Starting next year, meals ordered on the Disney Dining Plans will include alcoholic beverages, where available. The new beverage benefit also includes speciality beverages, including milkshakes, smoothies, and premium hot chocolate, for diners who don't want alcohol. For guests 21 and over who do, though, the new beverage benefit includes a single serving of beer, hard cider, wine, sangria, mixed drinks, or speciality cocktails. Previously, Disney Dining Plans allowed guests to order only soda, coffee, or tea as their included beverage.
Disney hasn't yet announced its 2018 prices for the Disney Dining Plan, so we don't know how much more visitors will have to pay for their beers, cocktails, and milkshakes. The Disney Dining Plan is available only as part of a vacation package at one of Walt Disney World's on-site hotels. Current Disney Dining Plan prices are $46.34 a day for the Quick-Service Plan, $67.33 a day for the regular plan, and $103.57 a day for the Deluxe Plan. Children's prices are $20.18, $24.22, and $37.62 a day for the three plans, respectively.
Of course, guests ages 10-20 will pay the full adult price for their DDP meals, but won't be able to order alcohol. And that raises just one of many questions that guests considering the Disney Dining Plan for their vacations next year will need to consider.
The inclusion of higher-priced beverages in the plan will change the math that guests need to consider when deciding if the plan makes sense for them and their families. The Deluxe DDP plan, for example, includes an entree and beverage at breakfast and an appetizer, entree, and dessert, plus beverage, for lunch and dinner, as well as two more snacks during the day. That's an immense amount of food, even for someone walking the parks all day. If you weren't going to order that amount of food a la carte every day of your visit, there's no way you should be considering that level of the dining plan.
But some guests do, and for them, the DDP can be a winner — even if many fans say the margins have tipped strongly away from guests' favor over the years. With alcohol and speciality beverages coming to the plan, guests will need to consider how many of those drinks they're likely to order when calculating the value of the plan. And for parents of teens and tweens, you'll need to consider just how many milkshakes and smoothies you're willing in to pour into your kids in an attempt to chase value from the DDP.
The Disney Dining Plan effectively encourages people to order the most expensive items on the menu in order to get their money's worth from the plan. And that, in turn, changes the economics of premium menu items for Disney. Under the plan, the company can't expect that the top-priced items on the menu will be ordered less frequently than lower-priced items. So they must procure a higher volume of those items, which could result in a decrease in quality. Will adding alcohol to the DDP lead to a similar squeeze on the quality of alcoholic beverages at the resort? Let's put that up for debate.
For plans that include table service meals, guests obviously want to book as many of their meals at those higher-priced table service restaurants as possible, to get the value they've bought from the plan. That's why reservations at table service restaurants have become so difficult to land since Disney added the dining plans, leading Disney to add more table service restaurants in an attempt to meet that added demand. Will the addition of alcohol to the DDP prompt Disney to expand the availability of alcohol at restaurants throughout the resort — including inside the Magic Kingdom — to meet what could be an increase in demand for adult drinks?
One more factor to consider: It is well documented within the hospitality industry that people drinking alcohol spend more time on their meals than people who don't drink. If the addition of alcohol to the DDP encourages more people to order alcohol with their meals at Disney, will that slow the turn-over in tables at resort restaurants? If it does, that means longer waits for people and eventually, fewer ADR positions available at each restaurant, as each table turns fewer times over the course of a day.
Is the Disney Dining Plan a good value for you and your family? Will the expansion of the beverage benefit change that math for you?
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The DDP can be a great value if you know how to use it, but it can be frustratingly complicated to ascertain if it's truly worth all the hassle. Not only do you need to figure out how much you would normally spend on food each day, but you have to determine if you would typically stay off-site, and if so, how much more money does it cost per day to stay on site to get access to the DDP (while also weighing/valuing the other advantages of staying on-site like free parking, transportation, Extra Magic Hours, and earlier FP+ reservation access). The DDP also requires guests to purchase theme park tickets, so those planning to visit with old non-expiring tickets, would at the very least need to purchase 1 day of admission to get access to the DDP. Also, if you don't make strategic ADRs far in advance (180-days for the most value-laden and popular restaurants), purchasing the DDP as part of a vacation package can be a losing venture over buying meals a la carte. If you're the type of person that cannot plan a vacation 6 months in advance, and instead fly by the seat of your pants, the DDP is not for you.
Our trip in October is right now stacking up to be the our first WDW visit in almost 10 years where we haven't been on the DDP, predominantly because the resorts are getting too expensive and the free DDP fall promotion had the entire month of October blacked-out.
I'm less concerned by rampant drunkenness, since a single serving of anything available isn't really going to get you there, but it's really the time, especially with the specialty drinks that need to be mixed, blended, etc.
I'd prefer Disney look to maximize profit by working on throughput of guests more than anything else, though I know that's less easy to quantify than just simply adding a per-DDP upcharge on the umpteen thousands of DDPs purchased every year.
Adding this option will just give people another variable to considing DDP
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This new benefit isn't about making things easier for guests. It's about making more money upfront while still making guests pay extra for sides. It also insures guests will not order everything they are entitled to, thus make more money for Disney.
Anyways, I recall ordering a milkshake at SciFi Dine-In for no extra charge.