Over Book dinner ressies?

[Tink3Belle]

Do many people book 2 reservations for the same meal in case they can't deceide where they want to go? It seems very overbooked for Free Dining besides the ibvious reasons. I changed a few recently but cancelled the ones I had before them so I wouldn't be greedy or give someone else a chance to get in. They don't seem to be checking if you have 2 for the same meal though??

 

[Allison]

They are checking. They might not see it all the time but people have been reporting they are being told they need to cancel a reservation. It actually happened to me last year when we had some confusion between who was cancelling ADR's between my TA and I. I had a duplicate and when I called to make yet another change, the CM noticed it and let me know I needed to cancel it (I thought it was already cancelled anyway).

 

[CR88]

Do many people book 2 reservations for the same meal in case they can't deceide where they want to go? It seems very overbooked for Free Dining besides the ibvious reasons. I changed a few recently but cancelled the ones I had before them so I wouldn't be greedy or give someone else a chance to get in. They don't seem to be checking if you have 2 for the same meal though??

I think they are checking, but I am not sure. It seemed like it though. Yesterday when we made our ressies for our Dec trip we had some in our party going to Garden Grill, while the rest of us are going to Teppanyaki. At first I didn't mention that some were going to different places at the same time so the CM verified how many of us were going to one place and how many to another.

 

[familyS]

I would not book two ressies for the same meal. If park hours and special events weren't released in time for my ADRs I might, however, book a late breakfast or lunch at one park and a dinner at another until I had my schedule set. I would cancel the one we didn't need as soon as possible to give someone else a chance at the time slot.

I am a big planner and pretty much know our plans for February 2008, but if they have the P&P party, I may need to tweak them a bit.

 

[BillSears]

I never do it. I would feel bad about taking away an ADR from someone else.

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

They are definately checking. I called to change some this weekend. I asked if I could check to see if there was availablity at the ones I want to change TO and they cancelled by current ADRs before they would schedule the new ones. I think because of free dining and updates on the computer systems they are definately checking. It seems to me that in past years, they weren't able to see all your ADRs when they are scheduling. In the past, when I called to confirm my ADRs before my trip, I had to give each confirmation number. This time I just gave my home phone number and they had all of them.

 

[TheGoofster]

I just spent the past couple of weeks going over and over my dining plans, so that when I called in for my ADR's yesterday I had everything ready to go (except for my hotel reservation number, but that's another story). I figure it is much more courtious to other guests for me to do all my deciding BEFORE I make my ressies than make multi ones that I plan to cancel later after I have time to think about it.
Even though the time we are going might not be as busy as some other times of the year, you still never know if somebody else gets a "sorry we are full that day" because I couldn't make up my mind ahead of time.

 

[Tink3Belle]

I am glad to hear everyone is being curteous about planning one ressie at a time. I do also - I think it is fair. Love the picture of your little boy with spiderman where did you get that done my sone would love it. (Does this mean I have to take him to that other place?)

 

[OKWMom]

They are definately checking. I called to change some this weekend. I asked if I could check to see if there was availablity at the ones I want to change TO and they cancelled by current ADRs before they would schedule the new ones. I think because of free dining and updates on the computer systems they are definately checking. It seems to me that in past years, they weren't able to see all your ADRs when they are scheduling. In the past, when I called to confirm my ADRs before my trip, I had to give each confirmation number. This time I just gave my home phone number and they had all of them.

I think like everything else, it depends on the CM you get. I called this morning to modify two of my ADRs and booked both of the new ones before cancelling the old ones. The CM I spoke with didn't ask me to cancel anything - although she did have an interesting variation on the dress code for signature dining spiel "...no tank tops....no bathing suits...no crocs" I've never heard of them actually mentioning crocs as a banned item in the dress code not that I was planning on wearing any but I thought it was kind of funny.

 

[budbeerlady]

I was suprised to see they are checking (as they should) I called about Le Cellier, I had one time on the day but wanted an earlier time. They made the earlier time and then saw the other time and asked if I was canceling it.

 

[ShaneH]

I called last night and changed some and each one they asked if I wanted to cancel the other, even after I said I want to change from 5:30 to 1:00 at Croal Reel and the lady gave me the new reservation number and then said do you want to cancel the 5:30.

 

[apirateslife4us!]

I'm new to the dis and all, but I think this must be really common. I googled this up and a lot of people do it I found a thread on passporter.com that talks about it like it's normal and a lot of people over there posted that they double book their meals, and then cancel the ones they don't want as the vacation nears and their plans firm up. Our trip is next week and I didn't double book because I had no idea it was that easy to do, and now that I know how HARD it is to get those special restaurants I wouldn't do it because I'd feel like I was taking some family's space! But I have to admit that if I had seen those posts months ago, before my trip was all set and before knew how difficult getting a table could be, I would have been tempted to double book while I figured out my plan and not realized how quickly these restaurants book up!

Slightly OT: Last week or so I responded to a post saying that I had no problem changing some of my ADRs around, agreeing with someone who said that if you're flexible you can get what you want... and boy am I eating my words! Now that my trip is less than a week away I tried changing my Chef Mickey's from breakfast to dinner and was told that it's booked for the entire week, breakfast AND dinner!!! So my novice planning led to only two dinners (Sci Fi and O'hana) and three buffet breakfasts in one week (two on back-to-back days) I'm glad we'll get to go to Chef Mickey's at all, but now we won't make it to Typhoon Lagoon until after 2pm... it's disappointing to think that there might be someone with dinner ADRs that won't even use them

Lame slogan of the week: Don't be abusing! Cancel ADRs you won't be using!