Park hours posted 180 days out? How to decide on ADR's

[ericbansemer]

So pretty soon I will be making our ADR's 180 days out. Most days we will be dining in the park we are visiting. So how do you decide which park to go to each day if 180 days out when you can make ADR's for the entire week you will be there, the only days that have park hours posted at 180 days will be the first day you're there? Really MK is the only park that matters knowing what the hours are each day because the others stay pretty close to the same, but it would be nice to know each park extra magic hours and which days the Halloween party will be before making all of our reservations.

Does any body have any tips? I was thinking maybe it would be safe to look at the few weeks leading up to the week I am there and see if maybe the same day each week has the same hours for each park.

 

[PHXscuba]

The Halloween party dates have already been posted, so that's a good bet for which days will close by 6:00.

PHXscuba

 

[Surgie2]

I don’t know if looking at the few weeks leading up to your dates will give you an accurate idea on hours or not. Before making my ADRs I looked at historical hours for the same time period the previous two years. This is not a guarantee of this year’s hours of course. We are less than a month from our trip and likely park hours are not finalized.

Your situation is different with parties but for us, I didn’t make any ADR decisions that could be affected by a change in park hours. No PPO breakfast ADRs with the hopes of getting into a park early. That can backfire so easily if park hours are moved earlier. For our in-park breakfasts such as Tusker House and Cinderella’s Royal Table, I made them at 10:00 or 10:45. That way we can get to the park early and get some rides in whether it opens at 9:00 or changes to 8:00.

 

[whiporee]

Times rarely, if ever, reduce. Make your plans based on what's posted, and if you get extended hours consider it a bonus. If there's a 6 pm closing, it's safe to assume it's a party night and that won't change.

Good luck!

 

[Tomh]

One of the great mysteries of Disney World, why they expect gusts to commit to meal times 180 days or more out, when they aren't willing to commit to park operating hours until a month out, a week out, maybe a day or two before.

 

[disneyvoice]

Park opening and closing times don't affect the times that we eat at all. We also don't change our plans based upon a park closing early. We just don't get stressed out about things like that. We also don't care about changing ADRs around after we have scheduled them I would say that 99% of the time we end up changing the ADRs we made at 180 days simply because we decide to go to a different park or we change when we want to eat. I have never had a problem getting even the most popular ADR after 180 days because we are pretty laid back about changing plans around to accommodate a slightly different meal time. Sometimes it's worth it to me to stalk the system to get the popular meal, other times we just don't care. The only thing I try to predict is morning EMH. In general we don't go to a park on an EMH day. If I later discover that I have a park with morning EMH scheduled then I just change things around.

I have found that our trips are MUCH more enjoyable when I am not stressing over whether our plans will change. I assume they will change and just roll with it.

 

[AngiTN]

Just another reason we no longer make any ADR so far in advance. I see no reason to