Hi, I am planning for our vacation oct. 2012. We have decided on several characters meals, & am also curious about the Fantasmic! Dinner Package. We will have the disney deluxe dining, & I know it uses 2 credits. Can anyone comment on personal experience, like lunch or dinner package, restauraunt, the fantasmic seating?? Also on the disney website it said on the reservation page that it will be held on select nights & to refer to the calendar. Anyone know what the schedule is typically like in October? Thank you!
The Fantasmic package uses ONE credit at Mama Melrose (Italian eatery) or at Hollywood & Vine (buffet) The only option which uses 2 credits would be Hollywood Brown Derby. We've usually done dinner around 4:30 to 5:00 (which is about the latest they will even book Fantasmic dinner packages because they want to make sure you get seated, eat, pay up & always have enough time to get to the theater so they won't book later dinners.) This has worked out fine for us -- we eat a very lite breakfast that day, have lunch around 11:00 AM, and then we're hungry for that early dinner. Last January, the Fantasmic show was at 6:30 so the dinner times available were like 3:00...we decided to do a Fantamic lunch reservation instead and had the Brown Derby lunch package (loved the meal). So to make that schedule work, we had a slightly bigger breakfast that day around 7;30 AM, then had that lunch at 1:30. We had a late dinner at 8:30 (late for us, anyway) That worked well since the parks were closing early that night anyway (mid-January, shorter hours on the parks in general)
We have eaten at all three...love Mama Melrose & Brown Derby. Would not return to Hollywood & Vine (so-so food, lousy service and way too crowded/noisy.)
Fantasmic dinner package seating is the far right-hand section in the amphitheater. View is fine from there (all seats in the place have good view, and the way show is presented you miss nothing , regardless of being to the side.) The advantage for us is shorter ramp walk up to the seats (you do not enter at the regular entrance) and also a faster "get away" after the show because we can exit the same place we came in, so actually get out ahead of the main crowd.
The calendar is generally released about 6 months ahead of time...and you'll see the days that Fantasmic is showing. The last couple of years they've cut back on Fantasmic shows to just a couple of nights a week which made the Fantasmic dinner package more valuable because you were guaranteed a seat as long as you got there at least 30 minutes before show time. On the limited schedule there have been times when all of the general public seating was gone 45-60 minutes before the show started and the only seats left were the reserved seating from the dinner package (we've been there twice when that was the case...we were in the reserved section and they were still seating dinner package ticket-holders at 45 minutes out...but general public seating was full and they were steering newcomers to the standing room only sections at the top of the theater.
However, if they switch back to every-night Fantasmic shows then chances are you'd get a seat most any night, so the dinner package deal is not as big a deal.
