Big Savings on Deluxe Disney Dining Plan?!
With 2017 pricing decreasing for Walt Disney World’s top tier Dining Plan, it’s a good idea to consider whether purchasing it or paying to upgrade if you take advantage of the Free Dining promo makes sense for your family’s vacation. While we originally tested this a few years ago, due to price changes, we thought it would be worth revisiting and updating this post. While our exact menu prices in the case study section are no longer entirely accurate, the idea remains the same.
Actually, the “idea” here favors the Deluxe Dining Plan offering even better savings for a 2017 Walt Disney World vacation. This is because menu prices have increased at a higher clip than Disney Dining Plan prices–again, the Deluxe Plan is actually decreasing in price for 2017! This means that, although the precise numbers now differ, the gap between using the Deluxe Plan and paying out of pocket is now greater than it was when we tested this.
Our point with this test was to demonstrate how the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan is the most expensive of the Disney World dining plans, but if you use it efficiently, you can maximize your value and save a lot of money at Walt Disney World restaurants. If meals are an important part of your trip, we think it makes sense to upgrade to the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan–even if you need to pay to do so during Free Dining season. What follows is that original case study, along with some new conclusions at the end of the post.
I had heard this a few times from Disney Dining Plan veterans, and the idea is great in theory, but I was still a bit skeptical that the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan would actually save money in practice. I mean, it’s just so much food. So when the opportunity presented itself for us to test the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan, we just had to do our own “research.” Oh, the sacrifices we make for our readers! 😉
For those who are unfamiliar with Walt Disney World’s Dining Plan structure, check out our Ultimate Guide to the Disney Dining Plan post. As you can see from that, the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan includes: three counter service restaurants or table service meal credits per night; two snacks per night; and, one refillable mug per trip. The snacks and refillable mugs are pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t waste time fixating on those.
The three meals aspect of the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan is a bit more interesting, and is where most of the savings comes into play. As the description above indicates, you can choose any mix of meals, table service or counter service, for these credits. If you eat at a table service restaurant, not only do the meals include desserts and entrees (like they do on the regular Disney Dining Plan), but they also include appetizers. Obviously, table service meals offer much better value than counter service meals, so it’s in your best interest to do all table service meals if you book the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan.
Unfortunately, unless you’re a competitive eater, three table service meals per day is probably too much. In fact, two table service meals per day might border on too much. Disney realizes this, which is why the price increase of the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan over the standard Disney Dining Plan is not as much as you’d expect when determining the value per-meal on the DDP.
Considering what you (potentially) receive on the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan over what you receive on the regular Disney Dining Plan, the price difference isn’t bad. In fact, it’s a really good deal by Walt Disney World standards. That is, assuming you can eat 2 table service meals every single day of your trip.
It’s one of those “eyes bigger than your stomach” scenarios, though. All that food sounds and looks great, but you’ll likely waste a lot of credits by the end of your trip, so the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan actually works out to be a poor value for a lot of people who purchase it. Unless you have a plan…
Our Plan
Realizing that three table service meals per day (the absolute best way to maximize your value on the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan) plus two snacks was an unrealistic goal for us, we decided to hedge our bets with the plan by doing two table service meals per day instead of three.
However, to keep the value high, we used two of these credits per day for signature restaurants, which meant that we were still using all three table service credits per day. I’ve written in the past that you get more value out of dining credits by doing two separate regular table service meals instead of one signature meal, but if your option is one signature meal or one regular table service meal and one counter service meal (or one table service meal and one wasted credit), you’re much better off doing the signature meal.
We thus planned on doing one early regular table service meal for lunch, and a signature table service meal for dinner. I’ve heard of others doing a breakfast character meal buffet and a signature dinner to spread the time between meals even more. However, we wanted to get a bit more bang for our buck, so we did lunch and dinner.
It also helped us that we were only doing this experiment for two nights (and we could spread out our meal and credit usage over the course of three days). I don’t think we could have kept up the table service lunch and signature table service dinner pace up everyday for a 7-night trip. Two sit-down meals per day may not seem like much, but it really is.
The next step was determining which restaurants would offer the most value for our money. After researching this at length last year to create our Best-Value Table Service Disney Dining Plan Restaurants post, I had a pretty good idea which non-signature restaurants we should consider. After eliminating a couple restaurants because we had already eaten at them recently (or for various other reasons), we settled on Tutto Italia and Le Cellier. I consulted some Walt Disney World menus and determined that Narcoossee’s and Yachtsman Steakhouse were the way to go for our dinners.
We booked reservations for Tutto Italia (lunch) and Narcoossee’s (dinner) the first day of our trip, Yachtsman Steakhouse (dinner) the second day of our trip, and Le Cellier (lunch) the last day of our trip.
Along the way we had snacks as our appetites allowed. We originally planned on doing this during Epcot Food & Wine Festival to really maximize our value since snacks there can sometimes cost $7+, but after giving it some thought, we realized that we wanted to focus our stomachs on the snacks and other Food & Wine Festival-exclusive offerings, so we decided to nix that plan, in favor of this plan.
Unsurprisingly, we saved a lot of money. We paid $342.08 to add-on the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan (total for two people, two nights) to our Disney Vacation Club stay at the Beach Club Villas.
Reminder: the 2017 add-on price would be different, but since the cost of both the standard and Deluxe Disney Dining Plans have increased at similar rates, the cost difference between the two should be about the same.
Here’s what each meal would have cost if we had paid out of pocket:
- Tutto Italia – $115.02
- Narcoossee’s (2 credits) – $201.20
- Yachtsman Steakhouse (2 credits) – $201.47
- Le Cellier – $113.30
In addition to that, we each received refillable mugs ($30.86 value) and we used 7 of our 8 snack credits ($30.24). We would have used all 8 credits, but the Disney’s Magical Express bus’ early arrival prevented us from using the last one. This amounts to a total value received of $692.09 for time we were on the trip, which far exceeded the amount we spent on the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan, and even exceeded Disney’s own advertised savings on the Disney Dining Plan since we saved over 50%.
UPDATE: Perusing menus should demonstrate that these prices are on the low end of what you’re going to pay currently, particularly at Le Cellier, which has spiked the most since we tried this. (It was also a 1-credit restaurant for lunch at that time.) It’s pretty easy to see that these menu prices have gone up much more than the DxDDP price.
I think the numbers pretty well speak for themselves. I was incredibly pleased with the Deluxe Dining Plan, and if you’ve read my review of the 2017 Disney Dining Plan, you know I’m not the biggest fan of the plan, in general. So this is high praise coming from me.
That said, before you go booking this because you’ll save 50%, there are a few things worth noting. First, we never would have eaten this much food if we weren’t on the Deluxe Dining Plan. Assuming that we dined at the same restaurants, we probably would have spent $85 at Tutto Italia, $175 at Narcoossee’s, $201.47 at Yachtsman Steakhouse, and $75 at Le Cellier.
We would have spent another $20 or so on snacks, and we wouldn’t have purchased the refillable mugs. Total, we still would have spent around $556.47. We also use the Tables in Wonderland card, so our total out of pocket would have been $445.18, which is still well above what we paid for the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan.
Plus, as noted, we received more food than we would have if we paid out of pocket–while we wouldn’t have ordered it if paying out of pocket, I’m certainly not complaining about it and we definitely ate it all and enjoyed it, so it must be accounted-for in an accurate value calculation. In other words, no matter how you do the math, the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan was still a great deal for us.
Doing only two nights of the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan was perfect for us as it didn’t require us to keep up the pace of such lavish and large meals over an extended duration. Had we done it for 7-nights, I think my verdict would likely be, “great deal, but way too much food.”
As mentioned above, this ‘too much’ food is exactly what Disney is counting on by pricing the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan so low (relatively speaking). The expectation that people won’t or can’t maximize their value on this plan is built into the price, and for those on longer vacations, I think that assumption is very accurate.
If you’re contemplating doing the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan during a long trip, either mentally and physically prepare yourself for huge feasts, or mentally prepare yourself to waste some credits (if you do end up opting for some counter service meals, make sure to consult our list of the best-value counter service restaurants to get good bang for your buck). Given the potential savings, you can use some credits “inefficiently” and still save a lot of money.
Now that the prices are shifting, we will likely test this strategy again during our 2017 Walt Disney World vacation, as prices are creeping up at table service restaurants and the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan has gone down in price. Since this will likely be a 5 day trip, we are going to take a different approach. Rather than lunch and dinner, we will opt for character breakfasts, followed by using snack credits for lunch, and early dinner at Signature Restaurants.
This is still a lot of food, but spacing the two table service meals out seems like a sound strategy. Plus, character meals can be an excellent use of table service credits. Even though most aren’t quite as good as ordering the most expensive meals at a standard 1-credit table service meal, we think we can adopt this strategy for a more enjoyable trip. It’ll cut into our savings a bit, but we should still save a lot.
Overall, we recommend upgrading to the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan if you think you can eat two table service restaurant meals per day for most of your trip (if you can do three, hats off to you–I’d like to hear from you folks in the comments) and use most of the snack credits. Although it was not a part of our case study, this is true even during the Free Disney Dining Plan promotion, which happens annually select dates every August, September, November, and December.
Free Dining also coincides with the absolute best time to use the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan: during Epcot’s International Food & Wine Festival. Then, you can get even more bang for your buck by using the snack credits on expensive food booth samples. However, that will be a lot of food…and any time of year is a good time to use the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan. Just make sure you pack your appetite and make Advance Dining Reservations to some of Walt Disney World’s more expensive restaurants!
Planning a Disney trip? Read our other Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews and our 101 Delicious Walt Disney World Dining Tips. If you are planning a Walt Disney World trip, make sure to also read our comprehensive Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide to make the most of your experience!
Your Thoughts
Have you ever done the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan during a Walt Disney World trip? Did you pay to upgrade to the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan from the standard plan when taking advantage of Free Dining? What do you think of our little experiment? Hearing from you is half the fun, so please share your questions or thoughts in the comments below!
My daughter and I got the deluxe plan when we went back in November and it was perfect. We were there for 9 days and she got the do all the charactor breakfasts, Cinderella’s table, Chrystal Palace Akershus and all the others. We had a couple of signiture dinners and stuffed our suitcases with enough snacks to take home that it took my daughter 5 weeks to eat through them. It was great! We’re going again this November and I’m using the same Deluxe Plan again. It’s well worth the money!
We used the deluxe with two kids for seven days. It was great. We had character breakfasts everyday, then we didn’t have to wait to see them in the park. We went to the Luau and Cinderella’s Royal Table. We would use one snack every day for frozen drinks. We would use DDP again.
We have used the Deluxe Dining Plan before but it is a lot of food. I am planning a trip for my husband and I and he is not much of a food lover so I have done a lot a research (even going as far as picking all the restaurants that I want to go to and picking the average meal price for DDP and OOP) if you want to eat it is definitely worth it. However even if you don’t want to eat a lot you will still break even and have more credit than you probably will use. I prefer the DDP simply because it is paid for in advance so I don’t have to worry about carrying money with me all trip or worry about staying on budget. I also make sure I am very aware about planing on how to use snack credits. Be sure lots of my gifts will be bags of Disney candy or popcorn or other transportable snacks.
We’ve been to WDW a few times & we’ve always taken advantage of the deluxe dining plan… The ideal way to go about it is to have a nice breakfast (Kona or Boma are favorites) and then a signature dinner every other day.
We never wound up using all our snacks but we found out that you can buy various candies/treats (I think the value has to be under $3.99) and just bring them back home with us for treats for our nephews & nieces. Haha, usually my carry-on is stuffed with cookies, rice crispy treats, candies… Must look funny going thru the scanner.
Don’t miss out on going to Ohana’s!
Tom,
I’ll do you one better than the Deluxe Plan. We went in 2002 and 2005 and did the Platinum Plan. We enjoyed Victoria and Albert’s on both of those trips in addition to Wolfgang Puck’s before a performance of La Nouba.
Decadence for darn sure. But totally wonderful experiences. Our mantra for both trips was that you’ll never go hungry on the dining plan!
I think we ended up with unused snack credits both trips. In 2010 we did deluxe and at the end we used the unused snacks to bring home treats for friends and family.
We are definitely foodies and the signature dining is part of what draws us to WDW so Deluxe works for us.
Assumed we were better off with a room discount and paying for meals out of pocket. any thoughts?
We go to WDW every year but have always done a room-only reservation (and have been lucky with discounts, although it’s always a little nerve-racking because we must reserve at full-price and hope that a discount comes out later.) The primary reason we have skipped a dining plan is that we are all vegetarians. Even though we tend to do two table-Service restaurants per day (often including at least one character meal) the vegetarian items are often the cheapest on the menu, so we’ve
Maybe this is a silly question or was already answered but I am staying at AKL in Sept for 7 nights (just two adults) and got free Disney Dining (yippee!!)
I was debating about upgrading to deluxe because my fiancee and I are big table service snobs and like the signature restaurants. With no kids, we like to get out of the heat and relax during the day and at night. But even with that, I still think that this will be too much. We won’t be doing any character dining (hubby isn’t a fan.. oh well!) and I don’t think we can eat a signature dinner plus a table service meal everyday.
Ex on somedays: Boma for breakfast, snack for lunch, dinner at California Grill or Jiko.
Question: Can I upgrade to deluxe for 2-3 days of our trip, and stay on the standard plan for the rest? Or is this too easy.
A lot of the time when my family goes to DW (we’re DVC members and my sister is a cast member) we’ll pay to stay at one of the value resorts on the weekend and then use our points the rest of the week for the weekdays. That way we can make more/longer trips without using all of our points up at once. So by doing this we end up with 2 stays… a 2 night and a 5 night. This way we can get the dining plan for the first ‘short’ stay and eat waaaay too much food, then have the rest of the time to eat more normal. Staying at 2 different resorts is a good way to not have to get the dining plan for your entire vacation.
I have been checking into the deluxe dining plan, we have always done the regular plan where you only get 1 counter and 1 sit down meal. Wanting to go back to Disney in December, didn’t they offer free dining last year free during the first part of December?
Yes, Stephanie they are currently offering the dining plan for select hotels on select dates from sept. 30 – Dec. 13th when you book through Disney. Hopefully it comes again in 2013 because I want to try the DxDP
My husband and I just got back from our 5 night/6 day Disney vaca with the deluxe dining plan. We usually go with my sister and a friend and opt for the regular dining plan. They couldn’t make it this year, so we splurged on dining.
We did similar to what you did and ate at 2-credit places: Narcoosee’s (the most expensive of the whole trip), Brown Derby, and Bistro de Paris. On those nights we had lunch and the other nights were regular lunch/dinner. Had I really realized just how much food we’d be getting, I would have scheduled lunches earlier to allow more time between meals!
We also used only 3 of our snacks (hello dole float!) and literally took home 17 snacks from the France bakery. Yummm! We live locally so it was easy to take them home. 🙂 Oh, and we banked 2 meals for breakfast on the day we checked out!
The deluxe dining plan can be a good deal if you use it…”right”. We like to call it maximizing, lol. I keep records of how much every meal would have cost and do the math at the end of the trip….and it is crazy how much you could potentially spend on that much food!
Being local is a real plus if you have to take snacks home. As much as we would like to, we could never take home 17 snacks from France!
We purchased the Deluxe Dining Plan when we were there for 2wks in January 2011. We were staying at Coronado Springs and the regular Dining Plan was free so we just had to pay the upgrade to the Deluxe…great deal! We always rent a car when we go to WDW so we drive to AKL every morning to have the buffet breakfast at Boma (and sit in Albert’s section if he’s working…he rocks!) We’re usually done by 815am and then off to a park. We usually just have a snack during the day and then go to a Signature restaurant for dinner. For those of you who have not done this, keep in mind you have to factor in the tip based on the pricey cost of the Signature meals, but its still well worth it:) We had some amazing dinners! And our son at the time was 15 so he was okay to having some late dinners at a nice restaurant and being well behaved…lol! I say that only because our dinner at The Yachtsman was accompanied by a family sitting not too far away with 2 small children that most obviously just wanted to go to bed…they screamed & cried for almost 2hrs. The children’s menus at the Signature restaurants also do not offer as much variety for the little ones that the regular restaurants offer, so that is something to keep in mind as well. Overall, the Deluxe dining plan absolutely added to the magic of our Disney vacation and we’ll most definitely do it again!
Boma everyday for breakfast? You must be big Boma fans! We’ve only ever done the dinner buffet there, but we really liked it!
Sorry my typing stinks…
BTW, one of my favorite memories is taking the other half of my Tonga Toast to go, then renting a boat and eating the rest of my breakfast on Seven Seas Lagoon right outside MK with a view of Cinderella’s Castle!!! <3
Now that’s what they call “The Life.”
Let me just say that I’m not one of those people whi like to throw away money, but I’m all up for doing the deluxe plan because it makes my vacation pretty much “all-inclusive”. I like the security of knowing I can do everything and eat anywhere without much worry of how much money I need to save for it. Deluxe plan is definietly too much food, but I always do a little doggie bag to have some snacks for the parks. I am constantly on the move at WDW, so I need the fuel for energy, as someone else said.
And I will say, I just found out recently all the things that can be eaten with snack credits! Wow!! I’m going to be rolling away from my next WDW vacation!! LOL No diets on vacation!
We (my wife and I) did the Deluxe Dining Plan this past November during the Food & Wine Festival and it worked out great. We also tended to mostly do an early lunch and later signature dinner (5 of 6 nights). Using the snack credits during the Food & Wine Festival was an extra special perk! We also used some snack credits for breakfast (Muffin or Cinnamon Roll from a Bakery) a couple times and that worked really well. While it is a lot of food, if you enjoy good food and take advantage of the Signature restaurants and top shelf table restaurants, I think it is worth it to indulge for a week. I saved my receipts and for 6 nights, and had we paid out of pocket for all of our meals and snacks we would have spent between $400-$500 more than we paid for the dining plan. So, it was definitely worth it for us. Thanks for the great post!
I am really starting to think we should do the DxDDP during Food & Wine Festival. Even if we end up using some credits less than “perfectly” efficient, we still should save a lot!
Frankly, I’m not sure we could have used all the snack credits had it not been for the Food & Wine Festival. The day we didn’t go to a Signature restaurant, we had breakfast at Cat Cora’s place, skipped lunch at a sit-down and ate our way around the world showcase instead. We had a late dinner at Cosmic Ray’s during MVMCP. It was great because we felt we could try anything we wanted at the Food & Wine Fest.
My wife and I are going to attend the 213 Wine and Food Festival, I understand there are some special events you can sign up for. We went 2 years ago and missed out on them because I couldn’t figure out how to sign up for them. Do you have any advice or knowledge on how and when to sign up for them?
Thank you,
Eddie
You can’t sign up for them yet, but there will be an official announcement on the Disney Parks Blog.
Wow, that is a lot of food. I would have never thought of using the Deluxe Dining Plan for signature restaurants. I think this would be a great idea for foodies and people *not* on a diet :-). The standard Disney Dining Plan is too much for me, but this definitely makes me think about trying the Deluxe plan on a short visit to WDW!
If the standard DDP is too much for you, the DxDDP will be WAY too much. However, if you plan well, you might be able to make it work on a short trip, like we did.
Mike and I were on Deluxe when we were down there. I’m not sure exactly how much it added to our trip, but for us, all in, we paid $2500 for tickets, hotel and dining plan. We did the math – $2000 worth of food, exclusive of snacks. We feel like we’ve gotten our money’s worth!
Sounds like you definitely got your money’s worth. You said you stayed at Pop, right?
Sports, but we ate everywhere else. Narcoosee’s, California Grill, Artist’s Point and Jiko (where we had the BEST meal of the entire trip).
I saw that it said you both got the deluxe dining plan and stretched it out for three days? So if you were going for a week you could buy maybe a 4 or 5 day deluxe plan and then stretch it across the week? If so that would be perfect!
That wouldn’t work. I should have clarified in the post, but you must purchase the plan for every night of your trip. Credits expire at midnight of the day you checkout. Thus, for us, we had three days to use the two nights worth of credits. If you were on a 6 night/7 day trip, you’d have 7 days to use 6 nights worth of credits. Does that make sense?
I can definitely see how the Deluxe plan offers savings, but we’ve always eschewed the Disney Dining Plans because we don’t eat the way that the plans are laid out. While we might, once or twice on a trip, eat at two or three table-service meals a day (light breakfasts and late dinners make it possible on occasion), we often dine in bars or lounges, split several appetizers instead of ordering entrées, and rarely order dessert. Also, several of our favorite restaurants do not participate with the Dining Plan. Most of the Downtown Disney restaurants and Bistro de Paris recently came on board, but we’d miss not going to any of the Swan and Dolphin restaurants.
My husband and I did the Deluxe plan for 8 days in September. We didn’t do the actual math, but our typical days looked like this: character or buffet breakfast, snacks for lunch, and a signature dinner (2 credits). We tried to have an early breakfast (before 9), lunch or snacks a little later (1:30 or 2), and a late dinner (8 or later). While I was full after each meal, for how much energy we used in the parks, we needed all the fuel we could get. My husband is much more into the food than the parks, so for us this worked out well. We are both fairly big eaters, but we did occasionally still have too much food. We had the biggest problem with the snack credits because we simply filled up at meals. We ended up stocking up on candy at the end. We’re already planning our next trip and will definitely use this again!
I planned on Disney World. I got some quotes from travel agents. Then I stumbled on Travel Agloo. He mentioned me about the different dining plans and the only one mentioned to me about the deluxe, at first I thought this is expensive but when we went, I was glad we did this plan. For sure going again with this plan, plus by booking this I got a gift card, Highly recommend this agency.
We did similar. Also, you don’t (didn’t) have to use both swipes at lunch for two people. Some lunches we only swiped once and shared a meal. And then had a character breakfast/ sig dinner day. Basically you add the total number of credits and then just places them where you want them on the trip.