Is it possible to do sit down meals in June without ADR's?

[kakiegirl]

Just wanting some advice as we have never tried to do this. We are going for 10 days in June with the meal plan. We did this last year but I made ADR's for all of our sitdown meals. Well DH did not like the having to be somewhere at a certain time every day so this year he wants us just to make a few ADR's for the places we know we want to go and just wing if for the rest. Is this possible if we go during off times like the middle of the afternoon, or am I going to regret it? I have to admit it would be nice to be able to be a little more spontaneaous about our eating. Now I know not to even try Character meals or CRT but I thought it might be possible with some of the others.

 

[Bob P]

Hi,

Yes, it's possible, but it's not recommended. Just be flexible with dining times and restaurants. And there will be some restaurants where it will not be possible. Don't forget, June is pretty busy.

The Dining Plan has changed the playing field at WDW when it comes to sit-down restaurants.

 

[CoolDisneyCat]

Like the previous poster said, it is possible. If you have your heart set on someplace, though, definitely make an ADR. A busy place like CP, La Cellier, or 'Ohana would be a must-ADR sort of place, too. But if you stick to the less-crowded places at the less-popular times, you might be ok.

 

[DCDisney]

If you have a small party and are willing to eat at off times you may be able to work it out. Why not make the ADRs each day and if you don't feel like doing that place that day just cancel it once you know you have somewhere to eat? If you were just OOP it wouldn't be that big a deal if you ended up eating a CS one night but with the 2008 DDP you could easily end up losing money if you don't do TS dinners. It would be even more frustrating than being overscheduled in my opinion to have to run around to a resort TS at whatever time you could get day of just to use up TS credits if you can't find places near where you are in the parks.

Yvonne

 

[MissionMouse]

If you are a party of two you could find a TS opening depending on the season, restaurant, day of the week and time. The larger the party, decreases your chances.

You should plan on eating at times which are not prime eating times and even then you may frequently be told we are not excepting walk ups today. If you can accept the chance of being rejected from multiple TS restaurants in a row, as your group is wanting to eat, then you will be fine. ADRs (priority seating, etc.) were required to eat at TS, during prime dining times, way before the dining plan group entered the picture. Now with the increase in the TS dining population it is even more important to make ADR's if you want to eat at a specific time or restaurant.

 

[everylastbreath]

I'm with your husband, I hate to make reservations, like to eat when/where I feel like it, but when we went to Disney in August, I did make a few ADR's for the places that we absolutely couldn't miss, such as Chef Mickey's (twice, actually once for breakfast and then on my GS's B-day for Dinner) and a Fantasmic Dinner.

This would be my suggestion and what worked for us, if there was a place that we would like to eat at but didn't want to reserve and be pinned down, we ate there for lunch instead of dinner, it's much easier to walk in without ADR for lunch. Once we knew where we would be for the day/evening, we would call and see if there was anything available for that evening (usually we did very late reservations, because we did eat some pretty large lunches/brunchs. But this worked great for us, we ate everywhere we wanted to eat and wasn't totally pinned to a reservation.

 

[lynninpa]

We went this past June and I thank my lucky stars we had ADRs! All of the boards they have set up outside customer service in the parks basically all said "FULL" for every place except Tony's, Nine Dragons, and Mama Melrose's. I called several times from our room on various days to get somewhere we wanted for one we had cancelled but never even got in on a cancellation.

 

[disnut8]

My husband never wanted to make any reservations before any trip because he didn't want to be tied down at all. This was way before the dining plan. It was just the three of us and my husband kept insisting that we didn't need reservatons. He quickly changed his mind. And we went during June back then.

Now, if we want a table service meal, we always have a reservation for it. It doesn't matter for where or what time or when during the year. We get one. And it's just the two of us.

We have had luck, though, we just calling and getting a last minute reservation once we are there. But we still have a reservation and we don't walk up.