So much food to eat, so little time!
I don’t really think I’m surprising anybody here at this point when I say that I really enjoy my time dining around Walt Disney World. It’s almost kind of like the resort’s some 100+ restaurants are the final frontier for me because even after riding every ride and watching every show at the parks, there will no doubt still be plenty of dining establishments to last for years to come! And with such a wide variety of options a mere bus or monorail ride away, who wouldn’t look forward to sitting down for a nice, leisurely meal after a long day filled with magic and wonder?
Of course, there is that one teensy, little question … who’s going to pay for it?
Mind you, we’re not here today to debate about the cost of your Disney vacation overall – I think we all understand that there’s a premium to pay for the quality of entertainment that the Mouse has to offer, and it’s pretty much expected at this point that everything from sodas to socks are going to cost you a little more when bought on property. That said, nonetheless anyone who’s crunched a budget trying to figure out their next vacation can vouch that right up there with hotel and ticket costs, dining expenses are still a force to be reckoned with, not to simply be shrugged off in the grand scheme of things.
This point rings particularly true for me because living only about an hour’s drive from Disney World, we tend to find ourselves taking a lot of day trips over to Orlando, and thus with our park tickets already paid for and no hotel stay necessary, the budget shifts to the point where often times our primary vacation expense is that of dining. And if you think about it, those are bills that can really add up if you’re not paying attention – we generally figure about $20 / meal for the two of us if we’re going counter service, $5 here or there for snacks along the way, and should we choose to indulge in a table service meal … look out! Just between two people, I’ve seen bills anywhere from $40 – $100+ for a single meal after drinks and dessert are factored in…
…and frankly, I’m ok with that because in my eyes, those dining experiences are more than just meals for us – they’re memorable parts of our vacations in and of themselves, filled with colorful drinks and delicious entrees, decadent desserts and even a few character photo opportunities here and there. Some served to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays and even our honeymoon, while others were more sporadic stops as we caught favorable smells wafting out of a kitchen in passing. And as I mentioned earlier, they can also serve as one more piece of this amazing resort that I’ve yet to explore, long after I’ve seen all the attractions they have to offer. It’s clear to see that as I look back at my more recent trips over the last year or two, dining is becoming more of a part of the vacation experience than simply a brief break for sustenance on the way to Space Mountain.
But granted, in the same right, dining at Disney World is expensive and when we start throwing table service meals into the mix, those bills have a tendency to add up quicker than we would expect! That said, there are a couple of ways that one can reduce those costs and I’d like to talk about one that I’ve been using over the last year here today. The Disney Dining Experience* is a dining discount program offered to annual passholders and Florida residents that allows guests a 20% discount off of food and drink prices at most table service locations (and even surprisingly more and more food court / counter service options, too) around the World. The cost of the program is an annual fee of anywhere between $60 and $85, depending on if you’re a passholder or simply a resident, so if you do the math, you’re looking at a dining expense of roughly $300 to break even before you see any real savings.
* Note: For accuracy’s sake, I should probably note that technically as of September 15, 2008, the Disney Dining Experience was renamed to Tables in Wonderland, supposedly because there was some confusion of names between it and the Disney Dining Plan, however more likely this was a feeble attempt to help promote last year’s International Food & Wine Festival at Epcot, which was similarly titled Cities in Wonderland. I won’t get too far into the rant because I’ve said it here many times before, but frankly I think Tables in Wonderland sounds ridiculous and simply can’t bring myself to call the program by its new name. If you’d like to indulge and hear more of my rant about this name change, I wrote a blog post about it back in September, but in the meantime for clarity’s sake, just know that I’m going to keep calling it the Disney Dining Experience until Disney comes to their senses and drops the silly title that makes no sense whatsoever…
So anyways, I first invested in this card back in November 2007 mostly because I was curious about just how much savings it could offer, but likely more so because I knew deep down that between the birthday trip planned for my at-the-time fiancée and our wedding right around the corner, we’d definitely be dining at least enough to break even and cover the costs of the card. And here today, some thirteen months later, I’d like to break down the math meal by meal to share with everyone those very results from my little analysis, and at the end we’ll see the cold, hard truth about whether I should just let the card expire or if it’ll be worth renewing for another year!
Now I should note before we begin that while I tried my best to keep accurate records (i.e. the receipts) from each and every one of these meals, when I finally sat down to write this there were some that I can’t for the life of me find, so we’re just going to have to wing it on those few! Fortunately, there are some benefits to taking pictures of all of your meals so I do have some points of reference, and coupled with the great menus that Deb has over on AllEars.Net, I’m fairly confident that I can come up with some pretty fair estimates for each of the ones that I don’t still have receipts for.
It should also be noted, for the sake of thoroughness, that as of January 2008, Disney began adding an automatic 18% gratuity to all bills that the DDE is applied to – now, for the sake of these calculations here, I don’t think it really matters because we’re going to tip regardless, so just remember that the prices you see below are the costs for food & drink only – tax and tip are being excluded. And for the record, I do have some issues with the automatic tipping itself, but we’ll save that discussion for another day…
Over the course of the last 13 months, if my memory serves me, we enjoyed table service meals at Disney World a total of 11 times, although nearly half of those meals didn’t qualify for the 20% discount from the Disney Dining Experience, which we’ll go over in a minute. First of all, here are the meals that did qualify and how the numbers played out:
Dinner at ‘Ohana (Disney’s Polynesian Resort)
(in celebration of my fiancee’s birthday with her parents)
· 4 adult diners – each had their amazing, highly carnivorous buffet
· Total for the meal was $107.96
· Disney Dining Experience discount – $21.59
Dinner at Cape May Café (Disney’s Beach Club Resort)
(as a trial for our big family get-together meal during our honeymoon)
· 2 adult diners – each had the clam bake buffet and one alcoholic drink
· Total for the meal was approximately $67.98
· Disney Dining Experience discount – $13.60
Dinner at Mama Melrose (Disney’s Hollywood Studios)
(a random meal while visiting the Studios)
· 2 adult diners – I had a flatbread pizza, she had a pasta dish
· Total for the meal was approximately $32.98
· Disney Dining Experience discount – $6.60
Dinner at Cape May Café (Disney’s Beach Club Resort)
(the aforementioned big family get-together during our honeymoon)
· pretty much the same meal and discounts listed above
· Special Note: As the DDE is applicable for up to 10 guests, we were able to get our discount applied to an additional 8 people dining with us (total party size was 17 adults and 2 kids)
· estimated additional Disney Dining Experience discount – $46.38
Dinner at Coral Reef (Epcot)
(attempt at a romantic dinner during our honeymoon)
· 2 adult diners – I had the Seafood Linguini, she had the NY Strip Steak
· both had an alcoholic drink and a dessert each; appetizer was split
· Total for the meal was $100.20
· Disney Dining Experience discount – $20.04
Lunch at ‘50s Prime Time Café (Disney’s Hollywood Studios)
(random lunch while touring the Studios)
· 2 adult diners – I had the Fish Sandwich, she had the Meatloaf
· I had two alcoholic drinks; we split an appetizer and dessert
· Total for the meal was $60.55
· Disney Dining Experience discount – $12.11
So if my calculator works right, the total savings for two people over these six meals was $73.94, or $120.32 if you want to count the additional savings by our guests at our Cape May honeymoon dinner. But just between the two of us, our dining paid for the cost of the card itself and then also saved us an additional $14 on top of that. And sure, that doesn’t exactly sound like a lot, but then consider the following five meals that didn’t qualify for the discount:
Dinner at San Angel Inn (Epcot)
(as part of our Candlelight Processional Dinner Package)
· 2 adult diners – both each got an appetizer, entrée, and dessert as part of the fixed-price package
· She also had a margarita, which was extra
· Total for the meal was approximately $85.98
· No discounts applicable because of the Candlelight Package
Dinner at Rainforest Café (Downtown Disney)
(celebrating my Mom’s birthday during her trip to Florida)
· 3 adult diners – we all split an appetizer and dessert (“Volcano!”)
· Sara also had some fancy drink in a collectible glass
· Total for the meal was approximately $105
· estimated 10% Annual Passholder discount – $10.50
Dinner at Yak & Yeti (Disney’s Animal Kingdom)
(opening of the new restaurant)
· 2 adult diners – I had the Crispy Honey Chicken, she had the Shaoxing Steak and Shrimp
· also had two appetizers (Pork Egg Rolls & Prawn Flavored Crisps) and an alcoholic drink each
· Total for the meal was approximately $74.96
· estimated 10% Annual Passholder discount – $7.50
Lunch at Yak & Yeti (Disney’s Animal Kingdom)
(summer visit – I really like this restaurant…)
· 2 adult diners – I had the Maple Tamarind Chicken, she had the Sweet and Sour Chicken
· also had an appetizer (Pork Egg Rolls) and a lemonade for her (I had water)
· Total for the meal was $47.28
· 10% Annual Passholder discount – $4.40
Lunch at Beaches and Cream (Disney’s Beach Club Resort)
(random lunch during our honeymoon)
· 2 adult diners – I had a Hot Dog, she had a Roast Beef Sandwich
· also split an order of onion rings; each had a cherry-flavored Coke
· of course, each splurged on a custom sundae for dessert, too…
· Total for the meal was $38.61
· Note: This meal was applicable for the DDE, however I forgot the card in the car and would’ve had to walk all the way out to the parking lot to get it. Oops…
A few different forces are at work for these particular meals – one involved my simply forgetting the DDE card, which I know Disney can’t really be held responsible for; the Candlelight Package has never been subject to discounts, except for the built-in discount by using the Disney Dining Plan, so no loss there; but as for the other three (two Yak & Yeti meals and a Rainforest Café), admittedly I do somewhat blame the Mouse for because these are restaurants that do not accept the discount due to a technicality. You see, both of these restaurants are actually owned and operated by Landry’s Restaurants (they recently opened the T-Rex Café at Downtown Disney, too), and while all are accepting the Disney Dining Plan and the Annual Passholder discount, they have opted not to participate in the Disney Dining Experience program … which is a real bummer for me because as mentioned above, I really enjoy the new Yak & Yeti restaurant at the Animal Kingdom.
All in all, with the exception of the Candlelight Dinner package, the other four meals would’ve netted an additional $53.16 in discounts had they all accepted the DDE. This, coupled with all of the other savings above, would’ve added up to a potential $173.48, or a net savings of $113.48 after the card was paid for. Arguably you could suggest that these savings could’ve all been had if we’d opted to stick to only restaurants that accepted the discount, but obviously in at least a couple of the cases there was a little more to the decision than that…
So where does this leave us?
Clearly in reviewing the numbers, the Disney Dining Experience didn’t exactly reap us great savings – ultimately fourteen bucks is, what, a lunch of burgers and fries while basking in the glow of one Sunny Eclipse? And yes, with the savings extended to our friends and family during that one huge meal, that number was bumped up to include several burger and fries, it’s still easy to see by adding the actual costs of each meal that this is one of those cases where saving more money equals spending more money.
Simply put, if you’re content with eating counter service for all of your meals, then this definitely isn’t the discount program for you.
But here’s the thing – as I eluded to earlier on in this column, we’re not content with just eating at counter service offerings and in fact rather enjoy checking out the various sit-down places that Disney World has to offer. And that said, going back through that list I think I can safely say that there’s a good portion of those restaurants that we wouldn’t necessarily have tried had we not had the incentive of a 20% discount to consider. Granted, it’s not really a huge savings, but it’s been enough to make us feel just a little more comfortable about splurging on these meals over the last year and in retrospect, I think it’s also safe to say that we had good times at just about every single one of them…even if the food wasn’t always up to our expectations!
That having been said, despite the ridiculous name, I do believe this is where I rescind my previously blogged statements and admit that I think we will be renewing our Disney Dining Experience for another year, and maybe I’ll even do a follow-up column in 2010 to see if we did any better during year #2 of this little dining experiment! At the end of the day, there are definitely a lot of factors to consider with this purchase – some financial, and some not so much. For me, I think it’s fair to say that at least for this past year, the justifications were more related to encouragement for trying new things than they were directly dollar-related, however it’s plain to see how the finances could definitely play a more prominent role, especially if you’re akin to eating more than one or two table service meals during the course of your vacation. The same goes if you’ve got a larger party you’re traveling with – a family of four who likes their sit-down meals is going to see greater returns simply because those checks are going to wind up bigger, too, and as long as the trip in general doesn’t break the bank for them, the DDE might be a great way to help shave off a cool 20% from each dining tab.
Of course, factor in a few of the other side benefits such as complimentary parking and valet for dining purposes, and even if you only eat a few table service meals each year, it could be of benefit to you based on your own unique tastes. But I guess that’s one of the nice things about dining around Walt Disney World – whatever your tastes happen to be, there are certainly plenty of intriguing options to indulge them…and that’s before we even get to the dessert menu!
Bon appétit!