Car capacity at Sci-Fi

[chaselovesnemo]

Related question.. so when you make an ADR do you include an infant who will not be eating or taking up a seat or just other members of the party?

 

[KrazeeK120]

Related question.. so when you make an ADR do you include an infant who will not be eating or taking up a seat or just other members of the party?

Yes, they need to be counted for occupancy purposes.

 

[Amelia :)]

OP have you tried modifying your reservation rather than just looking for a whole new reservation for 6? (I know you probably know this but just in case)

 

[DisneyNB]

It may have been pointed out over and over but not by someone who understands how occupancy works.

Occupancy is related to one thing - the ability of people to exit the building in case of a fire. The occupancy of a restaurant will not be lower than the worst case scenario of having a person in every seat + calculations made for wait and kitchen staff plus managers based on the size of the restaurant and the size of the kitchen. You design your restaurant and then you design your exiting so you can get everyone out... or if you start with an existing space and can't modify the exiting then you design your space to hold as many people as you safely can. By "exiting" I mean how big not only the exit doors are but also the PATH to that door is as well as maximum distance to an exit from any given point in the restaurant. Disney did not design a xxx seat restaurant so that they are breaking fire codes if more than say 80% of xxx seats are filled. These restaurants are designed to be filled. You are not going to have the fire marshal come shut you down because you are utilizing your entire capacity. That would be an incredibly stupid and inefficient way to design a building.

This is something else I see here all the time from participants here who speak it like gospel but without an understanding about how it works. No you cannot legally or ethnically overload a space beyond capacity... but exiting from spaces are designed to handle a worst case scenario of being utilized at 100%. The only times this is really an issue is when you are calculating standing room in some place like a club or even a theater, because you allocate a certain number of square footage to people standing that is more than they actually occupy and can basically pack people in like sardines and be in a situation where you can't get everyone out in case of a fire. In fact, fires at nightclubs were always the precipitating incidents for major changes in fire codes. Restaurants are pretty easy because there is a straightforward way to calculate the number of occupants. There is no way that having 6 people at a table designed to hold 6 is going to put you over the occupancy limit for the restaurant. Maybe there is some scenario where every seat IS completely filled and every last occupant is accounted for when adding together with the staff and if you have to grab chairs from somewhere else and add seats you would go over your limit. It's not likely but I suppose it is possible.

What you say just plain makes no sense. Can you imagine the logistical nightmare if the safety of people at Disney depended entirely on restaurant staff maintaining a head count of the number of people in a restaurant at any given and started turning people away at some fraction of the total capacity of the restaurant? If people show up or linger longer... this is a moving target. It makes zero sense for them to have to do that. Rather there are a certain number of seats in the restaurant and they fill them up as much as they can because the building is designed to safely exit that many people... and empty seats in a restaurant is money not being made. If you're squeezing in more tables or adding more seats in the aisle and impeding exiting ability in case of an emergency by squeezing down an exit path by putting obstructions in its way, that is an entirely different thing (the width of aisles are set by the number of people who must use it to get out of the building in a certain amount of time). But putting a 6th body in a car decided to hold 6 bodies is not going to warrant a citation from the fire marshal.

Just because someone repeats something they have read on the boards over and over does not make it true. it just makes it much repeated.

Great explanation, this makes total sense to me. Thank you.

 

[Micca]

OP have you tried modifying your reservation rather than just looking for a whole new reservation for 6? (I know you probably know this but just in case)

You know it just occurred to me today that I should also be trying that tactic. Thanks for the reminder!

 

[hakepb]

A 5 reservstion could be filled at one of the picnic tables in the back (i think they sit 4s and 5s there) so that's why a 5 group may not get a car. Again the restaurant does have to deal with capacity so yes in theory your family might fit at the table you were given but that doesn't account for people who may be shoving 3 in a row when the count is for 2.

I'll mention I've only been denied at Be Our Guest. We were flat out told no once and the second time we tried they begrudgingly said yes but that it would make our wait for a table go up significantly.

There are a few 4 cars (if I recall)
But I was under the general impression that ADR's got cars, and walk ups get tables.

 

[eeyoreandtink]

There are a few 4 cars (if I recall)
But I was under the general impression that ADR's got cars, and walk ups get tables.

This is not 100% true. Often, there is no space for walkups. A Reservation doesn't guarantee a car, although they do try. We have been seated at a table with a reservation, we were however asked if we wanted to wait for a car (another 30 min).