How we did the DDP - March 2016 **complete**

[hornetgirl]

Despite many holidays in Florida, I’ve never had a go at writing any kind of report before. I’m not sure I’d ever manage to complete a full trippy, so thought I’d have a go at doing a food report instead

The cast is a small one – just me, Lucy and my husband, Sean. We travelled in March 2016 and stayed at the Beach Club with the DDP. We’ve had the dining plan before and were confident that with a bit of juggling and sharing it would cover most of our food requirements. Neither of us has a huge appetite, but we do like good food, so the plan was just to enjoy some nice meals rather than to squeeze every last cent’s worth of value out of the dining plan. I know some Dibbers will disagree, but in our book, if you’re hot and thirsty, a large soda is as good a use of a snack credit as any. I’ll try to include prices to help people decide whether the dining plan is worth having, although in some cases I’ll have to round up to the nearest $ as I forgot to note the exact amount. I also won’t include tips, as that’s very much down to the individual.

Last time we had the DDP we were travelling with friends, so had only limited choice over where we ate. This time it was just the two of us so there were no compromises to be made. There was just one rule that we set ourselves – all our table service credits had to be used at places where we had never eaten before.

[hornetgirl]

Although we don’t live too far from Gatwick, we prefer to get to the airport the day before and stay over as we don’t like the nail biting uncertainty of the M25 on travel day. So the Premier Inn it was. We had already eaten lunch at home, so just took a little picnic to have in our room

And something to wash it down with. Well we are on holiday after all. Cheers.

[disney babe]

looking forward to more

[hornetgirl]

I offered to make Sean a cup of tea or coffee in the hotel room but he declined. He read somewhere that you should never do this in a hotel where cabin crew are likely to stay over as they use the kettle to wash their underwear in! Instead we headed off for some breakfast at the airport. Although I had access to the No 1 Lounge, I knew it would be busy as BA are currently sharing it until they move to the South Terminal, so we decided to eat elsewhere first. We settled on Comptoir Libanais, where I had the Comptoir Breakfast Tray, which was Greek yogurt with honey, a croissant and fig jam, and an orange juice.

Sean had the Egg Halloumi Flatbread, a side order of Falafels and a pot of tea.

The food was really good here and makes a nice change from the standard breakfast fare. Total cost was £22.15. Nicely refuelled we headed to the lounge to read the papers and have a coffee until our flight was called. As predicted, the lounge was BUSY.

Our flight was BA2037 and first up was the snack and drinks round – it was the usual little bag of pretzels.

For lunch we both opted for sausage and mash, which came with a beet salad and a little pot of gooey dessert.

I fly quite a lot with BA and have felt the standard of food to be declining recently, but this was fine. I washed mine down with a glass of white wine, while Sean opted for the red. The other options available were chicken casserole or vegetarian pasta (a vague description if ever there was one).

Afternoon tea was served a couple of hours before landing and was a couple of mini sandwiches and an itsy bitsy Kitkat. Again fine but if I’d been asked to guess the sandwich flavour I would have said tuna. Turns out it was chicken Caesar. Oops. (Forgot the photo, sorry).

Check in at the Beach Club and events took a dramatic turn when the CM told us he had some good news to share – we had been upgraded to club level! In an instant we’d gone from having just about enough credits to get us through, to having breakfast, snacks, hors d’oeuvres and desserts, not to mention drinks, pretty much on tap. Happy days.
After dumping our bags and taking a little look at the club lounge, we did what any self respecting couple would do after a long transatlantic flight – headed straight off to the Magic Kingdom for EMH and our first Dole Whip of the holiday. It was getting late, so we just got the float version to share.

This was our first experience of Aloha Isle in its new location and it was certainly much more efficient than the old one. In the past we’ve queued longer for one of these beauties than we have for some rides.

Cost – one snack credit/$5.29

[hornetgirl]

With our unexpected upgrade, all plans for sharing and careful use of snack credits went out of the window. Instead we just had to walk a few steps down the corridor to the Stone Harbor Club for breakfast. I didn’t take photos every day as the selection remained the same and we didn’t vary what we ate much – some days a Danish, a bowl of cereal or some toast, but generally as shown here.

Tea, coffee and fruit juices were all available too. The tea bags were Twinings, there was 2% milk and the water was hot enough that we could actually make a reasonably decent cup of tea – quite an achievement in Florida.

Lunch – Liberty Inn, Epcot.
I had the Red, White and Blue salad, although I requested mine without the blue part as it was cheese, which I don’t eat. I put the first forkful into my mouth and it was chock full of blue cheese crumbles. Bleugh! I took it straight back to the counter and an extremely apologetic CM told me she had asked for it to be made up without the cheese, so somebody else had probably got mine. A fresh cheeseless version was quickly made for me and was delicious.
Sean had the All American burger, which he loved. We each had a fruit cup for dessert and drinks were a strawberry slushy and a bottle of water.

Cost – 2 QS credits/about $41.

Dinner – Beach Club, Cape May Café
As we often flag early on our first day, we opted to eat at Cape May Café in our home resort. I dithered a bit over this ADR as opinion seems to be very divided about it on the Dibb but we thought we’d give it a go as we do like buffet style restaurants. I’m not sure which plates belonged to who, but here is a selection of what we had.

Clam chowder is one of my very favourite things to eat and this was quite possibly the best I’ve ever had. Sean is a bit of a shrimp fiend, so he was happy too. There was a good selection of salads available but rather a lot of them contained cheese, which limited my options a bit. Would we recommend this restaurant and eat here again? Well there was no escaping the distinctly fishy smell, so if that’s not your thing you probably won’t like it, even though there are plenty of fish free options. It was a nice enough meal but there are plenty of other places we’d like to try before returning I think.

Cost – 2 TS credits/$85.20

When we got back to our room, turn down had been done, so we had late night choccies too

[Kat11]

Looking forward to reading this with it being so recent. I love to see the pics and the thoughts on the restaurants.

Kat

[Excited6910]

Loving it so far too!

[hornetgirl]

Originally Posted by Kat11

Looking forward to reading this with it being so recent. I love to see the pics and the thoughts on the restaurants.

Kat

See more...

Thank you. I'm hoping to get it done quite quickly while it's all still fresh.

[sha9]

Great start! An upgrade to club level is amazing! How lucky!

[Alien]

great start. I would love to try cape may but I don't think my husband would like the smell