Dining Reservation Frustration

[Lyn07]

Minmart I can totally understand what you went through! We planned our trip to celebrate my daughter's 8th birthday and I have been been trying everything to just get a dinner reservation on my daughter's birthday. I have experienced website glitches on MDE as well as the website and also had all days blocked out to reserve except for the first day of our reservation. I did call via DVC dining and also 800-WDW-DINE. One call I was able to get only one reservation and today after speaking wit a cast member and explaining my situation I was told that there was nothing she could do and hopefully in the next couple of months I may get lucky and get my Chef Mickey reservation. I also asked the CM if the Free Dining may have anything to do with this and she felt it could be the case. I am so bummed that her day won't be a special as we would have like it to be I'm hoping we get lucky and can scoop up a reservation for Chef Mickey soon! Maybe some "pixie dust" would do he trick

 

[mirnmart]

So…..I'm completely confused….I had a message on my phone saying good news the restaurant has availability and when she calls me back she asks if I received confirmation from the restaurant and then tells me that it is now not available??? Beyond frustrated with this whole thing! and I had heard about the brunch but didn't bother trying to book since I thought I had a reservation already confirmed

 

[Missyrose]

You guys do realize that the majority of the reservations for Boathouse and Raglan Road aren't available through MDE? Disney only gets a portion, the rest are available by calling the restaurant directly or through OpenTable.com.

 

[VrBchJ]

I've been trying to get a reservation for Dine with an Imagineer at the Brown Derby for multiple dates in Oct.and Nov. and there's nothing available. Seems impossible that every date is already booked so I'm wondering if it's not longer being offered. Anybody know?

 

[supersnoop]

I've been trying to get a reservation for Dine with an Imagineer at the Brown Derby for multiple dates in Oct.and Nov. and there's nothing available. Seems impossible that every date is already booked so I'm wondering if it's not longer being offered. Anybody know?

I don't think those are actually loaded 180 days out. I've seen mention of 90 days, but, really, I bet it's loaded whenever they bother to schedule it.

 

[bananabean]

I've been trying to get a reservation for Dine with an Imagineer at the Brown Derby for multiple dates in Oct.and Nov. and there's nothing available. Seems impossible that every date is already booked so I'm wondering if it's not longer being offered. Anybody know?

I was randomly looking at the website today and Dine with an Imagineer was available for Sept. 11 for 2 people.

 

[tb1972]

I had difficulty today too with Nov. reservations. I was unable to get Brown Derby for dinner on Nov. 22nd which seemed strange to me. It's one of our regulars and I've never had a problem before.

I managed to secure Via Napoli on Nov. 21st but a later time than I preferred. I suppose I'll keep checking for cancellations but becomes time consuming to monitor frequently.

 

[gdrj]

Just need to vent about my frustration trying to make dining reservations today. We are celebrating my twin boys 4th birthday and my 30th birthday while on this trip so i had some key reservations I really wanted to get….was up at 5:55am to sign in and get my reservations made….and the website would not function properly. I had to sign in and out multiple times, sometimes it would show only the first day of my trip, other times I could see all the days but when I tried to search I got a message saying I could not book for that day. Finally after an hour I had only been able to secure 3 reservations. This was using multiple computers and my sisters My Disney account finally because hers would work for some reason when mine wouldn't. So I get on the phone at 7am on the dot and the voice tells me my wait time is 9 mins or less. After 20 mins I'm sent to the satisfaction survey and promptly disconnected…..I call back and wait another 40 mins to have someone tell me all the remaining reservations I wanted are gone Not surprising since it was now 2 hours after they became available. I am just so frustrated….is it to much to ask for a system that works? Now I know this is totally a first world problem and I'm thankful to be able to go on the trip at all and thats why I'm not going to get too worked up over it but just disappointing. My dreams of Chef Mickeys and BOG are gone!

I see later in your posts that a CM was able to help your with Chef Mickey's. I am going in Oct and checked a few days for a Party of 4. I would say 95% of restaurants had some availability (Chef Mickey's was late). With that said a number of ADR's (based on my experience) open up as the dates get closer. You unfortunately just need to keep checking. As I have noted on other posts, I have had success in getting ADR's the day prior to going due to ADR cancellations.

 

[mirnmart]

turns out they were not able to help me out with that reservation after all. She had asked what I was looking for and I said early morning because we had plans for the men to go fishing at 10am and then MVMCP in the afternoon. When she called me back she said she had a reservation for 1:10pm which I said would not work because of things we already had planned and because we have young children who will be napping at that time. She then proceeded to say in a rude tone, "can't they just nap later", needless to say I am very put off by the whole situation! So no there will be no rectifying our situation unfortunately. I will just stalk the dining website until hopefully I can secure something for our 2 birthday celebrations.

 

[AllieV]

I called Bluezoo directly to get a reservation in October. I couldn't find anything on line.

 

[LaurenT]

I agree with the frustration. Reservations for The Boathouse just opened up a few days ago and it's booked solid for October already. I even called this morning to make sure it wasn't a website glitch. I mean I knew that reservations would be a must and would require booking in advance but to be 100% booked in a just a few days?! At a Downtown Disney restaurant? I was so surprised and sad. But then again, should I really be that surprised? But I definitely agree that reservations right now seem to be almost impossible to get for the popular restaurants.

I have noticed though that Friday has been a popular day to for people to cancel reservations. This past Friday I saw that someone had cancelled a 7:30 pm dinner at California Grill for the date I wanted in October (perfect time to book to watch Hallowishes) and I also was able to find a dropped BOG dinner reservation for 7pm when looking on a Friday as well. It gave me hope when originally they had all been booked for my upcoming trip and I was getting discouraged. So don't lose hope yet and I hope you have the same luck!!!

Try booking the Boathouse through Open Table instead of through Disney (as recommended by Josh at EasyWDW)

 

[intertile]

Thanks for the tip about the boathouse. Going through open table was able to book right away.

I had the same issues with MDE trying to get ADR's...I made a post about it as well in another thread. The only reservation I didn't get wad BOG on the 29th of November...don't have a high confidence since that night is the Christmas party. Never know...the rest worked out for me after multiple tries over 2 days.

Good luck, its very aggravating

 

[CMNJ]

I've been trying to get a reservation for Dine with an Imagineer at the Brown Derby for multiple dates in Oct.and Nov. and there's nothing available. Seems impossible that every date is already booked so I'm wondering if it's not longer being offered. Anybody know?

It is definitely still being offered-I got a reservation for my husband for late Oct right at 180+7 (our length of stay)
I think the issue you are seeing is that there are only a total of 36 slots per week (12 slots per lunch and only on mon, wed, fri) and it is very popular. When I was looking it appeared that there was only a single spot avail the days I was checking (but as we have a toddler I only needed one spot for him). I would subscribe to the restaurant cancellation threads for oct and nov and keep checking Disney's website as people's plans often change.

 

[sssteele]

Thanks for all the encouragement. Will keep trying for my BOG reservation for my 30th and hope for some pixie dust! Happy to report after sending an email about my experience I received a call yesterday from someone apologizing for what I went through with an offer to get us Chef Mickey's reservations for our group of 14 on my boys birthday! Very excited! Nice to know at least someone is listening, doesn't change the frustration with things not working but at least they are trying to make up for it.

I'm only guessing, but I would think it's not easy to book a group of 14...lucky you. Enjoy the celebration.