I have used TP reservation finder in the past but it looks like there are so many other ones out there now like Mousedining and Mousewatcher. What does everyone like to use? Also, can they look out only 60 days or can they do 60+10 since you aren’t going through MDE? My thoughts are if they are 60+10 I could set alerts before my 60 day window to see what’s available and if something is already booked for a certain day then I will know not to try that date on my ADR day.
I use mousedining and love it. I was able to get Space 220, BOG, Oga’s, Homecomin, Spice Road fireworks package for our last minute trip.
I like that you can have up to 50 alerts I think. And the alert will stay until you cancel it so you will keep getting notifications. I like that better than having to restart an alert every time.
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Do you do the paid one that texts? I find I’m always too late with email but I like that they can do the firework dining and I think tours if I remember correctly.
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By default the unauthenticated web calls to the dining APIs only go to 60 days. Anything over 60 days would be hard for these services to pull off in my opinion, as they would need access to someone’s (probably yours) MDE that has a leading reservation, and also they would need to insert the leading reservation tokens into their code that scans for availability. I doubt these services offer 60+ days but I may be wrong. Plus I do not think it is a good idea to give these services your MDE info, most of us probably agree.
I’ve played around with this a bit and wrote my own reservation finder which 1) gives me an audio and visual alert, and 2) sends me a text if an ADR is found. I love snagging those hard to get ADRs, and yes I’ve spent too much time on this.
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I do pay to have the text version. Totally worth it since I rarely plan my trips 60 days in advance. And yes it can search for fireworks dining and tours. It can also search at DL (does TP do that?).
Also you can pay month by month so I cancel it when I don’t have a trip planned and then buy when I do.
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Ok this helps! I would really like to do the tours in AK while the weather is nice but didn’t want to pay forever!
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You can buy a 12 month subscription but I prefer to just pick and choose what months I need it for.
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Thanks, I will try mousedining. That is a nice feature that you don’t have to restart the alert if you don’t grab the first one that pops up.
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That really makes a big difference to me too. Because sometimes I forget to do that on my TP one.
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I couldn’t get a CRT reservation for 12/30 during my 60+ window (for some reason they didn’t have any reservations for the entire day at 60+10). I set up the TP reservation finder just in case, got a text yesterday that they were available, and booked one right away. Worked great for me (and yeah, having a text option is definitely the way to go).
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I’m just testing Mousedining, Mousewatcher and the TP finder simultaneously
So far, Mousedining and Mousewatcher have found one (the same) reservation opening for me within one minute of each other, in that order. TP didn’t find it with the same parameters.
I’ll continue testing and report back.
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vndt Thank you!
A little follow up on using the different reservation finders mentioned above
This wasn’t exactly a scientific comparison as I mostly had different alerts on each site, but I did have for example Kona Cafe and 'Ohana on the same dates in all 3 - Touringplans, Mousewatcher and Mousedining.
Mousedining provided the most hits on those overlapping alerts. I believe it was about 6 hits out which 3 were already gone when I logged in, a couple were at an undesirable time and one I ended up booking. Mousewatcher found a couple of times which were no good, and TP didn’t find any of them.
Considering Mousedining gives you 5 free alerts and the price for a whole lot more is cheap, it would be my choice. Mousewatcher is expensive and didn’t work as well in my case. TP didn’t really work for me and is limited to 2 alerts even for a subscriber.