1st timer on the Dining Plan

With the dining plan you'll be very full very often! You get a dessert with almost every meal, and more than enough food. When I went we planned all of our meals except one because we wanted to have some flexibilty with the last sit down service. The quick services also come with a dessert and a drink too, so you can usually treat the "treat" as a snack to eat later. I ALWAYS end up with a few snack credits left over at the end of the trip and load up on stuff for the flight home. Don't be afraid to use a snack on water if you need to, it's not always a waste. You can use a snack towards a coffee too (that's what my wife used the majority of hers on). Planning out our dining plan was one of the more fun parts of planning our trip. Also be sure to make note of which sit down services use two credits. You don't want to find yourself short a credit.

Also, we used a couple of our snack creds for breakfasts...A couple mornings we just wanted a bagel or croissant, and used our snack credit. The snack credits came in handy for expensive waters too! We had some left over too, since you get a drink, dessert, and meal with the quick service!

We also use some of our snack credits for breakfast. Especially if we have an ADR for an early lunch, a pastry snack for breakfast is perfect. If we have any left over, which we do on occasion, we also load up on snacks for the drive home.

I believe that you can get a water at no charge from the QS places. I have never tried it because we bring our own water into the parks. I know that I have read where people get their water free though. Which may not work out if you are thirsty at lunchtime and the lines are long.

Hello Timber and welcome back. Which dinning plan did you get? We usually get the deluxe and that is a lot of food, but we also book a lot of signature restaurants also. If you go during the Food and Wine Festival you can use your snack credits at the kiosk's to get items.

If you have the dining plan with the refillable mug and you eat at the quick serve at your resort, bring your mug and fill it but remember you also get a drink with your meal. Get a bottled juice or whatever to keep for later. That way you get the use out of your refillable mug and have a drink that you can have anytime. You can also get a snack item instead of a desert item. An example of this might be instead of a brownie or cookie you could get a bowl of soup or chilli. Look for the snack symbol beside items to help you decide or just ask a cast member. For desert we usually get a yogurt and save it for breakfast the next morning.

I've used the dining plan for the last 5 trips to WDW, it's awesome. As for water: I bring with me a collapsible cup that fits in my pocket (and now I'll bring a bottle of those concentrated flavor mixes). It's MUCH cheaper than buying water or soda every time I got thirsty.

link: collapsible cup

When I got the cups, I opened them up, washed them out and filled them with extremely hot water to let them stretch out.
The ones above are the type I got, but there are plenty of other styles.

I love the DDP! We really missed it last year when we tried paying out of pocket for food!

As for water, I always get a delivery from www.gardengrocer.com . We get 2 cases of water (family of 5 in August!), breakfast foods and park snacks.

We tend to use a lot of our snacks on breakfast. I'm the early riser, so I'll head down to pick up bagels or croissants or whatever for everyone (as well as coffee and tea, of course!) We find that a breakfast of that sort keeps us pretty full until lunch. (And, if not, there are those park snacks we've ordered.)

One snack you will want to try is a Dole Whip. You can get it either at the Polynesian or in the Magic Kingdom. I forget exactly where, somewhere near Pirates of the Carribean. It's kind of like a pineapple Italian ice... delicious!

As far as Quick Service, my favorites are both in the Magic Kingdom: Columbia Harbor House and the place that has Taco Salads in Fronteirland.

Actually Dole Whip is more of a pineapple soft ice cream. Aloha Isle is where you can get it in the Magic Kingdom. It's on your right as soon as you go into Adventure Land.