Dining in Disney

Lucky you! :)
If I don't write often enough some of you complain and nothing THAT exciting is going on with us right now. So, I'm going to talk about our Dining plans at Disney.

We are doing 3 character meals while we are there. Our first morning in Magic Kingdom we'll eat at the Crystal Palace with Pooh and the gang. On our day of rest we'll have dinner at Chef Mickey's with Mickey and his pals. Then our last morning in the Magic Kingdom we'll have breakfast at Cinderella's Royal Table.

We'll have two other "sit-down" meals while we are there as well. We will eat lunch at the Coral Reef in EPCOT's The Living Seas. Here they have large (floor to ceiling) aquariums filled with different sea life inside. We'll also have dinner at the Plaza in Magic Kingdom where supposedly they have the BEST milkshakes for dessert.

I found a few sites quite helpful in making my dining choices. The main one I used was http://allears.net/menu/menus.htm

Here they have every restaurant listed in the whole resort along with prices. This was a VERY handy tool with planning to make sure everyone could find something they would like to eat.

I'll also do an order with http://www.gardengrocer.com/ to have milk for our room that isn't overpriced along with a few snacks that don't pack well (like nutrigrain bars). I didn't do this on our last trip and got tired of going to the resort gift shop to buy a liter of milk for way too much money! :)

Walt Disney World has a dining plan that is pretty good. Last time we did the counter service plan where we could get 2 quick service meals and 2 snacks per day. The cost was Adults $29.99 per person per night; children 3-9 $8.99 per person per night.

The meals included One Entree OR one complete Combo meal, dessert (lunch/dinner) or One juice (breakfast) & One single non-alcoholic beverage. In addition to this, you got a resort mug that was refillable at your resort so if you had breakfast at your resort you could get a drink (soda, water or coffee) in your mug, one juice and one non-alcoholic beverage. We learned they weren't strict on the juice and would let you get milk instead so we were able to get the girls milks with our breakfast and put them in our room fridge for later.

My only complaint was the girls couldn't be on the plan but it was hard to feed TWO babies off of our plates. One would have been no problem, but it's harder with two hungry monsters! :) We picked the counter service thinking that it would be easier to just get our food as we ordered it and leave when we were finished and before the girls went nuts being stuck in a high chair for too long. However, what ended up happening was one of us (usually Josh) would sit at a table (when we could find one) and try to find TWO high chairs and wait while I would go order and pick up the food. We realized that all the time and effort added up to about the same wait you'd get in a table service restaurant. We did one character meal (breakfast in Norway in EPCOT) and realized that by telling the server to bring us our check with the meal, we could leave as soon as we were finished.

So this time I've decided to try the regular dining plan because in table service restaurants, children under 3 can order a child's plate and eat for FREE. This plan is slightly different. It's just called the dining plan and the cost is Adults $39.99 per person per night; children 3-9 $10.99 per person per night.

It includes: One table service meal (including entree and dessert (lunch or dinner only), or full buffet, 1 juice (breakfast only), non-alcoholic beverage; dessert not available at breakfast). 1 child table-service meal includes 1 appetizer, 1 entree, 1 dessert (lunch or dinner only) and 1 single serving non-alcoholic beverage, or 1 full buffet.

One counter service meal (including entree/combo meal, dessert, one juice (breakfast only) and non-alcoholic beverage; dessert not available at breakfast)

One snack (e.g. a frozen ice-cream novelty, popsicle, or fruit bar, popcorn scoop, single piece of whole fruit, single serving grab bag of chips, 20 oz. bottle of soda, medium fountain soft drink or juice, 12 oz. coffee, hot chocolate, or hot tea.)

The downside to this plan is gratuity is not included anymore (used to be) so you have to have cash on hand to tip (or charge it to your room). The table service meals do take more time but having the girls being able to eat free with our table service meal will be a little nicer.

There are more dining plans (one that includes wine, more table service meals, etc) but the cost of those doesn't really make it as good of a deal as the two plans I've mentioned.