Dining for Newcomers..

We only used DDP one time (because we went during a free dining promotion) and our intent was to use our snack credit for breakfast because we are not big breakfast people, a counter service for lunch, and a table service for dinner. My goal was to maximize the price of the free food that I was getting from the mouse just because I wanted to see how much value I could get out of that plan.

In reality, our scheduling was much different. Some days we used two counter service allotments and other days we used two table service allotments. We weren't park hopping and the table service food that we were most interested in was at EPCOT. Since we were not park hopping, this turned out to be very bad scheduling for us, as two table service meals in one day left us not enjoying the second meal of the day at all. Some of this is because we decided to go to WDW on three weeks notice, so the lunch ADR's that I could get were mostly after 1:00 and the dinner ADRs were mostly before 6:00. Eat at Rose & Crown at 1:45 (with dessert) and Les Chefs at 4:45 (with dessert) and let me know how that works out for you.

Snack-sized breakfast did not work for us at all. We both typically eat lunch early, so a light breakfast is usually sufficient, but at Disney, we were up early than usual, walking farther than usual, and eating lunch later than usual. We had some lunchtime ADRs at EPCOT that weren't until nearly 2:00, so most days we ended up buying breakfast because I knew when I woke up in the morning that there was no way I was going to survive that long on an apple or a Minnie Mouse cookie. My husband ended up spending most of his snack credits on bottled water and I would usually pick up a treat from one of the carts.

We've actually not used the plan again because we have not traveled again during free dining and it is definitely not financially beneficial for us to purchase the plan.

That was more information than you asked for, but that's my take on the DDP. Is free dining available all the time on packages from UK? In the US, it is only available seasonally. If it's seasonal for you also, do these folks always travel during fee dining?

We really play with the DDP
We usually opt for 1TS, 1CS, 1S per person per night of stay
We book Club Level so breakfast is always in the Lounge. Lunch is a CS for DH and for me it could be a CS or just a Snack option. Dinner is TS.

Prior to booking Club we would both have a Snack for breakfast (Bagel for DH and Oatmeal with Soy milk for me), CS for an earlier lunch and TS for dinner.

When we travel with my brother and his family it gets a bit more complicated factoring in TS for character breakfast. On those days we will save our CS for dinner and snack for lunch.

We really did some research on what a "snack option" is and we were suprised how will call fill our belly without buying a bag of chips.

This January we opted out of the DDP. We plan on really enjoying the hotel and the Club options. We have dinner reservations each night but will be floating in and out to enjoy the treats of the AKL Club.

The free DDP from UK used to be only at off peak,but now apart from Easter and Xmas,it's all year round..Last year was the first time we got lucky in July..Saved us a small fortune..

That's a fantastic question!

I haven't done the Q/S dining plan before, but if I did I think I would go the way that you suggested. Breakfasts are usually less expensive in Disney so paying out of pocket for them would be the most economical option. In addition - if they wanted to do some table service or like to have a bigger breakfast - there are some really fantastic table service & character breakfasts that they could take advantage of. That way they could have a large meal in the morning to fuel up for a day at the Parks and then be able to be more spontaneous with the rest of their dining. If they do want to do some table service, make sure they know to make ADRs!

My DH and I book the room discounts and pay out of pocket for all our meals. It works out better as it's just the two of us. We can book a moderate for 25% off room or 35% off room for deluxe. This is available to Canadians and our neighbours to the south; not sure if it's available for guests from across the pond. When we did do the DDP, we used the quick service for breakfast and then the table service for a nice later lunch or dinner. Snack credits were used for water to have in our room. Any other meals, we paid out of pocket. Usually 2 meals/day are good for us with the Mickey ice cream bars and dole whips we eat in between!!

We had free QS dining, it saved us a lot of money, but when we left we still had 14 QS meals left which we hadn't used. We tried but it was just too much food! Therefore, I would never pay for the dining plan because it wouldn't be worth it to us. The absolute best thing was being able to use the snack credits (we had 30 between us for a 15 day trip) at the Epcot Food and wine festival. We used them all there to try as many international snacks as we could. This was the best food we had at Disney and great variety. Also Wolfgang Puck Express in DTD was a great QS option. Great food on real plates with real cutlery!

I haven't used any of the DDPs myself for financial reasons but if I did have one for whatever reason, idealistically, if I really needed all three meals, I'd pay out of pocket for the cheapest meal and use the 2 DDP meal credits for the other two meals. More often than not for me, I would pay out of pocket for breakfast since I prefer a quick breakfast so that I maximize park time for the most part. Am I willing to take some time off and have a nice TS breakfast? Well, yes, but I feel that I don't always have enough time to spend in the parks per say and I don't want to deal with the park crowds as the parks begin to fill up. Or I don't have enough time and/or money to take an off day away from the parks so that I can really enjoy a TS breakfast. With more days to plan around, that solves the issue for me.

Now if you're using signature dining or 2 TS credits places, that's a wild card in terms of dining planning. Because I mean, if you use multiple signature dining credits, then that could easily take away some of the single TS places.

But I mean, there's really no right or wrong way of doing it. The only thing I can say is pick out the places you think you're interested in eating, look at the prices and hypothesize what you and your party members would order and calculate the cost including tax and then add it all up. Then compare it to the total value of the DDPs you have in mind. It's work, yes. But I'd rather do math for vacation purposes more than for anything else!