chaospearl
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2005
- Messages
- 65
Hi folks. I have a horrible feeling that I'm not the first person who's asked this -- that I'm probably not even the 12,000th, but I've searched through five pages of threads and can't find anything to answer the question, and I'm sure we all know how well the Search Function actually functions. So please forgive me if this is one of those common questions that's been answered so many times you'd all like to hit me over the head with an ADR. I honestly did try to find the answer on my own.
Anyway, here goes.
I've been to WDW about five times traveling solo as an adult, and I've never been much for making ADRs. Actually, the last time I seriously looked into it, they were called Preferred Seating or something along those lines and didn't actually guarantee that you'd be able to sit down and eat at the time that you'd reserved. My family and I had a bad experience with that, having made a PS (or whatever the term was) "reservation" for a certain time and then having to wait over an hour and twenty minutes just to be able to shove our way to the bar and get drinks. If I recall, my father had to leave the restaurant -- I want to say it was Coral Reef but don't trust my memory -- and head to a nearby snack cart to grab a lemonade so that I could take my medication. The restaurant's maitre'd gave him an awfully difficult time about allowing the paper cup of lemonade back into the restaurant, so I ended up having to go outside the doors with him to swallow a few pills and then toss the drink and go back inside, during which time the seats we'd had on the waiting-area bench were naturally grabbed up. I had to stand for the next twenty minutes until a very sweet gentleman offered me his seat after noticing the difficulty I was having (I'm disabled, and standing on my feet for long periods of time wearing a double leg brace is REALLY difficult for me -- I had an ECV but we'd chosen to park it outside the restaurant because it was so crowded inside that I felt it would be unforgivably rude trying to manuever a big Disney scooter in there, although I might have reconsidered if I'd had any idea of how long we would end up waiting, because as I said, we understood that Preferred Seating wasn't the same thing as a reservation but none of us realized it could easily be an hour's wait).
Ahem, where was I... well, that's why I've never been keen on ADRs during my recent solo trips, anyway. The other issue is that because my health can change so quickly and unexpectedly depending on how much activity I've had, the heat exhaustion\dehydration factor, fatigue level, number of (prescription) morphine pills consumed, and whether or not it's a blue moon on a Tuesday night, it's extremely difficult for me to guarantee that I'm going to want to eat lunch at precisely 12:30pm on a given day. Heck, most of the time I'm not even totally certain I'll be in a particular park on the day in question; I do start off with a rough schedule in mind of the order that I'd like to visit each park, but if I woke up that morning and felt like I'd been run down by one of the tour buses, it's entirely possible that the schedule got altered on the fly so I could sleep an extra two hours before venturing out. Or that I decided to just cancel the whole day's plans and spend it in the pool with a Tom Clancy novel and a cute waitress bringing me adult beverages. And on the slim chance that I do manage to haul my sorry carcass to Epcot by 12:30pm on the afternoon that I made the ADR at Coral Reef for lunch, and I do need to eat something at that time, I still can't guarantee that seafood is going to sound pleasing. My disability requires me to ingest absolute gobfuls of medications several times a day, the majority of which produce some degree of either nausea or painful stomach cramping. Thank the heavens that I do not actually have an eating disorder to contend with, but I do struggle to maintain a healthy weight because the sad fact is that most of the time I'm too sick to eat, and if I try to force food down when it's not something that feels appetizing, it's likely going to come right back up. I really don't need to be able to write a trip report detailing how vomit-friendly each of the Disney restrooms are, thanks. And there are many, many occasions during which my tummy is feeling just queasy enough that I might be able to keep a little something down if and only if it's a smallish portion of a food that appeals to whatever vibe my digestive system has settled into that day. So it's entirely possible that the very idea of the fried clam strips I was planning on at the Coral Reef is enough to send me running for the toilet, but that I could manage a cup of miso soup and some sesame noodles.
See where I'm getting at here? My question, after all of this totally boring background information... exactly how horrible would it be, on a scale of 1 to 10, for me to make multiple ADRs for the same day with the specific intention of choosing the one that sounds best to me when the time comes and cancelling the others, or cancelling all of them if I'm not able to eat at all? I've given this some thought because I do love to enjoy my table service meals when I'm up to eating, and honestly, even when I'm not, I was born with the moon in Taurus and I take a certain pleasure in sitting at a table with a starched cloth and perusing a menu of food choices, ordering whatever I please and having someone serve it to me on china and then come and discreetly remove the mess when I've finished -- even if all I can bring myself to order is a small green salad and a glass of wine. I'd probably kind of like to sit there for an hour and escape the heat and the noise regardless of whether I'm able to eat at all, but obviously I don't do that sort of thing because I'm not one to waste the restaurant staff's time and money nursing a single ginger ale for an hour.
My train of thought chases itself in little circles when I consider this problem and the track looks something like this: I know darn well that lots and lots of people attempt to eat at TS restaurants every day on the spur of the moment without having made an ADR (walk-ins), and the reason I know this is because I've always been one of them. It is insanely difficult to get into the Coral Reef without a reservation, by the way, and I've tried at least half a dozen times on various days of the week and at different times of day, and never succeeded. So if I make myself a neat little ADR at the Coral Reef one night and it turns out that I need to cancel it an hour before ground zero because I'm locked in The Land's bathroom intensely studying the inside of the bowl in the last stall, it means that at least one of the people who really wanted to experience a peaceful meal next to the big fishtank but didn't have an ADR is going to be able to walk in and not be turned away, due to my last-minute cancellation. On the other hand, it also means that one of the more responsible type people who attempted to call ahead of time and make their own ADR for that night is going to be told there's no availability because I called first and snapped up the last 8pm reservation on the books, even though I couldn't absolutely guarantee I'd be able to show up.
Which is the lesser of two evils? Do I have any right to make a 6pm ADR at the Coral Reef, and an 8pm ADR at Ohana on the same night, fully intending to cancel at least one of them? Do the Disney reservations staff want to throttle people who do that, or are they grateful for a night with a lot of cancellations because it means they don't have to turn away so many of the hopeful walk-ins? Is it unforgivably rude to even contemplate? Should I stick to a single ADR per day and just hope that in an ideal world, my health and my tummy will cooperate to allow me to experience at least half of them? Or do I really have no business making any ADRs at all, given that I can't honestly be even reasonably sure that I'm not just wasting space in the reservations book?
I hope nobody hates me for bringing this up. I really dislike being thought of as a rude or insensitive person -- it's just that I do pay a lot of money to visit Disney World just like everybody else, and it doesn't feel fair to be shut out of all the restaurants and relegated to Old Key West's snack bar because of my sticky health situation.
Thank you for any thoughts on this.
Jenni
Anyway, here goes.
I've been to WDW about five times traveling solo as an adult, and I've never been much for making ADRs. Actually, the last time I seriously looked into it, they were called Preferred Seating or something along those lines and didn't actually guarantee that you'd be able to sit down and eat at the time that you'd reserved. My family and I had a bad experience with that, having made a PS (or whatever the term was) "reservation" for a certain time and then having to wait over an hour and twenty minutes just to be able to shove our way to the bar and get drinks. If I recall, my father had to leave the restaurant -- I want to say it was Coral Reef but don't trust my memory -- and head to a nearby snack cart to grab a lemonade so that I could take my medication. The restaurant's maitre'd gave him an awfully difficult time about allowing the paper cup of lemonade back into the restaurant, so I ended up having to go outside the doors with him to swallow a few pills and then toss the drink and go back inside, during which time the seats we'd had on the waiting-area bench were naturally grabbed up. I had to stand for the next twenty minutes until a very sweet gentleman offered me his seat after noticing the difficulty I was having (I'm disabled, and standing on my feet for long periods of time wearing a double leg brace is REALLY difficult for me -- I had an ECV but we'd chosen to park it outside the restaurant because it was so crowded inside that I felt it would be unforgivably rude trying to manuever a big Disney scooter in there, although I might have reconsidered if I'd had any idea of how long we would end up waiting, because as I said, we understood that Preferred Seating wasn't the same thing as a reservation but none of us realized it could easily be an hour's wait).
Ahem, where was I... well, that's why I've never been keen on ADRs during my recent solo trips, anyway. The other issue is that because my health can change so quickly and unexpectedly depending on how much activity I've had, the heat exhaustion\dehydration factor, fatigue level, number of (prescription) morphine pills consumed, and whether or not it's a blue moon on a Tuesday night, it's extremely difficult for me to guarantee that I'm going to want to eat lunch at precisely 12:30pm on a given day. Heck, most of the time I'm not even totally certain I'll be in a particular park on the day in question; I do start off with a rough schedule in mind of the order that I'd like to visit each park, but if I woke up that morning and felt like I'd been run down by one of the tour buses, it's entirely possible that the schedule got altered on the fly so I could sleep an extra two hours before venturing out. Or that I decided to just cancel the whole day's plans and spend it in the pool with a Tom Clancy novel and a cute waitress bringing me adult beverages. And on the slim chance that I do manage to haul my sorry carcass to Epcot by 12:30pm on the afternoon that I made the ADR at Coral Reef for lunch, and I do need to eat something at that time, I still can't guarantee that seafood is going to sound pleasing. My disability requires me to ingest absolute gobfuls of medications several times a day, the majority of which produce some degree of either nausea or painful stomach cramping. Thank the heavens that I do not actually have an eating disorder to contend with, but I do struggle to maintain a healthy weight because the sad fact is that most of the time I'm too sick to eat, and if I try to force food down when it's not something that feels appetizing, it's likely going to come right back up. I really don't need to be able to write a trip report detailing how vomit-friendly each of the Disney restrooms are, thanks. And there are many, many occasions during which my tummy is feeling just queasy enough that I might be able to keep a little something down if and only if it's a smallish portion of a food that appeals to whatever vibe my digestive system has settled into that day. So it's entirely possible that the very idea of the fried clam strips I was planning on at the Coral Reef is enough to send me running for the toilet, but that I could manage a cup of miso soup and some sesame noodles.
See where I'm getting at here? My question, after all of this totally boring background information... exactly how horrible would it be, on a scale of 1 to 10, for me to make multiple ADRs for the same day with the specific intention of choosing the one that sounds best to me when the time comes and cancelling the others, or cancelling all of them if I'm not able to eat at all? I've given this some thought because I do love to enjoy my table service meals when I'm up to eating, and honestly, even when I'm not, I was born with the moon in Taurus and I take a certain pleasure in sitting at a table with a starched cloth and perusing a menu of food choices, ordering whatever I please and having someone serve it to me on china and then come and discreetly remove the mess when I've finished -- even if all I can bring myself to order is a small green salad and a glass of wine. I'd probably kind of like to sit there for an hour and escape the heat and the noise regardless of whether I'm able to eat at all, but obviously I don't do that sort of thing because I'm not one to waste the restaurant staff's time and money nursing a single ginger ale for an hour.
My train of thought chases itself in little circles when I consider this problem and the track looks something like this: I know darn well that lots and lots of people attempt to eat at TS restaurants every day on the spur of the moment without having made an ADR (walk-ins), and the reason I know this is because I've always been one of them. It is insanely difficult to get into the Coral Reef without a reservation, by the way, and I've tried at least half a dozen times on various days of the week and at different times of day, and never succeeded. So if I make myself a neat little ADR at the Coral Reef one night and it turns out that I need to cancel it an hour before ground zero because I'm locked in The Land's bathroom intensely studying the inside of the bowl in the last stall, it means that at least one of the people who really wanted to experience a peaceful meal next to the big fishtank but didn't have an ADR is going to be able to walk in and not be turned away, due to my last-minute cancellation. On the other hand, it also means that one of the more responsible type people who attempted to call ahead of time and make their own ADR for that night is going to be told there's no availability because I called first and snapped up the last 8pm reservation on the books, even though I couldn't absolutely guarantee I'd be able to show up.
Which is the lesser of two evils? Do I have any right to make a 6pm ADR at the Coral Reef, and an 8pm ADR at Ohana on the same night, fully intending to cancel at least one of them? Do the Disney reservations staff want to throttle people who do that, or are they grateful for a night with a lot of cancellations because it means they don't have to turn away so many of the hopeful walk-ins? Is it unforgivably rude to even contemplate? Should I stick to a single ADR per day and just hope that in an ideal world, my health and my tummy will cooperate to allow me to experience at least half of them? Or do I really have no business making any ADRs at all, given that I can't honestly be even reasonably sure that I'm not just wasting space in the reservations book?
I hope nobody hates me for bringing this up. I really dislike being thought of as a rude or insensitive person -- it's just that I do pay a lot of money to visit Disney World just like everybody else, and it doesn't feel fair to be shut out of all the restaurants and relegated to Old Key West's snack bar because of my sticky health situation.
Thank you for any thoughts on this.
Jenni
I'm not seeing a problem here. There are exceptions to every "rule."
