Hi Robin,
Welcome to planDisney!
As a huge fan of
Disney Dining Plans, I am sad to say that they have not yet returned. My family loved the Disney Dining Plan and the Disney Deluxe Dining Plan. Having recently visited the parks without a dining plan, I can say that we planned ahead and made it work.
One of the reasons that I appreciated the dining plans was that it gave us a solid estimate of our food costs for the trip. Without a dining plan on this last visit, I did more work to estimate our food costs at each meal. My family sat down and selected the restaurants we planned to visit for each meal period. I then checked the menus of each restaurant. To do so, just go to the homepage of each restaurant and click on View Menu. I then estimated our meal costs based on the pricing at each restaurant. I am happy to report that our actual food costs were just under my original estimates!
As you continue to plan, do make
advanced dining reservations at 60-days prior to your visit. On our last visit, those dining reservations were fantastic to have given the capacity limitations in restaurants. We also used
Mobile Food & Beverage Ordering on a few mornings at our resort hotel and we loved using
Mobile Dine Check-in to check in for our advanced dining reservations.
By now, I trust that you have your
Disney Park Pass system reservations. Availability is limited, so if you decided to change a park pass reservation, do check the
theme park availability calendar before cancelling a park pass reservation and trying to make a new one. And, as always, double-check My Plans in
My Disney Experience to make sure all of your reservations appear.
Robin, I hope you have reviewed our
Top 10 Packing Tips! Also keep your eye on the
Know Before You Go information since theme park and resort updates will be posted there. We are so excited to welcome you to a world of magic!
Magic and memories,
Donyell