The Dark Side of Disney (8 page)

2. The DDP itself is overpriced. Just a few years ago, when it first started, it was a good deal. Each day you’d get a quick service meal, 2 snacks, and a table service meal with an appetizer, entrée, drink, and desert (the tip was also included) for $35/day. You still had to eat a buttload of food each day to come out ahead, but at least you COULD come out ahead and have it be a decent bargain. But now you don’t get the appetizer, you only get one snack, and the tip isn’t included. That’s a reduction of 30% at least, and at the price has increased to $48/day. As only Disney can, they’ve increased the price and decreased the service, and people are still buying it. What a rip-off.

Do me a favor: visit
http://allears.net/din/dining.htm
, check the prices on the restaurants you want to eat at, and then add up what you’ll spend per person per day (without gorging yourself). Most likely over the course of 7 days that amount is going to be equal to or less than what you would pay for the Dining Plan.

3. If you’re on the DDP, by the end of your vacation you’re going to be so fucking sick of Disney food that you won’t ever want to eat again. But since you already paid for it you’ll feel obligated to keep those dining reservations and keep gorging yourself until it becomes an unpleasant burden. Why would you want to do that to yourself on vacation? Wouldn’t you rather just eat what you want, when you want, knowing that it’s okay if you want to skip a dinner ADR because you ate too much at lunch and you’re not hungry?

4. “But I like that it’s prepaid and I can budget for it,” you say. Yes, budgeting is important, and not being able to go over budget is a nice feature of the DDP. But you could also stash away the same amount of cash on a Disney Gift Card, and only use that to pay for your meals. Every time you use it the receipt printout tells you how much is left on your card, which is a great way to manage your spending.

5. WDW’s food quality and portion sizes have gone downhill big time since the DDP came around. Since the number crunchers have to make a profit on DDP, they can’t have any of the food at any of the restaurants be too different in price or quality. The reason being that if word gets around that there’s one spectacular restaurant, or one amazingly great (but expensive) thing on a certain menu, then everyone on the DDP will go to that one restaurant or order that one most expensive item on the menu, and Disney will lose money (in fact this has happened – as of this writing La Cellier, which often receives great reviews for their food and service, has gone from 1 Table Service credit to 2, effectively doubling the price of the meal. They also got rid of the really high-quality steaks there years ago). As a result, none of the restaurants stand out anymore, and all of the food is kinda blah.

Cheap/Free Dining for Drunks and Foodies:

So what’s the alternative to “free dining” and the DDP if you took DME and can’t drive to cheaper offsite restaurants? On the surface, it seems like your options are to either starve, which isn’t a pleasant way to spend your vacation, or pay out of pocket, which can get prohibitively expensive if you’re doing it for every meal considering the prices Disney charges even at the Quick Service restaurants. And what if you want to get totally shit-faced drunk? As someone with a fairly high tolerance, the prospect of buying enough booze at WDW to get good and blotto is enough to sober me back up immediately. Last time I was there a regular 12oz bottle of Bud was $6 at the resort’s General Store!

Well, there are options! You CAN eat and drink at WDW on a budget!

Split an entrée and an appetizer. Many of the portions are too big anyway, especially at the Counter Service restaurants, so why not order a single appetizer and entrée for two people and split it? Of course, you can’t do this on the DDP because each person has to order their own separate entrée, but if you’re not on the DDP you’ll find that this is usually just the right amount of food for two people.

Or you can order more food and bring back leftovers! This works especially well if you’re eating at Epcot and are staying at one of the Epcot Resorts, because you can walk back after your meal, put the leftovers in the fridge, and go right back to the park. I end up doing this a lot and leftovers make a great breakfast or late-night snack.

Don’t eat breakfast, then go to a buffet for lunch, stay there and eat for at least two hours, and then don’t eat dinner either. WDW buffets don’t end up costing much more per person than a full table service meal, but you can eat a lot more, especially if you stick around for a while and let the first round of gluttony settle. I personally recommend Boma or Tusker House, although Germany gets an honorable mention for the surprisingly reasonably priced liters of beer and awesome entertainment.

Tip: The dining rooms at these buffets are usually so sprawling and packed that it becomes very easy to secretly load up a plate of muffins, rolls, brownies, or whatever, and dump them into a large freezer bag, which can then be stashed in a purse or backpack. I used to wrap up cookies in a napkin and put them in my jacket pocket. Yeah, it’s pretty ghetto, but you’ll forget all about that when you’re eating Zebra Domes in your resort Jacuzzi later that night.

Taking this one step further is a tip that might actually be illegal, is definitely immoral, but is also totally fucking delicious! Pecos Bill’s and Cosmic Ray’s at The Magic Kingdom have epic toppings bars. Lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, shredded cheese, cheese sauce, sautéed mushrooms and onions, lettuce, and a variety of other condiments make this a vegetarian’s dream buffet. Bring a few paper plates from your resort, head over to one of these two counter service restaurants, and load up on free toppings! I’ve seen people bring their own tortilla chips and make a monster taco salad, or they bring their own rolls and make a great grilled veggie sandwich. Again, I think this is technically theft, but there are no signs saying “toppings bar for paying customers only”, so I figure it’s fair game.

The Entrance to Pecos Bill’s, home of the Topping Bar

Free sautéed mushrooms and cheese sauce

Free tomatoes, lettuce, and shredded cheese

As long as we’re talking about theft, you can get all the free food you could ever want in The Utilidors or behind the scenes at Epcot. For whatever reason they leave racks and racks of food sitting around out in the open. Mostly I saw sodas and rolls, but I’m sure if you looked around you could find more. Not that I’m advocating theft; this is more like a desert island scenario, like maybe The Mad Hatter stole your wallet and ran down to The Utilidors and you followed him and got lost and couldn’t find your way out and instead of resorting to cannibalism while waiting to be rescued you ate stolen bread.