Disney Dining Plan. Bewildered and lots of questions!

No need to be frantic! You don't need the dining plan to make reservations so no, they don't save any reservations for people with or without the dining plan. You can only make reservations for TS and Signature meals, not for QS meals. Reservations can be made by anyone at 180 days out on https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/dining/#/reservations-accepted and if you are staying on property, you can book up to 10 days of your vacation at the 180 day mark. There should still be plenty of reservations available for your August vacation with the exception of some of the uber popular restaurants (BOG, Ohana, etc). I would suggest going through and looking at park hours and crowd calendars to get an idea of which parks you think you'll be at each day and then look at menus on allears.net to determine where you think you'll want to eat and then go from there. Hopefully that answered all the questions!

Hello Hurlymcgurly
Well I will only give you my take on this and there are a lot of us out there so am sure you will be in a good place. That is the same dinning plan I always get when I go to Disney..love it just enough food for me. For some people the dinning plan is not worth it for them but for me I know that my breakfast or lunch (which ever way I want to use my counter service for the day and 1 table service works. And I do that because when I go out to eat at home I always look at the cost rather what I really want so this way I don't worry. So whether or not the dinning plan is worth it for you I think that is only something you can decide and how you eat. Meaning if you have only a muffin and coffee for breakfast and hamburger for lunch and maybe a meal for dinner that cost around 25 dollars it may not work. I would look at the places you think you want to eat and get the menus with the prices from All Ears. Again the dinning plan doesn't save you a lot of money if any but for me it is the only way I will go to Disney.
First are you getting the 'park hopper'? If so you don't have to stress too much about what park you will be in. Because if you are in Animal Kingdom and you want to eat at Epcot you can just leave Animal Kingdom and go to Epcot for dinner (if you don't mind the time on transporting you from one place to another). For me I look at what Park am doing on what day and within that park what restaurant I want to eat at with a time in mind but knowing I may have to be flexible. When am at 180 days out I get onto My Disney Experience and start with my dinner reservations. Or if you like you can call and they will help you with that. And for the signature restaurants that are always busy you will not get in unless you don't mind eating dinner at 3:30. If you go to www.wdwinfo.com/disney-dining-plan-restaurants it will give you a list of all the restaurants on the dinning plan for 2014.
And if you are staying on property you can book you FP's at 60 days out.

Ok so this is how I plan:

Step one

Plan what park you want to be at that day and any park hops you may have. Decide what you plan will be AM PM and night

For example Monday: magic kingom (am) park hop to Epcot (pm) illuminations (night)

Step two:
What meal do you want to use your table serve credit for, breakfast or dinner.

Step three
Look at resturant based on where you are going to be, so for magic kingdom you have in park, or the monorail resorts

Epcot: the park or the board walk resorts
Holly wood studio: in park or boat to Epcot / boardwalk resort
Animal kingdom: in park or animal kingdom resorts.

Step four
Match them up, so for example

Magic kingdom (am) breakfast at the crystal palace, park hop to Epcot (pm) lunch counter service in world showcase, illuminations (night time) snack in world show case

Or

Magic kingdom (am) snack from Main Street for breakfast, park hop to Epcot (pm) counter service in world showcase, illuminations (night time) table service in world show case

Hope that helps

YESSSSSS! That's exactly how we do it. The first time we ate TS in the parks, the next time we had one at a resort, and so on. Now we actually eat out of park more often. Babysteps. Do just like Phill says, and ask your family if that is the park they plan to be in so your ADRS are together or are they on their own?

One more point I did miss. We stopped "hopping" because we found we were using up so much time that we could use in the parks. So if a park closes early that was a good reason to go to a resort dining experience. Not every night needs to end at midnight and start at 8AM the next day.

When I book our adr's I look at park hrs for the day and kind of go by that, we also usually go for 10 days so are very flexible on what we do not too concerned with staying at a park for any amount of time we have plenty of time to get everything done that we want. I have found that mid to late august can be a little less crowded because a lot of southern states go back to school in august. This is when we are going and I had no problem getting res.

Then once you decide and make your res. figure out about how much you think you will spend and see if it will be more or less than the dp