Dining for a Dollar a Day

LOWEST PRICE FOR 2015
just $94.50 or 9 easy payments of $10.50*

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UNLIMITED ACCESS
to the park any time you want in 2015

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ADD ALL SEASON DINING
for just $85.50 or
9 easy payments of $9.50
(eligible for Easy Pay if purchased in the same transaction with your 2015 Season Pass)

I got the e-mail because our family signed up for the e-mails, and we have been season pass holders at Worlds of Fun since 2001. So we look for these each year to plan the purchase of our passes for the next year.  But I was waiting for the e-mail this year especially because I was curious if they would say anything about the All Season Dining.

We had seen notices at the park this year about All Season Dining, and had been quite tempted to try it. But it took a long time to see and be sure of all the details, and we hadn’t planned for the extra expense — which was $72 per person this year.  So we didn’t end up doing it.

And I also kept on wondering if I was missing anything. What fine print haven’t I read about this.  $72 to get lunch and dinner every day you come to the park for the season? How do they plan to make money off this?

The plan is good to use at 7 locations — 2 in Oceans of Fun and the other 5 in Worlds of Fun. It includes one entrée with side for lunch, and one entrée with side for dinner. Meals have to be separated by 2 hours. No drinks are included. (They recommend purchasing the souvenir drink cup and qualifying for the $0.99 refills.)

Now I think I have an idea: they expect to make their money when people come in, eat, and purchase the drinks for the day. People who buy the plan probably don’t spend a lot of money there usually, so they hope to encourage them to buy food, and especially drinks, to pull in more revenue. That and the people who buy it expecting to use it a lot but end up not using it.

On the other hand, I have been figuring out how to get the best benefit out of it, if we renew and add the dining plan, thus my “Dining for a Dollar a Day” title. Here is my take: The park is open daily from end of may to mid-August. That is 30 days each for June and July, and lets say another 20 days for May and August. That is 80 days. Add in weekends in April, May, September and October, another 15 weekend or 30 days, and you have about 110 days. If you manage to make it to the park for 86 of those days, you have dined for $1 a day.

So here is the strategy: Every weekend the park is open, we dine out — at the park. On Sunday we know where we are going for Sunday dinner. We figure it out right and we can have both lunch and dinner on some days — for $1 a day, $0.50 per meal. We don’t purchase drinks — plenty of drinking fountains around. Two months in the summer of virtually no grocery shopping. Since we live 5 miles from the park it wouldn’t be driving any further than going out to dinner would be much of the time — we travel much further to get to some restaurants.

Of course, the menu is more limited than a lot of restaurants.  See the below:

So is the experience worthwhile? Two months of straight dining plan dining — for $1 a day?