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Old 25 Apr 15, 05:42 PM  
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loves2plan
VIP Dibber
 
Join Date: Jan 12
This is a post I wrote on another thread, but think it might help on this thread too

To qualify for free dining you have to book both your Disney accommodation and park tickets at the same time, either direct with Disney or through an agent (the majority offer it and prices can vary, so it's god to get quotes).
The offer is:
Free breakfast at Value resorts (all of the All Star resorts, Pop Century and Art of Animation, but only in suites at AOA, not rooms)
Free quick service dining plan (QSDP) at moderate resorts (Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Port Orleans Riverside and French Quarter and Fort Wildreness Cabins)
Disney Dining plan (DDP at the deluxe resorts (any that I haven't already mentioned!)
In the past there has also been a gift card, but we haven't been told yet if there is one for this years offer.

There are some exclusion dates. The offer is valid for arrival dates between 01 Jan 2016 - 15 Mar 2016 and 03 April 2016 - 30 Nov 2016.

If you want to stay at a value or moderate but have the qsdp or ddp, then you can pay to upgrade the plans if you want to.

The Quick Service Dining Plan gives you 2 QS meals and 1 snack credit per person per night of your stay. The Disney Dining plan gives you 1 QS, 1TS and 1 snack credit per person per night that you stay. So for a 14 night holiday you would get 14 credits per person for each element. You also get a resort fillable mug to use.

The credits are loaded to your account altogether, so, for a group of 4 for 2 weeks, when you check in you'll have 112 QS credits and 56 snack credits on the QSDP or 56 QS, 56 TS and 56 snack credits on the DDP. All of the credits can be accessed from the magic bands, meaning that you only need 1 band to scan and 'pay' for a meal for all 4 of you - you don't have to scan each individual band. You set pin numbers for the bands which you have to enter each time you want to redeem a credit or charge a payment to your room. For the children we used their birth year as their pin number so if they wanted to go and get a snack, they could do so by scanning the band and entering their pin number - which they just loved! The children's bands don't have charging privileges so don't worry about them shopping with them!

Anyway, back to the dining plans! The credits can be used in any way that you please, in any order, in any quantity that you please any time between checking in and midnight on the day that you check out. The credits are completely flexible and if you don't use all of the daily allowance of credits you don't loose them, they just stay on your account until they expire at midnight on check out day. You could use them all on the very first day if you really wanted to and it wouldn't be a problem!

QS credits can be used at pretty much every QS place in the parks, water parks and resorts. You don't have to book - it's just turn up, order, take your food on a tray and find a table. Except for Wolfgang Puck Express at Marketplace where they bring your food to you and you get proper cutlery and crockery rather than plastic cutlery and paper plates. We had the QSDP on our first holiday and thought it was great. If you do a bit of research there are some great places to eat which offer a whole variety of food, so it's not just burgers and fries for 2 weeks. We would happily do it again. The other thing to know about QS meal credits is that the system doesn't differentiate between children's (age 9 and under) and adult credits, so you can order an adult meal for a child too. TBH, the children's menus at the QS places aren't great, so its really helpful to be able to do this. The only place that we couldn't was at Wolfgang Puck Express where they checked to see if there were any children in our party.

With the DDP plan you use your QS credits in exactly the same way and your TS credits at table service places which include character meals and shows. You really do need to prebook these, especially the popular ones, and can do so 180 days in advance. You get the added benefit of being able to book the first 10 days worth of meals at 180 days so don't have to call daily.. We've just had the DDP and it was lovely trying some of the places that we read about on here. With the TS places you do need to budget for tips which is 18-20% of what the bill would be if you were paying cash. What we found is that our server would ask if we were on the DDP, we would say yes and she would scan one of our bands. At the end of the meal they would bring us the bill showing what we ordered, the cost, the total and they 'helpfully' work out the 18 and 20% tip for you. We decided to charge this to our room, so would write in the gap how much we wanted to leave, tell them we wanted to charge it to our room and then they would take the bill away and process it, bring back paperwork to sign - one copy for them and 1 for us. Every few days we would go to the front desk to get a printout of our charges, check it and then pay it off, either in cash or using our $200 gift card.

Most TS meals are 1 credit, but there are some 2 credit meals - signature restaurants, Cinderella's Royal Table and the 2 shows; Hoop De Do and the Aloha one. We did both CRT and the Hoop De Doo and really enjoyed them both. One of the good things about these 2 is that the tip is included in the package, so no need to leave one - good job as CRT dinner would have cost us $250 if we were paying, so that's a hefty $50 tip!

For each meal you get an entrée (main), dessert and drink. At breakfast you don't get the dessert and there's nothing to replace it. Buffets are eat what you want, so no need to worry about them.

It's a LOT of food! Even though it only looks like 2 meals and 1 snack per day, it is a lot of food as the portions are so big. We soon found that we didn't need to get a meal each, so we would share at breakfast and lunch, grab a snack if we were getting peckish and then have a main meal each in the evening. At the QS places the desserts on offer most often seem to be chocolate cake and carrot cake. Believe me, there is only so much of these that you can eat! They will let you substitute for a fruit bag or water though, so we did that most of the time. My advice is don't plan to spend any money on food as if you do, you'll probably find that you've wasted the money as you have credits left over at the end. On the QSDP we had something like 12 QS credits left at the end of the holiday and we didn't go hungry. I think it's easier to use them all on the DDP as half the credits are TS and you use them up very easily as there are so many great places to try, character meals etc. This time we decided that we didn't necessarily want to eat breakfast at the food court every morning, so we packed some of those small variety box cereals in the case, bought some milk from the SSR shop and had breakfast in our room on days that we wanted to be at the parks early.

This PDF form Disney explains a bit more and also shows you all the places you can eat using the plans:
QSDP:
disneyworld.disney.go/me...ickService.pdf
DDP:
disneyworld.disney.go/me...2015Dining.pdf
__________________

POFQ: Our 'once in a lifetime' trip, 31st Oct - 14th Nov 2012
SSR: 40th birthday trip, 2nd - 16th Jan 2014
SSR 2 bed villa: my mums first trip, 7th - 21st Feb 2015
POR: An unexpected Easter break, 2nd - 15th April 2016
CBR: Another unexpected Easter trip, 29th March - 12th April 2017
CBR: 18th birthday surprise trip, 21st October - 4th November 2019
Food report - the unexpected Easter QSDP extravagana! April 2017
What do we want? FOOD! When do we want it? NOW! QSDP food report, Oct 2019

Edited at 12:53 PM.
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