Tell me your ADR strategy!

Walt Disney World
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My 60 day ADR window is coming up and I’m feeling a bit nervous because I haven’t done this in a long time. What is your strategy when booking your ADR’s? Do you make them from your computer and search for a specific restaurant at 6:00 AM? Or do you have that page open and refresh? Do you use your MDE app on your phone as well? Looking to get Space 220 and Oga’s as the top priorities.

Thanks for any tips! Liners know everything and my family is always amazed when we travel and all the tips and tricks :slight_smile:

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Book those two toward the end of your stay, cutting down on your competition. Incognito mode is touted a lot on Lines chat.

Have those two specific restaurant tabs open - the full website works better for me than MDE app many times.

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You may want to factor in the size of your party. My experience booking for 9 was very different than my usual party of 4.

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The website never works for me on ADR day, only check in day ever opens no matter what I do. So I use the app, search for the first restaurant just before 6 and hit reserve dining right at 6.

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I usually have several pages/tabs open for the restaurant. Each tab ends up being for the different instances I want to go to the restaurant (because once you make the reservation, getting back to the thing takes forever). This leads to multiple windows and tab groups.

I also have my MDE app up on my phone, but that’s a last resort.

At 5:45am, I usually start refreshing to see if it opens. If it does, the game begins…:stuck_out_tongue:

I start looking for times that I want starting at the general meal (breakfast/dinner). If nothing shows up, I go straight to the first hour I’d be ok with (ex: 10:00am) and should that not have anything, I go to the next or previous half-hour increment (09:30 or 10:30). And keep hopping on the half hours in increments.

If you get the message of something like “there’s nothing between the hours of 10am - 2PM”, IGNORE IT and keep hitting the half hour incriments.

Then, while it’s doing its loading thing, grab the phone and pull up the restaurant there and see if that’s got anything following the same method.

And this is happening for all my desired restaurants at the same time.

Once I get a hit, I stop the action on the other restaurants and finish the reservation (and this is important that you stop action on the other restaurants). Otherwise the system WILL get confused and book a different restaurant at the same time (it’s happened to me several times).

Once you have your reservation, close the tab and keep going on the other tabs. Repeating the process.

Oh and like it’s already been said, the farther into your stay one should be a tad easier to go after, so if it’s a super high priority (like space 220), book that toward the end of your stay and work backwards. This way once you have the initial ones, you can keep trying for earlier times.

It was the same during FPP days. :slight_smile:

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And do not be shocked if you sink several hours into this. It’s an amazing time sink.

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Thank you all! I never thought about having multiple tabs open. I really appreciate all of the feedback. We’re a party of 4 so I’m hoping we have good luck. Also trying to get a light saber reservation so I’ll be up at midnight and then up at 5 am for the dining. What fun! lol

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Wow. :hushed:

So been doing this differently for like ever. :confounded:

I could be in the wrong forum . . .

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It no longer starts at 6 am?

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I’ve had it where It sometimes starts early.

So I think it’s good to be ready by 5:45. Worst case: it allows you to double check you’re all ready and logged in.

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Thanks!

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Why is incognito mode preferred?

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Besides booking in order of hardest to get first and already plan for latest in vacation as possible, I don’t do much else. Oh make sure a CC is linked beforehand, you need it when you confirm the reservation. No money is taken out except CRT (unless the policy changed since covid).

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Because Disney’s site gets itself hung up on stupid stuff as it tries to access old tracking info. This is pretty common with big-budget websites nowadays. They want to see where you came from, where you’re going, and everything in between.

So Incognito mode is like going in with a clean slate and so Disney’s site spends less time trying to read old info and instead just installs new info (that is immediately deleted the moment you close the window).

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I failed at this today :frowning: I thought my CC was linked, but it was linked in the app and not on the website. So I had to enter it each time. ugh. Luckily, I’m not going at a very popular time or I would’ve missed out on everything. that really adds time.

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Update for the morning. I remember liners having the time.gov clock counting down so I did that to help me click right at 6 am. (clicked at 5:45 and a million times in between just in case, but alas it opened at 6). I did have an incognito mode tab open thinking I would try that as well but once 6am hit I felt like I was crazy clicking through tabs on various windows and never tried it!

I was able to get Space 220 on my son’s birthday-which is the last day of our trip (yay), but had wanted dinner. We got lunch. So have to re-arrange the plans.

Was able to get Oga’s as well, lots of availability. Then booked a few new experiences, which I’m excited about: Kona Cafe, Sci Fi & Yak and Yeti and then some ones we love and want to go back to: the Yachtsman, San Angel (before extended hours) and Beaches and Cream.

Debating Kona Cafe versus Ohana if anyone has opinions. My family does love sushi and has been to Ohana for breakfast before. Was thinking of trying to watch the Fireworks from the beach there…something we haven’t done before.

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Kona Cafe closes for refurbishment August 15th if that makes any difference for you.

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I’m sorry you didn’t get everything.

Load up te res Finder for the things you didn’t get. Good chance you’ll be able to get something since a lot of people use the shotgun method then whittle down as their trip gets closer.

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I’m am SO happy I got Space :slight_smile: I’m thinking since it’s summer we won’t mind a cool lunch inside during the heat of the day! But, I will still use the reservation finder and hope we get lucky!

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I am so dumb. My 60-day window opened this morning and I had it in my mind that the window opened at 7AM. Availability was already non-existent for some of the ADR’s I wanted to book. Now I realize the window opened at 6AM. If I just would have paid attention to yesterday’s TP alert, I might have gotten what I wanted. :roll_eyes:

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