How hard is it to modify dining reservations?

[ScubaTrek]

We’ll be taking our Daughter to Disney World for her 3rd birthday in February. We will be attending all 4 parks, but are inviting my neice and her son to join us for one park. We are not staying at a Disney resort so we will not have the dining plan.

At this point we’re still not sure which one of the parks they will be joining us for. As we’re trying to decide which character meals we want to take our daughter to, I’ve noticed that some of the venues require credit card reservation, and some (like Cinderella’s Table) actually require advance payment.

I want to make our reservations soon, as I’m seeing how quickly availability is disappearing, but as I said, we’re not sure which park they’ll join us for, and our plans may change. I have 2 questions –

1. For the venues that just require a credit card on file, is it a big deal if I made reservations for 6 but only show up with 4? Is there a way to reduce the number in the party on the reservation after I make it?

2. For the venues that require pre-payment – If I pre-pay for 6, can I get a refund if we’ve only got 4? Can I reduce the number on the reservation and get a refund in advance?

First trip to Disney with our daughter, and first trip doing advance meal reservations. Just trying to make this go smoothly.

 

[MHSweb79]

It can be very difficult to add people to your reservations. For any non-CC reservations you have, I would suggest making them for 6 people. It's no problem at all to show up with fewer folks- we've done it several times and the CM's have never batted an eye.

As for the credit-card ADR's, I would call & ask what the cancellation policy is. You probably have 48 hours or something like that, but I've never done it so I don't know. I'm sure someone will be along who knows for sure. It would probably be printed right on your confirmation as well.

 

[#1eeyoregirl]

I agree that it is very difficult to add an additional person. We went through this on our last trip. We had all of our ADRs booked at the 180 days and about 2-3 weeks before the trip another person decided to go. I called and we were only able to add her to one (Chef Mickey's). She tried to walk up and get into some of the other ones and some were able to accommodate and others said they did not have room. I would go ahead and book at the larger party size or maybe try to narrow it down more on the exact day they will be joining you (esp if you are planning CRT).

 

[purple figment]

For the reservations with a credit card guarantee as long as someone shows up for the reservation you will not be charged for the missing people. The cancellation deadline is addressed as well. Here's a link to the Disney Dining FAQs. The ones about the cc guarantee are at the end:

http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/faq/dining/

For CRT I would call and reduce it to the number of people who will be going once you know for certain.

 

[peabody58]

We easily added from '2 people' to '4 people' at 3 TS ADR's recently for our Oct trip.