Must Have Tips for Disney Dining
OK, so you have chosen your Disney Dining Plan. Below are some helpful tips..when it comes to making the most out of your Dinning Plan.
1. The Refillable mugs work great for coffee at your Resort in the Morning (I would also recommend packing a cleaning brush and small thing of liquid soap to clean them out) (Last minute Items for Disney).
2. The Quick Service Meal credit applies to adult & children’s meal. Meaning this if you have Child with you on the meal plan you don’t necessarily have to get a child’s meal with that credit, you can in fact get an adult meal. For us we traveled with 3 small children so sometimes this makes sense for us to get 3 adult meals vs. 2 adult & 1 childs meal.
3. You can substitute a drink for a side item or dessert in your Quick Service Meal Credit, this is super helpful if you are eating at your resort’s Quick Service Counter, because you have your refillable mug for drinks.
4. You can eat at any of the Resorts Quick Service Restraunts….sometimes the lines are really long at the Parks Quick Service & if you have hungry children this is not a good combination to have.
K & I enjoying our Quick Service at Contempoary before heading over to Epcot on the Monrail for Illuminations.
We tend to use other resorts Quick Service if we are park hopping usually no waits & better healthier food choices. Contemporary is a short walk outside of Magic Kingdom and has a great Quick Service. (Contempo Cafe)
5. You can now use mobile ordering through the My Experience App. (note : on our last visit it did not work with the Disney Dining Plan ie. using your credits). This may have changed, fingers crossed that it does.
6. You can now track your Dining Credits on the Disney My Experience App. & or ask any of the Dining Places for a print out. Even the gift shops (since they sell snack items) can print it out for you.
7. You can use your snack credits for a small lunch….here is what I mean (we do this at Animal Kingdom), there are a lot of great snack huts at Animal Kingdom, so we typically use 3 to 4 snack credits and make a smorgasboard for lunch to try out different meals.
8. Save Some snack credits for the end of you trip for fun candy, popcorn, or as I like to call them road snacks. Disney Springs has a Candy store & we stock up for our 12 hour drive home.
9. You can convert quick service meal credit into 3 snack credits! This was big for us when we had the Deluxe Dining Plan as we had some meal credits leftover, so we switched them to snacks.
10. Make a Reservation for Be Our Guest for Breakfast,
Enjoying Be Our Guest for Breakfast! Then off to Ride Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
this counts as quick service meal credit for Breakfast & Lunch. Now here is the big tip…pre-order your food online. Then show up as soon as they let you through(Disney Park Tips) to fantasy land. Go to Be Our Guest & check in for your reservation. They will ask if you already ordered if so you will get directed through the line much quicker.
Example : We LOVE Be Our Guest for breakfast typically we get an 8:30am reservation here 2 days on our trip. We get to Be Our Guest right at 8am & have our food by 8:15, we all eat & then H or I take “M” over to seven dwarfs mine train (she is the only one tall enough to ride it right now, so we don’t like to waste our Fast Passes on it) (Best Tips on Using Fast Pass with little Ones). While the rest of us finish eating & then I head over to the Little Mermaid Ride, which has no wait as well.
11. When, in Doubt Call Disney Reservations ..they are super helpful. Here are some instances where calling paid off big time.
On our Dec. trip we had reservations one morning at Be Our Guest. On this particular morning transportation was shut down to magical kingdom due to a cold spurt that left the ferry’s unable to run & monorails unable to run as well. This meant we were stuck along with a lot of other guests. I called Disney Reservations to let them know we were running late for our Reservation & they were super helpful.(If you miss your reservation your card can be charged) Another time was during our first trip I had made a reservation at Epcot for Akershus Royal Banquet Hall for an early dinner unfortunately “K” started not feeling well, and we needed to head back to the resort. They canceled my reservation for us & didn’t charge us.
12. Technically unless there is and emergency you need to cancel your Dining Reservations 24 hours in advance.
13. Check Reservations you wanted and didn’t get while on your trip…you will never know when one could open up. This happen to us with Cinderella’s Royal Table.
14. We Love the character breakfast & buffets …..the dinner ones are meh!
Having Breakfast at the Beach Club (Cape May & Minnie & Friends Beach Bash) before we head over to Epcot for the morning. Side note : There is a back entrance into Epcot from the Beach Club Resort .
We try to book our favorite character breakfast in the morning & take some fruit and extra mickey waffles with us. I bring along extra Ziploc bags in my snack bag. (insert link) This way we use snack credits for lunchtime. Also, the buffets fill you up and you won’t find yourself hungry.
15. If you don’t mind early mornings….book your reservations for breakfast so that you are allowed in the parks earlier. This has changed a bit since last year as you can now get on Main Street an hour before the park officially opens.
But unless you have a Dining Reservation at Be Our Guest or Cinderella’s Royal Table you cannot get past the castle til after the Opening Show.
16. When your little one’s are still shy around characters you can let your server know & they will have the characters come by & wave. This was helpful on our first trip as M& K were nervous around them.
17. When planning out your Disney Dining, you can make reservations up to 6 months in advance.
To get your top picks think Cinderella’s Royal Table, Be Our Guest, etc. You will need to be on the Disney website booking your reservations starting at 6am on the day they open up for reservations for your vacation.
18. Another tip is if you want to take advantage of the early magic hours is to either eat at your hotel Quick Service or have breakfast bars, etc. to eat when you get up and then head to the park hit all the rides (not using fast passes) then have late breakfast or early lunch reservation.
M & K enjoying a cool treat before we head over to world of Avatar to use our Fast Pass!
This is also the optimal time to use fast passes, since rides can be busy around this time ( Fast Pass Tips). We tend to eat a snack that we brought with us & or have a reservation lined up then head to use our Fast Passes.
If you would like more information on Disney, be sure to check out my other posts. As always comment below or email me I LOVE to help with Disney planing!
Til Our Next Adventure,
Jenn
