WDW Reservations emailed me that a $1,400 was noted on my account per room (we have two). I called and the dining plans (we had dining plan plus) have all been cancelled including pre-existing dining reservations. They have given a room discount but it only took off $200 (plus dining package charges) on the existing room rate for five nights at the Wilderness Lodge in an upgraded Fireworks view room.
WDW is still working out how to handle the changes and the inconvenience. I canāt believe I have to re-book my dining again. Our September 12th trip is the third booking this year due to prior coronavirus cancellations (March 31st and May 5th other dates).
Ugh-losing Cinderellaās Table again is so sad and I am thankful I didnāt tell my daughter about it.
Not sure if youāve heard this but they have cancelled all dining plans for at least until the end of September 2021. Edit: I misread your post but will leave this here in case itās helpful. They simply donāt know if they will be able to honor enough reservations to give you the full value of it. They are supposed to give you a 30% (maybe 35%?) room discount to compensate you for the lost dining plan if it was free. (Not sure what you will get if it was a paid dining plan.) You should ask about that if you had free or discounted dining.
You may still be able to recover your dining reservations once they set up the new reservation system. Keep checking the blog and forum for news.
I know now the plans are cancelled but with a fireworks view room, after removing the cost of the dining plan plus, the only difference is $211.00 for the ā30-35%ā discount. Our room total is $3,479 now for five nights and that is not 30-35% discount not to mention all of the work put into making the reservations we had in place.
I hope this is the case for us. I had all of our dining and experience reservations made in September 2019 for our March 2020 trip. (Of course, you never get all the ones you want.) After our March trip was canceled, I immediately (and optimistically) rebooked for September 2020 and made all of our dining and experience reservations yet again ā although I got even fewer than what I had originally. As everyone here knows, making ADRs is very time-consuming and stressful.
I know Disney is opening up ADRs first for those who already had reservations, which is nice. But it seems like they should open them up before that for those of us who are now making reservations for a third time ā or, even better, simply to carry those ADRs over automatically. It doesnāt seem fair to ālevel the playing fieldā in this case.
A couple days ago I received the e-mail informing me that all dining reservations would be canceled, which was difficult enough to read. But now, each day I am receiving a notification or two for each individual ADR being canceled. Canāt they just rip the Band-Aid off either by allowing that first e-mail to suffice or sending the individual cancellations all at once instead of sending me a message every day and pouring salt on the wound. (I know ā first-world problems, but still.)
I know Disney is doing what they can with an impossible situation. I suspect that they probably overbooked everything and now they are trying to weed us out by gradually taking away more and more magic each day until they are left with the number of people that they want.
If too many of us are resilient to this alleged tactic, I wonder what other steps they may take. It could be positive, such as offering a really great discount if we rebook for later? Or negative, such as no air-conditioning in our rooms (since thatās the optimal temperature for coronavirus), no pillows in our rooms, only being able to enjoy one attraction per theme-park visit. Or maybe they will just start automatically canceling entire bookings at random.
Sorry, Iām just getting very frustrated at this whole situation, as Iām sure all of us are. I figure this is a safe place to vent. We booked our March 2020 trip with Disney in December 2018, so by the time September rolls around it will have been almost two years. I need to get out of the house!
I totally understand your pain!! The first booking to cancel for me has been Chef Mickeyās. I truly hope that we can keep our highly prized Cinderellaās Table. I canāt believe that after three sets of dining reservations for entire trips, the final ones are being cancelled.
I still donāt understand how the ride situation is going to work without Fastpass options. It is all so confusing to me that I am questioning going at this point because with so many limitations, will it truly be magical for my kids first visit?
Maybe Iām in the minority, but I donāt stress all that much about ADRs?
We almost always (eventually) get what we want by using TPs reservation finder. And with having to make ADRsso far out, weāve usually changed our overall plan (which parks on which day, sometimes even which days weāll even be at Disney) several times before we get really firm on our plans, closer to when FPs were done (in the before time, at least).
If the emails stress you out, maybe set up a folder that Disney emails go to that you can check when you are prepared?
I actually have a specific folder for anything related to Disney. With our trip, though, I set up anything coming from WDW to go directly into my inbox so I donāt miss anything important.
I use the TP reservation finder too, and it has definitely worked for us. Maybe the problem is that we determine which parks we will be visiting first and then work our ADRs around this; only very rarely will we change a park day once weāve set that up. I like to start and end the trip with MK, and then I like to rotate as much as possible for the rest of the time.
Iām not sure if the new reservation system will be good or bad for this. I would assume that we will need to make park reservations first before we can book ADRs and experiences, so we might not be able to get to go to all the parks we want throughout our trip or book for on the specific days we want to go. Weāll probably just take what we can get. If I get reservations for less than 75 percent of the days that weāll be there, I may just cancel altogether. I donāt want to be just sitting around in our hotel room.
Between the time I wrote earlier today and now, I have received seven more cancellation confirmations. Maybe theyāre about done now.
From what I have been told by people I know who work at Disney, the reason they cancelled everything is because theyāre moving over to a completely different system that will be used from here on out. There was no way to avoid losing current plans. I think itās going to be a while before character dining and buffets are back, too. We all are just going to have to adjust and see what the new system is when itās released. Iāve heard that the 60 day dining window associated with the new system is probably here to stay, too. No more 180 days ā which I kind of like.
Here, here! I never really understood the need for 180 days. They donāt even have hours posted for these dates. They arenāt making staffing/purchasing decisions that far in advance. I think 60 is MUCH more reasonable.
For DLR I think the 60 days works well, as itās more of a local park. For WDW I prefer the 180 days. Going to 60 days is going to make it that much more difficult to get ADRs. Now, not only will you have to compete with all those who also book trips well in advance, you will have to compete with everyone who tends to book more last-minute. (If you consider two months last-minute.) I suspect this is a short-term solution and that, when things get back to normal, theyāll revert to 180 days.
Of course, I will admit that maybe this is just because 180 days is what many of us have been accustomed to and that perhaps the 60-day plan will work out. Iām open.
But I also definitely agree with @melcort10 that their not having their hours posted that far in advance is a problem. It makes it very difficult to know which ADRs to plan. If they do go back to 180 days, I hope WDW addresses this issue as well. Even TP pretty much gets the park hours estimated correctly each time weāve gone, so I donāt see any reason why the parks themselves couldnāt do so.
Ok, totally fair assessment. I think that there could be a happy medium, 120 or 90 or something is ok with me too. But I am pretty sure I booked dining this year without even having flights! 6 months is too far in advance!
I totally feel your pain! Weāre going in October as a party of 26. Each meal required a minimum of 3 reservations, and for 50ās I had 6. So far Iāve received 17 emails. Itās so depressing!
I like 60 days best but 90 could be ok. The only problem with 60 is that if itās the exact same day as FP (or its replacement), you will have to do major triage to determine what to book first (first CRT, then FoP, now back to my BoG ADR, now SDD FP!, etc.)
Iād think so. Assuming Fastpasses will continue to be a thing.
Overall, I like the 60 day change. I donāt think it will make it at all harder. In fact, I think it might make it easier.
Regardless, you can now schedule ADRs again for up to 60 days out right now. (And, I BELIEVE it will be 60 days plus length of stay if it isnāt already.)
Basically, at this point, weāre just waiting to see how the park reservation system will work.
Wow! There are just two of us, and it was difficult enough. I canāt imagine trying to organized ADRs for 26 people. Hats off to you! Weāll eventually get through this.
) I suspect this is a short-term solution and that, when things get back to normal, theyāll revert to 180 days.