table service meals all with alcohol, appetizers, and desserts.
We also used both of our snack credits at the Epcot International Festival of the Arts, and somehow managed to get a few uses out of our refillable mugs. (More importantly, we took them home with us, as we didn’t have this new-ish design.) Even if you’re not visiting during one of the Epcot festivals, there are so many expensive snacks at Walt Disney World now that it’s easy to get bang for your buck that way.
Rather than following our own advice in our Best-Value Table Service Disney Dining Plan Restaurants post, we opted for restaurants that were expensive, but also that we had yet to review. (And also that we were hesitant to pay for out of pocket as we anticipated they’d be poor values.)
As such, we booked reservations for Tony’s Town Square, Teppan Edo, and Coral Reef. Not exactly the heavy-hitters of the Walt Disney World dining scene, but restaurants at which we’ve been wanting to visit or revisit. I’m not going to fixate on our experiences at each restaurant since we’ll have full reviews of each coming later and whether our meals were “good” or “bad” is sort of irrelevant to this post. We could’ve done this same experiment at other 1-credit table service restaurants and had good meals if we wanted.
Instead, we’ll cut to the chase and share the objective results. We spent $232.50 to add on the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan (two adults, one night) to our stay at Pop Century.
That’s undeniably a lot of money. It’s way more money than we spend out of pocket on food during an average day at Walt Disney World. However, here’s what each meal would have cost if we had paid out of pocket:
- Tony’s Town Square – $135.53
- Teppan Edo – $138.45
- Coral Reef – $137.12
- Festival of the Arts Snacks – $40.25
This amounts to a total value of $451.35 (plus whatever value you want to give the refillable mugs–we barely used them), which far exceeded the amount we spent on the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan. It even exceeded Disney’s own advertised savings on the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan since we saved roughly 50%. Still, we spent more than we normally would have per day on food, so that mayo analogy still applies, right?
Well, maybe. The added wrinkle here is that we did these meals over the course two days. The scenario we tested is not practical for an average tourist, but presents an interesting way to ‘hack’ the Deluxe Dining Plan for those willing to work for it. In this test, we did a 1-night stay and spread out our 3 table service meals over the course of two days.
Since the Deluxe Dining Plan credits do not expire until midnight of the day you check-out, you effectively have two full days to use a day’s worth of credits. Likewise, you’d have 3 days to use a 2-day’s stay worth of credits, and so on. This is why we recommend doing a split stay, and purchasing the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan for only one of those stays.
Given that this was all we ate over the course of two days at Walt Disney World, I think it was a good value. With that said, it is disingenuous to tout this as a savings of $200+. Had we paid out of pocket, we would not have ordered alcohol at any of these meals (most of the drinks were bad and overpriced–they weren’t even worth the ~$3 we paid out of pocket for the tips on each one). We also would not have ordered expensive entrees at Tony’s, nor would we have purchased refillable mugs.
On this blog, we normally stress that the Disney Dining Plan is only “worth” whatever value you get out of it, taking into account what you’d eat normally when paying out of pocket, not in the contrived setting of trying to eek as much value out of the credits as possible by ordering the most expensive entrees, etc. I think that’s a fair point that also needs to be emphasized here.
Even with that in mind, we would have ordered expensive entrees at Teppan Edo, moderately-priced ones at the other two restaurants, and outrageously priced snacks at Festival of the Arts. Even discounting the actual value of what we received, we still came out way ahead, saving around $100. The difficulty here is in replicating our “experiment.”
Normally, the best practical way to leverage the Deluxe Dining Plan over the course of a trip is to do a character breakfast, eat snacks midday, and do a Signature Restaurant for dinner. Unless your stomach is a bottomless pit, three table service meals simply is not realistic, and that’s true from both a hunger and time perspective.
If you’re a normal person considering the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan, that’s the ‘best use’ scenario we’d recommend. Even that isn’t totally practical. Character breakfasts and Signature dining are pretty much polar opposites of one another, so unless you’re a party of adults who like to embrace a sense of whimsy and sophistication, or a family with well-behaved and mature kids, even that scenario is pushing the bounds of practicality.
As we do a lot of 1-2 night stays for the sake of hotel updates, it’s easy for us to buy the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan for one night. For those of you doing regular trips, this might seem like a useless tip, but keep in mind that it’s possible to book split stays. You don’t necessarily even have to change hotels for this to work (although we enjoy that aspect of split stays).
Now, we’re not condoning do 7 one-night stays at Pop Century and booking the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan every other night of your trip (to the contrary, I think you might run into problems with the hotel refusing to keep you in the same room because of the hassle you’ve created), but doing a one night stay at the front or back end of your trip and splurging on dining during those couple of days could be a savvy and realistic move.
Ultimately, maybe you’ll be able to leverage the Deluxe Dining Plan in a way similar to what we did here, and maybe this is totally unreasonable and utterly useless for you. Part of Walt Disney World planning comes down to reading different ideas, and distilling the information to determine whether it’s pertinent to you. For some people, this is definitely a terrible idea. For others, it’s great. Irrespective of how it rates for you, hopefully it was at least an interesting read. After all, we made the great sacrifice of eating at Tony’s Town Square (TONY’S!) for you. 😉
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
Have you done the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan? Were you able to get value out of it? Do you agree or disagree with our take on the value of the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
My family always buys DDP. My kids(24 & 28) usually walk to fill up their mugs. Sometimes several times a day. I always keep up with what we would have paid(on the first balance you are given). And we save $$.,We could get buy with a smaller plan but Deluxe offers alcohol with each meal now. It is alot of food but sometimes we share apps if we’re not real hungry. I love the dining plan.
We don’t do dining plan at all anymore unless we somehow end up going during free dining, because for us with a family of five children ranging in ages from 2 to 10, it makes more sense to just order as needed and pay “cash” and even let them sometimes share plates. We did the deluxe dining our first trip and it was nice to have that many credits because we actually prefer a lot of the two credit restaurants so that’s where having all the extra credits comes in handy for us. We don’t necessarily do three sitdown meals a day but we do a lot of 2 tableservice credits meals that eat those credits up pretty fast. Either way, I hate that you can’t just book the dining plan for certain people on your trip and that’s why we probably will never do it again at least not until our kids are all much older. I’m not sure. It’s just so expensive and unless you are really going out of your way to eat all the most expensive stuff to get the most out of it or even save a little money it’s more a convenience thing than a saving money thing so I would rather just charge to my room and pay the bill while I’m there lol. But it was definitely super convenient to have everything paid up front and to know that you pretty much had unlimited credits! By the end of our first trip though when we had this plan, we ended up having credits left over because a few of us got the flu while we were there so a lot of our meals got canceled, plus we had a lot of snacks left over that we had to cash out and pack up a bunch and take home with us. In the end pre-booking something like the dining plan brings in risks that you’ve spent all this money you might not end up using, at least with children. The regular Disney dining plan was OK but we ended up having to pay extra out-of-pocket of course when we used that plan during another trip. And honestly the refillable mugs are cool but for us it basically comes out to $130 to get 7 of them during a trip and honestly we don’t need that many… especially when pretty much the only place you can really use them is the food court or your room because most people aren’t going to lug them to other resorts. so between that and the excessive cost of snacks figured into the plan, we’ve decided to just pay cash from here on out and even take some gift cards with us from Sam’s club or target where you can get them 5% off, and just load up on those before the trip! Then you can charge meals to your room and use the gift cards to pay the tab at the front desk later on.
I always enjoy reading your articles but, I have to say I feel duped after opening this one up. The title suggests that you paid 50% of the normal cost of the Deluxe Dining Plan while really you were just stating that, by using the Deluxe Plan, it cost you 50% of what the bill came out to be. No worries, I’ll keep reading your articles but this did seem like “click bait”.
+1
We love getting the Deluxe Dining plan……granted we have always upgraded when free dining was offered. We feel the extra cost above the regular dining plan is well worth it for us….we usually share our desserts with the kids and use a lot of the snack credits to take back some candy souvineers. We do try to do one character meal a day (for the kids) and one signature meal a day to make the adults happy. I will say, at the signature restaurants, the staff goes above and beyond to make sure the kids are happy. On the DD they offer a lot of flexibility on the menu for the kids….they can usually order off the regular menu if they prefer. My husband is in such a better mood when he gets the higher quality meals. The drinks are also really good at the signature restaurants. It helped take the edge off the crowds. (Although I would say the drinks were excellent at Sanaa and a decent wine and beer selection at the Garden Grill. At La Hacienda de San Angel our margaritas tasted watered down.). This last trip we went for three nights/four days, which seemed perfect on DD for us.
When is free dining? Is that an option? Haha. I’m so far behind and overwhelmed. We’re going for four day, four parks. And staying on property. We don’t have dates yet, but saving money (free dining) would help.
We are going with our 3 children within the year, is it possible for my husband and I to do the dining plan for a couple of days and not our children?
Hi Heather!
We looked into this once and were told the entire party needs to be on the Dining Plan. That was a few years ago, though…
As of 2017, NO. Everyone must be on it, for all days.
This is why we no longer do it. Our oldest eats and even our second oldest now, but the three younger ones it’s just a complete waste of money. So it’s better off for us to not do the plan at all
It was my understanding that you couldn’t add the dining plan for a one night stay. We tried this last fall for a one night stay at Beach Club and was told we couldn’t add it. Did you add it at check in, or at the point of making the reservation?
Maybe I missed the answer in the explanation about but Just wondering if your total costs per meal included what you paid for a tip.
If I book a split stay and stay onsite, am I allowed to book FP+ at 60+ days for the entire stay or just at 60+ for each stay? The one night dining plan is quite intriguing, but I suppose right now snagging that FOP FP+ at 60+5 days that isn’t there at 60+4 days is more important if I can’t book all the FP+ in one go.
You can book FP for both portions of the split stay at 60 days from the first check in date. The same is not true for ADRs. There you can book 180 days from first check in only for the first half of the trip and need to wait for 180 days from the 2nd check in to book ADRs for the 2nd half.
I asked a cast member via chat when booking our stay and they said it was 60 days from each check-in, so we opted to not split our stay. They may have been misinformed or not quite understood the question since it was via chat, but I’d double check before booking.
You absolutely can book all days of FP at 60 days from first check in with a split stay. I have done it multiple times, the last time for a trip dec 2017. Unless something has changed in the last few months the CM you chatted with was mis-informed, or thinking of the ADR rules for split stay.
The best way to use this plan is to use one credit for a sit down, or quick, meal and use the other two credits for a two credit restaurant. You’ll still get way more than what you paid for and you get to spend a lot more time in the park. I’ve never been able to eat more than two meals during the day on any trip that I’ve ever taken to Disneyworld because the portions are so large anyway so using it this way is really efficient. May as well eat at restaurants that you would never try otherwise. And if you get hungry in between meals then you have your two snacks.
I love the deluxe plan. We are a family of 5. The kids enjoy the character meals. They are expensive but breaking down the dinning plan by day each person for 7 days we were paying $35.00 a day for each of us for 3 meals and 2 snacks. The year before when we went and paid cash we spent over $3,000.00 and only did 3 character meals that trip. I love the plan and we always had snacks for the drive home from the left over food and snack credits.
We did a version of this last year at Thanksgiving! We booked four days deluxe dining at Caribbean beach resort (free dining package (but paid to upgrade to deluxe) and stayed at the Doubletree for the last night. We are a family of 5 and food is very much a big part of when we travel but even we can’t eat that much food in one day so it really helped us to get the most out of it by stretching it over an extra day. We did have a few snacks left over. Our favorite meal was Tiffins and we prob wouldn’t have eaten there is not for your recommendation- thanks!!
On our last trip we had the deluxe dining plan for 3 adults and 3 kids. We ate at character breakfasts and signature as well as regular table service restaurants. We are big eaters and dining was a big part of all of our enjoyment at DW. We naturally gravitate to the most expensive meals and several of our dinners ( California Grill and Barcooses) were well over$400 even the grandkids picked lobster and steaks for their meals. Even for us it was too much food if we had 3 table service meals a day. I did the math and we did not lose money on the plan but saved a bit. We like the convenience of prepaying and not worrying about getting the most expensive item on the menu. We did not partake in any dessert parties because we had enough dessert with our meals. Nor did we want to snack between meals.
This year when we go we are doing the standard plan for 3 days at AK because we are going offsite one day and deluxe for rest at BC. The standard plan doesnt give us enough table service credits so we will need to pay for one meal out of pocket. We plan on having several signature meals this time too. We prefer table service to counter because we enjoy the sit down dining experience and the incredible theming.
The deluxe plan makes sense for our family now. This could change. For our upcoming trip we spent many hours making our dining choices and can’t wait to try out new dining options.
. From the advice I read here and elsewhere, it really does depend on personal preference what way to go- meal plan or not.
Thank you Tom for all of your advice on all things Disney
Very good article for people thinking of purchasing the dining plan to understand how to make it work in your favor. Love tge split trip idea. I recently went on a 4 night 5 day trip with two adults and 3 children. But 2 of the 3 children are over 10. I found that the basic dining plan was a success for us. Especially taking advantage of rhe overpriced snacks at the arts festival . We had a great time trying every snack at each country in place of a meal that night. We used 20 snacks that night and then spread out the rest of the meals over the next 4 days. We used every meal and snack and felt it was worth the money spent. My only complaint is that anyone under 21 cant purchase alcohol a should be in a different price point then over 21.
When we did a split stay last year we did the DDP for 2 nights, spreading 6 credits over 3 days. That was still way, way too much food and I think doing it for a single night is the only way we could make it work for us.
At Sanaa (not a “value” pick, but one we like) with the DDP you get 3 curry dishes instead of only 2. So the value is increased! But I cannot eat an appetizer, dessert, and 50% more entree in a single meal.
We only did a single Signature meal (Tiffins), so more Signature restaurants would also have stretched our value while not adding as many calories. We also ended up using most of our snack credits at the French bakery and taking those back to our room for breakfasts the next few days.
Did you post your recent review for Tony’s? I couldn’t find it. I’ve read mixed reviews elsewhere but we were going to give it a go this Friday for the first time. Having second thoughts.. please share your experience!
I thought the food was terrible the first time I went to Tony’s a couple years ago (I’m an Italian snob…). However, we just got back for a trip and tried it again (mainly so we could get “signatures” from Lady and Tramp) and we had EXCELLENT food. Not sure if there was a menu change or chef change but it was much better!
We eat there pretty much every time we go to MK and love it! I always get the calamari appetizer and the linguini with clams (the wine/garlic version) and I have never been disappointed. The menu is nothing fancy, but each time we ate there the service was excellent and the food was tasty. If you like chain italian restaurants, like a Maggianos or Macaroni Grill (I’d say it’s a step above Olive Garden), you will like Tony’s. If you want a higher end or more creative Italian, you’d have to look to Epcot Italy or Disney Springs. We appreciate both kinds of restaurants, but the casual vibe of Tony’s works well for an MK day. Hope you enjoy it!
Did you enjoy Teppan Edo, or was it disappointing since you can compare it with your experience with restaurants in (real) Japan?
Teppan Edo isn’t all that comparable to authentic restaurants in Japan (Benihana is American), so that wasn’t a problem. We enjoyed Teppan Edo.
Thanks! We are going next week. It does make it easier to enjoy such restaurants when I can go in knowing not to expect authenticity, and appreciate them for what they are.
I like Tony’s! There. I said it.
You might want to sit out our upcoming Tony’s Town Square Review, then. 😉
Nothing I haven’t heard before Tom.
I wish there was a Junior Price for dining plans for kids age 10-14. It seems ridiculous that a “child” still has to pay the adult price for the dining plan, especially when he or she only wants chicken nuggets or similar kid food. That is not worth the money unless the child appreciates fine dining options or has a big appetite.
In that scenario, you’re coming out way ahead if you don’t buy the Dining Plan, so why even mess with it?
YES totally agree! We haven’t done the dining plan in a few years because if that, it’s just too expensive to pay adult prices for my tweens!
A “hack” that we hope to try on our next trip – getting the deluxe meal plan for the room that I stay in with my kids, while my parents and adult brother book a room with no dining plan and sharing the credits among our whole party. Everything I’ve read online suggests that people have great luck and value with this system although I do worry that we will be perceived as somehow scamming the system and prevented from using our credits that way by the time we go. Any thoughts on this practice?
It’s technically not allowed, but I have never heard of anyone having any issues doing this. Based upon current restaurant protocol, there would be no means of them knowing that you’re sharing credits (even if Cast Members did know, most probably wouldn’t care). I’d do it.
What part is not allowed? I recall reading a few years ago that WDW explicitly noted on the description of the dining plan that you could use your credits to pay for other people at your table not on the plan. This was about the same time they formalized 1 credit for 3 snacks exchange. Has that changed? Or do you mean using child-priced credits for adults?
I did this very thing when we were there this past January and it worked like charm. There is no distinction in Disney’s system for deluxe credits between kids and adults like there is on the regular plan. They are just “credits.”
We had a couple “chicken nuggets type” kids in our that we would just pay OOP for and used all the credits for the adults. Had no issues at any TS restaurant.
the Deluxe Dining Plan has become sort of a game for me – i try and pay the least (by using the “free” dining offer and upgrading by paying the difference) and get the most. I’ve found the best way for our party is to do a character breakfast , snacks for lunch, and a late 2-credit dinner. Since there are blogs like this one and so many others that have awesome info like how much all the snacks cost, i am able to scope out what i want to eat vs how much it costs and really maximize a) my value and b) my experience. pretty much every single 2-credit restaurant would be a hard NO if it weren’t for the dining plan, so i include both convenience and culinary or character experience points with my total value.
I think one year i paid maybe ~$500 for the dining plan and we ended up getting at least $1100 worth between meals and snacks. (2 adults, 5 night stay)
Disney depends on people who don’t do their research, who use snack credits for small purchases like water and candy, and whose kids only eat half their small plate of mac n cheese at Yachtmen’s steakhouse! I enjoy manipulating the system and getting the most bang for my buck.