Display default value of Dropbox

Hi, 

I have an adaptive form which I am pre-filling with some data from the currently logged in user. I also have a bunch of drop downs distributed among some child panels of the form. These should show their default value "Please Select" when the form is initialised. In order to do that, I needed to add this value to the prefill.jsp so that the drop downs are pre-filled. 

But the drop downs are on child panels which are  dynamically hidden/shown and when I generate a default DoR it 'detects' the value "Please Select" and adds it and the entire child panel to the DoR.

Is there a way to exclude them from the DoR when they are on a hidden panel and also have them show the default text?

Any help is very appreciated. Thanks, Alex