We ate at Coral Reef on 9/4 which was the last night of our vacation. We had been on the fence about canceling this since it was our last night and there were many things we wanted to do, but we were in the Seas pavillion earlier in the day and my DD, who is 3, was enjoying the fish so much, so we decided to go. I did call and see if we could get a later reservation, since we wanted to get in some extra pool time, but was told that nothing else was available. So we cut our pool time short and raced back to get there for our 6:00 reservation.
When we walked in at 5:50, the place was mobbed with people even sitting on the floor waiting. Upon check in, I was told that they were running 25-35 minutes behind reservation times. We were told to wait in the lobby (which was so crowded you could barely move) or just outside the door. We went outside to wait but we couldn't go far and it was crowded out there too. (This was a big difference from when we waited at Rose and Crown a few nights before. There, we were given a pager, and were told that we could go anywhere in the UK pavillion while waiting to be seated. That wait only turned out to be about 15 minutes and once we were seated we had excellent service.)
Finally it was about 40 minutes after our reservation time and I went up to the desk to find out how much longer. A lot of people around me were irate and a lot of complaining could be heard. While I was waiting to check, DH and DD came in and got me - our name had been called.
We were seated at a table in the back of the restaurant, which my now very cranky and tired of waiting DD was not happy about, but DH and I were just happy to be seated finally. We had hoped to have a little more Epcot time after dinner and the longer we waited, the more that was dwindling. We sat at our table for more than 15 minutes before our waitress approached our table.
When she finally came over to take our drink order, I knew that the window of opportunity for us to have a sit down meal with a 3 year old was fading fast so, I asked her if we could give her our whole order then. Her reply was no, I can only take drink orders now. At this point, my DH jumped up and said that's it, we're leaving! We fully intended to leave and go find a CS meal but she convinced us to stay at that point, took our whole order, and asked the manager to come speak to us. We complained that the restaurant was obviously overbooked and I also told him how I had wanted to come later and was told 6:00 or nothing. He told us that he tells TPTB about this situation every night but they still overbook the restaurants and there is nothing he can do about it. He comped us for the wine we had already ordered and told us he would keep an eye on our meals, which were actually wonderful, but our mood was spoiled by that time. We wound up finishing our dinners and skipping dessert there. We then walked over to France and got wonderful pastry - but that was around 8:30 and there really wasn't time to do much more. We watched Illuminations and then went back to our hotel, but the whole thing at Coral Reef really put a damper on our last night. We were on the dining plan but our feeling now is that we will not do the dining plan again and will eat mostly counter service meals on our next trip, with the exception of a couple of character meals for DD.
This trip we felt like our meals were dictating everything else that we did or didn't do on our vacation. I did try to plan the TS meals according to where I thought we would be on a particular day, but especailly with a 3 year old in tow, sometimes your plans change, and we feel that planning all these TS meals 6 months in advance left us very little flexibility, during what is supposed to be a time for relaxation and fun. Sadly, the restaurants there are one of the things we have always enjoyed on our WDW vacations, but it's just not the same anymore with the necessity of these reservations. I remember when DH and I used to go , long before the dining plan, and just walk up to whatever restaurant we wanted and be seated. I guess those days are gone for good.
Sorry this is so long, but I was waiting for someone to ask this question and I guess I just needed to vent. Please have a wonderful vacation and try not to let this happen to you!