<p>My son also lives in Wildwood - we chose not to do the meal plan for fall as you would then have to commit to spring as well and we read so many bad things about the plan. We do garnet bucks and they have worked great. I purchase about $300 at the beginning of the semester and it goes on their fsu card and can ONLY be used for food. You can keep track of the balance(and specifically what they are spending and where if you so choose), online thru blackboard. seminole dining/campus dish is the website where you buy more bucks - $ for $ - I’m not sure I understand the .50 discount at the 2 main dining halls unless that is just taken when they check out and swipe their card. Anyway, you can use garnet bucks anywhere on campus and so not limited to the 2 dining halls as you are with the meal plan. about half way thru semester, you can check on website and they usually run a promo, “buy $X of garnet bucks and get 10% free”, so if you buy $500 at that time, you would get $50 free; I think they cap it at $70 free. has worked out great and over the fall semester, I think we spent $1300 or so for garnet bucks, saving about $700 as the cheapest meal plan is about $2K.</p>