You’ve made your hotel reservations, bought your tickets, reserved your park entry days, and now its time to make those Disney dining reservations. Here are the strategies you need to make sure you are dining in style at the sit down restaurants you want.
How do Disney Dining Reservations work?
Disney dining reservations open at 5:45 am EST 60 days prior to the first day of your visit. There will be plenty of people trying to get their ADR’s (Advanced Dining Reservation) at that time so set an alarm! You can see an example of how Disney marks off this window below. If you are staying “on property” you will be able to book your ADR’s for the length of your stay up to 10 days. If you are staying ”off property” this process will need to be completed each morning as your stay progresses (huge pain but that’s how it’s done)
There are two big tips to securing your dining reservation at the 60 day mark
- Have your restaurants and times already pulled up in separate browser tabs so that right when the window opens you can click on them, saving yourself valuable time searching.
- Have your credit card pre-loaded into your My Disney Experience account. All restaurants require it to hold a reservation. The cancellation policy states you will be charged $10 per person if you don’t cancel 24 hours prior. There are some restaurants, like Cinderella’s Royal Table, that actually require full payment up front. You will receive a refund though if you cancel prior to 24 hours.
- WORK BACKWARDS. I can’t stress this one enough. If you are staying on property you are going to have an advantage over those that can’t book that far out. If you look above at the calendar window posted, the smartest strategy would be to try for those harder to get reservations towards the end of the trip. The most popular Disney dining reservations are Topolino’s, Space 220, Oga’s Cantina, Chef Mickey’s, Yak and Yeti, Tusker House, Ohana, Cinderella’s Royal Table and Be Our Guest. I would have my browser windows preloaded with these reservations starting with the 18th and working backwards in the example above.
Best Way to get Disney World Dining Reservations after the 60 day window opens
Missed some of those hard to book reservations? Don‘t worry. Disney dining reservations DO open up!
Set a Dining Reservation Alert
There are several companies that offer free and paid versions of their services that will constantly monitor the Disney dining reservation database and alert you if your desired reservation is available. Listed below are the ones that have been most successful for me. They all monitor on a slightly different schedule and therefore some will pick up reservations at times others won’t see. This is not a complete review of the many Disney dining alert services available but simply a place to start researching which you may like best.
It’s important to remember that these are just ALERTS and they are going out to many people at the same time. You have to pick which is going to be noticed the quickest so you can react very quickly. For that reason, I like ones that allow you to alert several devices. Many times I miss an alert on my phone but someone else in my family will see it. Also, make sure whichever service you use you add them as a contact in your phone. I found one service consistently going into my junk texts and I never saw them!
- Mouse Watchers – I have found Mouse Watchers to be the most successful for me. I like that it alerts for both dining and activities, so if you are trying to score a reservation at Savi’s workshop or something similar you can use this service.
- Mouse Dining – I’ve used the paid version of Mouse Dining for a few years and I like that they offer a free version. Although the free version does not alert via text which is crucial. With any of these programs getting and acting on the alert as fast as humanly possible is of the utmost importance.
- Touring Plans – I’m a HUGE fan of Touring Plans for their room picker. There is no better way in our opinion for someone needing an accessible room to find what they need. Built into their yearly service is a limited dining alert benefit. If you are already a Touring Plans member I would turn this on. However, I would not join specifically for this benefit. I found this to be rather delayed and in my junk texts.
- Stakeout – Stakeout is an app for both IOS and Android. The big plus in my eyes is push notifications which tend to happen faster than texts. They also monitor for both dining and activities. Here you can see how that looks on an Apple phone
Join a Walt Disney World Dining Reservation Facebook Group
This sort of the underground secret that is both controversial and not too many people know about. Many people when planning cover all their bases and make multiple reservations. As the time gets closer and they firm up their plans, they will drop the ”extras”. That’s how those alerts happen. But there are groups where people will trade reservations or pay it forward by gifting them. I’m not going to get into whether it’s right or wrong. That’s up for Disney to decide if they want to police and so far they haven’t. But if you have tried all of the above this may be what saves the day. One I like and have had success with meeting friendly people in is Disney Dining Reservation Exchange Drop/Add.
🌟 Hire a Dining Fairy 🌟
Hire a Dining Fairy. This service will book the reservation for you for $6 per person per reservation. At that price we suggest you use it after exhausting your other options or if its super important to you. You only get charged if they are successful. You must link your “fairy” to your friends and family list so they can reserve it for you but you can limit them to only see “shared plans”.
Do you know of any other Facebook trading groups? Or any tip and tricks we missed? Please leave us a comment to help others out!
Diz”ability” Tip
When making your reservation make sure to pay special attention to the area for special dietary and access requests. It’s very important that Disney knows how best to accommodate your needs ahead of time as it makes the check in process so much easier!
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