Dinner Time.... Staying Offsite- need opinion

[SDSorority]

Hi everyone! We're staying offsite this year (eek) and are coming up on the week that I can make our ADRs (also eek). Since we're staying offsite, this will be the first year with a car. Our condo (friend's timeshare) is 5 min south of Animal Kingdom (Westgate), and we're planning on hopping. Here's my question- With all things considered (driving, traffic, ease of parking, hopping around the different parks, crowds, etc....) would it be wiser to make an early dine time (like 4pm-ish) or later (like 7pm-ish)? Or, should we have our 'big meal' in the middle of the day? Does having your TS meal at lunch-ish time make you feel sluggish?: How do you typically plan our your ADR's??

THANKS!!

 

[Meteora]

For us, it depends on whether or not it's a park day. If it is, we usually do our dinner between 4 and 6 so that we have plenty of park time when we're done. If not, we might do closer to 6:30 or 7:30.

We also take advantage of the many efficient, less expensive places we can go off-property.

 

[PlutoLuvr]

We also own at Westgate (the one just north of DTD and just south of Universal). We find our dining to be sooo much easier when we stay off Disney property.

You can make your large TS meals be the lunches. We've done that many times and don't really feel sluggish. It also frees up your evenings and being tied to an ADR somewhere. The way we see it, we KNOW for certain we're going to be in a theme park around lunch time. We don't always KNOW for certain when we're offsite we're going to be in a theme park at dinner time.

Another thing that we find to be easier when staying offsite are trying some of the restaurants at the Disney hotels -- as well as the Universal hotels. It's crazy easy with your own car and coming off I-4 with the signs (as opposed to trying to find certain hotels while you're already in the Disney maze). We'll do breakfast in the timeshare, a light CS lunch in whatever park we're in, come back to the timeshare in the afternoon, clean up, shower and go to dinner at Jiko, Citricos or Tchoup Chop at the Royal Pacific at Universal.

We find we eat later on vacation -- although, we don't have kids, and I would think that would make a difference. We normally eat between 6 - 7 at home, but we like to clean up and recharge at the hotel/timeshare after a day at the parks. We'll make dinner ressies between 7:30 and 8:30 to give us enough time to get where we need to. Lunch ressies (if we're not planning on something heavy for dinner) we'll do around 1:00 p.m. if possible. We also usually only make one ADR per day when we stay offsite, if that.

We do our offsite week every year, and we do a couple small onsite trips throughout the year, too. All things considered, at least in the food/dining department, we MUCH prefer how much easier dining is when staying offsite with your own car. And we eat the heck out of Disney food -- not saying we eat at fern restaurants on I-Drive. We just find it to be much, much easier, simpler and doesn't require the intense dining planning you might feel inclined or pressured to do if you were staying onsite.

Downtown Disney and Universal's Citywalk have restaurants that don't require ADRs for those evenings you and your group just want to wing it.

Have fun!