What's essential?

[DMM40]

Hi all
Have booked for July2020 and been reading through all the info, such a good wealth of information! My main question is about food, I see a lot of info about food plans? Do we need one or can you just buy food when you're there? We're a family of 4, 1 with a peanut allergy and whilst none of us are fussy eaters, the last thing we need are tired, hungry tiddlers in a theme park! Any advice appreciated 🙂

[sha9]

The Disney one can only be purchased if you’re staying at Disney and buy theme park tickets with the hotel as a package. The Universal one I don’t think is worth it. There are two versions - one you can only buy as part of a hotel and ticket package and includes some table service restaurants and the other is a quick service plan anyone can buy but isn’t good value.

I don’t know about the other parks.

[BigSkip]

You can just buy food in the parks, there are plenty of food offerings, some better than others, but you won't go hungry.

Make sure you let people know about the peanut allergy, WDW are excellent with dealing with food allergies.

[DMM40]

Thank you, appreciate the advice!

[Shooby doo]

TBh the vast majority of "plan mentions" on here will be from Free Dining, which you've missed for 2020 anyway, obviously you can still buy one but for Disney it has to be for the duration of your holiday & only if you already have a Disney Hotel & ticket package. Universal can be bought on the day but unless you have a Universal Hotel stay you can only buy the counter service version. Neither are good value unless in Disney's case you are doing a lot of character meals or buffets.
One good suggestion is to "put" the equivalent $ onto a prepaid card & use that for all meals, general consensus is that you will have money left over
SD

[DMM40]

Thank you, appreciate the advice!

[returnplanning]

We've done the dining plan, but only when it was free. Other times, and when we have been offsite, we pack a lunch to take into the park, freeze bottles of water overnight and put them in the backpack with the lunch to help keep it cold, and bring some biscuits or crisps as snacks (or things like hard-boiled eggs). That helps to keep the cost down. You can even put a backpack with your lunch in into a hired locker, so you don't have to lug it around. Alternatively, as lots of people have said, the portions are usually large, so it's often easy for 2 people to share a meal - and the advantage of that is that you get into the airconditioned restaurant!

[DMM40]

Great advice and some great tips! Thanks all