How to Get the Disney Dining Reservations You Want
My family and I love to eat. Period. The food scene at Disney is one of the main reasons why we love it so much. There are so many options, from grab and go counter service locations to amazing signature dining experiences. To score some of these hard to get reservations, it takes preparation and strategy to ensure you are eating at the hottest places on property.
My family and I are hard at work planning our trip for Spring Break ‘21. With the recent change of dining reservations being open only 60 days in advance of check-in (vs the 180 days it previously was), my window opened on Tuesday morning. If you are wondering, yes, you better believe my alarm was set for 4:55am CST with my restaurant wishlist all written out and ready for when the clock strikes. I wanted to share some tips on how I planned, executed, and locked in my dining reservations for Spring Break.
Map out your park days
With the parks requiring Park Passes now, planning is already partially done for you. You know what park you will be at each day which narrows down the dining options you will have. Look at your “My Plans” tab on My Disney Experience to see where you will be on any given day and determine the restaurant options in the park you are going to visit. Say you want to go to Oga’s Cantina, the bar inside Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge. You know that your option to go there is on Tuesday since this is when you have a Park Pass for Hollywood Studios. Figure out your dining must do’s and write them out so you can get organized on what reservations you are going to try and grab.
Consider transportation and surrounding restaurants
If you are looking to eat outside of the parks, check out some of the options at your resort or resort area. For example, if you are staying at Disney’s Contemporary Resort, explore some options at the resorts on the monorail loop. If you are staying at a value resort like Disney’s Art of Animation, check out options at the Skyliner Resorts like Disney’s Riviera, Beach Club, Yacht Club, and Boardwalk Resorts.
Budget
My least favorite “B” word. Yes, much like everything else for this vacation, you are going to want to budget how much you want to spend on food. If you want to be more budget conscious, it’s best to pack snacks in your park bag and stick mainly to counter service/grab and go options. If character interactions are what you are after, make sure you are aware of the hefty price tag that goes along with it. For us, we love doing at least one sit down meal a day. It’s so nice to have an opportunity to sit down for a while and soak up the air conditioning but, like i’ve said before, we love the food scene at Disney.
Prioritize your reservations
Once you have considered the three points above, you should have a rough idea of where you want to eat on specific days. You then have to prioritize which reservations, in what order, you are going to book. It’s always best to try and plan for the hardest reservations on the later days of your vacation. This is because you get to book for your whole trip at the 60 day mark of your check in date. If you are staying a week, you may be getting the opportunity to book before others who are going to be there at the same time. For example, if you are looking to book dinner at Be Our Guest in Beast’s Castle, I would try and book that on your last Magic Kingdom day. The odds of getting that reservation will be greater if it’s on one of the later days of your trip. Prioritize your list based off of preference and hard to get reservations (like character dining.) Once you have prioritized, your are ready and waiting for your 60 day booking window. (If you are wondering what specific reservations are hard to get, there are many vlogs and articles talking about this, but feel free to reach out to me directly with questions!)
May the odds be ever in your favor
60 days prior to your check in is when your dining booking window opens – and then it’s go time! I highly recommend that you are online at 5:59am EST logging into your My Disney Experience account to make your dining reservations. Sounds crazy right? I also recommend doing this on your desktop/laptop computer vs the mobile app. If there is one thing that I dislike about Disney, it is their technology. The app is super glitchy and I’ve always had better luck on my actual laptop. Let me tell you what happened to me this week. I was trying to snag a Chef Mickey’s reservation (character dining with the fab 5 – Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto, and Goofy) for breakfast during our upcoming Spring Break trip. I logged in right away and started trying to secure a spot. Each time I tried to select an actual time, it was gone the second I clicked it. After only a couple minutes had passed, all reservations were gone. I was devastated! Again, this was at 6:08am. This is just one of many examples when I have had a hard time getting a reservation that I wanted. This is proof that you can do all of the planning in the world and sometimes it still comes down to luck.
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again
People add and drop reservations all the time, especially on days 60 and 30 prior to check in. This is important to know because if you failed to get a reservation like I did, keep checking! That Chef Mickey’s example I mentioned earlier is a prime example of this. I didn’t get a reservation. I was so angry. I gave it a couple of hours, kept trying, and a reservation popped up for the day I needed! I only had to wait 2 hours and someone had already dropped a reservation. This advice is also true for when you are using the app. Again, it glitches a lot. So if you are seeing an error message, exit the app, sign in, and start over and you may see something come available that wasn’t there before.
How important is dining when you go to Walt Disney World? Do you have every single day planned to the minute? Or are you more of a go with the flow type of vacationer? Let me know in the comments below. Happy Eating!
-Melinda
