Ohana Check-In Problems -- How would you improve it?

[tanyaandallie]

Wow! Reading this makes me far less sad that I was unable to get and ADR at O'hanas on our next trip! I have no desire to wait insane amount of time just to check in! OP your experience at O'hana's is simply unacceptable. The managers behavior is unacceptable. But, folks keep going back so there is little reason for the restaurant to make changes.

 

[snowy76]

Wow! Reading this makes me far less sad that I was unable to get and ADR at O'hanas on our next trip! I have no desire to wait insane amount of time just to check in! OP your experience at O'hana's is simply unacceptable. The managers behavior is unacceptable. But, folks keep going back so there is little reason for the restaurant to make changes.

ITA. I had Ohana on my list for our next trip, but this thread reminded me of our last experience there in '05... it was crazy then too. I think I blocked out the memory

So, I'm not going to cry if I don't get a ressie there. Probably won't try. Might try Kona though - that's one we've never done.

 

[AquaDame]

The hassle of checkin, the anger of the guests around us waiting waiting waiting, the hard to peel 'crunchy' shrimp (who doesn't devein? Seriously??) and dry meats and the cost of the meal had we not been on the dining plan for such sub par service has convinced me to cancel our reservation here for March. I'm glad I tried it on the 'free' dining plan with my folks first so my fiance and I do not waste our money when we could spend a tad more and have a signature meal.

 

[coconutprincess]

For whatevr reason - I ALWAYS end up with a 5:00 reservation for when they open. The first problem is they don't start the checkin process until 5:00. Yet you have check in times from 5:00- 5:20 waiting in that line since they say get there early. There's a massive line just to check in.

I've also seen people turned away shocked they couldn't get a table when they just opened. I think If they would have someone start check in, at like 4:45 but don't seat you until 5:00 (when they open), it would go much more smoothly.

That being said - I have another 5:00 reservation for our trip in May

 

[Happy Mom2]

They were having computer trouble when I was there on November 28th. I was the 4th in line and it took 30 minutes for her to get to me and another 10 minutes to check me in.

That being said, it was one of the best meals we had. Our waiter was not the best, but we had no complaints about the food.

 

[mollygirl13]

For whatevr reason - I ALWAYS end up with a 5:00 reservation for when they open. The first problem is they don't start the checkin process until 5:00. Yet you have check in times from 5:00- 5:20 waiting in that line since they say get there early. There's a massive line just to check in.

I've also seen people turned away shocked they couldn't get a table when they just opened. I think If they would have someone start check in, at like 4:45 but don't seat you until 5:00 (when they open), it would go much more smoothly.

That being said - I have another 5:00 reservation for our trip in May

I totally agree. They need to start the check-in process BEFORE 5pm. Unfortuntely, the line just gets way too long and there is too much confusion going on.

 

[forgetmenot]

See when we had this issue, the manager assured us that the problem was "isolated" to that night only and that on the night we went, previous diners just stayed longer than usual. I believed him until I read this thread and now I know I was so naive...

Our ADR was for 9:15, but we showed up at 8:30 thinking that the "dinner rush" would be over and we could get seated a little early. Turns out the "dinner rush" theory applies to 99% of restaurants out there but not Ohana. The line was long, but when you are 45 minutes early, you manage to get to the podium in time for your ADR. We didn't get in until close to 10:30 and the waiting area was a zoo. What galled me the most was that a party bigger than us, with an ADR for 10, got in before us.

The food was good, but the kids had already almost fainted from low blood sugar, fatigue and hunger. They finished their bread and promptly fell asleep on the table. I asked to speak to the manager (probably same guy the OP spoke to). I didn't complain or yell, I very politely asked him if he realizes there is a problem (probably the same gist as the OP's discussion). The manager told us in a very patronizing tone that, with Ohana being one of the most popular restaurants in WDW, we were lucky to have gotten to eat there at all. He did comp the gratuities, but we felt like it was a stinger, since the service was mediocre and we wouldn't have tipped the customary level anyways. Since the kids hadn't had the energy to eat anything besides bread, so their faces lit up when the manager told them the chef is making a special dessert just for them. We waited another half a hour for dessert and nothing showed up. By then it was well past 11, the last resort transportation had already left MK and we had to cab it back to the POR with kids who could barely stand up. Next time, we know not to make ADR for anything other than when the restaurant first opens.

 

[verticalchaos]

Ugh. I strongly suspect my dad is going to be WISHING we had gone with one of our other choices for Christmas night.

And I'm going to be eating my tongue to keep from saying "I told you so..."

 

[Hibernians]

Us too. twice we have experienced painfully long waits for our tables despite arriving early for our ADRs. The check in at Crystal Palace always seems to be chaotic too but at least they seem to be seating people on a steady basis where at Ohana everyone seems to be sitting off in lobby area wondering what the heck happened to my reservation ?

 

[chrissyb2411]

We ate there for breakfast last week, and it was AWFUL. Never again. Here is our story (op I hope this is something you can use to pass on)

We had a res at 10:05. We had never done a meal at another resort, so left plenty of time to travel. We arrived at poly about 9, walked around and checked in at about 945. As I was waiting in line to check in, this was the scene. There is a party of 2 women and 2 kids in front of us. She asks for a table, CM tells her they are not taking walk ups, and she suddenly has a reservation, then carries on about how angry she is going to be if "that guy" (i assumed a concierge) didn't make the ADR he promised her So she carries on til they tell her to have a seat while someone comes out to talk to her. I check in, get a pager, sit. 1005 comes and goes. We wait. This woman who claims to have a res, and her party of the same size, get seated about 1020 while we are waiting. I mention it to DH who goes up to the podium to ask. No one will really aknowledge him. We will call you when we are ready they say. He moves on to the next CM and so on. 3 of them blow us off. So he walkes over to where they have the slips lined up on the podium for seating. We are third in line, behind a 1015 and 1030 reservation He asked about this, and again no one will really aknowledge him other than to shrug. GRRRR. We finally get seated at 1030. We again expressed our concerns to the CM who came out to seat us, and he ignored our questions and continued on with his rehearsed speach. Infuriating. And there was an entire seating section completly empty! And dozens of empty tables besides.

So, we are seated a full half hour after or res time. This may not seem like a lot, but when you have a 2 year old, and a 5 year old, and checked in the required 15 min early this is a LOT of time. The server is nice. The man who brought our food was a little scary. Very nasty look on his face as he plopped the food into the middle, and one mickey waffle on each plate without a word and a scowel for the kids. When we sat the server says one hour to one hour 15 min tops to see all the charaters. Great! DS really really wanted Mickey's autograph! So we wait, very patiently. An hour goes buy, we ate a ton (the food was yummy). And Stitch came. An hour and ten minutes and Mickey, Pluto and Lilo finally round the corner. As soon as we can see them, they leave for a 10 minute break! Really, I know they need a break, but we have now been sitting an hour and 15 minutes waiting for them, tack on the 45 minutes we waited to be seated, and my kids are at their limit. Not to mention there are still a dozen tables between us and where they stopped. So we left without seing the charachters, very dissapointed.

 

[WDWisTheBest]

After reading all of the posts, it seems reasonable to conclude that there really is a problem at Ohana with the ADR/check in procedure.

 

[Tiger926]

We ate there for breakfast last week, and it was AWFUL. Never again. Here is our story (op I hope this is something you can use to pass on)

We had a res at 10:05. We had never done a meal at another resort, so left plenty of time to travel. We arrived at poly about 9, walked around and checked in at about 945. As I was waiting in line to check in, this was the scene. There is a party of 2 women and 2 kids in front of us. She asks for a table, CM tells her they are not taking walk ups, and she suddenly has a reservation, then carries on about how angry she is going to be if "that guy" (i assumed a concierge) didn't make the ADR he promised her So she carries on til they tell her to have a seat while someone comes out to talk to her. I check in, get a pager, sit. 1005 comes and goes. We wait. This woman who claims to have a res, and her party of the same size, get seated about 1020 while we are waiting. I mention it to DH who goes up to the podium to ask. No one will really aknowledge him. We will call you when we are ready they say. He moves on to the next CM and so on. 3 of them blow us off. So he walkes over to where they have the slips lined up on the podium for seating. We are third in line, behind a 1015 and 1030 reservation He asked about this, and again no one will really aknowledge him other than to shrug. GRRRR. We finally get seated at 1030. We again expressed our concerns to the CM who came out to seat us, and he ignored our questions and continued on with his rehearsed speach. Infuriating. And there was an entire seating section completly empty! And dozens of empty tables besides.

So, we are seated a full half hour after or res time. This may not seem like a lot, but when you have a 2 year old, and a 5 year old, and checked in the required 15 min early this is a LOT of time. The server is nice. The man who brought our food was a little scary. Very nasty look on his face as he plopped the food into the middle, and one mickey waffle on each plate without a word and a scowel for the kids. When we sat the server says one hour to one hour 15 min tops to see all the charaters. Great! DS really really wanted Mickey's autograph! So we wait, very patiently. An hour goes buy, we ate a ton (the food was yummy). And Stitch came. An hour and ten minutes and Mickey, Pluto and Lilo finally round the corner. As soon as we can see them, they leave for a 10 minute break! Really, I know they need a break, but we have now been sitting an hour and 15 minutes waiting for them, tack on the 45 minutes we waited to be seated, and my kids are at their limit. Not to mention there are still a dozen tables between us and where they stopped. So we left without seing the charachters, very dissapointed.

I am so sorry this happened to you, but this is what we have experienced both times (first time wasn't as bad) at 'Ohana. It is a zoo, an apathetic manager who really doesn't care, servers who don't care, cold food and way overworked characters.

At hour 2, we started to walk out, and Mickey mysteriously appeared at our table, as the character handler decided that we did deserve to see him afterall.

If you ask my young kids (3 and 7), who have eaten at every character meal a multitude of times, what is the worst restaurant on property, they will both emphatically say Lilo and Stitch's restaurant, and they always ask us to never go back there again. We do always eat at Kona, so when we pass by, they both just shake their heads, I kid you not!

So many problems at that restaurant, yet no one sees fit to fix them...

Tiger

 

[scdak]

Gee, reading this entire thread makes me very happy that I couldn't get ressies there on my trip 2 weeks ago! On the other hand, we had a breakfast, lunch and dinner at Kona and were very happy with the meals esp the Kona cone Over the 6 days at WDW we had 13 TS ADR's, and in all cases we were seated early, we often got there 30 -45 minutes early just because we were in the area at the time and we would be done with our appetizers and ready to start on the entrees at the time that our reservation were supposed to happen.

I will say that I found it interesting that at almost every location (12 out of 13) there were a multitude of empty tables, yet I spent time every day for the preceding 3 months checking for different times for ADR's to see if there was a time I would like better, and they all listed my choices as not available? That didn't make much sense to me when we would be sitting at each restaurant with empty tables all around us for the entire meal (1-1/2 hours).

It sounds like Ohana needs some help from the other locations on the check in process.

 

[Swalphin]

We ate dinner at Ohana Monday the 13th we had a 7:45 reservation. This was the coldest day of the year in FL and not sure if the Spirit of Aloha was cancelled that night, I think it was. The waiting area was crazy, I figured it was because the Spirit of Aloha must have been cancelled. I spoke with a lady in line she said it was always like this. I gave the idea of heading over to the GF Cafe a thought. To my surprise we were called exactly at 7:45 and had a great meal. We had a view of the fireworks, that was nice, the coconut races started next to our table and I was a little scared of getting a broom to my head but that did not happen. The outside area is crazy but, in the restaurant it was fine for us.

 

[TDC Nala]

I will say that I found it interesting that at almost every location (12 out of 13) there were a multitude of empty tables, yet I spent time every day for the preceding 3 months checking for different times for ADR's to see if there was a time I would like better, and they all listed my choices as not available?

It's one of two things: people aren't showing up for the reservations they booked, or they have short-staffed the restaurants to such an extent that they don't have sufficient staff to take care of all the tables they have.

 

[OurDogCisco]

I will say that I found it interesting that at almost every location (12 out of 13) there were a multitude of empty tables, yet I spent time every day for the preceding 3 months checking for different times for ADR's to see if there was a time I would like better, and they all listed my choices as not available? That didn't make much sense to me when we would be sitting at each restaurant with empty tables all around us for the entire meal (1-1/2 hours).

It sounds like Ohana needs some help from the other locations on the check in process.

I'm sorry but there needs to be empty tables especially if you are the first seating of the shift. Could you imagine if they only allowed dinner at certains times like 5 pm; 6:30 pm or 8 pm? That's what they would have to do if they filled every table right away. But by nature people eat at different times. So, one person might want the 5 pm reservation while another would want the 5:30 reservation. If they filled all the tables at 5 pm then, the 5:30 person would have to wait until one of the 5 pm diners finished their meal. Meaning they could wait up to an hour after they checked in.

 

[latmck]

It's horrible to hear something like this because I have a ADR for breaksfast
(10:55) & dinner (5:25). Is it okay to shows up early for your ADRs? I don't expect to be seated early, but to show up early to get that check-in process started, just in case the computer is down or the line is long as other stated.

 

[Tamar]

We were at the Poly for drinks about 5:30pm on Monday. 'Ohana's computer system obviously wasn't working because they were yelling last names as tables became available. Some people had pagers, others didn't. At one point a cast member came through the lounge and got the names of everyone waiting for a table. I think they were doing all they could; I just have to say I'm glad we weren't eating there!

 

[Tamar]

I cannot believe that the manager's response is to comp the gratuity. Boy, I'm glad I don't wait tables there!

 

[forgetmenot]

I cannot believe that the manager's response is to comp the gratuity. Boy, I'm glad I don't wait tables there!

See I don't understand. The manager told us that he would "take care" of gratuities. Maybe I am just being as naive as usual, but doesn't that just mean the manager will cut a check (or top up the server's regular pay checks) with the 15% or 18% of the meal? So in the end, the server would still get their 15% or 18% tip?