Question about small children & the DDP

[DisneyBelle]

Can anyone entertain my ramblings please hehe!
We are planning on going back autumn 2021. We’ve only ever gone with the qsdp which has worked wonderfully for us and 2 small children (5&7) HOWEVER I have a fairly long list of table service / signature restaurants that we’d like to eat at now they’re older and less fussy with food!

I’m wondering a few things, are the 2 table service credit restaurants worth it for small children or would paying OOP be better for them?

Tips aren’t included are they? Do people budget for tips while on the dining plan and if so what kind of $$$ are you looking at for a family of 4? $40/50 per meal?

If you find yourself with table service credits left but can’t stomach another full sit down meal can they be swapped for a quick service meal? (Obviously I know this is not the best use of the plan)

Thank you for reading! Jodie x

[squishy]

Tips aren’t included; you’re right. For me, 2 TS aren’t a good use of credits, we’re going for 7 days, so have 6TS credits; I want this to pay for our meals, so we’ll use one a day and pay OOP for dinner at a 2 TS restaurant on arrival day - child price fairly cheap and my teen and I will share.

I don’t believe you can swap TS credits for QS ones. My children loved all the character dining we could do on DDP. Tips - you can budget in advance; for 3 of us it’s around $28-35, typically

[DisneyBelle]

Originally Posted by squishy

Tips aren’t included; you’re right. For me, 2 TS aren’t a good use of credits, we’re going for 7 days, so have 6TS credits; I want this to pay for our meals, so we’ll use one a day and pay OOP for dinner at a 2 TS restaurant on arrival day - child price fairly cheap and my teen and I will share.

I don’t believe you can swap TS credits for QS ones. My children loved all the character dining we could do on DDP. Tips - you can budget in advance; for 3 of us it’s around $28-35, typically

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Thank you for the reply 😁 my list did start to get quite character meal heavy as they really enjoyed the Crystal Palace last visit which was our only character meal.

I don’t think using 2 credits on a meal would bother us so much as I’m thinking some days we will just be a bit sick of all the food so a couple of snacks and a qsdp meal would suffice (in practice this may be different lol!)

[Guest]

If you go to a signature, you would be using 2 children's credits on the children's meals, so I don't really see any reason to pay OOP and save the children's credits, particularly as you refer to perhaps having some left over.

I would pay for everything with credits unless you get towards the end of the trip and realise you could be short, in which case at that time I would look to see where it would be best to OOP.

You can definitely swap a TS for a QS credit, or at least you could last year but they do change rules sometimes.

[Guest]

the DDP appears to have become less flexible than we were last there because of childs versus adult QS meals now being differentiated... but we used our credits in all manner of ways , we were able to spread our credits our for longer as often the kids shared a single adult TS meal & we even had them share a single kids TS meal one day where we had all had a buffet at lunch & knew they wouldn't want to eat much at dinner , this meant we ended up using left over TS credits for QS meal on our last day which was fine. I would rather do this balancing out rather than pay for any kids table service meals as they are always so over priced, so perhaps you could save up some credits by sharing more on your none 2TS days, however I don't think theres any 2 TS meals we would choose to do with young kids unless its cinderellas royal table for princess mega fans. we used a gift card for tips & paid between $20-35 per TS in 2019 (but we never ordered any extra drinks or anything) but you can work this in advance by going through the menus on the WDW website. buffets at lunch time tend to be cheaper than at dinner time, plus we all benefitted from a sit down at midday...worth booking a table around 11.15-11.45 if you have young kids.

[DisneyBelle]

Fair points I didn’t really consider so thank you!