All these ADRs are kinda stressing me out!! I have picked a few that I thought were must do’s. I am kind of more of a go with the flow type. Eat when we are hungry. How is the quick service dining, if I decide to just wing it for a day or two?
It can be very good with some planning. My favorites:
Satu’ll Canteen in AK
Tangierine Cafe in Epcot
Columbia Harbor House in MK
Wolfgang Puvk Express in DS
Lots of resort choices! My favorite is Mara
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There really is no reason to stress out even looking for table service restaurants. There are only a few that are hard to get but the rest are not that bad. The one that comes to mind is in the German pavilion called Biergarten. It is very good and I have a hard time finding why it isn’t harder to get. Character dinning is usually the reason for many being so hard to get. There are all types of QS dinning restaurants and I like Columbia Harbor House in MK, Sunshine Seasons in Epcot, Backlot Express in HS, and Flaming Tree in AK. There is one other restaurant that is a table service restaurant and it is in the Beach Club Resort. This is Cape May’s Café. If you like seafood this is the place to go. It is a buffet with Crab legs, huge shrimp, Clam Chowder Soup, and corn on the cob, just to name a few. Surprisingly it is not that hard to get ADR’s for.
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I was very stressed myself. I had to make a ADR for 9 people at Ohana on our first day, which turns out to be Father’s Day. I had no problems I got all my ADR’s that I wanted, Ohana for 9, BOG for lunch and a breakfast for 3, Liberty Tree, Boma, Biergarten, Hollywood & Vine for Fantasmic, and Ohana or breakfast, all for 3. Also for the times I wanted.
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I think I’m mostly just stressed about deciding when and where I want to eat so far in advance. I have t even made my FPP selection yet, so what is my plans change. What if I am standing in line and miss a ADR. I think that’s the thing that stresses me out. I already have secured ressies for the ones I thought we would like such as Biergarten and Sci-fi. I’m really undecided about coral reef and BOG. I have the res but might drop them.
Also I’ve decided we will only do one character dining so I got tusker. I guess I’m a little worried about times too. If I make a res then find out maybe because the time change I’m not even hungry! Lol. I’m I’m over thinking it too much. Haha
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I was at Coral reef today. It was amazing.
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Perhaps. But you can always modify both your adds and fastpasses. We accidentally were late for a few adrs (I get lost easily) and we were fine. Id probably do one TS a day though. I have a bazillion snack credits because we were doing two meals a day and couldn’t possibly fit a snack in!
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Personally I didn’t care for the Tusker House much but many love it. If it is a Character meal your looking at try Chef Mickey’s or The Crystal Place. Akershus in Norway has the Princesses. Oh yes, Coral Reef is expense and the menu has went way down hill. If way overrated these days. See their menu first,
The line thing is pretty easy. There are line time estimates on everything. If it’s close to your ADR time, don’t get in the line. Simple.
I have had wait times be off plenty of times in DL, so sometimes it isn’t that simple…
I guess it just depends on your touring style. I would rather enjoy my time even if it means not getting in every last ride. Basically unless I knew that the ride would 100% get me on and off, I’d rather not get on something close to an ADR time without having a FP+ for it than risk missing an ADR.
But also, unless you are in the pens to get on the next ride, if you see that you are about to miss your ADR, you can leave the line.
Ultimately it’s up to you to manage your time and keep track of when your ADRs are and not cut it too closely with rides on purpose.
If you’re “go with the flow” and don’t like to be tied down, don’t make ADRs - or only do them for breakfast or when you know for a fact you’ll be out of a park. If you make them and choose to ride rather than make the ADR, just be prepared to have a $10/person no-show fee charged to your card. And if you want a table service place, you can use the app to see what’s available close when you’re ready to eat - just don’t count on the biggies or character meals on a spur of the moment thing.
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Relax just get the phone number to the restaurants, if you are running late call to let them know. They say you have a 10 min. window but if you show up 15 late what are they going to do not feed you, they would lose money and Disney is not about to turn down money.
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I was amazed at how many TS ADRs I was able to make while I was there.
I made the ones that I absolutely wanted to do. I had a few days that I was unsure of and I was fine to grab those the day of or the day before.
I really like Sunshine Seasons in EPCOT.
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Friend of mine who’s a chef makes only 1 adr (Via Napoli) during his fam’s trips. They wing it for adrs & CS rest of week, by seeing what’s available (ppl cancel) night b4. It’s a very flexible way of dining, that suits them.
Myself, I like to know ahead of time where I’m going, thru the week. I plan my parks around EMH if we’re onsite, avoid if offsite. Then I plan my touring plan schedule, including fpps. Then I plan our dinners around where we’ll be that park that day.
Sounds like a lot, but actually it’s pretty easy, tho takes a bit of time. I like planning, so works for me.
Interestingly, I’ve found that we always land up cancelling at least 1 dinner adr by the end of trip, opt for a CS that day.
The 10-15 minute late is ok rule was told to me by a CS at Coral Reef. But I thought I had read it somewhere in the Unofficial Guide. Tried to find it the other day , but I couldn’t find it. Maybe some others can chime in re that.
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I’ve never seen an actual rule, but an ADR just means you’re in line for a table, it’s not really like a reservation you’d make at your local restaurant. We were only late to one, but they never batted an eyelid.
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Yes - it’s more like call-ahead-seating at some local restaurants - it gets you in line for the next table for your size party. They used to call it “Priority Seating” - not sure why they changed it as that makes it so much clearer.
As far as being late, I don’t believe there is anything official (and I’d be surprised if there was as that would encourage people to be late) in terms of a grace period. You are supposed to check in 5 minutes before your time (I could swear I’d seen 15 officially, but looking at the T&C I’m only seeing 5) - but there is nothing in the T&C about a grace period.
Do they allow people to “be late”? Most places likely will, BUT it will depend on the crowd levels, how busy the restaurant is - and sometimes human attitude and choice. If you are accidentally late (and I mean you left plenty of time to get there but something such as a transportation breakdown (which they can check) prevented you from being on time), and are apologetic they are likely to accommodate you if they can. If you go up to the check-in desk with an entitled attitude, they may not be as willing to accommodate you.
Just keep in mind that when you are late and they put you in line, you are then contributing to the backlog of ADRs and people waiting for tables that you have probably experienced elsewhere.
Bottom line - the polite thing to do is not purposely plan to be late. Accidents and delays happen, and they understand that. But when it becomes clear people are taking a lah-di-dah attitude about it and choosing to be late on purpose, I suspect we may see the “grace period” - official or unofficial - go away.
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We’ve been late only once, fortunately. It was at Coral Reef & that CM said since we were past the 15 mins where they’d hold the table, our adr was still valid but we’d have to wait til next avail table. (We were there 20 minutes late, out fault).
I really hope this doesn’t happen to us again. We had to wait 1 hour to get seated, yow. If I’d known that I’d have tried to get the 10 per person penalty waived & have gone elsewhere. It would have been a 50 total penalty tho for us, so if not waived, we might have stayed waiting even if knew was such a long wait.
I never did find out if we were considered standby at that point or in some grey area on list between adrs and standbys.
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I don’t plan on being late. Just don’t like the idea of so much advance planning. I’m a AP holder here in California. It’s so much different. We have maxpass and pick passes the day of. And the only ADR I would ever consider making would be blue bayou or rainforest. We do a lot of quick service or eat at DTD or even offsite. That’s why I was asking about quick service
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That’s good to know. Another thing I guess I didn’t mention is that we will be coming from California. With the time change our meal times could be way off. Maybe when I get there I can modify a few of them once we figure out how much the change has thrown us off!
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