Hey everyone, it's Jacqueline for Pixie Dust PhD. In today's video we will be going over
my initial attempts as well as modifications for advance dining reservations for my upcoming
fall 2021 trip to Walt Disney World. Other than a general update for my trip, we will
also be going over some tips and tricks related to ADR day. I'll also show you some snippets
of a live look in at what that hectic time during ADR day right when your booking window
opens up looks like. If you want a peek behind the scenes of the mechanics of actually making
advance dining reservations, or if you want to hear my tips and tricks and share yours
in the comments as well stay tuned!
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wouldn't be where it is without you. Okay, let's get into it. Previously on the channel
we have gone over quite a lot of information about advance dining reservations, so we'll
just do a brief overview now. Currently, since Walt Disney World re-opened after their pandemic
related closure, advance dining reservations open up 60 days in advance of your arrival
at 6 a.m. Walt Disney World time. This used to be 180 days in advance. For now, it has
shrunk to 60. Advance dining reservations are tied to your hotel reservation. So 60
days in advance of your arrival day you will be able to make advance dining reservations
for that day, and if you're staying on-site for the length of your hotel reservation.
If you're staying off-site you'll just have to do these one day at a time, 60 days in
advance of when you want to dine. Before your advance dining reservation booking window
opens up it's really important that you go through Walt Disney World's dining options
and decide which table service restaurants you are interested in. Then you will want
to rank them by order of importance. We won't be going chronologically in order of your
trip on booking day. Instead, you'll want to book the thing that matters most to you
first. So even if that happens to be the second to last day of your trip that is the thing
you're going to prioritize. This is why you need to rank them in order of importance.
And also note that it may not work out. Sometimes getting advance dining reservations is incredibly
difficult. So have a backup plan. If you know you definitely want to have a sit down lunch
the third day of your trip, whether or not that happens to be at Be Our Guest, Liberty
Tree Tavern, or somewhere else, make sure that you have your Plan A as well as a Plan
B. Next, before your advance dining reservation days comes, you need to make sure that you
have a My Disney Experience account, and you really should add your credit card information
into your account. Generally speaking, you do not pay upfront when you make advance dining
reservations, but you are putting a credit card guarantee down. And if you happen to
completely no-show your reservation then you will be charged via that credit card guarantee
$10 per person. There are a few exceptions where you do have to pre-pay at the time of
booking. These tend to be more elaborate meals; things like Cinderella's Royal Table, Hoop
Dee Doo Review, Spirit of Aloha dinner show, and similar. You've done your homework to
understand the background information about advance dining reservations, and you've done
your pre-ADR day prep; you are all prepared to let's fast forward to the morning of your
ADR booking window opening up. Remember, times open up at 6 a.m. Walt Disney World time or
Eastern Time. Therefore, I like to be ready a few minutes beforehand. Around 5:50 a.m.
I'll pull up the website and I will do a fresh logout and login into my My Disney Experience
account. Then, I will go through and I will open tabs on my browser of all the places
I am hoping to book in order of importance. For example, I did want to snag a Cinderella's
Royal Table dining this time, so I had that tab open first even though it may not have
fallen on the first day of my trip. And then things I was pretty sure I'd be able to get
even if I had to wait 5 or 10 minutes, like Kona Cafe, Grand Floridian Cafe, Olivia's,
etc., those were tabs sort of towards the end. Once this is set up, usually a few minutes
before 6 a.m. things will change in the system. If you're an on-site guest, your hotel reservation
should be linked in your My Disney Experience account. Then the entire system, including
dining, will recognize your hotel reservation. From there you'll notice that the days on
the calendar will become clickable for your whole stay. So even though it's not 6 a.m.
yet, usually a few minutes before, the arrival day and then the length of your stay if you're
an on-site guest up through 10 days will start to show up and you'll be able to click those.
Then you will also be able to click your desired time. Note that I've generally found better
success when I'm aiming for a time rather than a meal period. So if I want to have a
7 p.m. dinner I will click 7 p.m. instead of "dinner". If you're doing this a few minutes
beforehand like I'm suggesting here, around 5:55 a.m. Eastern Time, the "search times"
function won't actually work. So you can click your date, you can select your time, but if
you click search times it's going to tell you that there's an error in the system. What's
happening is these reservations aren't released yet. But if you're doing this ahead of time
and early you can go ahead and go through all of your tabs to click the day you want
and the time you want so they are ready to go. Once the clock hits 5:59 a.m. I usually
just jam my mouse and click search times over and over and over and over. Yes, I do this
for the full minute or until reservations show up. In my case, I've never gotten lucky
and gotten them before 6 a.m., though I have heard of that happening. We'll skip through
some of this footage but you get the general idea. You are set and ready to go; you are
looking at your most important dining reservation for you personally; and we are trying to snag
a time. At 6 a.m. the reservations will be released. In this case you can see that there
was nothing available for me at Cinderella's Royal Table at the moment, so that was kind
of a bummer. But that's the general procedure. And again, if there's no times available at
where you want and you have a Plan B, go ahead and move on to your backup plan. Otherwise,
keep going through your tabs. Let's look at a different outcome when an advance dining
reservation is available. After you click search times the first thing that you're going
to do is choose an arrival time. Here you can see I've moved on to Crystal Palace; I'm
looking for a lunch reservation around one o'clock. And when I click search times, great
there actually are options. So go ahead and click that time. Whoever is logged in will
be managing the reservation, and then after that it's going to ask you to choose your
guests. You can do this but you don't actually have to for the most part. I did find with
Cinderella's Royal Table I had to select the guests, so perhaps for the pre-paid experiences
you do. But generally speaking, a vast majority of ADRs you don't actually have to pick your
party right away. I leave this off until much later. Assigning the guests is something that's
very easy to complete any time after you've made the reservation. And if you're trying
to book a lot of reservations on that morning of your ADR, frankly I think it's time wasted
to assign the guests. So I just leave it blank and I move on. After you select your guests,
you'll have to put down your credit card guarantee. If you've already entered your credit card
into your account hopefully it will remember that and have it pre-selected. That being
said, even though I did have my credit card assigned in my My Disney Experience account,
sometimes when I was making reservations it said I didn't have one on file and I had to
fill out all of my information. So either have your credit card information memorized
or have it with you handy to type it in real fast. In general with ADRs, and honestly a
lot of the online tech experience with My Disney Experience, expect some errors--pack
your patience. I also occasionally ran into full errors where I would click next and then
the page would just error out. In all of those cases luckily if I just refreshed the page
the reservation that I was working on was still retained in my cart basically. All of
this is to say just be prepared for some hiccups. After you select a credit card, whether it's
in your account of you have to fill that information out morning of, then you're going to go ahead
and move on to the reservation contact information. If you've filled this out in your My Disney
Experience account this should auto-fill. It's going to be your email and your phone
number. This is also the page where you would add food allergies or special requests. I
never really do any of this; thankfully, I don't have any major food allergies that I
have to worry about, so I skip this step. And even if you skip this step, I've had friends
in the past who don't do this during booking, but then when they arrive at Disney--they're
very accommodating for folks with allergies, and usually a chef will come out and talk
to you to make sure whatever you order is totally safe. Finally, you have to agree to
the terms and conditions, so check this little box in the bottom. And then you are good to
go--you're ready to book. If successful, you will get a confirmation page that says congratulations
big on the top, and then will have your reservation information below. Then you can always double
check in the My Plans part of My Disney Experience to make sure that it shows up. You should
also get an email confirmation of this reservation. It's so nice to have a successful reservation,
but you probably have more to do so on to the next tab. If an advance dining reservation
that you really want is unavailable, well there are some things you can do. First, like
I already said, book your Plan B, get that done, so you at least have something if you
know you really want to dine during that time even if it's not at your perfect location.
Second, keep checking back. Do manual checks. You can do this online on your computer, you
can also do it on the app on your phone. In particular, be sure to check back even just
10 to 30 minutes after your initial attempt on that day that your ADR booking window opened
up. For me, right at 6 a.m. when I went to book Cinderella's Royal Table there was literally
nothing. So I went through and I booked the rest of my reservations, and then I came back
to Cinderella's Royal Table about 15 minutes later and suddenly there was a 3:55 reservation.
So I snagged that up. Sometimes I think people may put reservations in their cart and then
second guess it, especially for these experiences where you do have to pre-pay like Cinderella's
Royal Table. Other than manual checks there are a variety of tools online that can help
you out with this. Personally, I've been utilizing Mouse Dining, WDW Passport, and Touring Plans.
The first two of these will allow you to have two free alerts set up where they will email
you if they find a reservation. I believe Touring Plans is paid only. Also I'm fairly
certain that for all of these free dining reservation checkers you can pay a certain
amount per alert in order to have them text your mobile phone instead of just email you.
Touring Plans, for example, you can get a text and an email, but like I said it is a
paid service. These services are essentially bots. You will tell them the restaurant that
you want to dine at on a certain day at a meal period or an exact time plus or minus
an hour or so. And then every couple hours the bots will check, and if they find availability
they will go ahead and email or text you. It still is up to you to book that, and if
you don't have the fastest fingers you might lose out to somebody else. In my experience,
I'm not sure how often the bots are checking, but I do believe it's probably every couple
of hours--we're not talking about an every minute cycle. So if there's a reservation
that you really want, go ahead and sign up for multiple of the free services because
they're probably checking at different times. For example, I was able to snag a reservation
that I was really hoping to get via the email I got from Mouse Dining, even though I had
the paid text also set up at Touring Plans. Essentially, I just don't think that the Touring
Plans bot was checking for that reservation at the same time that the Mouse Dining bot
was. If there are other reservation finder services that you use and you like please
leave them in the comments down below. Essentially though, if you missed out on a reservation
keep checking back manually and keep utilizing these services--whether free or paid--for
as long as you can. But then about one to two days before you actually want to dine,
start checking back a lot more frequently. There is this credit card guarantee and you
have to cancel more than 24 hours in advance in order to not be charged that no show fee.
So a lot of folks will change their plans sort of last minute in this one to two day
before timeframe. You never know what's going to show up for dining reservations, and if
you are flexible enough to slot something in if you really want to do it then it's worth
checking for, for sure. Let's take a look at my initial advance dining reservation attempts.
We're doing split stays, and like I said before your dining booking window is actually linked
to your hotel reservation. So if you have a split stay you will have multiple ADR days.
All in all, we were able to get almost everything that we wanted, which was fantastic. This
included some reservations that are typically touted as pretty hard to get like Topolino's
Terrace for dinner and an Oga's Cantina reservation. Unfortunately, on the first day when my booking
windows opened there was absolutely nothing for Le Cellier or Beaches and Cream for the
rough days and times we were looking for. And I was able to snag reservations at both
Cinderella's Royal Table and California Grill on that initial day that my booking window
opened up, but they were at pretty undesirable times. Personally, I think getting something
is better than nothing cause you can always try to modify it, but I knew that these weren't
set in stone and done--I would have to come back and keep trying to modify them. That's
the summary of my initial ADR attempts; but of course, I like to tinker. And like I said
there were somethings that I missed out on and some things that I knew I wanted to change.
So since my booking window opened up I have continued to tinker. All in all, what I can
say for sure is modifications are your friend. You can do this on your laptop or on the Disney
app on your phone. Essentially, you'll go to your plans and then scroll down to the
reservation that you want to modify. Click change reservation. Here you can change the
date, the time, and the size of the party. In my case, every time I'm just trying to
look for a better time. Then you click search. If there happens to be a modification that
fits your needs better go ahead and book that right away. In this example of course I failed
and there was nothing better. But I'll keep trying. Here's a summary of my continued ADR
attempts. Beaches and Cream I wasn't able to get anything on my initial attempt. About
a week later I found a 2:20 p.m. reservation, but that was pretty late. Another four days
after that I was able to modify it to be a much better lunch time: 12:05 p.m. I am still
shooting for something closer to 11 though, so I will keep checking back. For Le Cellier,
like Beaches and Cream, I wasn't able to find anything at all on ADR day. About a month
later I was able to snag an 8 o'clock reservation on the day that I wanted. I am hoping to get
this closer to 7 or 7:30; 8 just feels a tiny bit late to be starting dinner--that's more
like second dinner in my opinion. So I'll keep trying for this. For Cinderella's Royal
Table right at the start of my ADR day there was nothing, but when I came back to it after
booking everything else I was able to snag a 3:55 p.m. Again, I would consider that pretty
undesirable. About a month later a 7:50 p.m. time slot opened up, so I went ahead and snatched
that. Cinderella's Royal Table is a little bit strange because you can't just modify
it like other ones because it is a pre-paid experience. So I did full on cancel my 3:55
and then book the new 7:50 p.m. reservation. Then for California Grill on my ADR we started
at 9:20 p.m., which again is a little bit late if you ask me. About a week and a half
later I was able to modify this to 5:45 p.m., which is probably a little bit early. An additional
two weeks after that I found at a 6:50 reservation that I snatched up. Ultimately I'm hoping
to get a 7:30 or 8 p.m. reservation. I want to do this dinner at California Grill after
a day at the Animal Kingdom theme park, so I want to make sure we can be in the park
for quite a long time but still make it back in time for dinner. 6:50 might be a little
bit early for that. That was a little smidge of footage of a live look in at my initial
attempts for advance dining reservations. I also did show you the process of a modification;
I still am trying to get that Beaches & Cream closer to eleven o'clock, but this one failed;
I continue to fail--we'll see how it goes. Other than doing your homework and being prepared,
I really think that my best advice is just pack your patience. It can be a long and arduous
process, but stubbornness is your friend in this case. I am quite stubborn so generally
speaking with something like this I'm pretty confident that I'll eventually get what I
want. If you don't want to work this hard though, definitely have a Plan B that you'll
be happy with--whether that's other table service meals that are going to be easier
to book, or quick service dining that you know you'll still like. And definitely utilize
those dining alert services, whether you're using the free alerts or paid versions. And
like I explained earlier, if there's a reservation that's super important to you I would absolutely
double up on services. That worked out well for me and I'm sending you all those good
ADR vibes too. Overall, I still have a little bit more tinkering to do. I'm hopeful that
in that 1 to 2 day before when I want to dine timeframe comes up I'll be able to edit everything
to exactly my liking. If you have any advance dining reservation tips and tricks be sure
to let me know in the comments down below. Particularly, if you use any services I definitely
want to hear about your experience with those. We can also chat about all things dining reservations,
and really Disney in general, over on Twitter and Instagram--you'll find me @PixieDustPhD.
Even though my table service dining reservations aren't perfect yet, I am really happy with
the success rate I've had so far and I'm definitely looking forward to these experiences in my
upcoming trip to Walt Disney World. But wish me luck snagging those last few reservations;
I could certainly use your good vibes. I hope the rest of your day is kind to you and feels
like snagging that perfect California Grill reservation.
Stay magical, and we'll see ya real soon at Pixie Dust PhD.