2024 Food & Wine Festival: Best Disney Dining Plan Snacks

If you’re using the Disney Dining Plan, you’ve got a great way to keep your EPCOT Festival budget in check. Most food items and some non-alcoholic drinks are eligible — and with some items breaking the $10 mark, they’ll be some of the best value you can get for a DDP Snack Credit.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It’s only a “good value” compared to the Snack Credit average of $6 if I’m going to enjoy eating it. So what’s worth your Snack Credit? Our parks team tried everything at the Festival to bring you these 16 recommendations for what to scoop, what to skip, and what you’ll need to make a personal call on.

Spending cash and want a sampler that lets you stick to a budget? Check out The Best Way to Spend $50 at the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. Want to see everything that’s at the Festival? 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival Menus.

Best Value Disney Dining Plan Snack Credits at Food & Wine

Many of these dishes already appeared on our Best $50, or our list of the Best New Dishes at the Festival. They’re worthy of your dollars, so they’re definitely a great way to spend a Snack Credit.

Red Wine-braised Beef Short Rib | Earth Eats – $8.50

The tender beef, silky polenta, & flavorful sauce put this dish tops on all our lists except the one that required dishes to be mostly cheese. But you know, shaved pecorino is cheese, and we’re considering a petition for Disney to add this to Emile’s Fromage Montage too.

Flauta de Barbacoa | Mexico – $8.00

Crunchy, creamy, tangy, and umami. With its crispy exterior, perfectly cooked beef, and a bit of dress-up on top, this dish had all the bases covered. It’s a little on the small side, but not too small to be a good value for Snack Credit. It’s big enough to share if you really want to.

Eel Temaki Sushi | Japan – $9.50

The quality of this roll is so high that it made our Best $50 sampler despite the price tag, and it’s an even better value when you’re spending a Snack Credit on it instead of the green stuff. The sweet-salty eel, just-right rice, and pickled Daikon radish are lovely, and the serving size is very generous.

Wagyu Temaki Sushi | Japan – $9.50

Not a fish fan? The base of rice here was the same as on the Eel Temaki Sushi, but it’s topped with tender steak instead – so tender it literally almost melts in your mouth, no need to chew. The flavors here were perfect again, and it was another generous serving. This is a great dish for anyone who likes sushi flavors but doesn’t like raw fish.

Filet Mignon | Canada – $9.75

This is always a Festival favorite with a lovely flavor, and we think our serving was actually bigger this year than it has been recently! We know that this dish typically has some challenges with consistency, but if you’re spending Snack Credits we definitely think it’s worth it. Our best advice is to get it when the booth is busy enough that it’s rolling out at a decent pace instead of sitting under the lamps.

Fry Flight | The Fry Basket – $8.00

Three great fry flavors and the price is right – cash or credit. We loved them all, but especially the Truffle Parmesan. And we appreciate that since only the flight is offered nobody has to argue with themselves about which flavors to try.

Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail | Coastal Eats – $13.00

Our shrimp were perfectly cooked, the lemon was fresh and bright, and the cocktail sauce was perfect. The one ding is that you can easily make this at home for a much lower price. But since we rarely do, we felt it was fair to give it the nod here.

Skip These Food & Wine Dining Plan Snack Credits

Not all of these dishes taste bad. But none of them can be called a good value, even if you’re spending Snack Credits and not cash. They’re probably better than spending your Snack Credits on rice krispie treats. But maybe not.

Polpettine Toscane | Italy – $8.50

If you are a Festival first-timer, you may not be aware that the Italy booth is routinely the subject of Festival scorn. The prices are always high, and the servings are often small. Plus, the food doesn’t really taste like anything better than you’d get buying a skillet supper in your local supermarket. Sometimes it doesn’t even taste as good as the supermarket stuff.

This is that. These were small in size, tiny in flavor, and they cost almost as much as Canada’s filet mignon? We know that you’re paying for labor too, but really! At least the focaccia was good, so this dish wasn’t a total loss? But a good slice of bread can’t make us think this is reasonable with so many better options nearby.

Roasted Lamb Chop | Australia – $8.75

This is very tasty every year. But it also gets smaller and smaller every year. This year it was so small that there was almost more garnish than lamb chop. Even if it feels “free”, we can’t say this dish is a good return on your Snack Credit.

Vanilla Cheesecake | Italy – $7.75

Yes, we know this is technically not over $8.00. But, it is the only dessert at the Festival that got close! And our parks team described it as “a tiny little baby bite of meh cheesecake”. This dish tastes fine, but it’s only “good for the price” if you’re on the Italy scale. We say spend your tokens elsewhere.

It’s Your Call

The dishes in this group fall into two categories. Some are dishes that we just didn’t love enough to say “get them”, or dislike enough to say “skip them”. Others are dishes that can be fantastic, but there’s a good chance that the one you’re served might not be.

Roll the Dice

The three dishes in this section had a single big, glaring error when we tried them. But when talking to others in the community about what they had, experiences were not consistent. It’s up to you whether you’re willing to gamble with your Snack Credit and hope you get what they had and not what we had.

Crispy Duck Bao Bun | China – $8.25

The bun was a floofy pillow & the sauce was so nice. But our duck, the centerpiece of the dish, wasn’t crispy and was also mostly fat. (We know duck tends to be fatty. We mean even more than that.) We’ve heard from others that they got better duck, and you could too.

Paella Negra | Spain – $8.00

It is always ambitious to serve seafood at an EPCOT Festival, where the kitchens are small and the food might spend a few minutes under the lamps. Putting squid, octopus, and scallops — all famous for being finicky and sensitive to cooking time — in the same dish? That takes chutzpah.

You need to be an adventurous eater for this one – especially when you see the octopus tentacles pointing up at you. The flavor is good and the squid ink ice was tasty; the shrimp was also nicely cooked! But the octopus was a bit on the rubbery side, and we have a feeling that’s going to happen a lot.

Roasted Warm Water Lobster Tail | Coastal Eats – $13.00

The same comment about seafood applies here, and indeed, ours was tough and overcooked. We’ve heard great things from others. Garlic butter is yummy. This dish could be worth it but when it’s not it’s really not.

Middle of the Pack

These plates had nothing particularly wrong with them. We also didn’t think there was anything particularly great about them. They were just middling, so go ahead and give them a try if they’re your favorite flavors.

Grilled Bison | Bramblewood Bites – $8.75

Our bison was a tiny bit dry, but was tasty and wasn’t overcooked. Flavorwise, our crew felt it was at the center of the pack. If you’ve got some extra credits after hitting up our recommended list, you could give it a try.

Italian-style “Nachos” | Italy – $9.25

Straight talk, if this wasn’t from Italy it might have gotten close to our recommended list. We could see spending our own money on it if we’re nearby to Italy and we’re hungry. But we’re almost embarrassed to admit it, and we’re wondering if it’s actually that good or if it’s more like when a terrible ex does something just a little decent and everyone is like “OMG they’re the best!” It is FOR SURE not worth the money, but it was tasty. If you’ve been burned by Italy in the past and want to say that you had something good here once then you should go for it.

Shanghai Scallion Noodles | China – $8.50

This was a pretty generous portion for the hefty price, but it was just ok. Not bad exactly, but not a shining example of what China can do. The flavor on the dumplings from the same booth was fantastic and this was a really distant relation – it’s hard to justify paying more for it, even when it’s just a Snack Credit.

Have you been to this year’s Festival? Which of the pricey dishes would you spend a Snack Credit on? Let us know in the comments!