In this post, I am going to be going over Universal’s Dining Plan. It is fairly similar to Disney’s Dining Plan but there are a few differences that to me make Universal’s Dining Plan better and worth the money. So, like I said with this blog post I’m going to tell you about the different dining plans and what you’ll get with them (as far as your food and drinks) as well as how Universal’s Dining Plan works and how to use it.
There are two different dining plan options to choose from. The first dining plan is Universal’s Quick Service Dining Plan. With it each guest will receive 1 quick service meal, 1 snack and 1 non-alcoholic beverage. Also, with the quick service dining plan you can upgrade your plan to include a 1-day unlimited Coca-Cola freestyle beverage cup that would in turn replace the 1 non-alcoholic beverage.
The cost for this plan is: $25 per adult, per day and $18 per child, per day. If you decided to add souvenir cup it would be $32 per adult and $24 per child.
The second dining plan is the Universal Dining Plan. With this plan, each guest will receive 1 full service meal, 1 quick service meal, 1 snack and 1 non-alcoholic beverage. Please remember that you will only be able to purchase this plan along with a vacation package and not on its own. The cost for this plan is $64 per adult, per day and $25 per child, per day.
How do the Dining Plans work?
Well basically all you are doing is selecting how many days you would like to pre-pay for your meals and depending on how many days you select, that will be the number of meals you will get. For example, if you are staying for four days and want to pre-purchase your meals for those four days you will receive four meals, four snacks and four drink credits to use within those four days. Meaning you have all four days to use your dining credits, they don’t disappear when you don’t use all your credits that one day.
How do you get your dining plan credits?
If you have selected to get the Universal Dining Plan, you will receive a ticket with your vacation package to be exchanged for your Universal Dining Plan card and each guest in your party will receive a card. Which is the only downfall to me about Universal’s dining plan because it can get to be a pain when you’re trying to keep up with 4 or 5 different cards, plus your actual park tickets and then throw in an express pass ticket. Geez!
If you have selected to get the Universal Quick Service Dining plans, there are two ways to receive your credits. If you have pre-purchased the plan online, you will need to visit a kiosk at one of the front gates at any of the theme parks to print out your dining plan ticket and then exchange it for your dining plan card, which again you will receive one for each guest in your party. If you haven’t pre-purchased a dining plan and then later decide to get one upon arriving at Universal, you can still purchase the quick-service dining plan. What you will have to do in that case is visit a Dining Reservation Cart in any of the theme parks or at the theme parks’ front gates, a participating quick-service location, or a Universal Ticket Center Desk at any of the onsite resort hotels. Once you do this, you will then receive your dining plan card for each guest in your party.
How do you use your dining plant credits?
Well now that you have all these dining plan cards for everybody, it’s time to use them. What you will do is go to any of the participating locations within the parks and city walk and choose what entrees or items you want to eat. Now, how you will know which menu items are included in the dining plan is you will look for the Universal Dining Plan icon. Pretty much everything as far as your entrees go for full service and quick service are included with the dining plan, the snacks and beverages is where it gets tricky. So, just look for the icon or you can always ask a team member before you make up your mind as to what you would like to eat or drink.
What all is included in the dining plan?
Included in your Full-Service meal is your entrée, a dining plan dessert and a non-alcoholic beverage. Your quick service meal you’ll get an entrée and a non-alcoholic beverage. With your snack credit, you’ll be able to get things like hot dogs, ice cream or frozen beverages from food carts or quick service locations. And your beverage credit you’ll be able to get any non-alcoholic beverage that has the dining plan logo next to it from a food cart or a quick service location.
Another thing that I want to note is, with the full-service meals the gratuity is not included with the dining plan. So, just be prepared when you get the bill at the end of your meal to pay for your gratuity as well as any other purchases that were not included in the dining plan (like alcoholic drinks) will have to be paid for out of pocket.
Well that’s all that I have for you about the dining plans at Universal. If you would like a complete list of all of the location that participate you can go to the universal website and print out the PDF they have for you and check that out.