Disney Dining Plan

First, the countdown - just 80 days left! Less than 3 months from now I will be enjoying the heat and crowds at my favorite place! Yay!

Anyway, today I wanted to comment on the Disney Dining Plan. Being a DVC member, I'm happy to see they extended the plan to DVC members staying on points, without needing to purchase a ticket to make it a "package". Our upcoming trip was originally planned to be 6 nights in 2 2-bedroom villas with my husband's family (14 in all). I had mentioned adding the dining plan to one room and trying to extend the use to everyone when we made the initial reservations, but my husband was resistant to the idea. He thought it'd be too confusing.

Sometimes, he takes some time to warm to an idea.

When the free dining offer came out, we added 5 more nights to the end of our trip, added tickets and free dining, and made seating reservations. Then, we found out when my daughter starts school - she'd miss 3 days that week! Since she really didn't want to miss her first day of school (though we thought she'd have been fine) and everyone recommended against it (though the teacher would have been okay if we'd decided to do it), we re-booked through AAA for the week before our original trip instead. So instead of 5 nights and free dining, we have 7 nights of paid dining.

And my husband, who pretty much holds the purse strings, signed off on it. Who'm I to complain?

After rescheduling all of our meals, we were set. Then, the husband started to think. While sometime this can be a painful thing, when it's Disney-related, it usually means there's a bonus in the works.

Now he thinks maybe we should spring for dining for one room, to help defray overall dining costs.

We can save quite a bit of money. We're looking at about $400 per meal for the 2 buffet dinners currently planned for the entire group. We'd just about break even if we add another dinner, and then the counter service lunches and snacks would be gravy. Coordination is probably a non-issue.

The main question is, is that an acceptible use - i.e., using dining credits for one room for people in two rooms?

Mousesavers (http://www.mousesavers.com) has this as a hint in getting the most out of your dining plan.

I checked allearsnet (http://www.allearsnet.com) but didn't see it listed on their DDP information at all.

I sent an email to DVC back in January, and received a reply from Pepe in Member Services that stated that we do not need to use all of our credits for people in the room - that we can use them for others as well - but that we will be limited only to the credits for that single room. Great! That's exactly what we wanted to know, and from a semi-offical source (I'll be printing this out just in case).

I don't believe the Walt Disney World site or any of the Dining Plan informational materials directly from Disney specify one way or the other. I did read some threads on one of the web boards (the Disboards, I think) that people had both success and failures in attempting to use their dining credits in this way.

We're not trying to cheat Disney out of money. In fact, the places we're eating are all buffets, so are really not the best "value" for the plan we could get, versus table service. We are intending to pay for the plan (as we're on DVC points, though our reservation is during the free dining period). The credits we are using could be used by those in the room if necessary (though that could make coordination difficult), but it's unlikely that those in the other room would get full benefits out of purchasing the plan for themselves (due to some dietary restrictions).

We have time to make the decision as to whether to add the plan to the room (or rooms as the case may be). I have to say, though - from looking at our 7-night plans for the 3 of us, we're going to save some money over what we would spend to eat at the same restaurants with cash.

Granted, on cash, we'd eat mostly counter-service and not spend anywhere near the same amount. But for the convenience of having it pre-paid (and pre-budgeted), and being able to try places we wouldn't ordinarily go without having to worry about how much we're spending - or tips! - I'm hoping it'll make our trip that much more enjoyable and relaxing.