Tag Archives: Disney Dining Plan

Thank Disney it’s Friday – November 9!

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Hello all, I hope its been a week full of Disney magic; whether you have been in the parks, cruising or planning your next trip!

During my October visit I used the Disney Dining Plan for the first time ever, I can’t wait to share some tales with you about that!!

But in the meantime, here’s your Friday question…..

If you had just one SNACK credit left on your dining plan what Disney food item would you use it to buy and why????

I look forward to getting hungry from reading your answers!!

 

And don’t forget…..we’re having another Daydreaming Disney giveaway!!!!! Every reader leaving a comment on ANY Friday question posed in November will be added to a prize draw. A name will be selected at random on December 1 to win a selection of goodies picked up during my trip to Walt Disney World!!!

 

:) :) :)

 

Where dreams come true….

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Hello fellow Disney nerds and daydreamers…I have returned from the World!

It was a fun and exhausting two weeks spent at Walt Disney World; meeting up with old friends, having new experiences and creating Disney memories to cherish forever.

So I hope you’ll join me in the coming weeks as I share some of my stories….I’ll let you know my thoughts on the new Disney Photopass+, the Disney Dining Plan, eating at signature restaurants and of course…using Disney transportation. I’ll share how I felt about attending Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, the Food and Wine Festival and a fun Eat To The Beat event.

I’ll share the highs….and maybe even some lows of our trip (there were a couple)!

I look forward to daydreaming Disney with you…..so for your safety, please remain seated and keep your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside the vehicle at all times……  :)

 

 

That’s a first!

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As I put the final details in place for our forthcoming trip to the World I realise that this visit could yet again be full of magical first time Disney experiences.

It’s clear to see that by simply changing the time of year for our visit it has opened up a number of new experiences and events which I will see for the first time. By visiting Walt Disney World in October I will see Magic Kingdom decorated for Halloween and get to attend Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.

This also means that I will be visiting Epcot during the Food and Wine Festival; I’m looking forward to not only sampling some of the dishes on offer but seeing how World Showcase looks with the addition of the international marketplace booths.

Due to a special promotion I was able to include the Disney Dining Plan for free on my vacation booking which means I’ll be experiencing Disney dining on a whole new level. I’ll be visiting Signature restaurants for the first time and some of our advanced dining reservations will take us into resorts that we’ve never really had the chance to explore before.

After attending the Key To The Kingdom tour on our last visit I knew that I wanted to book at least one tour or special experience on this trip….well, I decided to fit three in! We will FINALLY get to Dine With An Imagineer, we will be taking a unique look at Animal Kingdom on the Wild By Design tour and last but by no means least we will be taking in the detail of Magic Kingdom during a park tour with Lou Mongello.

Something else which will make this trip so unique is the number of friends that we hope to be meeting up with during our two week vacation. A few years ago, before I started blogging and talking to fellow Disney fans across the social networks, I had no idea that I would make friends with so many people who lived close to or worked at my favourite vacation destination.

And lastly…now this could well make or break a vacation….we have unplanned days on our WDW daily schedule!!!! That’s right, I threw out the original daily plan which I had spent so long researching and planning! So the new schedule includes the booked tours, ADR’s and a couple of planned meet ups but that’s it! We are going to decide that morning or the night before which park we feel like going to each day….if we wake up and feel like stuffing our faces at the Food and Wine Festival we’ll head on over to Epcot, if we feel like spending a morning people watching in a busy Magic Kingdom then we’ll head on over there!!! For a mega planner like me this is pretty scary stuff but there’s a first time for everything!! :)

So what about you? Do you like to visit at the same time of year or stay at the same resort because you like to know every detail of your vacation? Do you make sure that you experience at least one new thing during each trip or do you throw caution to the wind and never plan your trips, hoping that magic and surprises come along to make memories that you’ll cherish forever???

 

 

 

 

All fine for the Food and Wine!

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This October will see my first ever visit to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. Now this Walt Disney World special event is a huge hit with guests; many making it the reason they return to WDW at this time of year, every year.

As you all know I like to read about Disney A LOT so it comes as no surprise that I’ve spent years reading details about past Food & Wine Festivals and have a pretty good understanding of what actually happens during the event. But do I know how to go about actually attending the event myself AND getting the best out of my visit? With so much information available it can actually make it difficult to know what you need to remember, and know what you can afford to forget!

And that is where the Disney Food Blog and the DFB Guides come to your rescue! These guides are downloadable and can be used at home or on the go. So far the collection includes the DFB Guide to WDW Dining 2012, the DFB Mini-Guide to Epcot Snacks, the DFB Mini-Guide to Magic Kingdom Snacks and the DFB Dining Adventures: Magic Kingdom.

 

 

So when I heard that there was a DFB Mini-Guide to the 2012 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival I just knew that this would have the answers to all my questions and more!

Firstly….who knows why it’s called a ‘mini’ guide…with over 160 pages of details and photos covering everything there is to know about the Festival! There’s an introduction giving an overview of all the happenings at the event, then chapters on the International Marketplace Booths, Special and Signature Events, Seminars, Celebrity Chefs, Eat to The Beat, RunDisney events and Frequently Asked Questions.

I found the guide really easy to follow and the linked index at the beginning takes you straight to the information you’re looking for…it’s so much easier than having to spend time searching through several websites trying to piece the information together.

The guide makes you feel like you know what’s going to be happening when you arrive at Epcot and makes you think in advance about how you want to experience the event. I particularly like the Festival Touring Strategies and the World Showcase Booth Crawls….I’m a fan of anything that helps me plan my time!

But do you know? Even if I wasn’t able to attend the Festival this year I think that this e-book would still make a good read for any Disney fanatic wanting to learn more about the different happenings at the World. I picked up the original DFB Guide to Walt Disney World Dining last year; not because I had started planning my 2012 ADR’s already but because I just wanted to read more about WDW dining!

So there you have it…I have my DFB Mini-Guide and I’m all fine for the Food and Wine!! ;)

 

 

 

Thank Disney it’s Friday – June 29!

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It’s that time again…time to start making plans for the weekend and hoping that they include lots of Disney activities and thoughts.

There seems to have been yet more food news coming out of Walt Disney World this week with more details being released about the Be Our Guest restaurant coming to Magic Kingdom….so this week’s question has once again got a foodie theme…..

 

If you could eat at only ONE dining location for the duration of your next trip where would you choose and why???

 

Think carefully now….this could be a counter service, a signature restaurant or even a food court at a resort….you will be eating ALL your meals there…so choose wisely!!!!

 

:) :) :)

 

Thank Disney it’s Friday – April 27!

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Well hello Friday :) It’s been a busy week with little time for daydreaming about our special place…so let’s take time out for the Friday question!!

 

It’s lunch time and we’re at Magic Kingdom….our options for lunch are Cosmic Ray’s or Pecos Bill Cafe…which do you choose and why???

 

:) :) :)

DDP…easy as one, two, free!

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The Disney Dining Plan (DDP) has always fascinated me…or should that be that the people using the DDP have always fascinated me? Despite the plan providing a daily allocation of meals and snacks for your vacation there always seems to be this issue with managing the use of your table service credits and using the numerous unspent snack credits on enough snacks to take home for all your friends and relatives.

Search any number of Disney fan forums and you will find numerous threads on how to ‘efficiently’ use the DDP. Getting your money’s worth….that’s the key…the issue…the deal breaker…

So what happens when you get the Disney Plan for free? Surely that should be where the fun begins; it’s free food after all. But because it’s free does that mean you need to use the plan even more effectively? Don’t waste those credits…get the most out of it…this has cost you NOTHING!!!

Now I have never used a Disney Dining Plan. I have never felt the need. When we go to Walt Disney World we’ll plan a couple of ADRs (Advanced Dining Reservations) but certainly not one a day for the full fourteen days. We’ll book specific restaurants that we know we want to visit because of their food, atmosphere or how an early ADR will get us into a park before opening.

We love American style breakfasts so we tend to eat A LOT first thing. We love cakes so we’ll usually have at least one of those to keep us going during the day. We love hanging out at our resort in the evening so we’ll usually grab something from the food court if we haven’t already eaten at a counter service during the day. And that’s it; no regular meals, no regular meal times, no rules.

For us when looking at the cost of the DDP it hasn’t added up. Yes, you get a lot of food on the plan for the duration of your vacation. But we don’t actually spend as much on food as we would on buying the dining plan. So until now we’ve ignored all those forum threads, we’ve ignored the little notes on the food counter advising how many credits it will cost to buy this burger and cupcake, and we’ve laughed and shrugged it off when our server looks horrified when we say ‘no, we’re not paying with the dining plan’.

But that is all about to change…..for we shall be using the Disney Dining Plan on our next trip. And it will be free. When booking our latest trip we just couldn’t ignore the offers that were available if we travelled at a certain time of the year so we went for it. And now we are getting free food.

I’m really looking forward to the experience. I’ve tried to play it cool and go along with the ‘well it’s free’ philosophy, but every now and again you find yourself planning a day’s events around that ADR you want to book or how many table service points you’ll have used by that day.

Will we have an abundance of snack credits? Will we feel like we are eating all day long? Will we look for the most expensive thing on the menu…because it’s free? I can’t wait for this new Disney experience.

So what about you? Do you have any tales from using a Disney Dining Plan for the very first time? Or any traditions that you have when eating ‘free food’ in WDW?

Food glorious food!

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I love American food….and I love planning and researching my WDW trips…imagine my delight when I came across a website that connected the two!

It was December 2010 and we were at the WDW Radio 200th episode party. Despite feeling overwhelmed (in a good way) I was trying to mingle and chat to as many people as I had the courage to approach. Whilst waiting to say goodbye to Lou we got chatting to a girl called AJ. We were talking about the UK, about the States, and of course the subject got onto food! Until AJ gave us her business card I didn’t know that we had been speaking to THE expert on ‘Disney’ food!!

When we returned to the UK at the end of our holiday I picked up AJ’s card and went to seek out her website www.disneyfoodblog.com and that was where my WDW food journey began!

Don’t get me wrong; I’m aware of the vast array of food choices at WDW. I’m aware of many counter service and restaurant style facilities in each of the parks. I’m aware of the Disney Dining Plan and refillable mugs. But I never really understood many of the details until becoming a regular user of The Disney Food Blog.

This website covers everything you need to know about food at WDW and Disneyland; it has food news, reviews, photographs, menus, details on discounts, food related merchandise, dietary requirements and more!

I personally enjoy the dining reviews posted on the website. AJ has a very open and honest style of writing; if she likes something she’ll say it, if she thinks something could have been done better she’ll say it. This gives me the option of forming my own opinion and deciding whether to try that restaurant, meal, or snack for myself. And there’s a simple thing that makes this website fun; if you leave a comment on a post AJ will do her very best to respond to what you’ve written, it makes you feel like every comment is appreciated :)

In the last few months AJ has also launched a series of Disney Food Blog e-books. Not only are they downloadable, so that you can have them to hand on your digital reader or phone, but they have links to various pages on the website so the information will always be up to date. A must for every serious WDW planner like myself!

Reading the information and reviews on this website has made me enthusiastic and intrigued about the variety of food available at WDW. So much so that I’ve opted for the Disney Dining Plan for my trip next year and will be using The Disney Food Blog for a lot of planning and advanced dining reservations (ADR’s). It will also be our first visit to the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival, but no need to panic as AJ has that covered as well!

And on a more serious note, I’ve been training for ‘The Disney Food Blog WDW Cupcake Crawl’….yes, you read that right…earlier this year AJ produced a map of WDW and ten different cupcakes to eat at various locations on property…now that’s my kind of exercise!!!! ;)