How hard is it to book ADR's for larger groups?

[AnnabelleTheTalkingTree]

We have a trip scheduled for this coming spring - we are a party of 11. I'm the primary planner and I'm starting to get a preliminary itinerary together. This is far from our first trip, but it IS our first trip with this large of a group (last time we were 7, and I had no problem getting ADR's for the group). It's also our first trip since the 180 day booking window was still in effect. Just out of curiosity I just looked to see if I could get a reservation for 11 60 days from today as if our booking window was open. There was literally ONE restaurant available. Should I be breaking us into groups when the time comes? I'm not sure how to handle this.

 

[RamieGee]

In the past I was able to do this. This time, nowhere allowed this. We had to book two separate reservations (5+5) at close times slots. It gets tricky during ADR booking as everything is filling up. I’ve been told even #s may make this easier, but since you’re 11, that may not help.

If you are doing the booking for the entire group, if you are on separate reservations but linked as friends/family, you will need to book THEIR group first, and then YOUR group. Also, MDE on my laptop let me do this, but I can only book MY party through my phone app for some reason. The app will not let me book for the other family.

Not sure I explained that right, sorry!

Last time I was able to get everything as mostly reservations of 10. It was impossible this time.
Good luck!

 

[SteveH]

I'm going to copy what I wrote for a person with a very similar question yesterday.

Generally for larger groups you are better to try to call 407-WDW-Dine. COVID-19 also brought on some changes in how Disney operated. For social distancing larger tables were split up, so you may want to get 2 smaller table groups that are as close as possible to the time frame of each other. Could be a table of 4 and table of 6. Four top tables tend to be the easiest to get, so it might be a table and 4 and two tables of 3. This is why calling makes it all easier, but the waits can be really long too.

 

[MainMom]

I had no problem booking ADR’s for 11-13 pre-Covid. I haven’t tried it since.

 

[Dakota731]

I can’t get anything larger than eight. So if we call at 7:00 for ADRs is everything gone since people reserved online at 6:00? We all want to sit together and had no trouble precoviid but no luck now

 

[dbtex83]

I just booked ADRs for my group of 10. There are a handful of restaurants that are available for 10 in a single reservation, likely because they have tables meant for that size (Biergarten, Teppan Edo, Boma). And interestingly, Oga's can do a large group reservation.

But I had to break almost all into either 8+2 or 6+4. It wasn't that hard, just takes longer. Most I could get the exact same time for both reservations. A couple are within 5-10 minutes of each other. But like other posters have said, you need to set them up with different lead guests or else MDE will see it as overlapping reservations from the same guest. We used two separate MDE accounts so there was no issue searching and booking reservations at the same time.