Disney meal plans

I was planning on booking the "plus" meal plan which includes a snack, a quick meal, and the sit down one.

Here's my question:
If you've done the meal plan, how did you plan it out? What about the third meal?
I was thinking the "snack" may cover a bagel for breakfast but that doesnt seem to be right. Then have a good lunch and dinner. Am I going to have to spend more $$ on the third meal for each day. I have two boys that eat like crazy!
This is our first trip to Disney and I feel overwhelmed!

Re: Disney meal plans

when we went, we usually used lunch as our quick meal.

dd was only 2 and barely ate anything, but we had to pay for her meals anyway. the kids meals are the basics, nuggets, pizza, etc and cost around $6 a piece.

other meals, we did a lot of buffets. we could get her something she liked and still eat what we liked.

Re: Disney meal plans

Breakfast was our extra meal not included.
Lunch was quick serve
Dinner was sit down

Re: Disney meal plans

I can totally help you if you would like. Feel free to FM me with any questions.

Okay we do the regular dining plan on our past few trips. That is the one you are talking about (they have a deluxe and a counter service one as well).

I would suggest you go to this site:
http://allears.net/menu/menus.htm

This site has all the menus for every table service, counter service and snack cart in WDW - both at the hotels and the parks. This way you can see what restaurants you are interested in (and see what will give you the best bang for your buck on the dining plan).

Honestly - in the past we have done 2 things:
1) get 1 breakfast platter from counter service (eggs, bacon or sausage, biscuit and potatoes) a yogurt or bagel and we buy the refillable mugs on our first day - then we split that between the 3 or 4 of us (it is a large portion and the girls don't eat much) - and we pay OOP since breakfast is the cheapest meal of the day.

or

2) Have Gardengrocer.com do a grocery delivery (like peapod) to our resort on the 1st day - and we use that to have breakfast in the room (as well as snacks for the parks, bottled water etc.

There is another option - which is to use your snack for your breakfast - you can usually get most things that are under $4 - something like a muffin or a yogurt. So if you are not a breakfast eater you could buy cereal and then use your snack credit for a muffin etc.

We buy the refillable mug the 1st day (It was $14.99 last time). It gives you unlimited refills in the counter service location at your hotel for the length of your stay. Which was nice to have. They have coffee, tea, hot chocolate, iced teas, sodas, poweraide, lemonade and I think apple juice and fruit punch. So we would get coffee in the mornings, then use it for sodas or iced teas in the afternoons on our down time and then do a refill in the evenings when we returned to have a drink in the room if we needed it. You can bring the cups to the park BUT you cannot refill them there. But it was nice to have coffee in the morning on our way out.

Make sure if you are not at the 180 days before your check in date that you have all your meals planned out in advance so that on that 180 day mark you can go online or call and make your ADR (advance dining reservations). Places like Chef Mickeys, 1900 Park Fare, Cinderella's castle etc can be VERY hard to get if you don't make those at your 1st opportunity. If you have passed that mark it is okay - you might still be able to get those places but might not have your 1st choice times. So I recommend you pick a few places right away and try to get started with that.

Re: Disney meal plans

There is so much food on the meal plan, you won't go hungry.

We switch it up all the time. Some days we eat a sit down lunch and some days a sit down dinner - it all depends on where we're planning to be and since we have certain favorite restaurants, it depends on whether or not we can get reservations for lunch or dinner.

First, where are you staying? If you are staying at one of the vacation club "villas" you will have a kitchen. DH and I will make coffee/tea and go buy english muffins or something for breakfast.

There's not a huge difference in price as far as counter-serve lunches and breakfasts in Disney. Some days, we eat a counter-serve breakfast (think egg sandwich, french toast platter) and then just grab a pretzel or ice cream in the park for lunch and then eat a sit down dinner.

You honestly won't be hungry. The lunches and dinners (whether counter-serve or sit-down) all include an entree and desert.

Re: Disney meal plans

We were really on a budget this time around and we drove so we could carry food with us.

Somedays
We did oatmeal or cereal for breakfast
Quickservice for lunch
Table service for dinner

Other days it was
Quickservice for breakfast
PBJ for lunch
TS for dinner.

Some days we just had snacks in between because honestly the meals were so big.

We also split some quick services.

We were able to spread our 6 day meal plan over 7 days with out spending any extra money for food. The key is to make sure you are getting everything coming to you. Instead if desert we usually got an extra fruit because you have so many snacks for deserts, plus desert with dinner. For breakfast we always made sure we got our two drinks.

We did buy the cup, pay for alcohol and frozen cappuccinos occasionally

Message edited 9/22/2010 9:42:51 PM.

Re: Disney meal plans

I did not do the meal plan because it was not worse it for us. I had looked at the plan that was about $30 per person. Mostly quick serve and counter service.

We had our breakfast from Gardengrocers.com and got it delivered to the hotel.

We also got the water and sodas from them. It turned out so much cheaper.

We ate salads a lot so for us spending $15 on a lunch was not going to work. On our own without the plan, we spent about $26-$27 per day on food. Still cheaper than with the plan. But we don't eat a lot of snacks, etc... We also got snacks from the store delivered to our room.

We also could not do many sit down dinner with DS since our time is limited on how long we can dine and entertain him.