Hi Christine,
Thank you so much for visiting the Disney Parks Moms Panel with your question. You are in for some great dining with your
Deluxe Dining Plan!
The
Disney Dining Plans offer meal and snack credits per night of your stay rather than per day of your stay. For instance, if you are staying at Walt Disney World for four nights, you will receive a total of four nights worth of dining credits. The great news is that all of the credits are available from when you check in on your check-in day, until midnight of the day that you check out. So in the four-night example, you would actually have five days to use the credits. Because the Deluxe Dining Plan comes with three meals and two snacks per night of your stay, overall each person in the traveling party would have 12 meal credits and eight snack credits to use over the course of the five days, inclusive of check-in and check-out days. This is especially helpful on the Deluxe Dining Plan, which offers lots of credits! Spreading this out to include both your check-in and check-out days is a great idea. You can also use these in any order that you want, with no requirement to use a certain number of meals or snacks on any given day.
A couple of my favorite dining locations at Walt Disney World are
Jiko - The Cooking Place at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge for delicious fare inspired by Africa, and
50's Primetime Cafe at Disney's Hollywood Studios for a fun, throwback to the 1950's, down-home American dining experience.
Please do let us know if you have any further questions, Christine!