Dinner reservations necessary last weekend in January

[donkthemagicllama]

Hi,

We're staying a couple nights at Cabana Bay at the tail end of a WDW/DCL trip at the end of January. We've only stayed on site at Universal once before, quite a few years ago. Back then it was off season and the place was nearly deserted.
Do you think we'll need to make dining reservations, or will we be OK doing walk ups?

Since we're not as familiar with the area, we'd like to just do walk ups, but don't want to be stuck waiting for an hour for a table with hungry kids.

I think we'd rather eat at city walk or at the hotels than in the parks if that makes a difference.

Thanks for any and all advice!

 

[macraven]

Hi,

We're staying a couple nights at Cabana Bay at the tail end of a WDW/DCL trip at the end of January. We've only stayed on site at Universal once before, quite a few years ago. Back then it was off season and the place was nearly deserted.
Do you think we'll need to make dining reservations, or will we be OK doing walk ups?

Since we're not as familiar with the area, we'd like to just do walk ups, but don't want to be stuck waiting for an hour for a table with hungry kids.

I think we'd rather eat at city walk or at the hotels than in the parks if that makes a difference.

Thanks for any and all advice!

at the end of january both parks close either at 6:00 or 7:00 pm
for the 30th and 31st, both parks close at 6:00 pm.

for the 26th to 29th, 7:00 pm closing.

lombards, finnegans do take reservations but i don't think it wil be necessary for a late afternoon period.

city walk reservations can be made on open table.

the only time i have made a reservation for city walk has been for saturday nights.
i avoid waits with a ressie.

the 3 deluxe hotels have restaurants on site.
Bice, Palms do take walk in's, but if you are going on saturday night, a reservation might be a good thing.

if it were me, i would plan on a walk up unless it was a saturday night after 7:30pm

 

[goofy!]

Hi,

We're staying a couple nights at Cabana Bay at the tail end of a WDW/DCL trip at the end of January. We've only stayed on site at Universal once before, quite a few years ago. Back then it was off season and the place was nearly deserted.
Do you think we'll need to make dining reservations, or will we be OK doing walk ups?

Since we're not as familiar with the area, we'd like to just do walk ups, but don't want to be stuck waiting for an hour for a table with hungry kids.

I think we'd rather eat at city walk or at the hotels than in the parks if that makes a difference.

Thanks for any and all advice!

We were there during the busy Holiday season. We never made dinner reservations and never had a wait over 20 minutes. New Years Eve, we had a 15 minute wait at Finnegans at 7pm.

The only restaurant we encountered that absolutely had to have reservations was Mythos. They were only taking reservations till 4:30 and after that would take walk-ups.

Make sure you tell them you are an onsite guest. At most (not all) of the restaurants, you get the equivalent of Express Pass and jump to the head of the list.