Originally Posted by
Fornebufox
Wait, $40-60/pp INCLUDING the small children? And 25% tip on top of that?? Clearly I live in a different America than the the typical Disney family. But then, wasn't it Disney that built the town of Celebration, FL (?), a buffed and polished simulacrum of what America should be?
Of course, for a family with several active small children, a 25% tip could be too low.
Children's menus at the Disney restaurants ARE cheaper. However, Disney moved the cut-off age between adult prices and child prices to 10 - 10 and above pay full boat.
Of course, there is no prohibition against adults ordering from the children's menus in the Disney restaurants, and many who aren't big eaters do so quite often. But Disney has been shoving their Disney Dining Plan down the guests' throats for several years now; the DDP is a pre-paid meal credit system, and on that system, those age 10 and up pay full boat.
I really love WDW, and I love many of the restaurants there, but I'm no fanboy - I despise some of the ways they've come up with to separate unsuspecting newbs from their hard-earned vacation dollars.
Originally Posted by
nkedel
Well, I stand corrected: there are a few nutters out there arguing for 25% tips, not just servers trying to scam foreigners. I can't see it being common.
Unfortunately, it's more common, at least among the Disney crowd, than you'd imagine. Heck, there is a raging debate over whether a server at a buffet deserves less, the same, or higher percentage tip than a server at a full-service restaurant. Some say the buffet server works harder because he has to clear more plates, and so deserves a higher tip, while others say that bussing tables and taking drink orders is far less skilled work than waiting full-service tables, where you have to memorize menus and get orders straight and synchronize food delivery and split checks.
Originally Posted by
nkedel
Youch. Of course, one goes someplace like Disney World expecting to be ripped off, and paying $40-$60 per person with kids is insane. That's low for fine dining, but fine dining with pre-adolescent kids is wasted, and it's above the reasonable range for casual dining unless you're spending a fair bit on alcohol.
$40-$60 covers a wide range of restaurants. The signature restaurants, the ones that really could be considered fine dining, are by far the most expensive, and tend to have fewer kids because of the price and the higher level of culinary sophistication. Granted, you're not going to find a true five-star restaurant at WDW - I think Victoria and Alberts, the best on site, is rated four star - but there are a few exceptional places down there is you care to look.
I have come to the conclusion, however, that a lot of the tip creep we've seen over the last 20 years is simply due to the fact that Americans are becoming mathematical dullards who don't understand the difference between flat amounts and percentages. They think, "same percentage" means "same amount", even when you're talking about a higher bill, and fail to realize that 15% of $10 is $1.50, but 15% of $100 is $15, so yeah, the server is getting a higher tip, even if you use the same percentage you used in 1987.