DL with no dining reservations?

[Tina]

I'm a WDW veteran and know how important it is to make dining reservations during busy times. I haven't been to Disneyland in a few years. My sister and I will be there for 3 nights at the end of June (Tues - Thursday) and we've made no dining plans. I don't expect that we'll want to eat at Blue Bayou, but I'm wondering if we're making a mistake by not making any plans. If we decide to have lunch at the Plaza Inn or dinner at one of the Downtown Disney restaurants on one of these week nights, will we have a horrible time finding a table without a reservation?

 

[disneyfaninaz]

You are going during the middle of the week so it won't be as super crazy as on the weekends. The nice thing about DL is that if you decide one morning that you want to try Blue Bayou for lunch or dinner, you can walk over and make a PS for later in the day.

If you don't have your heart set on eating at any particular place, then you should be fine without making PSs.

Only the sit down restaurants inside the parks take PSs, Plaza Inn does not. Try to to his those places during off hours. Eat a late breakfast/brunch or an early dinner and snack during lunch time. Don't know about the DD restaurants, I know that Rainforest Cafe is very popular so you have to wait at some of those. Again, try to hit them during less busy hours.

 

[JenDisneylandlver]

It depends on where you want to eat. Some places will be completely booked out (like the Blue Bayou) and you might as well forget it! The night we ate there last June people were walking up and were being turned away for the entire day. It also depends on what time of the day, how busy the parks are ect... We almost always get a table at the Rainforest with little wait, and no PS. There are lots of options like counter service, places on Harbor ect... that we eat most of our meals at anyway.

I would highly recommend calling and making PS for the places you absolutely WANT to eat at though.

For this trip we have a PS made for a character breakfast and today hopefully I'll get my ESPN Zone one done as well. The rest we plan on playing it by ear like we always do. But I want my PS made for the places we'd be disappointed if we couldn't eat there.