Do you think the dining plan is better...

[kelleigh1]

Do you think the dining plan is better during the "off-season" than during peak times?

I think for obvious reasons, as far as getting ADR's it would be better during off-peak times. But I was also thinking that it may work better for those times of year when the parks close a little earlier.

I see that a lot of the complaints about the dining plan involve either having to make ADR's or having to plan your entire day around the ADR. In my thinking, it would seem that on the days the park closes early, the dining plan would be more effective because you could make your dinner ADR's for park closing or after.

Am I crazy?

 

[JimMIA]

No, you're not crazy. We usually go in May and November, and we just don't have the crises many report here with ADRs.

We DO make our ADRs for Le Cellier and character dining a couple of months out, but for the rest of the meals, we often wait until pretty late in the process. During our May trip, for example, we had made an ADR for the Norway princess dinner, but then had two additional relatives decide to join us two weeks out. We had to change our scheduled time, but other than that we had no problem.

I think another thing that makes my ADR job easier is we like to eat later in the day. Many people want to eat at 5-6 PM, and obviously not everyone can eat at the same time. We actually prefer to eat around 8 PM, so we are usually able to get ADRs at that time.

On the other hand, we no longer go in December because of the difficulty getting ADRs we want without the Candelight Processional packages. If we were going to do CP, we'd go then, but otherwise, we go earlier.

Needless to say, we wouldn't go during free dining on a bet!

 

[Minnie0107]

No matter if you are on the dinning plan or not you still need to make ADRs We went early December and the crowds were not bad, but the restaurants still filled up. B/c in my opinion there are some good restaurants and some not so good one I made my reservations about 2 months early ( We still did not get into Le Cellier) The other couple that went with us did not. They ended up not being very happy with the restaurants they had to eat at. My advice would be to always make ADRs, scheduling around them is just a small price to pay to get into a good restaurant without waiting for 2 hours!

 

[kelleigh1]

Oh yeah, we definitely made ADR's. Our 180 day mark was yesterday and we are booked...including Le Cellier. I don't think I'd do the DDP without ADR's, but I just meant in terms of not feeling that panic of needing to make ADR's at 180 days out, but having more ability to wait until it's closer.