Online dining reservation abuses?

[mom2rtk]

Just wanted to report on what we are observing - we are on Day 13, and leave tomorrow night, so 14 days in total. We eat in at least 1 TS restaurant daily.

We are seeing lots of empty tables at most restaurants, despite being sold out. These include: Chef Mickey's and Tusker House breakfasts. Have been speaking to CMs, who are saying that with the advent of online ADRs, they are getting tons of no shows - a bit more than normal. This is allowing for some walk-ups or for some of us to get into our tables a bit earlier than expected. The other night at The Wave for instance, they said they had only 1 ADR left, so pretty much a sell out, yet when we were seated, and for the next 1.5 hours of dinner, there were at least 20 empty tables in the entire restaurant - tons of no shows according to the CMs.

Just wanted to remind people to cancel their ADRs if not necessary, so that someone else can use them. Restaurants have a certain factor built-in for no-shows, but they are telling us, and we are noticing higher numbers than usual.

Hope this info helps, Tiger

I'm not sure if you can blame online dining for this. The dining window for today opened 90 days ago, and online wasn't even up then.

 

[Tiger926]

I'm not sure if you can blame online dining for this. The dining window for today opened 90 days ago, and online wasn't even up then.

Good point, but CMs have said since online dining, they are seeing no shows and cancellations more frequently. We modify our dining once we here, so this is what I think the CMs are referring to - perhaps people have modified online, and are not showing up?

Just reporting what a few of the booking CMs are telling us - this is their job, so perhaps they are speculating, or, since they have access to the system, they are keeping abreast of online dining situations?

Regardless, we are seeing it at almost all restaurants. Just now, I got Princess Storybook Dining for lunch today @ 1:40 pm! We had Coral Reef, but I just cancelled, as this is an added surprise for our DD. We ate at Princess Dinner last week, and were pleasantly surprised (have eaten here many times, but food and service have not been that great, but characters are), so we figured, we go for lunch, as we depart at 4:00 pm today (we are driving). We'll get a free picture, meet some characters, and they give free meals to babies under 3 here, so that's great for my hungry toddler too! A great way to end our vacation!

There is more availability once we got down here, as opposed to what the online system, and dining department has told us. I guess people really are changing their plans a lot the past 2 weeks that we've been here.

Tiger