new to all this...Free Dining Plan..vs Upgrade - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
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It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
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It entirely depends on how your family eats. I upgraded our free dining to deluxe because my DH and I prefer table service for our meals and will eat at the signature restaurants for a lot of our dinners.
It really depends on your preference between quick service meals and table service.
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If you prefer to sit down for almost all of your meals than the deluxe plan is for you! We upgraded last year during free dining and had a blast. We stayed four nights and so had 12 meal credits each. We used all of them . . . we ate two meals a day for 5 days and did 2 signature dining experiences! I like that the mug is included as well!
As others have said, it depends on your dining habits. It worked for us, because we like two table service meals a day and we just made one of those a signature meal, which meant we easily used our three credits a day.
Like everyone else said... it does depend on if you want to do a lot of TS vs QS meals. But it is a lot of food, even we admit that! But we love having the ability to just eat at TS places since we like to sit and enjoy our meal and talk about what we've done and what we'll still do or plan what to do after the meal. Also the TS food is awesome And if you can eat just two meals a day a couple times you can do the 2 TS meals without a problem. We're doing CRT twice when we go in Nov.
Just make sure you know everything involved and remember that the resort mug is included in the Deluxe plan so that's 12 bucks there per person saved
It is basically the difference in price between the dining plans. I believe we are paying $30 a day for adults & $9 for kids.
We upgraded last year & will be doing so again this year. For us the basic plan is not enough food and I don't know that we would do the deluxe plan if we had to pay for it but just paying to upgrade you get alot of food for the amount you pay to upgrade.
For us, 2 adults plus DS11 and DD15, we have never used all of our food credits on the basic (always unused CS - not TS). I toyed with upgrading this year but we tend to take long trips and this year is 9 nights. For 4, it gets spendy and makes my decision very simple!
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'78-'88 - 4 stays w/ parents! '89 - w/ HS Band & Choir '90 - 3rd date w/ my wife! Super Q on I-Drive '91 - w/ College Choir '94 - Comfort Suites on 192- '97 - Orange Lake Country Club '03 - Rented home! '04 - Pop Century! 60's Building - Partied w/ Hurr. Charley! '06 - 9 nights free dining at ASMu! '08 - May-MS Marching Band- '08 - September - 7 nights free dining! Aug '09 9 nights - free dining. Nov '11 7 nts free dining @ Cabins!. Jan '15 8 nites DD 21st b-day ASSp, DDP.
For us the basic DDP is plenty of food. We do the CS for lunch, and TS for dinner.
And we use our snack credits for breakfast alot. because with desert served for both CS & TS, we found the first time on the DDP we had lots of snack credits left over. So now if we want the occas Dole Whip or Mickey bar, we pay OOP for it.
For us the Deluxe wouldn't work.
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We usually do the basic dining plan, however, we upgraded this time to the Deluxe. We prefer sit down meals to CS or snacks. IMO, it is definitely worth it with the free dining!