How to book as a Grand Gathering?

[MommyBryn]

How do you book as a Grand Gathering if everyone is making seperate reservations?

 

[nomolos]

we booked one for our trip last yr. The person planning the trip should be the first one to call and make a reservation. when you call, tell them that you are booking a grand gathering. they will connect you with a department just for that. if i remember correctly you will need the names and ages of everyone in the trip and also need to know how many "groups" of people will be calling to add a resevation. the person who sets it up can make reservation changes for the whole gathering. All of this is from memory so dont flame me if i get something wrong. I do remember that it sounds alot more complicated than it actually is. they will give you a gathering # when you book it and make sure everyone else who makes reservations gives the # when they call to book thier package.

 

[MommyBryn]

Okay, thank you so much! So it's really just a lot of naming people (& ages) on the first call, but then everyone else just gives the number and proceeds like a "normal" reservation, correct?

No also, the only reason we want to be a Grand Gathering is to hopefully have rooms close together. (I know that's not guarunteed though) We won't get "stuck" with any of the other GG stuff, will we? I mean, those are only options that we can CHOOSE to do, correct?

 

[w-family]

We are going down next summer w/ my sister in law and her family ( there will be 13 of us all together) and we wanted to do grand gathering dinner - ie the safari or illuminations. Is it worth it? how do you book it? We haven't been able to find much about it, except that it exists.

 

[MommyBryn]

We are going down next summer w/ my sister in law and her family ( there will be 13 of us all together) and we wanted to do grand gathering dinner - ie the safari or illuminations. Is it worth it? how do you book it? We haven't been able to find much about it, except that it exists.

That's my problem too. Disney is great about making it known, but doesn't give you any clue (at least not one that's easy to find) about how to do it.

 

[timzagain]

Our party of 11 just returned from Disney. We made our arrangements through Dreams Unlimited Travel; we had our travel agent make all our ADR's and she tried her best to secure some of the exclusive Grand Gathering events for us. Unfortunately, we couldn't secure bookings for the events of interest to us! Bummer! We figured that mere fact that the 11 of us were on vacation together was a grand-enough event to make up for the absence of any "real" GG events!

I tried to post a link to Disney's Magical Gathering page but it won't work for some reason. Just do a search on the Disney site for Magical Gatherings for the information on the exclusive GG events. According to Disney, "it just takes 4 easy steps!"

The number for Disney's Grand Gathering specialists is 407-WDW-MAGIC.

Warning - if you are calling long distance, this could be an extremely expensive affair. My sister is still ranting about the amount of time she spent of the line, waiting..and waiting...and waiting, before she actually spoke to someone! Did I mention she was calling from Barbados? Ouch! That was what made us decide to leave any and all dining arrangements in the capable hands of our travel agent!

Good luck with your arrangements! I couldn't persuade anyone in my family to actually wear their Grand Gathering badges that we received at check-in, because as my nephew put it, "Gosh - the thing is about the size of a stop sign!"

BTW, we did get our rooms together. My parents' room and our room were adjoining - which was very convenient! Built-in baby-sitting which we used for a 1 am Wal Mart run! And my parents didn't have the stress of squeezing the kids into their room! My sister's room was right next door; no connecting door though!

 

[daleswife]

My family and I did the grand gatherings safari this past august. It was ok. the safari was at 630pm and all but a few of the animals were hiding by then. The dinner was great though. If you are or have picky eaters they may not like it. My sister and her family or "the ungreatfuls" hated it....long story.....but Rafiki and Timone were there and they had live music and dancing. It was good. I didnt do the illuminations but i did the fireworks voyage and it is definately NOT worth it. I'd love to do illuminations......good luck

 

[MommyBryn]

Thanks everyone! Looks like I'll just plann on being the first to call for reservations. There are 18 of us so we're not really interested in the other stuff, just getting our rooms close together.

 

[sk!mom]

Thanks everyone! Looks like I'll just plann on being the first to call for reservations. There are 18 of us so we're not really interested in the other stuff, just getting our rooms close together.

We did a GG with 21 in June. The first person to call will be given a GG # and will be asked to "name" the group. Each additional group to call can give the GG number and then all the ressies will be linked and the rooms blocked together. Ours worked without a hitch.

Just call the regular reservation number and tell them that you are a GG. They will then give you a seperate number to call for large group dining ressies.