How the Disney Dining Plan Affects Your Restaurant Satisfaction

As we’re adding charts to the site that show a restaurant’s satisfaction ratings over time, I noticed that satisfaction numbers for Be Our Guest went up a lot when the Disney Dining Plan returned in 2024:

A couple of questions came to mind:

• Are these increases statistically significant?
• Are there any Disney restaurants rated higher by guests using the Disney Dining Plan?
• Are there any Disney restaurants rated lower by guests using the Disney Dining Plan?
• Does any effect that appears happen for any dining plan at any restaurant?

Let’s go over each question one by one. The results may help you decide whether to purchase the Disney Dining Plan for your next trip. The results may also help you decide where to eat while you’re at Walt Disney World.

Since the dining plans returned we’ve received 65,000 restaurant surveys from guests not using the plans and 14,000 from guests using the plans. If you’re interested in the data analysis, here are CSV files with the results:

• Per-restaurant results including 95%, 90%, and 80% confidence intervals
• Summary level for categories table service, quick service, and bars/lounges

Disney Restaurants Rated Higher With Dining Plan Use

Several restaurants have statistically significant higher satisfaction from guests who use the Disney Dining Plan:

• Sunshine Seasons, a Quick Service restaurant in EPCOT’s Land pavilion, earns a 97% satisfaction score from guests using any dining plan. That’s 10 percentage points higher than the ratings from guests not using a dining plan (87%) at a 95% confidence level.
• ‘Ohana at Disney’s Polynesian Resort gets an 87% satisfaction rating from guests using the dining plan and 82% from guests who don’t (95% confidence).

95% confidence is a high bar to clear. These restaurants show higher satisfaction scores at an 80% confidence level:

• Topolino’s Terrace at Disney’s Riviera Resort (99% vs 96%, so you can’t go wrong either way here)
• Satu’li Canteen in Pandora at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park (98% vs 97%, also can’t go wrong here)
• Connections Eatery in World Celebration at EPCOT (94% vs 91%)
• Kringla Bakeri og Kafe in Norway in EPCOT (97% vs 95%)
• Trader Sam’s at Disney’s Polynesian Resort (100% vs 94%)

Almost all of these restaurants are rated highly by all guests. The unusual thing is that the effect seems to work both ways, with some restaurants rated lower by guests using the dining plans.

Disney Restaurants Rated Lower With Dining Plan Use

Interestingly, some Disney restaurants get lower marks from guests using the Disney Dining Plan. My hypothesis here is that guests are thinking something like “this wasn’t a good use of a meal credit.”

These restaurants get significantly lower ratings from guests using a dining plan versus guests who are not (at 95% confidence levels):

• The largest gap is at Sebastian’s Bistro at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, where 83% of guests using a dining plan give it a thumbs-up. That compares to 97% approval for guests not using the dining plan. That’s a huge difference, essentially going from “much below average” to “exceptional” based on dining plan use.
• Captain Cook’s at the Poly (79% vs 90%)
• Tratoria al Forno at the Boardwalk (79% vs 91%)

Those are all very large differences that probably warrant further study.

Several other restaurants have smaller gaps, and many of those gaps are just levels of “very happy overall”:

• Les Halles Boulangerie at EPCOT’s France pavilion (92% vs 97%, which is still pretty good either way)
• Via Napoli at EPCOT’s Italy pavilion (89% vs 94%, still a good choice either way)
• Garden Grill at EPCOT’s Land pavilion (91% with dining plan vs. 97% without, and still good no matter how you’re paying)
• Katsura Grill at EPCOT’s Japan pavilion (82% with, 89% without)

Two more restaurants show difference at the 90% confidence level:

• The GEO-82 lounge in EPCOT has an 80% satisfaction rating from guests on the dining plan versus 89% from those without
• Polite Pig at Disney Springs (90% vs 96%) Polite Pig is the best barbecue in Walt Disney World, so this is a good choice either way

What’s odd here is that GEO-82 doesn’t accept the dining plan, so its specific use here isn’t directly related. That’s a large gap, too. I’d love to hear about your experience here if you’ve used the DDP elsewhere on the same trip you’ve visited here.

The Disney Dining Plan Effect Across All Restaurant Types

Looking across all table service and quick service restaurants, plus bars and lounges, there’s no significant differences in satisfaction between dining plan users and those not using the dining plan at Disney’s table service restaurants or bars and lounges.

At Disney’s quick service restaurans there’s a small drop of about 1 percentage point between guests using a Disney dining plan (90.6%) versus those not using a plan (91.4%, 95% confidence level).

That’s not enough of a gap to worry about, and ~91% odds of being happy is good no matter how you look at it.

Would You Get the Disney Dining Plan Again?

Our survey asks guests who used the Disney Dining Plan if they’d use it again:

I think those are solid numbers:

• 87% of guests using the standard Disney Dining Plan would use it again
• 85% of guests using the Quick Service Dining Plan would use it again

For context, more people say they’d get a Disney dining plan again than say they like dogs. Anything that does better than puppies has to be good.

Let me know in the comments below if there’s a specific restaurant or bar you’d like us to explore more. Thanks for reading!