After an over three-year hiatus, Walt Disney World brought back the Disney Dining Plan with a few consequential changes last year. The most notable of which was the removal of the Deluxe and Plus tiers of the DDP. This post covers why these options went away and why a couple of years later, there are strong new signals that the DxDDP might return in rebranded form, as the Ultimate Disney Dining Plan.
Disney Dining Plans are currently available for booking with qualifying resort stays during both 2025 and 2026. Guests can choose from the Quick Service Disney Dining Plan or the standard Disney Dining Plan. See our updated 2025-2026 Disney Dining Plan Info page for pricing, what each tier of the plans includes, along with our review, recommendations, and more.
When Walt Disney World brought back the two lower tiers of the Disney Dining Plan, they did so without really addressing the future status of the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan and Disney Dining Plan Plus. The announcement did not indicate that they’ve been officially retired or eliminated, it just ignored them entirely.
Prior to that, the official Disney Dining Plan pages had been frozen-in-time for over 3 years with a “temporarily unavailable” banner and included details about the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan and Disney Dining Plan Plus. The pages were that way from March 2020 up until early May 2023. All references were vanished within minutes of the standard and Quick Service Disney Dining Plans returning.
With the passage of two more years, it sure seemed conclusive that the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan and Disney Dining Plan Plus were gone for good once 2026 details were announced and nothing was revealed for those tiers. However, Advance Dining Reservation demand has cratered and Walt Disney World has been pulling other “levers” to incentivize guests to dine at table service restaurants, so it seems like anything might be on the table. (I have a bold idea: they could try lowering menu prices instead of raising them?!)
The latest “lever” that Walt Disney World appears potentially poised to pull is finally reinstating the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan. We’re really pleased to see this, as more tiers of the DDP was a ‘wish list’ item for us, as covered earlier this year in Why Walt Disney World Should Bring Back the Disney Dining Plan Plus.
As first reported by our friends over at TouringPlans.com, a variety of guest surveys are being sent out that ask several questions about the Disney Dining Plan lineup. Their readers sent in multiple variations of similar surveys with several questions focused on the DDP. Most notably, these surveys ask questions about three different tiers of the Disney Dining Plan. The two that are currently offered, plus a third that’s similar to the now defunct Deluxe Disney Dining Plan.
On one of the surveys, the current Quick Service Disney Dining Plan has been renamed to the “On-the-Go” Disney Dining Plan. Additionally, the current Disney Dining Plan becomes the Essentials Disney Dining Plan. Above that, the new-look Deluxe Disney Dining Plan would be known as the Ultimate Disney Dining Plan. Here’s a look at one of the graphics from the survey, courtesy of TouringPlans:
The Ultimate Disney Dining Plan would offer 2 Table Service Meals, 1 Quick Service Meal, 1 Snack, and 1 Resort Refillable Mug per stay. Note that this actually differs from the old Deluxe Disney Dining Plan in a couple of ways. First, there’s only one snack credit as opposed to two; this is consistent with an across-the-board reduction made when Walt Disney World brought back the two lower tiers of the DDP last year.
Second, the Ultimate Disney Dining Plan specifically allocated credits to table service meals and counter service meals. Previously, the DxDDP had floating credits that could be used at either. Obviously, it made sense to prioritize table service restaurants in order to come out ahead (or rather, not way behind), but the option was nevertheless yours. If you wanted to do 3 meals per day at the All Star Music food court, you could heart your heart (and stomach) out.
At the other end of the spectrum, a better example under the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan to illustrate value maximization would probably be a character breakfast and a Signature Restaurant for dinner each day. That’s a sometimes odd combo, but is how many planners leveraged the DxDDP to get the most bang for their buck with it.
Obviously, this is just a survey and it doesn’t have the time to explain the nuance of the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan or Ultimate Disney Dining Plan, so it’s entirely possible that the new-look top tier DDP, whatever it’s called, will still offer 3 floating credits.
That would make sense, as Walt Disney World has had a habit of pulling liberally–and literally–from the 2019 playbook. We’ve been shocked by just how much has come back in the last couple of years without any material tweaks.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if this new top tier does not offer floating credits. That specific example above was the way to maximize and come out way ahead on the DxDDP, and I could see Walt Disney World wanting to clamp down on that very specific, but highly popular, use case.
Otherwise, I just want to say that I fully endorse a new name for the standard Disney Dining Plan (even though it’ll create a ton of work for me updating verbiage across the site). It has never made sense that one tier of the Disney Dining Plans is called the Disney Dining Plan, which is precisely why this and other sites (and even Walt Disney World itself from time to time) add something like “standard” or “regular” in front of that specific tier of the DDP. Giving it a proper name to distinguish it from the Disney Dining Plans, as a product line, makes complete sense and is a long overdue change.
Why’d WDW Eliminate the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan in the First Place?
To understand why Walt Disney World would bring back the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan, we should probably understand why they got rid of it in the first place. There are several reasons.
First, simplifying and streamlining the Disney Dining Plan. Making vacations easier and simpler to plan is a major through-line of Walt Disney World’s big announcements in the last few years, and this was a theme of the announcement about the DDP’s return.
Too many tiers of the DDP causes consumer confusion. Walt Disney World might’ve had data showing that average guests were booking the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan because they wanted the Cadillac of vacations, but didn’t understand what it offered and were wasting many or most credits.
I’m skeptical of this explanation. Walt Disney World added the fourth tier–the Disney Dining Plan Plus–less than a few weeks before the parks closed. Survey data up until that point justified its addition, and survey data since (minus those three weeks when things were just a tad chaotic) has been nonexistent.
Second, one of the reasons Walt Disney World was so slow to restore the Disney Dining Plans was because they lacked the dining capacity to accommodate. For a while during the revenge travel period, even mid-tier table service restaurants were difficult to book due to a combination of decreased capacity and increased demand. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to book Sci-Fi Dine-In, for example, only to be shut out.
The Deluxe Disney Dining Plan and Disney Dining Plan Plus were particularly popular with Signature Restaurant and character dining experience enthusiasts. These restaurants sustained elevated demand even longer than their regular counterparts, so there was likely reluctance to restore these tiers sooner.
This had started to ease up by the time Walt Disney World made the announcement about the return of the Disney Dining Plans, but there were probably internal concerns its comeback would trigger ADR shortages again. It didn’t.
Advance Dining Reservations have gotten less and less competitive in the last two years, to the point that we seldom struggle with anything. There are exceptions to this, like GEO-82, Beak & Barrel, and some character meals, but by and large, ADR availability is the best and easiest it has ever been in our years of covering Walt Disney World.
Third, getting rid of the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan and Disney Dining Plan Plus was arguably closing a loophole for WDW dining power users. This was one of the big motivators in switching from Genie+ to Lightning Lane Multi-Pass, as the knowledge gap between casual first-time visitors and diehard Walt Disney World planners was wide. It’s a very similar idea here.
The DxDDP and DDP+ offered the most money-saving potential if you leveraged savvy strategy and hacked them. We know that it was possible to save money with the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan because we did. All the time. Almost every character dining experience or Signature Restaurant review on this blog from March 2020 or earlier was “powered by” the DDP+ or DxDDP. We have two different illustrative posts (here and here) about how we saved a ton with the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan.
These hacks only worked if you dined in a very specific way, and it was an unnatural one unless you specifically set out to beat the system. First-time guests without this knowledge would probably come out behind on the top tiers of the DDP, as they were not conducive to the natural way most casual guests would dine.
Consequently, it’s likely that a chasm emerged. Power users absolutely loved the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan and Disney Dining Plan Plus because they saved a ton of money–more than was possible on the two lowest tiers. Everyone else likely wasted credits and money with them–more than on the two lower tiers. It’s possible that guest satisfaction scores also reflected this. Although maybe not, because the perception of an all-inclusive or ultimate Disney Dining Plan is strong, especially for the kind of guest who would not balk at the DxDDP price point.
Despite all of this, it caught me by surprise that the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan did not previously return. Nothing discussed above is a bombshell revelation. Walt Disney World knew that hardcore planners were hacking the DxDDP. They knew that casual guests were wasting credits. They knew whatever guest satisfaction scores were, too, and how those broke down among demographics.
The Deluxe Disney Dining Plan had been around for over a decade. It was an entirely known quantity and everything discussed above was already priced in. The introduction of the Disney Dining Plan Plus in early 2020 indicates that Walt Disney World wanted more of that, not less.
That the Deluxe and Plus Plans only worked well in a narrow set of circumstances and resulted in overspending in all others was a feature, not a bug. It reminds me of credit card hacking. Those companies are fully aware of churners gaming the system to earn rewards without paying a penny in interest. They close loopholes to the extent feasible, but otherwise don’t care. Hackers are a vocal minority, the reward payout is the cost of doing business, and it’s a very lucrative business!
Why Bring Back the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan Now?
Anecdotally, there seems to be far less interest in the Disney Dining Plan since its return. This has been the sentiment we’ve heard from multiple travel agents, and it’s also what we’re seeing on our own posts.
It used to be the case that Free Dining was the big deal of the year. While it had its detractors who loved to explain how it wasn’t actually free, it was still beloved. The math worked out for most guests who weren’t doing Deluxe stays, and even some who were. Free Dining was exciting, and guests anxiously awaited news and rumors about its return.
Free Dining is still the focus of commercials and advertising campaigns for mainstream audiences, but we see far less reader interest in Free Dining articles. Among fans, the promo has been surpassed by all other novel special offers and even some room-only discounts. That never happened before.
One reason for this is probably sticker shock, whether it be on the cost of the paid Disney Dining Plans or the all-in package price of Free Dining. Even though price increases on the DDP are commensurate with higher menu prices and below USDA food inflation data, it’s a lot all at once on the front end of booking a trip. What once offered “peace of mind” when booking is now an overwhelming budgetary burden that’s easier to swallow later.
Another reason, which we believe is an underrated one, is the monetization of FastPass via the various Lightning Lane tiers. What was once free is now paid, and is a “non-negotiable” add-on for many Walt Disney World guests. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Most people don’t have bottomless vacation budgets, and expenses incurred on a new product offering result in cutting something else. The easiest discretionary spending is table service dining.
If this were a thesis about the downstream effects of Lightning Lanes, it’d be a lot longer. But I would also hazard a guess that the average guest ticket duration has decreased slightly, as has the propensity to purchase the Park Hopper add-on and other bells and whistles. Less time in the parks also means less time for table service restaurants, as there’s a greater sense of urgency to ride rides.
I believe this is fairly evident in the aforementioned Advance Dining Reservation availability. As I’ve said in countless other posts, I have never seen ADR options that are this plentiful, and it just keeps getting better and better.
Nothing seems to reverse that trend, either. Not Free Dining season and not the recent 40% off Annual Passholder discounts or Welcome Home Weeks for DVC Members (although the former did spike demand for a few locations).
Then there’s the biggest change with the 2026 Disney Dining Plan, which is that Kids Eat FREE All Year in 2026 at Walt Disney World! Throughout all of 2026, guests staying at one of Walt Disney World’s more than 25 on-site Disney-owned resort hotels will get a Free Disney Dining Plan for their kids when purchasing a Disney Dining Plan as part of their package for the other members of their party.
As we love to point out, Walt Disney World does not offer discounts out of corporate benevolence. They do so out of necessity. All of the above suggests to me that table service restaurant demand is down. The Kids Eat Free perk is evidence that the Disney Dining Plan, specifically, is not as popular as it once was; that Walt Disney World overshot its mark with price points and has lost families on the DDP.
The fact that the 2026 Kids Eat Free offer is technically a perk as opposed to a special offer–meaning it’s stackable with actual special offers and available to Disney Vacation Club members staying on points–is wild. This also means that Free Dining will either change substantially in 2026 to make it more appealing, or be further minimized.
Taking all of that into account, and the real surprise is not that Walt Disney World is sending out surveys about bringing back the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan. It’s that they’d need surveys in the first place, and that this news wouldn’t have been an announcement that accompanied the 2026 product launch a few months ago. (With that said, Disney is known to use surveys as internal justification for decisions they’ve already made–or to tweak them–so this could just be about landing on a new name for the top tier of DDP.)
Bringing back the Deluxe Dining Plan is not going to reverse the surplus ADR availability. In the grand scheme of levers that Walt Disney World can pull to stimulate dining demand, this is a relatively small one. But it should nevertheless help with those coveted per caps, especially since guest spending is one of the most important metrics to Walt Disney World.
Having a more expensive tier (or two) of the Disney Dining Plan also has indirect benefits; it could help push the standard Disney Dining Plan. One of the first rules of upselling is to create an expensive product tier that most consumers will not purchase. Not because companies actually expect consumers to buy it, but because it makes the other options more attractive by comparison.
If you have three products that are difficult for the average consumer to distinguish–and the prices are ~$60, $98, and $169–a lot of people are going to naturally gravitate towards the middle tier. There’s a perception of value, and it also feels like playing it safe. After all, you don’t want to cheap out too much on the budget option–especially during a rite-of-passage vacation!
It’s safe to assume that few people purchased the Deluxe Dining Plan, but it still likely served its purpose in nudging them to buy the standard Disney Dining Plan instead of the QSDDP. That thereby helped achieve higher per guest spending, which might as well be the Sixth Key.
Ultimately, those are possible explanations as to why Walt Disney World is finally considering bringing back the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan in 2026. Even if it doesn’t happen next year, we do not think that the Disney Dining Plan will only consist of two tiers forever. Big changes by 2027 seem likely.
While we’re talking about the Disney Dining Plan and its value proposition, my other hope is that it drops alcohol at some point soon. Admittedly, this is mostly a matter of selfishness. We no longer drink and the Disney Dining Plan has made zero sense for us as a result since it returned. But we’re hardly alone in this, as fewer Americans consume alcohol with each passing year.
That’s especially true of younger generations. It’s especially true of the youngest generation, which isn’t even 21 years old yet somehow gets charged adult prices for DDPs that include alcohol despite being too young to legally drink. This is the most common complaint we hear from readers, so perhaps having a ‘family’ tier of the Disney Dining Plan that doesn’t include alcohol at all would be a savvy move to reduce costs and increase sales.
Hopefully, Walt Disney World has a lot more up its sleeve for enticing more dining demand to fill tables and stimulate higher spending. Here are just a handful of totally free, completely unoriginal ideas: bring back Tables in Wonderland; restore Brunch at the Top, breakfast and counter service lunch at Be Our Guest Restaurant, breakfast at Plaza Restaurant, character dining at Trattoria al Forno, Dining with an Imagineer, Grand View Tea Room, Pizzafari Family Style Dining, Restaurant Marrakesh, and other dining services I’m probably forgetting that matter less to me, personally; add more enjoyable upcharges, such as dessert parties, EPCOT festival enhancements, and so forth.
The bottom line is that there are so many ways for Walt Disney World to get creative and “fix” its dining demand and guest spending “issues” (air quotes because they’re still doing quite well, setting quarterly revenue records!), and I can’t wait to see what else they try. It should be a fun few years between unique special offers and guest perks as Walt Disney World tries to bridge the gap until its next development cycle. We’ll keep you posted with official news and rumors like this!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of Walt Disney World potentially bringing back the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan as the Ultimate Disney Dining Plan in 2026? Does this move the needle for you or not? Disappointed that it has taken so long, or isn’t happening in time for your trip this year? Excited about the return of the top tier DDP? Would this make you more likely to do Signature Restaurants or character dining experiences? Other thoughts or comments in response to this? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!