Disney meal plan - help with budget

[WelshMoth]

I'm off to Disney after lots of saving. We're room only at the moment and trying to calculate whether to opt in with a meal plan or go it alone.

We've been priced £2200 for 4 of us for 10 days. That includes breakfast (quick service), 2 snacks each, refill drinks and a restaurant a day. So that works out a budget of £220 a day for us all.

Does anyone here have Disney experience of eating in their restaurants? What would you do?

We've asked for the full dining price instead of the quick dining price because sitting down to eat will be a welcomed rest from all the walking around.

Grateful for any input from anyone.

We did a modified plan and made sure to set reservations well in advance for a sit down meal on a daily basis.We ate breakfast at the Disney resort cafe we stayed at. Bought the refillable soda cups. We also arranged grocery delivery to our resort room for bottled water and sports drinks (and soda very handy in summer)

It might depend on how picky you are. I was quite disappointed with the lack of vegetarian food and vegetables generally

Nquartz we booked with Thomas Cook and as part of the hotel booking we had 14 for 7 WDW tickets and 4 Universal Studios tickets. No mention of gift card!

I'm quite happy to not sit down every evening - I think we'd rather be more flexible and just book 3 or 4 definite restaurants that we want. Quite like the thought of pizza delivery one night as well.

I'm intrigued by having a shopping delivery to your room though. Makes sense if you're in an apartment or villa but where do you store the stuff in a hotel room?! The fridges in hotel rooms are tiny! Also, a pp said that they'd ordered bagels - are there toasters in hotel
Rooms?!!

God this sounds a nightmare. Some holiday.

Visibly - thanks- really helpful.

It's an adventure - adventures need planning.

We have done it twice, it’s great not having to think about money, except tips.

Snacks can be used for drinks, and bearing in mind how hot it was, we would buy Starbucks iced teas (massive ones) for everyone and it was so refreshing.

We did have snacks left but we then spent a week at universal so exchanged for bottled coke etc to take with us for the last week.

You can also exchange sit down meals for fast food. Although we much preferred the sit down meals, there is food meals and awful restaurants but we ate well, decent variety and lots of veg etc!

Also snacks can be fruit, there was lots of fruit stands where you could pick up grapes, pineapples, strawberries, apples etc which was good to counteract the bad stuff.

Also long days at park meant the kids could pick what they wanted when tired and things which we perhaps wouldn’t have chosen to buy!

The delivery pizzas are absolutely massive. One feeds 4, easily.

I am a veggie and ate well with veg. You can ask for most meals to be adjusted, and quick service you can order from your phone to pick up, and can add or remove extras to burgers etc. for example in earl of sandwich you can tailor sandwiches to remove gherkins etc

Also for quick service you get a dessert usually too... so a cookie or something as well as a “main” meal so would get drink sandwich and cookie as one quick service

The refrigerator was large enough for a pint of milk and various bottles of drinks. We had fruit and cereal and donuts as well as snacks in our room. We also came back to our hotel every afternoon to chill and relax. BTW we also had access to a pool and a very modern laundromat at the Disney resort. Best part of it all was Disney transport picked us up at the Orlando Airport and we never had to drive anywhere had monorail,boat,bus and tram available between the parks

www.wdwinfo.com/disney-dining-plan.htm
This calculator is good for trying to find out if it’s worth it for you.
Personally I’ve had it free and it’s great, but wouldn’t pay for it unless you’re going to be doing a lot of character meals and eating the most expensive choices on the menu most night.
It also means you have a dessert rather than a starter with meals which I find restrictive and really you eat more than you really want to to try and get the value out of it.
Better to get a delivery from someone like amazon prime or garden grocer with a large case of bottled water and some snacks bits for your room, pizza delivery as someone else said.
Myself and my daughter also share a lot of meals as they are so large. Also you get free iced water in the parks at all kiosks so you don’t have to be buying drinks all the time.
It can be useful to get the refillable mugs but you can’t use those in the parks, only hotels and we’ve found it depends which hotel you stay in and where your room is, we’ve stayed in one particular hotel that we were so far away from the machines we hardly made use of them as it was such a trek

There are proper Disney pizza delivery services such as Sassagoula Pizza Express which delivers to Old Key West, Saratoga Springs Resort, Port Orleans Riverside and Port Orleans French Quarter. However, Disney do allow you to order and receive delivery from outside chains. Per Disney policy, you must meet the delivery driver in the lobby. We like the wood fired pizzas from Flippers Pizzeria. flipperspizzeria.com/menu/ One 16 inch pizza is enough for a family of four.

The easiest and most robust grocery delivery service and seemingly the most popular with other guests is by far Garden Grocer. We use it mainly for breakfast items, snacks and bottled water. I don’t want to spend the time or money eating breakfast in the food court every morning, so having cereal and juice in our room is the best solution for us. We have never been disappointed by GG, and have always found their service to be top-notch.
Orders are delivered to bell services at your hotel within the delivery window selected. When we’ve used the service, I sign up to receive both an email notification and a text message (optional) when the goods arrived. Our deliveryexperiences have been flawless. Cold items arerefrigerated by bell services at the hotel (so be sure to tip them).
As of April 2019, Disney started a $6 per package handling fee for each package that is received through the front desk or delivered to your hotel room. If you pick up your order from bell services, there’s still no fee (as that’s not the front desk); it only applies if the order is delivered to your room. Second, the fee is still far less than you save by doing it this way.

There is usually toasters in the food court, but even on quick service you will have more than enough credits so you won't need to buy anything extra.