180 + 10 rule

[Colonel W]

Heading to WDW in Feb 2015 for a long overdue visit. I plan on booking the elusive BOG online. Will all my dates (188 days) automatically show up on the reservation calendar when I hit the 180 day mark? Does this happen before or at the 6am start? It may sound trivial but from reading these boards it sounds like every second is precious when attempting to book BOG. Thanks!

 

[wdw4rfam]

When you log in it just gives those dates automatically. My advise, go to the last possible day you can do BOG first, I couldn't get it until day 7 at all, but wasted time looking at day 1-6 in the mean time, and from what I heard it is almost never available the first few days, so don't waste time looking.

 

[bhyer]

Our first day at WDW is January 27, 2015.

On July 31st I logged on at 6 a.m. EST to make my 180 + 8 dining reservations. The dates automatically showed available but every time I tried to search on something it would just say results unavailable at this time. Try again later. I foolishly continued doing this for an entire hour. And yes, I had read how it's best to log out and be "freshly" logged in before attempting.

Then when the phone lines opened I tried calling in. For 20 minutes I kept getting the message that all international circuits were busy. I was very frustrated as I had to get up at 3:45 a.m. my time to begin all of this.

At this point I was thinking I would not get any of my reservations.

I then phoned the technical support line to see if they could help as I thought perhaps I was doing something wrong on-line and I was told there is a glitch in their system that they have "been working on for a long time" where it would only allow you to make a reservation for day 180 on-line. Seriously!!!! I was NOT impressed. The technical support fellow asked if I would like him to put me through to a dining reservations specialist and I said yes please. To my surprise he had someone on the line very quickly and I got every single reservation I asked for. Including BOG dinner for our first day and one other day on our trip. I was sooooo happy.
I was also told the reason the phone lines were so busy that day is because it was the first day they were taking reservations for some food and wine festival stuff.

Hope this helps.

 

[Colonel W]

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. Our first day is Jan 31 so our 180 day mark is coming up. The fact that you got the reservation for your first day at this time of year gives me hope. I will let you guys know the outcome on Monday. Thanks!

 

[Colonel W]

I tried this morning and my dates didn't show up right away. I had to log out and log in again and this worked. Times disappear quickly. I clicked on a 6:30 and it kicked me out. Fortunately when I went back in a 6:35 was available and I got it. I think it is a matter of several people clicking on the reservation at once that causes the time to disappear.