Extended waits and CC hold

[RachelEllen]

I had this question buried in my other thread, but thought I might ask it directly as well.

My family is not great with long lines/waits, and we gear our planning to avoid them! That means fast passes, maybe avoiding really popular rides, etc. It also means that if an ADR wait is really long (like over 30 past time), we will generally leave. It just isn;t worth the stress for us to wait.

In people's experience, are we going to be charged the no show fee if we do this? Is there any official policy?

 

[Colleen27]

I'm waiting for a response from Disney on this one because we had exactly that experience with our dinner ADR at Crystal Palace and were told by the hostess and manager that we would be charged if we left. The wait was just over an hour past our ADR time, so not a slight delay. I sent a letter snail-mail to guest services not quite two weeks ago about the experience; it remains to be seen if they'll follow up at all.

 

[RachelEllen]

Thanks, please do let us know. I think someone referred to your experience on my other thread.

I have zero problem committing to show up for an ADR, but its unfortunately, not unusual to have prolonged waits, and it doesn't seem right to not at least give people the option of leaving without a charge in that case.

 

[DaisyMaisie]

That is a great question. If they are that overbooked they should be happy to have someone give up their ressie. Seems like once they check you in, you would not longer be charged for a ressie. Since it is not checking in on time that seems to be triggering charges?

If it only happened once I would fight it out until I got a positive resolution. I would suggest asking for a manager right at the scene and if he/she refuses to waive the charges have them initial something that says what time it it. I would think the manager of an overbooked restaurant would want you to leave, and not stay and be miserable.

 

[3happydancers]

We would be curious to know this as well!!!

 

[serene56]

when we went in Sept-- the wait for our ADRs were a little bit much too.
And i mean every one of them. was over an hour wait.

Ohana and Sci Fi were worse with almost the 2 hour waits at each. We spent considerable time waiting. I bet we wasted 10 hours waiting to eat that week.

Next trip if the wait is more then 30 minutes-- we will go elsewhere.

I hope that with making the reservations people can not hold more then one at a time to prevent the over booking of places

 

[ppony]

That's an excellent question I'll be wanting to hear an official response too as well.

But I wanted to post to tell the OP that we always book our ressies close to when the restaurant opens or on the early side of the mail times as oppose dto when most people go and we're never waiting. I think we've once had to wait 10 minutes and that was when we booked a slightly later ADR. So that means for breakfast we book at opening and for dinner we book around 5 or 5:30 and always have excellent fast seating. I am with you on avoiding the stress of waiting. I do the things you do as well and that's why we book the times we do for meals

That said, I think it's obscene to make a guess wait more than half an hour past ADR time and have the kahunas to charge for it. If they overbooked or people stayed too long, then they have no rights in charging a guest that showed up but wants to leave. It's NOT like they didn't show.

 

[RachelEllen]

That's an excellent question I'll be wanting to hear an official response too as well.

But I wanted to post to tell the OP that we always book our ressies close to when the restaurant opens or on the early side of the mail times as oppose dto when most people go and we're never waiting. I think we've once had to wait 10 minutes and that was when we booked a slightly later ADR. So that means for breakfast we book at opening and for dinner we book around 5 or 5:30 and always have excellent fast seating. I am with you on avoiding the stress of waiting. I do the things you do as well and that's why we book the times we do for meals

That said, I think it's obscene to make a guess wait more than half an hour past ADR time and have the kahunas to charge for it. If they overbooked or people stayed too long, then they have no rights in charging a guest that showed up but wants to leave. It's NOT like they didn't show.

Definitely our strategy as well! I'm pretty good at keeping the non themepark lover in our family (aka DH!) happy. However, this trip we invited my mom to join us and she accepted about a month ago, so we had to change a bunch of ADR's.