DDP - food budget?

[WDWlover]

Hi all

Hope everyone’s having a good weekend so far.

We go to Orlando in a couple of weeks and just wondered about people’s experience of the DDP.

We are going for two weeks, staying at POR. We have the dining plan which includes per day:
One quick service
One table service
Two snack credits
Refillable mug

We’ve never had the dining plan before. Do you think we will need to spend much on food? (excluding tips). We are just changing money into $ now and not sure how much to budget for food really!

Thanks in advance.

[loves2plan]

You really don't need to budget anything for food if you don't want to. We've had a dining plan on all 5 trips both the (ddp and the qsdp) and have never needed to buy any extra food. We do take cereal for breakfast, but that's more because we like to be able to grab a quick breakfast in our room sometimes so we can head straight to the parks, rather than eating out for breakfast every day. If you want starters or extra sides and drinks, then you'll need to pay for them, but we've never found it necessary so we don't budget anything for spending on food. So, it really depends on how much you like to drink and if you think you might want starters. You get an alcoholic drink included with both qs and ts meals, so 2 a day anyway. At your resort you can use your refillable mug for soft and hot drinks, and you can get free iced water in the parks or use snack credits too. So, depending on that I'd budget $10-$15 per extra drink and $10-$15 per starter.

[Th1nkT1nk]

Hi. We did ddp for the first time last year and we were surprised how little we spent on extra food! If you’re clever with snack credits you can use them for pastries etc for breakfast. We were quite cautious the first few days but we ended up with quite a few quick service credits left. The portions are so large that you easily share at times. In my experience you will spend very little

[WDWlover]

Thanks both! I tend to only really drink water in the day anyway so I won’t need to spend much there unless i fancy something different. I’m planning on taking some of those squeezy squash bottles with me for the parks.

I thought about not really budgeting much if anything but wanted reassure that I wasn’t being a bit mad!

[Jen3675]

Don’t underestimate the cost of tips!

[J&C]

You'll eat like a king on the DDP, no need to budget for food at all! But yes, as said above you'll still get a full bill with a recommended tip - which isn't included on the DDP

[WDWlover]

Thank you!

Sounds good to me, more money for shopping! We usually set aside money for tips when we go so will probably do the same this year I imagine. So excited now

[J&C]

Just try to be organised with your DDP credits - some of the fine dining restaurants are 2 x table service credits per person (Yachtsman Steakhouse, Narcoossees and Le Celier being our personal faves!) In which case we tend to use snack credits for breakfast, a quick service for lunch and 2 table service creds for dinner

[Bobbins]

Originally Posted by J&C

Just try to be organised with your DDP credits - some of the fine dining restaurants are 2 x table service credits per person (Yachtsman Steakhouse, Narcoossees and Le Celier being our personal faves!) In which case we tend to use snack credits for breakfast, a quick service for lunch and 2 table service creds for dinner

See more...

So what do you do for dinner the next day?

[Dabootie]

Originally Posted by Bobbins

So what do you do for dinner the next day?

See more...

We rarely need to eat 3 ‘meals’ per day when in Orlando, it’s frequently too warm to need much more than breakfast and an evening meal, this means we can stretch our snacks or QS meals allowing us to use a couple of Sig meals using our TS meals.

Eg. One QS credit for a breakfast platter in your food court and swap your drink for a pastry and use your mugs. This feeds 2 and saves both your snacks for later.