Hi Christy,
Welcome back to the Disney Parks Moms Panel! I am delighted to answer this dining plan question for you!
It sounds as if you will have the
Disney Dining Plan. My family has used this plan in the past and it worked quite well. When you check-in to your resort hotel, all of your dining plan entitlements will be loaded onto your account and you can use them in whichever order you choose. You can certainly use entitlements on the day you arrive even if you are not at a park. On this plan, we typically use one table-service entitlement for dinner on the day we arrive and one quick-service entitlement for breakfast on the day we depart.
Be sure to make advanced dining reservations, especially for character meals. We love to dine at restaurants at our resort hotel and we like to dine at Disney Springs on at least one day. A few of our favorite restaurants are Cinderella's Royal Table, Akershus Royal Banquet Hall, 'Ohana, 1900 Park Fare, The Crystal Palace, California Grill, 50's Prime Time Café.
Christy, also check each restaurant's web page to see the number of dining entitlements required. From the restaurant's home page, click on "Some Dining Plans Accepted." I usually make a chart with all of our advanced dining reservations and the number of meal entitlements required for each to make sure that we do not use all of our entitlements prior to the end of the trip.
Magic, memories and Minnie Mouse hugs,
Donyell