Many international guests (Europe, Australia etc) would stay for two weeks or more though. Coming all that way, it makes little sense for families to come for less. Especially if it might be a once only, or every few years.
And if I ever go to DL I will be booking ADRs for sure. I know you can only book them something lie 60 days out.
I sent you a PM.
We typically don’t make multiple ADRs for a trip - usually 1 or 2 for special meals. We also don’t do the DDP. We don’t have to eat a lot of TS to get our money worth out of the DDP. We are DVC so typically eat breakfast in room, tend to eat 1 big meal and snack more. We also don’t do character meals since our kids are teens and aren’t interested.
I have more TS booked this trip since we are going Christmas to New Year. Haven’t been in high CL time, so trying to be prepared. I did double book or hoard one restaurant because I just can’t figure out what our plans will be. However, we may end up doing the restaurant multiple times. I probably didn’t need to book the restaurant that early, but it’s a must do for my family so didn’t want to chance not getting what looks like ideal day/times to us. I think 180 days is ridiculous. 90 would still be a lot since Disney doesn’t have a set schedule at that time.
That’s another good point. If the restricted ADRs, they couldn’t sell the DDP. Which of course makes them money in the majority of cases; it’s a lucrative source of easy money with the “free” dining promotions.
To me that seems very unreasonable. Kids and adults who have eating restrictions for health reasons often need to make TS for each lunch and dinner so their food can be prepared the proper way (they can’t get that at QS at the parks).
Most res are available 180 days out. And on-site guests staying more than a few days will most likely be able to get any TS they want (though perhaps not at the most desired time sometimes).
I have to echo this. It is VERY few that aren’t available at 180 days. I’ve planned trips at 80 days, 50 days, etc and never felt like I was eating out of trash cans!
From what I have seen almost everything will be available eventually, especially around 60 and 30 days out when people make FPP choices. They will finalize there plans and ADRs are suddenly available for even the hardest to get things. I am making a trip in November, to celebrate my 30th anniversary, and we will be there for a week and have 10 TS meals planned. I am very glad that there were not limits on how many of those I was allowed to reserve. I also had no idea we would be making this trip until 4 months before we will be there. I have seen so many things that became available that I could have totally rearranged our whole trip about 50 times. I stuck with the original choices and have a list of things we want to do on future trips.
Congrats!
Hello, I’m an ADR hoarder. I panicked and reserved everything because I didn’t know what I was doing. And who can blame me, I’ve never planned a Disney trip and they’ve already changed the park hours twice since my ADR day, along with announcing a bunch of closures, opening dates for new attractions, changing the fireworks schedule, and on and on. Shortening the ADR time frame would probably simplify planning for a lot of people. I released a bunch of reservations 60-90 days out (I don’t remember exactly).
If the system prevented me from booking the same restaurant more than twice, I would have to make some decisions and that would seem fair. Especially if I could call in and get a CM to bypass the restriction if I really wanted to eat at the same place more than twice.
We also have food allergies, which normally make vacations very stressful for me. I prefer to have our restaurants chosen ahead of time for most of our meals, so a blanket restriction on the number of ADRs per trip would ruin a lot of the magic for me.
That’s true because it’s all about the bottom line.
Which ADR’s were you not able to get at 180 days? Did you try for any meal and any time at those restaurants?..or were you looking for a specific time.
I’m off site so I need to make reservations at 180 for each TS. ADR success depends on the date and there is a need to be somewhat flexible. But perhaps right after 60 or 30 days, people may start dumping ADRs because we obviously horde.
At 180 for Sunday, December 15th, we could not get one for CA Grill (I had all 4 of us up at 2:45 AM PDT looking for ADRs.). This was originally our first choice for date. But we got two for Story Book Dining: 8:45 and 8:50. These are up for grabs.
We tried for CA Grill again at 180 for Wednesday, December 18th. We got two: 6:05 and 6:10. These are up for grabs. We also got Story Book for 4:20 and 8:15. The 4:20 is up for grab.
After mulling these over for the day, we decided that December 18th wouldn’t be that great for us. At 180 for Thursday, December 19th, we got two for CA Grill: 7:35 and 9. Someone else has asked for the 9.
We stopped trying after that because we were tired of getting up at 2:45 AM. We are just keeping two ADRs for our 15 night stay.
That sounds like a lot of work/early mornings for just 2 ADRs!
Yep but we had a couple of high demand ADRS. Most others don’t require such early hours. I perused again when I got up for work.
It turned out that pre-park open ADRs are the only things that consistently got my family to the park at anything resembling park opening. So I’m glad I had two of those ahead of time. But 180 days ahead ADR system is silly. As a planner I wouldn’t want it scrapped entirely but I’d be happy for it to be changed to a ~45 days ahead thing – if you’re on the dining plan, being able to calculate that it’s worth it before paying the final deposit would be good. I’d rather plan ADRs after FPPs, but as long as they were within a couple of weeks of each other I could work with that.
I also like the idea of a same-day release of ADRs along the lines of @Jeff_AZ’s suggestion.
I think it would be way more convenient to do FP before ADR. I am def not saying move FP to 180 days though, leave it at 60 and yeah maybe ADR at 45.
That would mean anyone staying offsite would have to do ADRs first though.
Change their FP date too then? There’s room for adjustment across the board.