Thinking about meal plans for some reason today, and I am struggling to find one that I would feel like buying, much less recommending on the site. Maybe I'm just not eating that much anymore, but many of these deals seem to have lost value over the years.
Which parks are offering meal plans or deals that you can recommend these days?
The main thing that sucks with the United Parks all day dining is waiting in line. It’s expensive but you do have the possibility of getting enough meals out of it (it’s every 90 minutes). However, if you go on a busy day, then most of your day is you waiting in lines at the food places. You’ll spend more time in food lines than the actual attraction queues.
But hey, if it’s not busy and you plan to be there all day then it’s good value. Just remember, the food sucks lol.
Yeah, I don't care how cheap the food works out to be on a meal plan, if it's not good, I don't want to eat it at any price.
The only meal plan i've ever bought is the daily unlimited plan at Cedar Point because the park is big enough, has enough attractions, long enough park hours, and enough food locations that accept it, to justify it. Pretty much every other park if I want to eat I just leave the park and go back after eating.
Although there is a caveat, on Steel Vengeances opening day the park was so understaffed that it took 30-60 minutes to get food anywhere and in that case it was more of a frustration than anything. So busy days during the spring and maybe fall its not worth it due to understaffing, but if the park is slow its not an issue (for example we had no problems the day after opening day).
In regards to United I agree the quality of food there has gone so far downhill its not worth it. If you go from morning to night at the park and use it over and over, than maybe you can justify it from a value standpoint, but the food is so low quality that you are better off leaving the park to eat just for that reason. When I was at SWSA recently the tickets I bought came with one meal included and the food was disgusting, I am typically someone with very low food standards and not a food snob at all, but when they gave my wife the "salad" that was literally some shredded lettuce and shredded carrots thrown together into a small dish, even I was thinking wow thats a straight up scam. Also if you want to add anything to your meal (IE small cupcake they have on the dessert rack) its a totally outrageous price that would be the cost of a whole meal pretty much anywhere else.
WDW/UO are whole different beasts and quite frankly while I personally have ways of saving money at these places, for the majority of people you're probably just better off biting the bullet and getting a meal plan or budgeting an insane amount of money for overpriced park food. I think both properties have done a good job making food part of the experience so at least its not a drag having to overpay to eat there (as long as you have a plan and don't end up somewhere like Cosmic Rays and pay a hundred bucks for that lol). Although for people who are chronic visitors I think eating at the parks is insane.
I'm beginning to wonder the same thing. We've tried a number of different dining plans, and I think the best has been Cedar Fair's All-Season Dining Plan. The one issue with the CF plan is that you can get 2 meals per visit, but they have to be 4 hours apart, which means you probably need to grab food as soon as you enter the park. The one good thing is that most CF parks have decent variety in what you can get on the plan, and if you have a Platinum Pass, the dining plan is good on visits to any other formerly Cedar Fair park.
In a similar vain, the Cedar Fair parks have an all-day dining plan for single day visitors where you can get a meal every 90 minutes - which could be a lot of food for 1 person in a day, but if you share with other members of your party can be an economical way to eat in the parks. Again, the variety of food served in most Cedar Fair parks makes this far superior to any of the Six Flags meal plans.
United Parks offer a similar all-day dining plan, but it's more expensive than the Cedar Fair plan, and dining locations where you can redeem the plan are more limited (usually just 3 or 4 restaurants in each park).
The Disney Dining Plan has become so expensive that it is just not worth the hassle to try to extract value out of it. Yes, if you're diligent, you can probably come out ahead, but it takes a lot of work and planning to make the DDP even a decent value. Unless you're the type of person that wants to have all of your costs accounted for up front, you're much better off paying individually for meals at WDW.