Thursday, August 7, 2008

Quick Service Dining Plan for 2009

Disney has announced the updates to their 2009 Magic Your Way plans for 2009. One of the most interesting is the new Quick Service Dining Plan. Here's the details:
2009 Magic Your Way + Quick Service Dining Plan

The Magic Your Way Package Plus Quick Service Dining offers you an easy and affordable way to experience a wide variety of participating Disney restaurants. The package includes everything in the 2008 Magic Your Way Base package -- Disney Resort accommodations, a Magic Your Way Base Ticket, etc., plus an arcade card valid for 30 minutes of game play at resort arcades (one per room) -- and a Quick Service Dining Plan that offers the following:

-- 2 Quick Service Meals per person per night: One Entree OR one complete Combo meal, dessert (lunch/dinner) or One juice (breakfast) & One single non-alcoholic beverage

-- 2 Snacks per person per night: Choose from items such as frozen ice-cream novelty, box of popcorn, single piece of whole fruit, medium fountain soft drink

-- One refillable drink mug per person

The new Quick Service Dining Plan prices: Adults $29.99 per person per night; children 3-9 $8.99 per person per night

Everyone in the room must be on the same package and ticket options. All tickets must be used within 14 days of first use, unless the No Expiration Option is purchased. All dining credits must be used by midnight the last day of your stay, otherwise they expire.
Although we generally stay off-site more often than we stay on-site, I have to admit that this new dining plan seems to make more sense for us than the others. It resolves some of the issues we had with the dining plan before. With all the table service meals in the other dining plans we found our vacation was too "planned" and that we had to stop having fun to go eat. We also got sick (literally) of food.

The way this plan is structured, we could eat most of our meals as counter service with a few planned table service meals during the week. I suspect that we would be much happier and less bloated by the end of the week on this plan. I also like that they throw in the free refill mug. To quote Woody Guthrie, "This plan is my plan."

The only real question I have is whether or not the price is a bargain or not. For most people it probably is. Especially if you use all the snacks. However, the problem I have is that when on the plan, you cannot share meals. When I'm not on the plan I don't really have any problem sharing a meal and we do share meals a lot, especially the kids, because the portions are so large. If we don't share meals, we end up throwing a LOT of food away or stuffing ourselves. So we tend to eat cheaper than the menu would typically lend someone to believe. Still, it's nice to know going into your vacation that your food budget is pretty well set rather than having it soar out of control as it so easily can do.

What do you think of the new dining plan? Is it something you will be taking advantage of? Or will you pay $10.00 a day more to get the basic dining plan?

No comments: