ADR's and the Crowd Calendar park hours

Walt Disney World Dining
1

I just finished creating a preliminary itinerary for my ADR’s and FP+ for our trip in September using the hours I found in Touring Plans. My ADR booking window opens at the end of this month. I notice the hours have changed since I checked a little over a month ago and was wondering how likely they will change again AFTER I make my ADR’s at the end of the month. i would hate to have to shift reservations and parks around! This is a LOT of work! LOL! When are the hours pretty much set for a certain time?

2

Unfortunately the hours are never guaranteed and they can change up to the day before. I think for the most part they’ll have them set a month out. I just check periodically to see if anything has changed.

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3

Check out Interpreting Park Hours | TouringPlans.com Blog - it gives an insight into the WDW scheduling process. It is an old post (2011), but it still pretty much holds.

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4

Thank you. Does anyone know if the hours put out on the Disney website are usually fairly correct?

5

They are correct, in that they are the current planned hours. The article gives some stats in terms of how often the initial planned hours are changed, and, depending on the season, this can happen quite frequently for certain parks. One thing that I have noticed is that the predicted hours that TP posts before WDW posts the first schedule are often quite close to what the final hours will be.

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6

That is good to know. I guess I’m just too worried about having to tweak my reservations too many times. I’ve read on different forums that many people end up having to do this and it’s hard enough to get some of them!! Thank you.

7

I tend to make my park plans based on the information that is available at the 180-day mark and stick with that. I sometimes make a few back-up reservations in case I change my mind, but I try to not go overboard with that.

If you do want to change your plans after the 180-day mark, the TP Reservation Finder Disney World Dining Reservation Finder can really help out. You tell it what you want, and it keeps checking for openings and then notifies you when they are available. Many Liners have gotten difficult to find reservations using it.

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8

Excellent advice brklinck! I like both suggestions. Thanks so much!