Did lots of reading on these posts, made sure I had credit card loaded and had a written game plan. We are new to Disney vacations (my husband and I preferred to travel to Europe prior to kids). We have an almost 3 year old and a baby who will be 9 months on our trip. Staying at the end of October including Halloween night.
Since we have such young children and are staying at The Polynesian, I looked at only monorail restaurants. Specifically my only wants were dinner at O’hana and 1 character breakfast. Don’t think my toddler can handle much more and she’s super picky.
Doing 2 days at MK and 1 at Epcot- planning Casey’s Corner and Columbia Harbour House for MK and Epcot food stands for lunch for park days.
I live in Tx and set my alarm for 4:40 am. No need, I woke up at 4am I was so nervous. Started trying to get on at 4:47 am CST and my days were available and ready to go! Unfortunately the site was down, likely due to so much traffic. Specifically you could look at reservations prior to that 60 days but kept getting error messages for our 60 days plus. This was with my iPad and phone (our bedroom is 3rd floor on 3 story townhouse and didn’t want to walk to husband’s office on first floor to try for computer). Note, the iPad didn’t have the Disney app but I logged the website.
It took almost 20 minutes to be able to look at reservation times. So just a little after the time it officially opens considering it opened at least 15 minutes early.
My husband woke up at this time and took over as the baby was crying (but he did no practice runs!). By 0515 CST he had O’hana booked for breakfast on 60+5 (our last day) on iPad. He had to put in cc info (and stopped to ask if I wanted to add a celebration cake. No fool, just confirm the reservation!). Then got O’hana for dinner on iPad at 60+4 at the time we wanted but Halloween night, which I didn’t want. The nights we wanted for O’Hana was arrival day (non available, figured we couldn’t get it) and resort day (60+ 2, only had 9:50 pm reservations).
Around 5:20 am CST I was able to start using my Disney app on iPhone. So much easier and the cc info was already loaded. Just a few clicks where it was a real pain in iPad. No chef Mickey reservations for breakfast open so made dinner reservation for a good time at 60+2.
Around 8am CST went back and changed to a better time for O’hana breakfast on 60+5. They also had reservations open within the hour for our dinner reservation at 60 + 4. And made good time dinner reservations at O’hana dinner 60+ 3 (Epcot day, will probably cancel that and keep Halloween night dinner). So really didn’t need to get up that early with our small ADRs because they still didn’t have availability earlier in our trip. And had the same offerings 3 hours later for what we could get. I could have slept in on that Sunday and gotten the same thing but where’s the fun i that.
Grand Floridian Cafe at 60 + 1 for dinner and Steakhouse 71 for breakfast at 60+2 were super easy to get. I’ve read horrid reviews of Chef Mickey on TripAdvisor. Food cold and inedible. Vomit on the floor for 30 minutes before environmental services came to clean it up. My toddler recognizes the big 5 characters and not anyone else in the Disney World, so will keep the reservation for now. But if reviews don’t pick up will cancel that reservation.
Am satisfied with reservations. I’m going to keep looking for early O’hana dinner on Sat 10/29 because that’s our resort day. Otherwise no complaints.
Since we have such young children and are staying at The Polynesian, I looked at only monorail restaurants. Specifically my only wants were dinner at O’hana and 1 character breakfast. Don’t think my toddler can handle much more and she’s super picky.
Doing 2 days at MK and 1 at Epcot- planning Casey’s Corner and Columbia Harbour House for MK and Epcot food stands for lunch for park days.
I live in Tx and set my alarm for 4:40 am. No need, I woke up at 4am I was so nervous. Started trying to get on at 4:47 am CST and my days were available and ready to go! Unfortunately the site was down, likely due to so much traffic. Specifically you could look at reservations prior to that 60 days but kept getting error messages for our 60 days plus. This was with my iPad and phone (our bedroom is 3rd floor on 3 story townhouse and didn’t want to walk to husband’s office on first floor to try for computer). Note, the iPad didn’t have the Disney app but I logged the website.
It took almost 20 minutes to be able to look at reservation times. So just a little after the time it officially opens considering it opened at least 15 minutes early.
My husband woke up at this time and took over as the baby was crying (but he did no practice runs!). By 0515 CST he had O’hana booked for breakfast on 60+5 (our last day) on iPad. He had to put in cc info (and stopped to ask if I wanted to add a celebration cake. No fool, just confirm the reservation!). Then got O’hana for dinner on iPad at 60+4 at the time we wanted but Halloween night, which I didn’t want. The nights we wanted for O’Hana was arrival day (non available, figured we couldn’t get it) and resort day (60+ 2, only had 9:50 pm reservations).
Around 5:20 am CST I was able to start using my Disney app on iPhone. So much easier and the cc info was already loaded. Just a few clicks where it was a real pain in iPad. No chef Mickey reservations for breakfast open so made dinner reservation for a good time at 60+2.
Around 8am CST went back and changed to a better time for O’hana breakfast on 60+5. They also had reservations open within the hour for our dinner reservation at 60 + 4. And made good time dinner reservations at O’hana dinner 60+ 3 (Epcot day, will probably cancel that and keep Halloween night dinner). So really didn’t need to get up that early with our small ADRs because they still didn’t have availability earlier in our trip. And had the same offerings 3 hours later for what we could get. I could have slept in on that Sunday and gotten the same thing but where’s the fun i that.
Grand Floridian Cafe at 60 + 1 for dinner and Steakhouse 71 for breakfast at 60+2 were super easy to get. I’ve read horrid reviews of Chef Mickey on TripAdvisor. Food cold and inedible. Vomit on the floor for 30 minutes before environmental services came to clean it up. My toddler recognizes the big 5 characters and not anyone else in the Disney World, so will keep the reservation for now. But if reviews don’t pick up will cancel that reservation.
Am satisfied with reservations. I’m going to keep looking for early O’hana dinner on Sat 10/29 because that’s our resort day. Otherwise no complaints.
