Below is a copy of a post I did for my family blog. It includes yet another copy of a post written on my friend Ashley's blog. The post that Ashley did about our experience making ADRs last week is hilarious! Please read all the way through.
"In September our family and my best friend Ashley's family are headed to Disney together for ten days. It won't be our first time vacationing together but it will be our first time doing the
Disney dining plan together.
We are going during "
free dining." It's a promotion that Disney runs where if you book a stay at one of their resorts you get the Disney dining plan for free.
It saves a truck load of money to do this. Only trouble is Disney dining is a complex affair.
You HAVE to get your act together well in advance because every other savvy person going at that time is doing "free dining" too and this means the restaurants will be booked
solid.
You have to have the foresight to figure out where you want to eat, on which day, and how you are going to spend your "credits."
The way the dining plan works is that each day you get one table service meal credit, one counter service meal credit and two snack credits. You don't have to use a set number of credits per day. You can roll them over. This is useful for eating at certain "signature dining experiences" that use two credits such as Cinderella's Royal Table.
Ah Cindy's! In all the years that we have been going to Disney I have never been able to score a meal in the castle. It used to be that one could book a meal at Cinderella's Royal Table 180 days in advance. So, by the time we made vacation plans, we were always past that date and the VERY limited number of reservations were gone.
Then this year Disney changed the advance reservation date to 90 days. Score! This was finally our shot. Sunday, June 21st would be our day to call. I re-read the chapter in the Un-Official Guide to Walt Disney Word on how to make a reservation at Cinderella's Royal table. Yes, unbelievably there are 8 detailed pages devoted to how get a table at Cindy's. It involved synchronizing your clock to the automic clock, learning the call in prompts ahead of time and other such craziness.
Then...Disney rolled out a brand new on-line reservation system. It started just a few days before our magic 90 day ADR date. My friend Hayley (fellow Disney maniac who is also going during free dining in September) showed me how to use the new system.
I also read through the 75+ page thread on how to book on-line ADRs on the DIS boards.
I was prepared.
On-line reservations start at 6:00 a.m. EST. Phone reservations open at 7:00 a.m. EST. Those who can book on-line now have a full hour advantage. So yes, there are people who get up at 3:00 a.m. on the West Coast to book their reservations. I take comfort in not being the craziest person out there!
I dragged my butt out of bed at 5:20 a.m. and Ashley did the same.
Only to discover that...Ack! We were both locked out of the on-line reservation system. I hopped on the DIS boards where I learned we were not the only ones experiencing this glitch. It was very disheartening.
We would have to wait to call in at 7:00 a.m. and hope, that like a hotel, a batch of reservations was held for call-ins.
Brian woke up and offered to help us too. It was Father's Day and I will never forget that he was doing this for his little girl. Siennah's desperate love of Cinderella is the whole reason we press forth with this insanity. The whole rest of the vacation will undoubtedly be unequally geared toward what the three boys want to do, Mason, Cole and Sebastian.
We called in at EXACTLY 7:00 a.m. Ashley and I were put on hold for 45 minutes and Brian was on hold for an hour. He hit "send" just a second after we did!
We were able to get all of the reservations we wanted---Chef Mickey's, Ohana, Garden Grill, Boma and Crystal Palace (At a reasonable time---around 5:00-5:45) except one. There was no Fantasmic Dinner packages left. So, we are doing the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater instead.
Best of all we scored lunch in the Castle!!! Ashley got 12:05 p.m.
Meals at Cindy's are secured on your credit card. The cost of the meal would be $274!!! We would
never do it if it were not for free dining!
Our
travel agent tried to make dining reservations for us a couple days later(not knowing we already did them) and he was not able to get anything at Cinderella's Royal table during the entire 10 days of our trip or at Chef Mickey's. The other restaurants he was only able to get before 3:30 p.m. or after 6:45 p.m. for dinner.
Here is the tale, written by my friend Ashley of what happened on our 90 day ADR morning. She started to write the post during our hour long wait to call-in. I laughed so hard that I cried when I read it. I hope you enjoy!
The Happiest Place on Earth
Each year, thousands of happy parents plan vacations to take their thousands of happy children to The Happiest Place on Earth - Disney World.
And then we all become raging maniacs.
First off, did you know there were entire message boards with millions of threads related to how to plan a Disney vacation?
Second, did you know there were thousands of messages on this message board just to help you figure out how to make a flipping dinner reservation?
Bear with me, cause this is where it might get a little nutty.
Ninety days prior to your desired date for a meal, you must have the foresight to want to eat that meal and call Disney's Advanced Dining Reservation people, a.k.a. Those Who Hold the Keys to the Universe. You may call starting a 7am, although travel agents can call as early as 3am, so even if you call at 7am you might STILL be **** out, I mean shut out. If you are staying at a Disney resort, you are able to provide your hotel confirmation number and starting 90 days before your check-in date book Advanced Dining Reservations (ADRs) plus 10 days after your check-in date. There is a definite advantage to this game if you stay at a Disney resort. Normal, non-Disney staying folks who don't have shiny Mouse Ears tattooed on their behinds can still only book 90 days ahead of time. I like to call them "The Commoners" cause I guarantee they don't have good dinner reservations and there's not a chance in hades they're getting in to Cinderella's Royal Table (the most coveted reservation in all of WDW).
There are pages in Disney planning guide books devoted to how to synchronize your clock to the automic clock (which is, by the way, three seconds faster than Disney time). It also instructs you to call a few days before and practice going through the prompts so on your "Big Day" 90 days out, you can get through to an ADR agent asap. Then, you are supposed to cut the person off as they announce their name and tell them you want "Cinderella's Royal Table for _____" be it breakfast or lunch (don't bother with dinner, Cindy's a no show in the evenings and you're only graced with the Fairy Godmother).
Amber and I are hell bent to get in to CRT. If nothing else, for poor Siennah who gets stuck partaking in so much boy stuff since Mason, Cole and Sebastian are forces to be reckoned with. We want to get her to see the princess.
Then last week, online reservations were launched, to further complicate this insanity. Now, you can book online beginning at 6am with the same 90+10 days rule if you're staying in a Disney hotel, you just have to provide your confirmation number and phone number.
Does all this makes sense?
It gets nuttier still...
So Amber and I, our husbands and our six children are taking a 10 day vacation (if it's legal to call it that) to this Magical Place in September. Today is the first day we can make ADRs. We were up at 5:30am in preparation for making said ADRs at 6:01am. Of course, Disney's lovely web site is allowing neither of us to sign in with our confirmation numbers, saying "Sorry, your reservation can't be retrieved at this time."
Have a Magical Day!! You'll never get in to have a meal with that b**** Cindy! And your kids will nag and whine and generally make your life miserable, and we here at Disney will love it! Because really, this is our diabolical plan. We masquerade as this wonderful place for children, but the reality is you're being Punk'd. We sit and watch you on close circuit television as your children melt down in line to meet Mickey. We laugh as you stand in the sweltering Florida heat in line to ride Dumbo, when your kids don't even know who the flip Dumbo is cause we put his movie in the vault. And unless you want to pay $59 for a scratched up used copy on eBay, they never will!!
I wanted to throw the computer out the window. After cussing and swearing and a 5:30am phone call between me and Amber that involved some more cussing and swearing, we relegate ourselves to calling in at 7am and hoping for the best.
We start at 6:59. I got a "Sorry we're closed message." I hit end and a split second later a text came from Amber saying "GO!" So I quickly hit "Send" twice to redial, went through the prompts (I had not practiced, FYI) and got the "You will be connected to the next available rep." No sooner had some jammin Disney tunes started then I got a new message: "Due to heavy call volume, your wait time may be more than thirty minutes."
Thirty minutes!! THIRTY MINUTES?!!! I called at 07:00:01am. How many crazy people were able to get in one second ahead of me?!?!?
I am lamenting that we will never get to dine with Cindy. I am so annoyed with the ridiculosity that is Disney that I want to shred up a stuffed Mickey Mouse.
In the end, we were able to secure the ressieat the castle. So as low and my angry low got, my happy high is pretty high.
Until September, when we arrive, and that mouse starts screwing with me again!I'm telling you, it's a conspiracy!" </em>
I called right away and they had everything. She said it might be because I had all my dinning ress b 4 online dinning. IDK . But I felt better once she saw them and I have all my conformation numbers.
