It seems to me that Disney is trying to 'sardine' groups.
50's Prime Time tried to seat 13 of us at a table for 10. And that was already cramming us together. Meanwhile, there was an entire section empty. Even after having the manager (with whom we spoke earlier in the day--and gave us 100% wrong information) come over, she still wanted to seat all 13 of us at that table. We were willing to split into two groups but that seemed to be to hard for them to accommodate. After some time (and extremely high blood pressure) we decided it wasn't worth the hassle. We walked out and over to Backlot Express, pushed some tables together and had a lovely meal--for half the price and without any headaches.
I was a few minutes late to the 50's Prime Time dining fiasco and by the time I arrived most (but not all) of the schenanigans and table shuffling was done. But the frustration level of everyone was on high alert. You could cut the tension with a knife. 50's Prime Time seemed unable to even contemplate a group our size.
I don't know what model they use for seating people but whatever it is they need to change it. Any non-Disney restaurant seems to be able to figure it out but for some reason Disney restaurants just can't think outside of the box and come up with a solution.
To make things even worse: the waiters that tried to seat 13 of us in a table for 10 started complaining that they had two other large groups coming in.... Knowing we had made an ADR for 24 people (of which only 13 showed up eventually) this did not really help turn things for the better.
We were there from the beginning, and Kat had gone in to confirm our ressie well beforehand.
I realize they did not have a table that would seat all of us, but really......
We had made a group ressie.....GROUP....thats what they are for, to warn of a large GROUP coming in at once.
The original ressie was for 24 people, what they would have done if we all had shown up, I don't know.
So, they know they have a group of 24 coming, but were still totally unprepared, as in they should have had some sort of area ready, not all at one table, but an "area" ready.
They were informed right away that not everyone had shown up and the 24 was now 12 (and then Tonya came in, making it 13)
This SHOULD have eased some of the problem, right? 24 is now only 13.
The table for 10 was just barely able to seat 10, and we had 2 kids with us.
The tooth sucking and eye rolling among the CM's was at a premium.
While trying to figure out what they were going to do with us all, other CM's seemed to look at us as if we were from outer space, and some were standing beside us as if to be ready to thwart a mutiny or gang war.
This could have been due to 13 people standing around in the centre of the restaurant looking at each other and shaking our heads in disbelief.
At one point we were told "well, we also have a group of 12 and one of 19 to seat as well". Yeah.....so?
That's fine, where are they going to sit?
I guess someone should have been ready for all these large groups, right?
Tonya is correct in saying you could cut the tension with a knife, and if you did, it would have made an awful "fingernails down the blackboard" sort of sound.
And at least one of our group nearly lost it with one of the waitresses, but I won't mention names.......she's shy
As we stood there, there were 2 booths for 6 each right beside each other that opened up, but my pointing and suggesting fell on deaf ears and they were filled by another group.
I would estimate we stood there for a good 10-15 minutes before we were sent to seperate rooms and seated.
We lasted about 2 minutes at our table, and discussed leaving, before the other table showed up behind us and said "We're leaving, this is nuts!" (actually, it rhymed with "full spit")
The mass exodus began amidst sideways looks from the CM's.
So, over to the Backlot we went, and I am sure, no positive, we had a much better time than if we had stayed in the 50's PT.
The whole event has left a bitter taste in my mouth and I doubt we will ever be back to 50PT, even as a group of 4, which I'm sure they would be able to find a table for.
Glad you folks walked out - they need to realize that guests will not stand still for this treatment.
Good call Todd. Leaving and heading over to the Backlot hopefully sent them a message and got you guys what you wanted; good food and friendly company in a comfortable environment.
The sad part is that our walking out probably had no affect on any of the CM's other than "Whew, they're gone, dodged that bullet".
Always have great food and service when we are there. And I have seen them sit large parties before. 
That's when Yvette and I had enough. Todd and Rob were so nice and said they would go with the waitress, but Yvette and I said that we would leave if they did that. 
