Club Level and ADR

[Tessaf]

We currently have a club level reservation booked for an upcoming trip and have just a few questions. I've read online through forums and other websites that you have access to the Itinerary Planning Office (IPO) which can help book ADR. Has anyone every used them to book the ADR? We want to do a lot of the character meals and BOG and I wasn't sure if we had a better chance of securing the reservations by booking ourselves or by going through the IPO. If you went through the IPO, did you get to request times that you are hoping to having the dining reservations and were they good at reserving you reservations close to your requested time?

 

[Sue M]

IPO has no better chance of booking ADRs than you do. Years ago they used to. I book my own. If you don’t have the time or inclination let IPO do it. You can give them time frames for times you prefer. Recently they’ve centralized IPO, so I don’t have any experience with new system. They used to be Resort centered. No longer.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

IPO has no better chance of booking ADRs than you do. Years ago they used to. I book my own. If you don’t have the time or inclination let IPO do it. You can give them time frames for times you prefer. Recently they’ve centralized IPO, so I don’t have any experience with new system. They used to be Resort centered. No longer.

Yes, this. I've never had luck with CL booking my ADR's and gave up years ago. If you are available at 6 am to go online or 7 am to call on your 180 day, I would do it yourself.

 

[Mousemommy1]

The centralized IPO won’t do it until they open at like 9 or something.

You’re better off to wake up and get it done early.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

We currently have a club level reservation booked for an upcoming trip and have just a few questions. I've read online through forums and other websites that you have access to the Itinerary Planning Office (IPO) which can help book ADR. Has anyone every used them to book the ADR? We want to do a lot of the character meals and BOG and I wasn't sure if we had a better chance of securing the reservations by booking ourselves or by going through the IPO. If you went through the IPO, did you get to request times that you are hoping to having the dining reservations and were they good at reserving you reservations close to your requested time?

FYI, to add to @Sue M's comment, they did away with the IPO setup late 2016, although you do still see a lot of "IPO" references around here and other planning websites.

It was replaced by a new service: Disney Signature Services (DSS). Basically the same thing as the IPOs, it's just a centralized planning office/resource dedicated to CL (and select other) guests. It's not a resort-specific group like the IPOs were.

Here is contact info:

Disney Signature Services
(407) 939-7777
disney.signature.services@disneyworld.com

I agree with the others in that, generally speaking, DSS does not have any special access to ADRs that you otherwise can't see online yourself. You will 'occasionally' read a report on the CL thread of DSS really helping out / finding something hard to get, but that's not necessarily the norm.

Also generally speaking, those that do use DSS to make all their ADRs at 180 report positive experiences. Although I tend to think that 'many' DISers are more controlling of their reservations and don't necessarily utilize DSS for this. It's just so much easier to do it yourself sometimes.

Hope that helps! Happy to answer any questions.

 

[h&D3]

When we went back in 2013, and stayed club level at AKL, we used their IPO office for our reservations. Yes, I was scared to give that portion of the trip planning up (sorry, but yes, a control freak here), but it worked out really well. We stayed for 6 days but I sent my list in that included 10 days worth of reservations. We got all of the reservations that we asked for... for all 10 days. No questions asked and they even got some of the hard ones for us as well, all at the times we requested. Heck, when we checked in, the same IPO person that I had been emailing with, met us up on the club level and checked us in. She said if we needed anything during our stay just to let her know. I really felt like we had personalized service on our last trip. Which was AWESOME!

This time, after finding out that it switched to DSS, something inside me felt uneasy about having them make our reservations. So I sent my list of reservations anyway. They called me a few days before our 180+6 timeslot and I gave them my cc info to hold any reservations.
Well, just because I felt uneasy, I was up and online a 5am CST and we made our own reservations... 180+6. I emailed DSS afterwards and told them I made the resies ourselves and which ones that we secured. However, we couldn't get BOG and one other online. (which I did eventually get after I kept on checking and I lucked out) A few days later, I discovered that DSS had actually double booked me for a resie. Once again, no big deal, but it could have been if I didn't catch it until we arrived. One DSS person told me no, that I couldn't get the entire list of reservations that we had asked for, but would book the first 6 days for us. Then another DSS person went ahead and made all the reservations on our list. So I really didn't know how to respond to that. I guess it's like everything at Disney, it depends on who you talk to. Maybe because they open at 9am I felt more like I had a better chance of getting the reservations and the times we hoped for. Using DSS, I sort of felt like I was getting the left overs.

I don't know but I really didn't find DSS as helpful as when it was the IPO right at AKL. (and maybe because it was directly at AKL that made it different back in 2013). Not that I expected the personalized service that we got the last time we were there, it's just this felt like it was different in some way. Going forward, I still plan on making all my own ADR reservations and only use DSS to alter anything if needed.

~D