Walt Disney World: Utilizing Your Dinning Plan

So, here’s a little known fact, Dining reservations at WDW can be made 180 days out AND people staying at Disney Resorts can book 10 days before that. You may ask why on earth would anyone want to book reservations for dining 190 days in advance. Easy. People in the know; know that to get the best selection of establishments and times you’ll want to book as early as possible. For some venues the difference between booking at 190 days and 189 days is the difference of eating at that particular venue or not. The Princess Breakfast at Cinderella’s Castle literally books solid within 15 minutes of coming available. Hoop-de-do will book out shortly after coming available as well. Now, personally, I’ll work extra hard to book that Hoop-de-do reservation. Because I know that it’s a BLAST! But I don’t worry about not joining Cinderella for breakfast, because 1) chances are it’ll be booked solid and 2) There’s another cheaper Princess dining experience at Akershus that has everything my daughter will need in a Princess breakfast. She’ll never even miss Cindy. It’s these tips that you’ll need to know before you sit down at your computer on March 11^th and plugging in your reservations. Now, at 6 months out you need not stress too much, just relax and every once in a while check out a restaurant in WDW and try to decided if you want to dine there. Now, remember that your dining reservations will probably determine which park that you will be in at any given time. You’ll not want to book 3 dinners at the Magic Kingdom because that means that you’ll need to be in the Magic Kingdom on each of those days. I’ll generally get an idea as to which parks that I think that I’ll be in on each day of the week, then I’ll start looking at the special dining experiences that I’m interested in. (i.e. Cinderella’s Royal Table, Hoop-de-doo, Polynesian Luau, etc.) and when I know them I’ll decide where those are located compared to where I’ll be on a given night and then make changes as needed. Remember that once you start making your reservations, you may find that the night you wanted was booked up. That will mean that you’ll need to change things to different nights and also change up your Park plans. The beauty of planning 6 months out is that plans are easily changed. Here’s an example: Saturday- Arrival Day Breakfast at Airport Lunch at Layover Dinner at Port Orleans, the Disney moderate resort where we are staying (CS-Counter Service) Sunday- Magic Kingdom Breakfast at POR (Port Orleans Riverside) (CS) Lunch at Liberty Tree Tavern (CS) Dinner at Tony’s Town Square (TS- Table Service) Every time we have eaten here we have not been disappointed. The food is Italian cuisine and always very good. Monday- Epcot Breakfast at Akershus (TS) This is an excellent Princess Character breakfast. They see almost all of the princesses in this breakfast except Cinderella. Each one visits with you at your table and stops to take pictures. The breakfast is a buffet within a Norwegian themed castle. If you plan this you will get into Epcot before the park opens too. Lunch at Bistro de Paris (CS) Dinner at Coral Reef Restaurant (TS) Tuesday- Rest Day We will dine for breakfast at our resort and then enjoy some pool time and maybe a short cruise to Downtown Disney where we will have lunch at one of our favorite spots. “The Duke of Earl Sandwich Shop” where they serve great deli style sandwiches. Dinner at Hoop-De-Doo (2TS requires 2 table service dinning tickets) located at Fort Wilderness. This is an all you can eat fried chicken and bar-b-que rib dinner with a western theme vaudeville show as entertainment. Wednesday- Hollywood Studios Breakfast at POR (CS) Lunch at Pizza Planet (CS) Dinner at Sci-Fi Drive In (TS) We can’t wait to try this place out. The tables are shaped like cars and they have a big screen on the wall that shows previews of old horror and sci-fi movies. We think this will be a fun dinning experience. Thursday- Animal Kingdom Breakfast at POR (CS) Lunch at Flame Tree BBQ (CS) Dinner at Pizzafari (CS) Friday- Magic Kingdom Breakfast at POR (CS) Late Lunch at Whispering Canyon Café (TS) This is located at the Wilderness Lodge and again has some awesome ribs. They serve your drinks in mason jars. Snacking at Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party for dinner. Now look at the plan and you’ll see the CS and TS comments, those refer to Counter Service and Table Service. Remember that you’ll have 1 TS and 1 CS for each person per day. You’ll need to count up those credits knowing that for a 7 night vacation you’ll have 7 CS and 7 TS credits total. Since we are a Breakfast type of family, I usually end up paying for a lot of CS meals above the dining plan. However these can be pretty quickie type meals. A fruit plate, a few Danishes to split and we’ve got breakfast. I have 13 CS listed so I know that I’ll need to foot the bill for 5 CS meals (again I’ll usually make these cheap meals and with a few sharing tricks I can even buy less. ) Also Remember that you’ll not need reservations for ANY CS meal. I have 7 TS meals listed. This is good as TS meals are expensive and I don’t want to foot the bill for any of these. So I’ve come in right on target. No Changes needed here. Now I might be ready for making my reservations but I first need to look at my schedule a little more closely. There are lots of perks for staying at a Disney Resort. One of them is the Extra Magic Hours. These are hours in which a park either opens early or closes late for ONLY Disney Resort guests. There are two ways of thinking on the proper utilization of this perk. 1) The Parks that have the Extra Magic Hours will attract more visitors because of the large amount of people who want to take part in them and so you must avoid the EMH days. OR 2) The EMH days enhance the value of your tickets by making them worth more Hour’s per dollar. During peak seasons I would have to go with the former. Anything that increases the number of the people in a park will not work to your benefit. However, during value seasons the volume is low and if a bump in visitation is felt it is small and will not detract from your vacation. You’ll need to decide for yourself as to which strategy will work best for you. For my September trip I’ll be attending during the EMH days. Two reasons: It’ll be slow and it’s the rainy season and the likelihood that I’ll be spending some of my time dodging a rainstorm will be high and I’d rather get the most hours for my money. If the EMH rotation for your week is available for the week you’re there you’ll plan your park visits during the week around that. Once your park visits are planned then you can make your reservations for dining. I’ll bet you’re wondering why make your reservations so far in advance? Here’s the reason: With free dining, you’ll be competing with a lot of other free diners for the same limited number of seats in the restaurants. Those who decide to wing it will either be turned away at the door or have to wait until a table opens up. Book early and you get the best selection.


So You've Booked Your Cruise Now What?