Extra Reservations?

[hawkeyes1024]

We are planning a trip to Disney World in October with our two young children. We will be there 8 days, and have NOT gotten a hopper pass but instead are just planning our days for where we will be. We did get the FREE dining plan.

This is our first time using the dining plan, and we have made a sit down reservation for each day planned to the best of our ability around where we will be. A friend of ours who frequents Disney once a year, says we need to make "extra reservations" for a backup plan in case our plans don't work out, and just to give us other options.

To me that seems like a lot of extra work since it was hard enough to plan the first round of reservations, and also, there are not a lot of reservations to be found (at least not ones that are of interest to us). Plus trying to keep them all straight and cancelling those extras while on vacation sounds like a headache.

Is this normal to make these extra reservations? Do I really need to do this?

 

[TDC Nala]

This is not something that WDW guests are encouraged to do.

For one thing, there are 20 restaurants that require a credit card hold. If they're not cancelled at least a day before, you are charged $10 per person for not showing up.

It is also considered a breach of etiquette toward other guests to be holding restaurant reservations that you will not be using. It is recommended that you cancel them as soon as you know that you will not be using them.

 

[OrangeCountyCommuter]

And the "extra" is why they started charging IMHO. So your friends are now at risk of being charged for their rude actions LOL!

Seriously, you probably won't wind up eating a TS meal every night I would think about cutting that down. If it's your first time and you have kids they aren't going to want to give up fun every day for "food"

 

[cobright]

I'm sorry that your friend is a lout.

 

[jennylyn_b]

We book and keep one ADR a night for dinner. Every night we have a nice Ts dinner. We don't change plans and we don't book extras. Booking extras is rude IMO.
If you have adrs and are happy keep them. If you are trying to find new ones go ahead just cancel the ones you don't want and make someone else very happy.

 

[MsLisaG]

I agree, it's rude to make extra reservations - particularly during free dining times when ADRs are scarce to begin with. I'd stick to your plan and ignore your friend.

 

[CanWeGoNow]

Also, isn't it Disney policy that you can't make more than one dining reservation within a two-hour window?

 

[TDC Nala]

Also, isn't it Disney policy that you can't make more than one dining reservation within a two-hour window?

Yes, the Disney reservations website will not allow the same person to make concurrent reservations within two, two and a half hours of each other. The guest would be prompted to cancel the earlier reservation.

 

[RookieLady]

Yes, the Disney reservations website will not allow the same person to make concurrent reservations within two, two and a half hours of each other. The guest would be prompted to cancel the earlier reservation.

Be careful. There was a glitch with this last week. I made a reservation at 1900 Park Fare last week for 10:15 am, because I wanted a later time. I was not prompted to cancel my existing 9:00 reservation. I had to do that independently, which is different than what I normally experience when I am making changes. I only mention it to make sure folks don't get a charge for failing to cancel.