Family dinner reservations, 3 first timers, 4 not first time

[Fantasia79]

My wife and I are taking our daughter (will be 2.2 m at time of Trip) to Disney for the first time this June. I've got my Dad and his wife with us for 3 days (have never been to Disney), and my mom and her husband with us for 4 days. One day overlapping grandparents.

Currently, my daughter eats like clockwork. Her tastes change frequently. Everyone is a pretty adventurous eater. Plan is to take daughter back to the room daily after lunch for nap/rest.

Here's what I've got booked for meals:

Arrival day 1: dinner at Artist Point

Day 2: breakfast at Boma
Dinner at Coral Reef

Day 3: lunch at Via Napoli
Dinner at Garden Grill

Day 4: breakfast at Kona Cafe
Dinner at O'Hana

Day 5: breakfast at Be Our Guest
Dinner at Liberty Tree

Day 6: breakfast at 1900 Park Fare
Lunch at Skipper Canteen

I've never brought a little one, so I'm asking a lot of advice and doing a lot of research.

Might cancel Kona & skipper. Missing meals we're planning quick service or breakfast in the room. Plan was to guarantee a table for the entire group during peak meal times (also my daughters peak times). She has my wife's hangry tendencies.

What am I overlooking?

 

[_auroraborealis_]

Doing 2 TS a day will have you sitting and eating 2-3 hours per day. You comment that your child's schedule is good and she eats well, but my question would be if she typically sits through 3 hours of meal daily (plus another meal for that QS or in-room).

That would be my concern. Even families who are really good about family mealtimes rarely are spending 2-4 hours a day at table.

 

[martikus]

We found afternoon breaks too exhausting with a kid. We always do rope drop and go until tired which is about 3 or 4. Then back to room. If we are rested maybe dinner at Disney springs or something. And child to bed as close to regular bedtime as possible. Yes it means we don't see any evening stuff but we can do that when he is older.

I think you have way too many meals. I find even one sit down a day too much with a kid. We would pick 2-3 for entire trip. If your child isn't scared of the characters those will Be the best meals - not food wise but experience wise.

My best advice is be flexible. Our first trip when DS was 4 he HATED rides but LOVED charCters. So we embraced the fact a lot of our trip was standing in line to meet characters. At 7 all he wanted was rides. It is really fun to see it all through kids eyes.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Everyone does Disney differently but for us that would be A LOT of sit down meals. Depending on where you are staying it also seems like a lot of time will be spent in back/forth transit, especially considering the daily nap.

Neither of my kids were/are particularly great at restaurants at that age (I have a 2 and 6 year old). I cringe at the thought of taking any of them on your schedule, but again, that's just us. We tend to do a TS every day or two.

I used to book a bunch of ADRs in advance but then found I'd drop a ton of them once we got into the rhythm of the trip.

 

[IrishNYC]

I personally couldn't do more than one TS per day. We didn't do WDW with DD at that age (I assume you mean 2+ years old, not months!), but for all our vacations at that age one sit down meal per day for a week long vacation was enough. Even now, DD is 7 and whether we are at Disney or not, one sit down meal per day is enough. It takes too much out of our day to sit down and be waited on more than once.

 

[POTCfan]

I've done 2-3 sit down meals per day when on the Deluxe Disney Plan, but the point of that trip was to experience the restaurants. But if your looking to experience parks, I would never do that. The nice thing about your reservations is that Garden Grill and 1900 Park Faire are both character dining, and O'hana has some fun games that kids can participate in, so I wouldn't consider your reservations as bad (it will take away from park time, but will add to the overall Disney experience, in my opinion). I might be the odd man out, but I think your reservations are fine (unless you are looking for as much time in the parks as possible). If anything, I might take away Kona for breakfast - but I'm sure others would disagree. I do agree with a previous poster that maintaining a regular sleep schedule for a kid is important. If you found that you weren't getting as much park time as you need at the beginning of the week, you could always cancel reservations at the end of the week when there.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

You don't mention when and how you are arriving, where you are staying or what your park plans are, so it's a little difficult to comment on the transit time issues for your reservations. You have a lot of resort breakfasts which, unless you have a rental car, will use uber or are staying at the resort, could make transportation problematic and cumbersome in the mornings.

I agree with the others that you have a lot of TS meals planned and some quite close together. Personally, there is no way I could eat breakfast at 1900 and then lunch at Skippers or lunch at Via and then dinner at Garden Grill. Also, when my DS was 2 and touring WDW, his nap schedule went completely awry. There were some days we made it back to the resort and everything was on schedule. Other days he would fall asleep in the stroller and DH and I would then just stroll (EP was great for this) or find a quiet spot and wait out the nap. Some days he would nap much longer than expected. It threw our evening plans completely off to the point that I stopped making dinner ADR's and we would just wing dinner each night - either QS or any last minute TS ADR I could snag.

If it were me, I would reduce down to one TS per day and ditch any ADR's that would require inconvenient resort-to-resort transportation. I would most likely keep lunch and/or dinner ADR's, but make sure the dinner ADR is late enough that an unexpected long afternoon nap wouldn't interfere with it. I found when DS was younger, a lunch ADR was the perfect way to unwind after a morning in the parks. We would eat breakfast in the room, tour the park, eat lunch and then typically try to get back to the resort if he didn't fall asleep in the stroller first.