ADR the international WDW site sucks

[Thickey]

So I have been looking at booking the fireworks party for my trip in October and I have also been wanting to book Spirit of Aloha. Both of which I have been having major problems booking online. The Fireworks party just gives an error and Spirit of Aloha I don't think even shows up!

I have also found that many WDW links found via google end up in a 404 error and generally being very unhelpful. It turns out that WDW present you with a different site depending on the country you are visiting from.. This makes sort of sense if you are looking to book a trip but I would think it would be easer/better to keep the same site and just swap the booking elements in and out but there you go..

Anyway.. I was playing around last night with US VPN which effectively makes it look like you are from the US.. As I have hotel/tickets sorted I just wanted to sort out some ADRs. I was able to successfully book Spirit of Aloha with no problems (I logged in using my Disney experience account) and made the payment with my USD prepay card.. yay! Fireworks was slightly different as October reservations are not open yet, but I selected a date that was and it would have let me book so it proved the point that I *could* book when the time came.

So in short if you are having issues with making ADRs, or finding some WDW links give you a 404 error then you should try using a proxy/VPN service. I used TunnelBear which is very easy to use and free. It seems that once you login from the US site a cookie gets written so if you are logged in there is no need to fire up Tunnelbear again until you get the non US version of the site show up.

I thought that this may help a few people who could be having ADR booking issues.

 

[flortlebap]

That's useful to know.

I've had an annoying issue where you can't search for restaurants by location, as the search automatically defaults back to every restaurant in WDW! Assumed it was a browser issue but its the same on my iPad or laptop.

I might give your idea a try!

 

[chmurf]

if you don't get to the "my disney experience" website, try another browser.

There is an issue with British ISPs and people from the UK get redirected to the international site (international means "european" in Disney speech)

Now on the proxy issue, that's a good advice to review bookings or access US based information, but there's no way I'd put my credit card details (prepaid or not) through a proxy
I'd rather open my window, and shout my credit card details at the top of my lungs several times in a row, including the PIN code.
It would then be less likely that someone picked those details up than it would be using a proxy (especially if the proxy is advertised as "secured" which basically means that it's monitored and logged) ...

 

[Fantasia Sam]

I've found that if I open the MDX on Firefox or Internet Explorer through the proxy and then disconnect from the proxy and then go into those browsers again then I still continue to get the MDX until I clear my cookies - just another little tip