Hey TP crew! Does anyone have an excel file that they use for planning meals (aka - looking for reservations)? I’m all about the lovely excel formatting options, and before I made one up, I thought I’d ask the TP crew. Thank you!
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Although I make a pretty involved, color-coded spreadsheet for the entire trip, my ADR tracking is a pretty simple 4 column Date/Time/Location/Confirmation Number chart to the side. Once I have my ADRs, I plug the times into my master chart. On a 7 day trip it’s not unusual for me to have 14 ADRs, and this method has always worked for me.
That being said…
On my last trip with DW, my number one priority for the trip was to get the V&A Chef’s Table - the most difficult to get ADR in WDW. I was willing to build my entire 7-day plan around whichever day I was able to get that ADR, so I made 7 different master plans (with 7 different permutations of 14 ADRs). Yes, I was slightly crazy. I was on line right as ADRs opened, and I got the V&A, 15 seconds into the window, for my second choice day (180+7). I then pulled the master list for “V&A on Saturday night”, and then made the remaining 13 ADRs. I got every one I wanted, and was done in slightly over 30 min. I didn’t change a single one (although I did cancel one the day before as our plans morphed around weather considerations).
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Dang, and I thought I was in deep with the Excel work. Well done! I only have a few tabs on mine
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I too have a detailed, color-coded spreadsheet with all of my details, but I just have a list of restaurants for my ADR tab. I did list out second and third options for the more difficult ones, added a priority column and then sorted by priority so I would make reservations in that order.
The process also went very well for me and I got everything I wanted, but I’ve made infinite changes since then (but I’m finding that I’m pretty back to my original plan). I guess there was more logic in my initial plans than I realized! 7 days to go!
Another Excel nerd here. My planning spreadsheet has seriously bloated over the years, and now includes 42 (!) tabs.
For ADRs I make a list of all the ones I want, along with preferred date, preferred time and acceptable time range (preferred time can be 18:00 but acceptable anything between 17:00 and 19:00). If I have alternative dates which also work for the same ADR I list them on separate lines. Once the list is complete I sort it according to how difficult the ADRs are to get, and at the 180 day mark I work my way down the list. As long as a time is available in the “acceptable” range I snag it, even if it’s not the perfect time. I’ve pretty much always managed to get a “better” time later.
I actually do pretty much the same thing for FP+ reservations, only that list is much longer and is going to be a little bit more stressful now that FoP is in the mix (we last went in April so didn’t need to worry about that). 
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Any chance any of you would be willing to share your excel spreadsheets with me? Because I’d love to play around with some… thanks!