We chose our vacation dates primarily because of economy. “Value” season at Disney World began on 8/16/11 this year, and a free dining package was rolled out beginning on 8/19/11. We took advantage of both.
Here are some thoughts on some of the “options” we took advantage of during our trip.
“Value Season”
We very quickly learned that “value season” does not equate low crowd levels. The place was packed. Oddly, though, while we were sweaty elbow to sweaty elbow with the masses, we didn’t spend a lot of time in line. Oh, we waited (for one ride over 70 minutes), but the norm was less than 20 minutes. Of course we did avoid a lot of the “major” attractions because they really weren’t appropriate for our kids. And the hotel room was about $20-$30 cheaper per night during value season.
Disney Dining Plan
The dining plan was good for us. Because of the hotel we stayed at, we got the regular Disney Dining Plan. This provided each of us with one snack credit, one sit down meal credit, and one counter (“quick”) service meal per person per night of our stay at no additional cost to the trip. Despite our best efforts to “spend” the credits, we left some credits behind when we left.
The dining plan allowed us to eat “better” than we would have otherwise. For example, we ate at four separate character dining restaurants. While the character dining meals are not as expensive as some of the sit-down places, we probably wouldn’t have done four if we were paying for them ourselves. John and I ate at a restaurant that is classified as a “Signature Dining Experience” for our “date night.” We had planned to pay out of pocket for this meal because we had figured that we would have run out of table service credits. We planned to spend about $200 for the meal—“Signature” apparently means “damned expensive.” When we actually got the hang of the dining plan, we realized that we could use the dining credits to pay for most of the meal. In the end, we shelled out about $50 and 4 dining credits, but that was definitely better than what we had planned.
I would definitely go for the dining plan again, if I could get it for free. I’d need to think about whether or not I would shell out the dough for it or it’s “deluxe” and “quick service” counterparts. While there is great flexibility in how you “spend” your credits, there is no way to really choose how many credits you get. You are allotted one of each credit for each night you stay. It’s difficult to use all of those credits, so it’s very likely you will be paying for credits you don’t use. It’s also not an option to get additional credits.
It’s also not as easy to use as it could be. It took John a couple of days to get the hang of it. I think I understand it now…
The credits also expire at midnight on the day you checkout. You cannot carry any that remain for your next stay.
Also, it’s not all inclusive. Alcoholic beverages are not included, nor are appetizers for adults and the gratuity on the bill.
It also makes paying the bill a little hectic, particularly if you have people from different rooms (and thereby different dining plans) in your dining party. First, your server will bring the check for the table. Then you tell the server how to break up the check—what to charge to whose plan (at one point, we took out a pen and paper and wrote down what should be charged to whom). Then the server comes back with the new checks that (hopefully) reflect the proper billing. He or she will then awkwardly ask you how you would like to handle the gratuity and then bustle back to charge your plan for the meals you’ve eaten. Then he or she will come back to give you the final bill to sign.
Then there is the absolutely outrageous amount of food. It’s downright wasteful. At buffets you can kind of control that by only taking what you will eat, but at other places it’s incredible. There were several times when we ate at a counter service restaurant and John and I easily could have shared a meal; yet, we got both.
Having the dining plan allowed us to do some things that we would not have done otherwise. As I said, John and I had a great meal at the fraction of the cost we would have paid out of pocket. Also we did do a lot of character dining. We would have done at least one had we paid for it ourselves, but all four of the meals were pretty awesome in their own ways. The meals themselves were better than we had anticipated and the characters were great.
Bottom line on the Disney Dining Plan:
I would gladly do it again if I could get it for free; however, I would have to do some serious math if I was paying for it out of pocket. It would be interesting to see how much our meals would have cost us.
Disney’s Magical Express
We also opted to make use of Magical Express, Disney’s “free” transportation from and to the airport. It is a service that is provided at no additional cost to whatever package you purchase.
I was on the fence about this one because my previous experience with the Magical Express was neither magical nor express. In fact, they failed to deliver a piece of luggage and then told me that it never arrived at the hotel. It had, in fact, arrived at the hotel. They failed to deliver it, and bell services gave me a very un-Disney-like hard time about it. Of course, the suitcase in question was the one with all of the baby stuff in it, like diapers and food.
The two key factors with this trip that tipped me in favor of Magical Express were:
1) It’s “free”—there’s no additional cost above room and ticket prices to anyone staying at a Disney hotel for this service.
2) It meant that I didn’t have to worry about car seats. While there are some good things about car services, car seats can be tricky to manage. By using the Disney’s Magical Express, a bus, we avoided the whole car seat issue entirely.
On the way down, the service was both magical and express indeed. We waited very little and our luggage was delivered promptly. I don’t even remember if we went to another hotel first to drop off passengers or not…The key thing, though, was that we didn’t have to deal with our luggage when we got to the hotel and our room wasn’t ready. We only had to manage our take-on gear, not our suitcases as well.
The problem was really on the way home. It was decidedly less magical and the bus actually arrived a little late. That didn’t really matter because they got us to the airport ridiculously early.
We didn’t use bell services because we had an early pick up (6:40 a.m. for a 9:50 a.m. flight). So we schlepped our luggage down to the Magical Express waiting area. As I said, the bus was a little late (not really a big deal, but annoying after having to schlep my own luggage to the bus, onto the bus, off the bus and to the sky cab. We were at the airport way too early.
The wait at the airport was an ordeal. We were all tired and ready to go home or ready to go back to the hotel. The last place we wanted to be was at the airport. We were crabby and we were just ready to be on our own. For the adults and Jack, it would have been manageable, but for Anna this was awful. She was glued to me. She was jumpy. She was biting (which is an old trick she pulled out just for this occasion). It was all directed at me. It was probably the worst nearly three hours of my life (to be added to the nearly 9 hours it took us to get home from there).
I think next time we go, I will use the Magical Express for the trip from the airport, but maybe hire a town car or something for the drive to the airport, even if that means schlepping car seats. Then I can pick the times and not have to spend so much time in agony.
Photo Pass:
Disney plants photographers around their parks and you can have them take your picture. You can have them use your camera or theirs or both. When you get your picture taken, the photographer will scan a Photo Pass card. Whenever you get your picture taken, just give the photographer your card. Once you get home, you can access the Photo Pass Pictures from your computer and you can order a variety of products—photo books, CDs, mugs, t-shirts, etc. You can also add borders and images to your pictures. The CDs are kind of cool because you pay one flat rate to have your pictures put onto CD—regardless of how many CDs that takes. The price for the CD is generally $140, but if you order it before you go it’s only $99.
I shelled out the $99. We had 75 Photo Pass pictures when we came home. Then, I went through and added images and borders to many of the pictures. Then Disney added some additional content (some random pictures of characters). When all was said and done, we then had 138 pictures. Not quite worth $99. I’m trying to rationalize this, though. Part of the $99 is the licensing fee which means that I can take these pictures anywhere and print out as many of every and any picture on my CD as I would like. That’s cool, but I’m not quite convinced that it is worth the $99.
Of course, I love the pictures. I truly do. On the other hand, it would have been worth it to have taken more. But we either forgot, or we were in a rush to get somewhere or everyone was too tired. You can easily differentiate the pictures from the end of the trip from the pictures from the beginning of the trip. This is because Anna was so done at the end of the trip that one of the adults had to physically hold her in place to pose for the pictures.
Another down side is that while our Splash Mountain pics are stored on our CD and we can reprint them to our hearts’ content, we still had to shell out an additional $28.
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