We have the same results paying OOP for QS meals rather than doing the QSDP. We had free QSDP on our last trip which was nice -- and since we were a party of 5 on that trip it saved us about $1,000 which is way more than any room discount would have saved us at a value resort (where we usually stay).

On our trip a few weeks ago, we were a party of 6...5 Disney adults (real world: 3 adults, 2 teens), 1 Disney "kid" (8 yo). We decided to skip the dining plan and pay OOP. QSDP would have cost us ~$1400. At the end of the 7-day trip, our food, snack, and drink total OOP was $1200. And that included buying at least 2 bottles of water/powerade per day per person. And usually an additional snack per person per day. So to compare apples to apples, we would have had to add another ~$5/person/day to the dining plan total to account for the extra drinks (since the plan only includes 1 snack per day). So our total cost for QSDP + extra drinks/snacks would have been more like $1600 compared to $1100 that we actually paid. We didn't skimp on meals or seek out the cheapest restaurants and everybody ordered whatever they wanted. When we were on the free dining plan, we threw away sooooo much food. This time we ordered only what we were hungry for. Many times I'd only order the sandwich/entree with no sides and then I would pick at the kids french fries (that they never finished anyway). Sometimes I'd order a kids meal for me (which is usually more than enough food). We certainly weren't walking around hungry and we weren't throwing away large amounts of food because we were forced to order desserts and sides with every meal. We'll never pay for the QSDP. And since we typically don't do more than 1 or 2 table service meals per trip (we didn't do any this last trip and no one missed them), we'll probably never even consider the other dining plans.