The Disney Dining Plan has returned to Disney World and we’re here for the snacks!

You can now purchase and use the Dining Plan all around Disney World. Many locations will accept your snack and meal credits (just watch for the DDP symbol on the menu or Mobile Order!). Since we practically worship Disney food, we’re so excited to have this plan back. However, as we’ve been wandering the parks and getting all the Dining Plan details, we have stumbled upon what some might consider — SNACK SCANDALS! 😱 (Disney — WHYYY?!)

Let’s break the new Dining Plan down a bit first. There are two plan options — the Quick Service Dining Plan and the Standard Disney Dining Plan The Quick Service Dining Plan is the cheaper of the two but you do not get any table service meal credits. This means you are limited to eating at only counter service type locations, which can be perfect if you’re family is constantly on the go. Whereas, the Standard Disney Dining Plan gives you one Table Service and one Quick Service meal credit per day you purchase the plan.

Both plans come with one snack credit per day. And here is where we begin our snack scandal rant.

Ok, it might be a bit of a stretch to use the word “scandal” but we were a bit crushed when we learned about these snack credits. Is Disney was being a bit too sneaky for its own good? We’ll let you be the judge. If you’re headed to the 2024 EPCOT Festival of the Arts, be on the lookout for two of these three snack credit fiascos.

The France Whiteout Scandal

We headed to the Festival of the Arts in EPCOT on opening day. We were having a grand time enjoying all the entertainment, merchandise, and food when we came across the menu at the France booth, L’Art de la Cuisine Francaise.

If we zoom in, you can see lots of items at this booth have the DDP symbol, meaning you can use a snack credit to purchase meals and beverages. But we noticed that one item, the Duo de Saumon Hot and Cold had WHITE OUT over the snack symbol!!

A last-minute decision or mistake must have warranted this change in plans. You could not use a snack credit to purchase this $14.75 snack. However, the $9.95 Créme de Brie en Petit Pain (the second highest-priced item on the menu) was still available for the DDP. We get it, not everything can be a snack credit (no matter how much we wish they could), but using whiteout to cover the symbol on something that used to be DDP eligible seemed a little shady.

The Poutine Scandal

On January 9th, the day the Disney Dining Plan came back to the parks, we were in EPCOT grabbing some poutine at the Refreshment Port.

We wanted to confirm that the poutine was still a snack credit, as it had been with the old Dining Plan before it was removed. The Cast Member there confirmed that it was (thank, goodness!!), BUT they mentioned that when the Festival of Arts started, a non-traditional poutine would not count for the Dining Plan!

When the festival started, a specialty poutine, Gnocchi Poutine, was added to the menu. But Gnocchi Poutine is not eligible for the Dining Plan like the Traditional Poutine. You can see the DDP symbol next to the Traditional Poutine but it is not there for the Gnocchi Poutine. This was a big surprise to us!

The Gnocchi Poutine costs $10 whereas the Traditional Poutine is only $7.50, but $10 is not too high for a snack credit (we found the highest-priced snack credit at the festival was $12). This difference was a little odd to us.

Aloha Isle Refreshments

This next snack credit debacle is not secluded to just Aloha Isle Refreshments, but it is an excellent example of it.

The Tropical Serenade, which wasn’t on the menu during the days of the previous Dining Plan, isn’t part of the Dining Plan now, but its counterpart at the time, the Kakamora Float, was. The Tropical Serenade is $7.99 and is basically just a Coconut DOLE Whip Float (just different flavors) with a cake pop — which is a snack credit.

These snacks aren’t even that expensive when they are compared to the $12 snack at the Festival of the Arts that qualifies, so we don’t really understand why they aren’t accepted.

The moral of the story is, that when you’re searching for a snack to use your Dining Plan credits, make sure you’re paying close attention to those little symbols! If you don’t want to pay out of pocket, be sure to only order something that has the DDP symbol next to its name.

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STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE: How To Use the Disney Dining Plan in the Disney World App

Will you be using the Disney Dining Plan on your next trip? Let us know if you have any questions in the comments!