Hello all! We are planning a trip for Oct of 2018, and may have to to ten (10) people in our party. We are staying in property so will be planning at the 180 day point.
How hard will it be to get reservations? We will be trying for a bunch of signature restaurants, and other breakfast places. Does anybody have any tips on how to best tackle getting reservation for a party this large?
_I have been planning a trip for 12 this December. I was not able to get 1 ADR for 12 people at the 180 day mark online. The system wont allow you to split up into more than one ADR. When I called the cast member was able to get the restaurants and times that I wanted. She had the ability to break the ADR into 2 smaller groups. The ADR’s are both the same time and in my name. Good luck
It’s been two years since I did it, but I made reservations for 10 at quite a few places. There are a couple of places it wasn’t possible - Be Our Guest was one, but I suspect that was due to popularity. When I tried to make a reservation for ten at the Grand Floridian Cafe, it wouldn’t let me. But as the previous poster said, when I called, they were able to break it into two smaller parties for me. I also went in August, which I think is less busy than October, so take that into consideration. But yes, the system will allow you to reserve for 10 at a time.
Just did a trip in June 23-30 this year… Party of 8 ( 4 adults, 4 kids). I was online when our ADR opened.
I had issue with Via Napoli, I coundn’t find table of 8 so I had to do two tables of 4. When we got there, they did put us together at one table, and I didn’t have to ask (when I checked in, I just gave my last name and they said “oh, party of 8”).
And we also got CRT, BOG, H&V Dinner w/Fantasmic, Tusker breakfast w/ROL, Check Mickey dinner. That being said H&V w/Fantasmic was a little early (like 4:30p) and they seated us at two tables of 4.
If you can’t get a table for your party size, try and get two reservations for smaller parties, and when you arrive to check in for your reservation, ask to be seated next to or near the other party.
I am going in early December with a group of 10. I am the primary planner but my sister has her own MDE account, and we made one for our Mom also. So on our 180 mark, my sister and I were both on speaker phone with each other while we each had our computers open. Because we have 5 children, all aged 6 and under in our group, we’re not doing a lot of TS meals. However, we did want an Akershus breakfast, a BOG lunch, and were open to a Biergarten lunch & 1900 Park Fare breakfast. Not the toughest reservations, but we could not get anything for Akershus at all at 180 (likely due to holiday dining packages). Doing 10 at Park Fare breakfast was no trouble - we got 5 & 5 at both BOG lunch and Biergarten lunch without too much hassle. Eventually, using the TP reservation finder, we did get a reservation for 10 at Akershus, which pretty much made our trip! I keep posting how grateful I am to TP for this one, but I really am! 
If you will be the only person making ADR’s, then I definitely suggest trying for 2 groups if you cannot get all 10 at once, but when you set up the TP reservation finder, look for the larger party number with that. Then you can always cancel the reservation for two groups once you get the one reservation for big groups. Worst case scenario, if you have 2 reservations that slightly overlap, I have read that you could call the restaurant the night before to see if they could add a note to your ADR that you want to sit with that other party. And, that arriving a bit early and repeating the same request at the check in stand could help also.
Just for clarification purposes - when we split our group into two groups of 5 (total of 10 people), all of our names were linked in MDE. My sister & her husband have 3 children, so they are one set of 5. My husband and I have 2 children, so we always added my Mom to our reservation. And also, since my sister and I were both online together at 180 days, we decided that since Akershus was our priority, I first put in for 10 people at various breakfast times, while she was trying for 5 people. Neither worked, so we did the same for BOG - I tried for 10, she tried for 5. That worked with her 5 and I was able to quickly do 5 also, and so on.
I think you will be just fine - we were upset at our 180 mark due to not getting some things but I became more optimistic after reading about various reservation finders & how people do cancel ADRs near the 60 day mark (which we are not yet at).
We went with a party of 11 in second week of November 2016. I was surprised at how easy it was to get ADRs. We did Akershus breakfast, Tusker House lunch, Garden Grill dinner, Crystal Palace breakfast, BOG lunch, and 1900 PF dinner all together. The one or two I had trouble finding, I was able to get using reservation finder. One of the things I noticed was the difference in longer wait times to be seated compared to when we had been a party of 6 the year before. Dining definitely took longer that trip.
Thank you all! We are going for a few signature meals, so it may be best to call for those . . . My friend can help, so maybe we will attack the other reservations by breaking up the group to see what we can get.
Much appreciated, folks!