New to APs, DVC and DDP -- Help us not be tools!

[Kwahati]

Just my .02, but we got three things out of using the DDP:

1) It *felt* like it cost less because it wasn't money we had to worry about and plan for while we are there*. (*by "there" I mean "on vacation, trying to enjoy myself with my best friends [some of whom are fictional] and as far from all worries [including money] as I can get")

2) It encouraged us to think about food and develop a plan earlier than we normally would (our dinner reservations were made shortly after we booked our flights) rather than waiting until we're starving and overpaying for something we didn't really want to eat in the fist place.

3) It saved us money compared to BOTH important alternate scenarios:

a) Buying the same food ourselves rather than with the DDP would have been much more expensive. (This is especially interesting given that we didn't pay any special attention to ordering "the most expensive items on the menu" and further, I'm a vegetarian, so my entree at a TS dining location was virtually always the cheapest thing on the menu!)

and, equally important but often overlooked:

b) Eating as we have on previous trips (with very little planning and, often, quite a bit of urgency) has proven to be pretty expensive (surprisingly so given the number of garden burgers I've consumed on Disney property) and therefore using the DDP fed us MUCH better food and still gave us a small savings over our norm.

The only other thing I would add is that we also enjoyed trying things we might not have wanted to spend the money on if it was out-of-pocket. We often don't do appetizers when left to our own devices, but I had a run of FANTASTIC soups from Tony's Town Square, Coral Reef and Le Cellier that I probably wouldn't have tried if not for being encouraged by the friendly waiters! (Don't you just love Disney staff!?! They're the best... :D :)

Edited to add: The biggest money saver I've found is using gardengrocer.com to have a case of bottled water, some sodas, fruit and juice delivered to the room. I take bottled water everywhere and, the way my math worked, drinking the whole case of water (which we did, no problem) paid for the entire order when compared with drinking that much bottled water at disney resort prices!