Cinderellabride
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 11, 2006
- Messages
- 362
I have sworn by ADR's for years. We plan out every meal on a big spreadsheet, get the dining plan, make our ADR's as far in advance as possible. If we don't get what we want we call every day sometimes multiple times a day (the advent of online ADR's made this a lot easier on our last trip) until we get what we want, which we usually do. I would never consider NOT making ADR's...until now...
On our last trip in Dec, we got free dining, and we upgraded it to the deluxe dining. I didn't listen when people said it was waaay to much. I thought since we like to do character breakfasts and we like sit down dinners and dinner shows we should do it. So we did. Boy was I wrong! My DH, myself, my DS who was 21 months, my DS who was 7 months, my dad, and my DH's parents went. I swear we spent more time in restaurants than anywhere else. For some reason the meals took forever. We missed a lot of things we wanted to do because we spent so much time eating. It was insane. We all agreed next time we would not get the deluxe plan.
This time it will be me, DH, and DS who will be 2 1/2 and DS who will be 16 months. We are booked for basic dining, and of course hoping they do free dining (we are going in September). We decided we will only do 1 TS meal a day. So if we do a character breakfast we will do counter service for dinner. Most days we will use snacks to get something quick for breakfast at the resort.
Our plan was to make ADR's for all of our sit down meals as we always do, but now I'm wondering, and I haven't mentioned this to my husband yet, what if we don't
? What if we just make ADR's for the most important places, the places that are hard to get into without an ADR, and the places that are "must do" for us? Then just play the rest by ear. Eat when we are hungry where ever strikes our fancy at the time? Would that be possible? If they do free dining (or even if they don't) will it be impossible to walk into ANY TS without ADR's? When I used to go with my dad that's what we used to do, or we would make ADR's in the morning when we got where ever we were going that day. We'd either walk to the restaurant (or remember those touch screen computers with tinker bell 
they used to have the front of the parks?). I fear those days are long gone though and that if we don't make ADR's for every TS meal we will have to eat at CS places, and pay OOP because we won't have enough CS credits for that.
On our last trip in Dec, we got free dining, and we upgraded it to the deluxe dining. I didn't listen when people said it was waaay to much. I thought since we like to do character breakfasts and we like sit down dinners and dinner shows we should do it. So we did. Boy was I wrong! My DH, myself, my DS who was 21 months, my DS who was 7 months, my dad, and my DH's parents went. I swear we spent more time in restaurants than anywhere else. For some reason the meals took forever. We missed a lot of things we wanted to do because we spent so much time eating. It was insane. We all agreed next time we would not get the deluxe plan.
This time it will be me, DH, and DS who will be 2 1/2 and DS who will be 16 months. We are booked for basic dining, and of course hoping they do free dining (we are going in September). We decided we will only do 1 TS meal a day. So if we do a character breakfast we will do counter service for dinner. Most days we will use snacks to get something quick for breakfast at the resort.
Our plan was to make ADR's for all of our sit down meals as we always do, but now I'm wondering, and I haven't mentioned this to my husband yet, what if we don't
? What if we just make ADR's for the most important places, the places that are hard to get into without an ADR, and the places that are "must do" for us? Then just play the rest by ear. Eat when we are hungry where ever strikes our fancy at the time? Would that be possible? If they do free dining (or even if they don't) will it be impossible to walk into ANY TS without ADR's? When I used to go with my dad that's what we used to do, or we would make ADR's in the morning when we got where ever we were going that day. We'd either walk to the restaurant (or remember those touch screen computers with tinker bell they used to have the front of the parks?). I fear those days are long gone though and that if we don't make ADR's for every TS meal we will have to eat at CS places, and pay OOP because we won't have enough CS credits for that.
