Disney Food

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a huge fan of food! It's one of my favourite things in the whole world and so I'm in my element going to Disney! This year we upgraded to the Quick Serve Dining plan and I will never look back! It was amazing and we never went without. In fact in the few days before we came home we were pretty much eating all day everyday just to use the credits up! A lot of people turn their left over credits into snacks to take home but we really didn't want to do this as we already had a LOT of candy left over from Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party and we had quite a lot of park merch to bring home so I really didn't need more sweets weighing down my case. We made it our mission to enjoy as much food as we could whilst in Disney. Also, this made it feel like we were getting our monies worth rather than spending more to upgrade just to bring back bags of sweets.

The cost of the upgrade to Quick Service plan was worth it for us but every family is different. I definitely recommend looking into it before you decide to pay as to whether you will be mostly eating onsite or offsite, how big of an appetite your family has and how many of you there are in your party as these factors can help you choose whether or not it will be worth it for you.

For our first visit to WDW we were offered free breakfast with our room as part of the Disney Dining and we felt this would be more than enough as the plan was to have a large breakfast, eat a snack at lunch time and then just pay for a meal on an evening as "it would be too hot to each much" and we'd heard the portions were huge. Unfortunately it didn't work out like this and we ended up spending about £1500 in the two weeks we were there just on basic "cheap food". Our holiday is pretty much always onsite and we found the portions we're overly huge and so we ate normally. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. With extra cold snacks because of the heat! This trip we were still offered the free breakfast but were also asked if we would like to upgrade to Quick Service for £800 for the room. Knowing we each had 2 meals and 2 snacks per day for the whole trip with a lot more choice was a no brainer and so we paid the upgrade and ate like kings (I think my jeans still hate me now!)

A hot chocolate and a pastry from Terror Tower

A tip with the credits which unfortunately we only learnt in the days before we left is you can change 1 meal credit into 3 snacks and so if you don't fancy a full meal, i.e. at breakfast, you can chose 3 smaller snack items. For the last few days of our holiday I enjoyed picking up a pastry, hot chocolate and a bottle of water to take around the park and then had a meal later in the day when I was hungry. It also strangely enough felt like we were getting more for our credits. We were told this is only allowed at Quick Service restaurants that serve hot food and not at the little stands around the parks so if you plan to use this tip ask the CM first before putting your order in.

We found the Quick Service was the best choice for us. I'd love to one day upgrade to the sit down dining plan but with little ones it's just not feasible as we just cannot guarantee where we will be at any given time and what mood the littlest ones will be in. We did book a couple of sit down meals for our trip last but unfortunately they didn't go to plan. One had to be cancelled last minute due to overheated grumpy children (dinner at BOG! I'm still not completely over it!) and the other meal was cut very short because of a poorly teenager and a baby who refused to sit still the entire breakfast and screamed if I put him in his highchair! It was amazing seeing the characters and watching them interact with the older kids but we pretty much had to pay a small fortune just to rush what food we could quickly grab and race out the door as fast as we could whilst apologising for the carnage we'd left behind! The plus side is I did get to have a look around the restaurant whilst I was running around after little man and I can say it's very pretty!

We were able to use our meal and snack credits in Be Our Guest for lunch or breakfast (only)meaning we could "eat for free" in the Beast's castle. The food was lovely and it definitely felt like you got a lot more for your credits by eating here as you get the added bonus of experiencing the amazing castle which is a must for any Beauty and the Beast fan . If you have breakfast only credits with your reservation you can still use the credit for lunch in BOG but you have to pay out of pocket for any desert you have which is what we did last year. Beast is not at lunch or breakfast. Beast is only at Dinner (the evening meal for any UK friends!)

Don't forget if you are wanting to eat at BOG you need to make reservations as soon as they become available on your "My Disney Experience" app when they become available for your family at 180 days. We didn't know about this on our first trip and so I didn't book any meals at all. Luckily the wonderful Disney community let me know what I should be doing and I was able to set up an alert on the "Mouse Dining" app and I was notified of any cancellations. This was pretty stressful for me and took me 3 cancellations before I was able to claim a reservation as they were so sought after they would be gone by the time I even logged into my account! Luckily 2nd trip I was all prepared and bagged a lunch and as dinner (which was later cancelled boohoo) straight away at 180 days out. This was definitely a more relaxing way of planning our holiday.

We also found in a lot of places that you could pick up an adult meal using a child's credit and so if you do have kids that are bigger eaters then they could have any combo meal on the menu. We found this at Casey's Corner in Magic Kingdom, the Fish & Chip place in Epcot (UK) and I have also been told Toluca Legs Turkey Company in Hollywood Studios and Sommerfest at Epcot (Germany) also don't have children's menus but we haven't personally visited those yet. This again makes you feel like you are getting more for your credits.

Often when we were out late or we just wanted something quick we would order a large pizza from the resort food court. These were 2 credits but would feed all 4 of us and you could choose pretty much anything for your topping. They were quick and easy and saved us credits to be used at a later date. We could also take them back to the room if we wanted which saved having to sit in public with the small terrors!

Snack credit can be used at any Quick Service restaurant, food cart, theme park shop or resort that display the Disney snack symbol so look out for this.

You can also redeem your snack credit at Starbucks and during the food and Wine Festival at Epcot on taster menus found around the World showcase.

Ok if you have gotten this far, thank you for reading!! I am by no means claiming to be an expert on the Quick Service Dining plan and we have only visit WDW on two occasions so far and so there will definitely be places we haven't visited and tricks we haven't learnt yet but these few things I have written about helped make us feel like we were making the plan worth our while during our holiday. I do hope they help someone else but if not that's fine too.

I've added a few pics of some of amazing food and snacks we tried during our stay below and hopefully as I learn more and try more I can update this blog or maybe write a new one as there is still so much we don't know and Disney is forever growing and changing. If any of you have any more tips you would like to share please DM me or comment below as I would love to add this to our planning for WDW 2019.

These were a selection of cold treats found at StoryBook Treats opposite the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in Magic Kingdom. My favourite was the Peter Pan Float and my least favourite was the Maleficent cone as it was so messy and melted through the hold in the bottom of the cone all over me!