How far in advance should you have to plan your meals on a Disney vacation?
The Walt Disney World Resort offers hundreds of dining options for its tens of thousands of daily visitors. You can enjoy anything from a turkey leg bought from a street stand to a multi-course, sit-down meal in a picturesque dining room. But if you want to eat at most sit-down, table-service restaurants in the parks, you will need a reservation.
You can book reservations for Disney restaurants up to 60 days in advance of your visit, unless you are booked to stay at an on-site Disney hotel. In that case, you can book restaurants for your entire stay (up to 10 days) starting 60 days in advance of your check-in date. That gives Disney's hotel guests a head start over day visitors for the most popular restaurants, crowing out those who do not stay on site.
Reservations can be made online and open each day at approximately 5:45am Eastern time. The result is that Disney visitors who really want to eat at popular locations such as Le Cellier, Be Our Guest, and the new Space 220 must get up at the crack of dawn and play the log-in lottery in an attempt to secure reservations the moment they become available.
But is this really the most fair way to handle the overwhelming demand for certain Disney restaurants?
Several factors complicate the situation. Back when Disney offers its Disney Dining Plan, that deal encouraged guests to book table service restaurants in order to get the most value from their meal credits. That prompted a rush to book the highest value restaurants ASAP, since people didn't want to get caught having to use their credits at less desirable restaurants.
Even with the Disney Dining Plan suspended for now, the practice has continued, as Disney's reservation system has trained guests to book early. Also complicating things is the presence of third parties using the reservation system. Some travel agencies make and hold reservations for potential clients, leaving fewer available tables for others trying to make plans. It's long been rumored that some parties have been using systems to automatically book reservations when they become available so that access to those reservations can be sold when they are canceled. (To be clear - not all parties selling alerts to available Disney restaurant reservations do this!) But third-party alert systems do help make it so that anyone else has much less chance to grab released tables when they become available. If you're not lucky or willing to use a third party to book, you might be left out from many of Disney's most-hyped restaurants.
Of course, plenty of good Walt Disney World restaurants still have tables available for latecomers. Among the top-rated WDW restaurants in our annual reader survey, Tiffins, Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. Skipper Canteen, and Biergarten all show availability within the next 30 days, for example. But even for those, Disney visitors still need to make the extra effort to look for and book times in advance, so that they can make sure that they have park reservations for those dates, too.
Does a Disney vacation really need to be this complicated?
Dining can be an attraction, and often is at Walt Disney World. Disney did away with advance reservations for its rides and shows, so perhaps it could do the same for its restaurants. Now, this raises what probably will be an uncomfortable issue for many Disney fans. Disney has eliminated its free Fastpass+ advance reservation system for attractions. So I must admit that I am surprised that Disney hasn't yet tried to replace its advance dining reservations with some form of Lightning Lane-style, pay-to-play reservation system, as well.
Since people are paying third parties for access to Disney's dining reservations, frankly, I am shocked that Disney hasn't tried to capture that money for itself by selling popular dining reservations directly to its guests.
But what if Disney just went back to the way that things were, say, when Epcot opened, and guests at rope drop had to decide whether to queue for one of the park's attractions or to queue to get a dining time at one of its restaurants? Making guests wait until they arrive at the park to get a dining time means they have to make a choice about what is most important to them. Shouldn't a person who is willing to sacrifice a shorter wait time at Frozen Ever After in order to get a lunch seating at Le Cellier deserve it over someone who doesn't care to make that sacrifice but just happened to get luckier clicking their browser at 5:45am two months ago?
Or take that concept further, do away with assigned dining times and just make every restaurant first-come, first-served on a walk-up basis. Disney could text people when their table is available, so that guests are not spending hours in dining queues (yay, virtual queueing!), but that approach might reduce a good bit of the current excess demand for table-service dining in the parks.
What do you think? I have four options for you in our Vote of the Week and encourage you to offer in the comments details on how you think Disney should handle access to its restaurants.
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This is a seriously odd question, Robert. The difference between advanced dining reservations and advance ride reservations is that all over the world table-service restaurants accept advanced reservations. People know that they need to make a restaurant reservation if they want the their choice of restaurant and time. Disney didn't invent it. Also, people are used to making reservations for free, not for a fee. I can't imagine why Disney would want a different in-park experience than people are used to. I'd be seriously miffed.
it comes back to why for most of these.
If they are having issues with no-shows and not being able to fill the tables. Charge a deposit (this is becoming more common in many restaurants although not most) this will at least guarantee you are serious about the reservation.
Otherwise, I think a 3rd option. Pre-book 50-75% and save the rest for day of reservations once inside the park
@emanymton …. Disney already charges $10/person on the booking, for no-shows.
I hope Disney will go for paid reservations. Keep milking those consumers! They'll pay it as they do for the rides lol.
Honestly, 60 days feels just right. 180 days was simply insane and if DDP was the cause, let us pray it never returns.
Unfortunately IMHO advanced dining reservations will be a paid option on Genie+ eventually, especially if and when they bring back the dining plan
I think you asking to solve a problem that does not exist, Robert.
As important as food is to many Disney-goers (just look at the number of posts on Disney blogs based on just the food), restaurant reservations are just fine.
Keep as is…yes it can be a chore getting a reservation sometimes, but it works. It’s comforting to know that you have meals lined up, before you get there. I would not like having an extra thing having to stress about during the actual trip.
We have a lot of experience with the ADR system, and have been able to secure some of the most exclusive dining reservations available, including the Victoria & Albert's Chef's Table (1 party per night). The issue with WDW is that not every ADR is created equal with different restaurants and experiences possessing different levels of popularity, notoriety, and capacity. There is always going to be a hierarchy to ADRs, so there's naturally going to be a first come first served aspect to securing ADRs.
The simple solution to a situation with a product with a limited supply and high demand is to create a line/queue, and sell it to those willing to wait for it the longest. However, it just doesn't make sense to have guests taking time out of their theme park day to stand in line for a restaurant. You're going to end up with a line of grandparents standing in a cramped lobby holding spaces for the rest of the family for the best in-park restaurants. Securing reservations ahead of time, like you would do for virtually any restaurant around the world, makes a whole lot more sense. There are some high end popular restaurants around the country that use a walk-up only system, and they are complete debacles with a secondary industry of spot holders (like task rabbit) arising from the desire from people with more money than sense wanting to secure a high demand table without having to actually stand in line.
That eliminates any possibility of "walk-ups". for Disney restaurants except for places that actually do not "sell-out" of ADRs ahead of time. That means there must be some type of reservation system, so the question is what type of reservation system should be used.
Because of Park Pass, I think Disney needs to create a different (or modification to the current) system for in-park restaurants than for resort and Disney Springs restaurants. Park Pass is a HUGE issue when trying to secure ADRs, because it doesn't do any good to have an ADR if you don't have a Park Pass for the theme park where the restaurant is located. That means the ADR system needs to be linked to the Park Pass system to only allow guests to reserve restaurants in parks where they have reservations (or hold a park hopper ticket).
The question then becomes is how far in advance should guests be allowed to reserve. In the general restaurant industry, most advance reservations open up 1-2 months in advance, which is consistent with WDW's current system which allows reservations 60 days in advance (not pre-pandemic when ADRs opened 180 days in advance). I think that's pretty fair, and giving on-site guests an extra 10-day head start with a confirmed reservation is also appropriate - especially since by the 60-day point, guests have passed the no penalty cancellation window, which wasn't the case when you could book ADRs 180 +10 days in advance.
The ADR system also has a "pay" element since guests are required to provide a credit card to hold the reservation, which is charged a fee if the guest no-shows. However, charging guests to access the reservation system (like Genie+) would be ridiculous, and would unlevel what is currently a very level and fair playing field.
Ultimately, I think the current system works pretty well with the only modification I would make would be to link the in-park ADR system with Park Pass to make sure guests can only reserve in-park restaurants where they have confirmed reservations (or park hoppers for ADRs after 2 PM).
Thanks for the clearest procedure on how to actually make reservations. Especially the hotel angle which explains why Space 220 is never available. The hotel guests are snapping those up. Now I question why I even got the seasons pass to begin with. How is a newbie to the Disney ecosystem ever to figure this out without the knowledge from the blog-o-sphere.
@leroyk - I'll reiterate that how WDW's ADR system work is not that much different than many other high demand restaurants around the country (including those that use Open Table - which is what Universal Orlando uses - or other 3rd party reservation systems). Knowing the day and time reservations open is critically important, and being quick on the trigger is just as essential in WDW as it is anywhere else.
As far as Space 220, I think its popularity will eventually wane (reviews have not been great even after they tweaked the menu), and even now guests are reporting availability as soon as 1 week in advance. So, if you are unable to get a reservation at the 60-day mark, you should continue to check back and be flexible with your dining times and dates, particularly if you have a season pass. I can say that on our most recent trip to WDW for the Galactic Starcruiser media event in February, I saw some very limited availability for Space 220, but our problem was that we couldn't get a Park Pass for EPCOT (or any other park for that matter so our park hoppers were useless) on either day where there were reservations available.
There really isn't that much knowledge you need to understand the ADR system - it's far less complicated than Genie+, which you have to pay to use.
Bring your own lunch food and drink n save some $ and skip the elite reservation hassle for frozen microwaved meals
I think the current setup is generally fine, but there are a few tweaks that I think would improve it for in-park restaurants...
1. Reservations can only be made at a park you already have a park reservation to. Therefore, you must make your park reservations before you make your dining reservations. If you have a hopper ticket, lunch reservations can only be made at your first park, but dinner reservations may be made in any of the four parks.
2. Instead of giving out 100% of restaurant capacity in ADRs, a portion (20-30%) is reserved for day of assignment. This is done similar to the virtual queue system...guests put in their restaurant(s) of choice (in priority order) and the window they'd like to dine in, then enter a virtual queue at park opening for lunch or at noon for dinner. Guests can decline if they're given a restaurant or time they don't like, but once they accept it's locked in and a no-show fee applies if they don't arrive on time.
3. Each guest may only hold one ADR per day in order to maximize the number of guests that can dine at the restaurants in a day. They may attempt to get a second reservation day-of through the process described above if they really want two full-service meals.
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I'm not saying this is what I would want them to do, but why wouldn't they go to a paid dining reservation system? People will pay it. Especially if it's just for their more popular restaurants. Next up: Paid Lightning Lane for their Starbucks, especially first thing in the morning.