Anyone ever gone ADR-less?

[ejhall]

We're going to WDW the last week in Sept on the free DDP and we're not making any ADR's!

Don't get me wrong, I love to plan! But I just can't see planning our days down to that much detail and then stressing over having to be at a certain place at a certain time. I have to do that every day at work, I'm just not going to do it on vacation! We've decided we will eat wherever we can get a table whenever we're hungry.

 

[Ms. Belle]

Not completely, but there were days when I hadn't made any ADR's and called WDW dine and asked them what they had open for that night. That was how I ended up going to Boma which I had never been to before. The only problem was getting a good time; I wanted to eat around 7pm and there were either very early or late. I ended up getting 7:45pm which I was happy with.

 

[druidia]

I thought about it for this trip, but with all of the buzz about free dining, I chickened out! I just got off the phone with DD and booked 5 ADRs for our Labor Day weekend trip!

Curiously, we had no trouble getting everything we wanted, but we don't always dine at the super popular spots, either.

My DH jokes that I can't be spontaneous on our trips, but he always marvels at how well planned our trips are. Well SOMEBODY is doing the planning, duh!

 

[pixiepower1971]

Used to be able to do that all the time...years ago! Now, we only do it in the off season.

I would suggest that is there is someplace you REALLY want to eat, make an ADR. You can always cancel it. There is nothing worse then being hot and hungry and not being able to find a place to eat.

 

[LadyOmega]

Ummmmm......well, you may not be eating then. Nah, you'll probably be able to find some place to use your credits, but be prepared to wait a good while. And be prepared that you very well may be turned away from a lot of resaturants, as they don't set aside any tables for walk-ins. We prefer to go w/out ADR's too.......but no way would that work for us during free dining. And we aren't even there till the week after free dining, but some ADR's have been very hard to come by. If there's some place in particular you want to eat, I think you might want to make at least a tentative ADR. But make sure you cancel if you change you rmind so someone else can have it!
Hope it works out ok!

 

[Hoopfamily]

We're going to WDW the last week in Sept on the free DDP and we're not making any ADR's!

Big mistake. On our first trip in 2001 we had no ADR. I hadn't even heard of them before I got there. Suffice it to say that we were faced with wait times for some places we wanted to eat that were silly. For instance 1 hour 45 min at 50's prime time cafe. Needless to say our next trip we had adrs and it worked awesome. I will say however you don't always have to make them months in advance. We were able to call on our 2nd trip (2002) and get a priority seating for Breakfastosaurus.

Lastly I'll say this. We're going this october and have booked 4 adr's. We are planning our days around these to a point. MAKE ADR's. MAKE ADR's, Make ADR's.

 

[WI_DisneyFan]

I was there last year during the free dining period (end of Aug, beginning of Sept), and we only made three ADR's before leaving home. One for breakfast at Chef Mickey's, one for dinner at LTT, and one for dinner at Fulton's Crab House. Otherwise we just winged it. Well, we had no problem using all of our TS credits. Now, I'll admit that we did normally plan that morning where we wanted to eat that night and we made ADR's accordingly. And that might go against your anti-"certain place, certain time" mantra, but we never had to go with out dinner because every resturant was booked. Maybe that would be a decent compromise for you. At least you won't have to plan what park you'll be at 180 days in advance, only 10 hours in advance.

Sadly, I think this is going to end up being one of those never-ending debates. Much like "when is the best time of the year to go". One person says the parks in early December are almost empty, others complain about 90 minute waits during that same time period. Some people probably consider a 45-minute wait for a table acceptable, while others are upset if they can't be seated within 5 minutes. In my opinion, I think it really depends on how flexible and tolerant you are. A lot of complaints I hear are that people went to a certain resturant, and were told that it would be a long wait. But what they don't say is if they tried other resturants, or if they were just upset that their first choice was booked solid. Maybe they could have called Disney Dining to find another acceptable place to dine that evening. So if you are flexible in where you are willing to eat, I think you'll be fine.

 

[MICKEEP]

Yes, all the time....before that horrible DDP began.

 

[MrsJobba1]

In August I had a couple of Adrs before i left, but for the rest i just visted the guest services @ at ssr the day before we wanted things and we got what we wanted - teppanyalki and Sci fi.

 

[ejhall]

for all the replies! I like the suggestion of calling for ADR's in the morning for that evening (Thanks, WI_DisneyFan!). We may even decide the night before where we will eat the next evening. We really aren't fussy about where we will eat. There might be a few places we'd like to try, but if they are full, we'll just try someplace else!

 

[goofygirl77]

Dh and I never made ADR's cause sometimes you just don't know what you might be in the mood for that night. Well, that was our attitude up until last october during free dining. After arriving there on Oct 2, and walking around Epcot and the boardwalk for like 3 hours in hopes of finding a TS meal, we realized we needed to plan. As it was, it was very hard to get dining while we were there last year. So this year we planned, we have a few nights without ADR's, but figure we'll use our Counter service meals and get something light those nights. My advice is make a few ADR's. I know when I get hungry i tend to get a little cranky. Who wants to be cranky in WDW!

 

[bluejasmine]

Back in 2003 I did, we were able to get into RFC at DTD, Sci Fi and Captain Jacks with very little wait, now I wouldnt try that now..I wish it were possible to get into many of the restaurants without having to make an ADR so far ahead its nice to be spontaneous sometimes but I do like planning but it would be nice to be tied down to an ADR..

 

[aubriee]

We were there last Sept during the free dining period and whereas the parks were almost empty, the TS restaraunts were packed and were turning away all walk ups. We saw it at every restaraunt we went to. There is no way I'd go during the free dining period without ADRs. Alot of people that normally just do CS will be doing TS. This past Sept there were signs at MK saying no TS restaraunts were accepting walkups and the same sign was up at MGM. At Epcot we saw people turned away at Le Cellier, Coral Reef, and San Angel Inn. I'm sure there were probably others, but I'm not sure. Chef Mickey's and 'Ohannas were also turning away walk ups. We'll be there Sept 22nd-30th and tried for about six weeks to get an ADR at Whispering Canyon (without success). The only ADR we can get for 'Ohannas is at 9:20pm. I'm still calling every day trying to get that one to an earlier time.

If you go without ADRs during the free dining time, good luck! You're going to need it!

 

[n2mm]

If you don't mind eating alot of CS food and fries, you should be OK and if you have a car and can easily drive to other resorts, that too is an option. I personally would not want the STRESS of trying to find a place to eat. My job is stressful and my 5 hours commute to/from work everyday is extremely stressful, the last thing I want on vacation is not knowing where I'm going to eat, or if I can get into a restraurant. I find having ADRs extremely non-stressful and very relaxing. We just returned and had ADRs. There was only one I did not make it to and there is one that I added the day before. You can certainly have ADRs to start with and modify later if you need to. We go to WDW 4-5 trips a year and would never go without ADRs...to me, it's one less thing to worry about. BTW, don't plan to visit LeCellier because while we were there this weekend we asked about availability and was told that they are booked up until October. I guess at this point it really doesn't matter too much as availability is pretty much gone now for most of the popular places, but there is probably some availability at the not so popular places. When checking in last week the CMs again asked if we had made our ADRs and we said yes. The CM said good, because there was not much available in terms of TS left.

 

[pumba]

we never had to plan a reservation before and this last April into May...eleven whole days.......only place we could get into was Biergarten.....and our friends could only get Sci Fi.......so this tells me that they were booked up to the sky....we asked........what do you have available ......which restaurant in a certain time frame.....being a diabetic I do have to eat sometime close to a normal life schedule.....so not a one.......

 

[Laurafoster]

Usually when i go we do not make ADR's - unless its one for something special - like in Sept we did Mickeys Backyard BBQ. We have never had a problem eating in all the places we wanted. However this was before DDP. Now i have an ADR for everyday of our next trip in Dec - my theory is i can always ring and cancel it if i choose not to but its always better to have the option!

 

[madcat]

when we went last year we had no ADRs that being said we got into three TS meals(we were there for 5days) one of them being a character lunch the other was for breakfast at wcc. and the other was lunch at Tony's. That being said, I am making ADR's for this year just because I would like to try a few more places that we didnt last year, and because one night we had been in the Magic Kingdom all day went to Epcot and then back to Magic Kingdom loooking for something to eat and found everything closing up or full. we ended up ordering pizza back at the resort, we were all tired and cranky. not a good start to our trip.

 

[ncseric]

When I went with my parents as a kid, we never ate in the "nice" restaurants due to the costs... we lived at the Electric Umbrella and the Yakitori House in Japan.

The first time I went on my own (Disneymoon) we had every meal planned out and had ADRs for every one of them. It eliminated a lot of the waiting and got us better food -- the fast food there leaves something to be desired. We ended up having to cancel some when my new bride got sick (flu, if I remember correctly), but we already have ADRs for our trip in January. We are also doing the dining plan, so eating at the nicer restaurants isn't as big of a financial burden.

 

[pachelbel9]

I am going on a family trip next month. I was into full blown planning mode, but no one would agree to let me go so far as to plan their meals ahead of time. My parents claim that during past trips they've always been able to get ressies the day of their meal. Then again, they've never been there during free dining. With all of the ADR stories I've been reading on here, I convinced them that we needed to make ADRs for dinner every night. I just made ADRs last week, and had a heckuva time getting what we wanted. I can only imagine what it would have been like if we had waited until we were on site to do ADRs.

 

[WI_DisneyFan]

Geeze, with all of these responses I'm starting to think I just got really lucky last year with going almost ADR-less. Maybe we just eat at an odd time, or maybe we didn't pick the really popular resturants. But I swear we never had any problem with getting ADR's the morning of, and we were there in the middle of free dining time. I'm just confused now.