ADR Mulligan - How would you do it differently?

[firkat]

Okay, say you had a chance to do it all again, what would you do differently in terms of your dining plans? Too many ADRs, too few? Eat somewhere twice or not at all. Coordinate better with the parks you would be in? Eat more counter service? What? Also, if you thought your planning was absolutely perfect, would you kindly share your plan and what about it made it so great! Thanks!!!

 

[Mackey Mouse]

How we do WDW will be very different from how others do it. I am not a "dining commando" so we are very flexible on where we eat. We only eat at our favorites and we are flexible on the times. I usually do not book till I get to WDW and then just roll with it. But I am becoming somewhat concerned lately that I am not be able to continue my way of doing WDW..

My faves are Citrico's, Teppanyaki, Brown Derby, Grand Floridian Cafe, and if I am able to hit one or two of them with no issue, than I am happy. Of course, I have been going to WDW for many years so I can be a bit flexible with my plans.

Also, I do try to make my plans for the park I am in.....I try to cut down on the rushing from one park to another to eat. If I do have to travel, I always allow at least one hour to get to my ADR..

 

[kaybird]

How we do WDW will be very different from how others do it. I am not a "dining commando" so we are very flexible on where we eat. We only eat at our favorites and we are flexible on the times. I usually do not book till I get to WDW and then just roll with it. But I am becoming somewhat concerned lately that I am not be able to continue my way of doing WDW..

My faves are Citrico's, Teppanyaki, Brown Derby, Grand Floridian Cafe, and if I am able to hit one or two of them with no issue, than I am happy. Of course, I have been going to WDW for many years so I can be a bit flexible with my plans.

Also, I do try to make my plans for the park I am in.....I try to cut down on the rushing from one park to another to eat. If I do have to travel, I always allow at least one hour to get to my ADR..

While we do make ADRS, like MackeyMouse we have been to the parks many times and are usually able to create a very flexible schedule around eating. We have had good luck with going to a park and calling for ADR's form there also. They are much better able to tell you what is available than the CM's on the phones weeks ahead.

Eating is our best thing!

 

[firkat]

Thanks Mackey Mouse for your reply. You are truly a veteran Dis-er.

For those parents/grandparents or others travelling with young kids, I am curious if you regretted any of your planned choices or couldn't make it to the planned choices because of the times.

(I am not looking to start an argument about whether children should or should not go to fancy restaurants, rather I want to know about your particular experience, please . . .please.)

Also, would you have preferred to do more or less of the character dining thing?

 

[Mackey Mouse]

Anytime, always try to oblige. I am a veteran with no grandchildren so cannot answer that question for you...not yet anyway...

A funny story here, and I think I told it before, my husband and I walked up to the Galley restaurant at the Yacht Club, we were staying there at the YC and tried to get seated for dinner. We were turned away as we did not have a reservation but the place was empty. I was annoyed and went to the customer service area of the Yacht Club and spoke with a younger castmember who did not get it.....but alas a very special castmember was sort of listening and heard our predicament and heard the younger castmember tell us to have room service.. YIKES

She came out from the behind the counter and caught as we were heading to the Dolphin Resort to eat at the old Tubbi's....she said I checked and there are reservations available for the Galley for 5 minutes from now. She made a reservation, gave us the slip, we went back to the Galley and were seated immediately...

Moral to that story is Disney prefers you use their ADR system. We do reserve when we get there and it always works for us... We never know where the day will take us and since we have been so many times, we like to do what we like to do, when we like to do it.

One more thought on the children thing, I have been to Citrico's, fine signature dining, and have had children seated near me eating their dinner very well behaved. I think this way you know your children or grandchildren and you know how they will deal seated for dinner and how tired they are and I would take all that into consideration when making my reservations, but no way, no how, would anyone tell me that I cannot take my grandchildren to one of my favorite restaurants when they are here.

I did the character meals when my children were younger. We do not do them now as, flame me for this one, but I would prefer that spot go to someone with small children. I know adults love character meals and that is fine, just not for us and for the reason I stated.

Oops.. sorry for the epistle. Have a great night and hope you get more responses to your questions.

 

[Kteacher]

We went last summer at the end of July/beginning of August. I had ADRs for each day of our stay- a few days we even had a breakfast and a sit down dinner scheduled. We ended up not wanting to eat so much food when it was so hot out, and I think I canceled 3 or 4 ADRs during our stay. We're going again during the heat of the summer , and I didn't schedule any breakfast buffets this trip.

 

[liamandcaili]

For those parents/grandparents or others travelling with young kids, I am curious if you regretted any of your planned choices or couldn't make it to the planned choices because of the times.

Also, would you have preferred to do more or less of the character dining thing?

Our dinner choices with our then 4 and 6 yo were Raglan Road, Coral Reef, Akershaus, Brown Derby and CG. We would not do Raglan Road, Coral Reef or Akershaus again...for different reasons. The adults did not enjoy Raglan Road as much as we thought we would; DS hated the children's menu at Coral Reef (boxed mac and cheese and frozen pizza); and none of us ate much at Akershaus. The children both loved Brown Derby and CG, and the adults really enjoyed CG.

We did one character meal (Akershaus) last trip and that was enough. We don't do buffets.

We would not rely on CS at all. DS has some food allergies, so the menus are limited for him, and he won't eat most of the available options. We had some real food issues with him this past trip, and we won't repeat them. This means no CS and carefully looking at the children's menus at potential restaurants. It also means bringing lunch into the parks for him. We could not understand why any restaurant would not be able to just make a grilled cheese sandwich.

Obviously, you know your children/grandchildren best so have to decide what is right for them. We found out our last trip that the better the restaurant was, the better they were able to accomodate DS's needs and make it so we all left pretty happy and satisfied. My children actually enjoyed the long breaks in the restaurants too. It was a pleasant break from the busy parks.

Oh, and we found we always got hungry well in advance of our scheduled ADR. We called from the park, and the restaurant was almost always able to seat us earlier. We tried to make our ADRs close to my children's regular mealtime, or earlier.

Good luck!

 

[CamColt]

We usually do 1 sit down a day, and make our ADRs for that well in advance. Sometimes we will do 2, breakfast and dinner.

While most of our favorites are at resorts we like do do those early in the evening after our midday break. Other days if we dont take a midday break we will do our sit down meal during the day (for example, leave Epcot to eat at ESPN, then return).

In the past we have always kept all our ADRs and they seem to work well. We also sort of plan where we will eat for counter service and usually things go according to plan.

DH and I only go to signature restaurants when we have a babysitter along to watch the kids.

 

[firkat]

I really appreciate all the feed back . . . as I sit here trying to plan dinner reservations for months in advance . . . when my family can't decide what to eat TONIGHT . . . well, I figured why reinvent the wheel when I have so many experienced Disers right at my fingertips.

So, I wondered what am I going to regret. Will I regret making too many ADRs or not enough? What if I have all the times screwed up and nobody's hungry or they get hungry earlier and eat and then what? My children have a wide age range: DD15, DS9 and DS 18months. So it is hard to build concensus.

I am curious what YOU regretted and why and if it was perfect - then please share!

 

[firkat]

What about character meals, dinner shows, breakfasts? If you knew then what you know now, how would you have planned it differently?