I have an admission…I have never done a “reservation finder.” This may be a common sense question but I assume I have to be inside my 60 day period to do a finder request so that I can book it when it becomes available? I was going to try and see what the process is like but my 60 days isn’t for a couple weeks…
There isn’t a need to do a reservation finder before your 60day window because you haven’t even tried yet. I don’t think the system will search outside of 60 days from today anyway. You would do the finder after your window has opened and you have not been successful in finding what you wanted.
2 Likes
makes sense–thanks!
1 Like
I think you have this process backwards. First, by all means, try to secure your ADRs using MDE, website, or phone when your 60 day period opens. Then, only if your are not successful, setup a resfinder for those ADR that you were not able to get.
In other words, no need to worry about resfinder until after you exhaust your day 60 options.
4 Likes
Thank you! I really dislike hassles, so hoping I can get atleast a couple of what I need from the get-go.
Also, I’ve had more luck by maniacally refreshing MDE trying to find a reservation multiple times a day. To me resfinder is a backup but never my main plan. About 90% of the times an ADR is gone by the time I click on the notification.
3 Likes
I have been using reservation finder to tweak ADRs that I already have to better times (either because I misjudged when our meal should be, or I couldn’t originally get an optimal time). Since you can only do two “finds” at a time I started with the most crucial changes and now I am down to my last two.
The TP reservation finder has definitely been helpful and I have been able to update ADRs 2-3 times already (one kept creeping closer to the ideal time). While I am also checking MDE on my own, I haven’t been successful so the reservation finder has definitely been helpful.
2 Likes
good tips–thank you and the others for the info!
as a local I think most of TPs product offerings don’t work for me because we tend to visit either on weekends, long-weekends, teacher-planning days, etc when half of Florida has the same idea and goes there. As a result most of my ADR are probably in super high demand and refreshing just works better.
2 Likes
I am visiting 9/30-10/5, so definitely a challenging time!!
However, the tweaks I have been making have been to the less difficult ADRs, the difficult ones were overthought and I picked the right times off the bat! 
My last two hold outs are
- An earlier 'Ohana dinner reservation on 9/30. I booked it well after the beginning of my window as an afterthought and it is currently at 9:45pm …would prefer 8:30pm or 9:00pm. (MK closes at 8:00pm that night)
- An earlier Yak & Yeti lunch reservation on 10/1. @OBNurseNH pointed out that we might be too full for our 8pm CG reservation. I am trying to pull it back to 12:30pm. If I cannot, I will try and leverage the Landry’s walk up option.
3 Likes
The only reason I can think of for setting up a reservation Finder outside of your 60 days is if the restaurant hasn’t re-opened yet, and you want to be alerted when it does.
If the restaurant is open but you find times aren’t loaded when you try at 60 days, you can also use it. It was more likely to happen when the window was 180 days and you wanted something like Hoop de Doo.
But the restaurant does have to be listed. I tried to set one up for Space 220, to see when reservations opened - this was before we had an opening date. I was thwarted because it hadn’t been added to the restaurant list.
It does search. Because if you have a 2 week stay, and don’t find what you want at 60 days out from your check-in date, you can put in a search for something on Day 5. And it will search for that. I remember searching for HDDR for any date during our stay which was over 2 weeks (obviously back when it was 180 days).
If you get an alert and you’re not in your 60 day window you just wouldn’t be able to book it.
1 Like