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Meet the Dis Savvy travel party.
We drive from Illinois in separate vehicles and arrive on property to stay in Disney Vacation Club accommodations. We do not use the dining plan when visiting the parks. This post is going to explain how we Do Dining in Disney!
One of the best parts of staying in a DVC property is…
The full kitchen! We make a run to the local Publix grocery store on check in day and stock up on essentials. Breakfast and snacks are completely taken care of from this point on.
As for dining in the parks. We do dine at table service and quick service throughout our trip.
Here are a few ways we dine:
We will make ADRs for table service restaurants throughout the resort.
PRO: we schedule lunches which cost less money.
CON: we find we get a later start to our day because of our timing of early lunches.
We do eat at our favorite quick service restaurants throughout the resort.
PRO: I have some of the pickiest eaters on the planet so I can mix and match meal options for the family when ordering.
CON: I have some of the pickiest eaters on the planet so I HAVE to mix and match meal options for the family when ordering.
We dine at one or two table service restaurants during our stay.
PRO: We aren’t trapped in a dining plan taking time out of our day at a table service restaurant every day.
CON: There really isn’t one for us on this one.
We have a Disney VISA Card
We “save up” for our dining by using the Disney Credit Card. We have three of these cards in our family. Hubby and I have our own card and there is a “house account” card. We charge EVERYTHING! We pay it off but get the rewards. Every point we earn translates into a dollar in Disney currency. We will use the rewards points to pay for quick service dining during our stay. Generally, for our family of 4, we spend between 30-40 per quick service meal.
PRO: It’s a mini dining plan – you can get whatever you’d like and no cash out of your pocket.
CON: Don’t think of how much you had to spend in the first place to earn those points. You earn 1% on average.
Based on our twice a year trips, we have enough points among all three cards to cover our quick service meals for a Sunday-Thursday stay.
So that’s how Dis Savvy dines. I think if Disney allowed you to just purchase dining credits in bundles and you could spend them as you wanted, that would work…but wait, that would be the same as ordering and paying cash!
8 Comments.
Love to hear your perspective on no dining plan. We go back and forth on this with every trip. One question: why do you have 3 different credit cards for points? Is it just for organizational purposes? Or are there Disney restrictions when you use the points? No worries if it’s too personal; I’m just trying to figure out how you make it work. We’re always looking for a better credit card to help with our Disney addiction 🙂
It’s just our finances. My husband and I each have our own personal cards and then there is the “house account”. The personal cards are for our own little things while house acct covers gas and groceries etc
BTW. My father in law has the card as well and charges his chemo sessions.
This might work for us someday, but right now in order to be able to afford a full kitchen we would have to stay off-site, since the Villas are not in our budget. I really would prefer to stay onsite, mostly because we are a carless family, and the ME and Disney Transportation make it really convenient for us.
I like that you use your rewards points for dining though! I’ve seen a lot of people save up for years to pay for their whole trip, but using it to decrease the cost on multiple trips means you can enjoy it more often!
It’s nice to read your take on things. It’s nice to see how people that don’t do the dining plan eat.
If you have a lot of people then it sounds like your way is great. But, if I’m on vacation, I don’t want to cook or clean up dishes. LOL
It must be a LONG ride!
[…] back to Disney 101! Last time Jenn took us through her way of doing dining which is without the Disney Dining Plan. Today we are going to dine at Disney my way which includes the Plus Dine plan. If you missed our […]
Using the Disney credit card is a good tip. We don’t have one but I just cashed in our points from our credit card and am planning on putting it aside as ‘food money’ for our trip. It is crazy to think how much money you spent just to get that point though lol!
This is something we’ve talked about doing for next trip.