Plan ADR or Theme Parks Schedule first?

[lindzegurl]

I'm a newbie and wondering if it is best to try and get the ADR to specific restaurants FIRST? Or plan out where we want to be each day, and then look for ADR's in that particular park?

Make any sense? We will be there for 1 week and have the Magic your Way dining package.

 

[Mandychelle79]

I'm a newbie and wondering if it is best to try and get the ADR to specific restaurants FIRST? Or plan out where we want to be each day, and then look for ADR's in that particular park?

Make any sense? We will be there for 1 week and have the Magic your Way dining package.

Depends... do you have park hoppers?

If so plan where you want to eat and then if you arent in the park that day, hop to it.

If non-hoppers plan where you will be, and meals around that.

Ive done it both ways, and so far like planning where we were going to eat and then fly by the seat of our pants for parks.

 

[tfoster]

I definitely suggest picking your park days first and then your ADRs. If you book at the start of your booking window, you shouldn't have any problems.

If you haven't already done so, you might want to take a look at touringplans.com. For a pretty small fee (< $10) they have a projected crowd calendar and will list "best" and "avoid" parks for each day. A lot of people on these boards (including myself) use this to help plan the parks schedule. Keep in mind, though, that the calendar is subject to change. For example, it changed for my trip days due to Disney's adding more Fantasmic showings. I went back and forth on it and ultimately changed our schedule (and ADRs) accordingly. I decided low crowds was the highest priority for us and fortunately was able to replace nearly all of the ADRs we had. Others might decide that their ADRs were higher priority (and ours WERE a pain in butt to switch around) and deal with a higher crowd for a day or too.

Have fun planning!!!

 

[pooch]

decide at which restaurants we want to eat (sounds funky but I think that's grammatically correct), then which parks on which days based on park hours, then match the restaurant to the park. We like to use resort restaurants as a means of getting from our daytime park to our nighttime park (we always hop).

 

[djp0630]

Plan the park first, then your ADRs around that.

 

[danielle.st]

I prefer park first then restaurants around that. This way, I am eliminating a ton of travel time and I am able to avoid busy parks on thehir busiest days.
If you borrow the Unofficial Guide from the library, you can get access to the extended crowd calendar.

 

[Thumper_Man]

I'm sure you'll get mixed reviews here. This is how we do it. Since some ADR's are so hard to come by, we usually plan our park days around our ADR's.

 

[mikeandkarla]

I suggest planning park days first, factoring in Fantasmic and/ or extra magic hours, then palnning ADR according to those plans.

 

[PearlySwan]

^^^ As others have already said, plan on which park(s) you will visit first, based on crowd level predictions (www.touringplans.com). Then plan your ADRs around park(s) visit(s) each day. If you have hoppers it will be easier to get both of those things synchronized, but even if you don't have hoppers you can do it with some careful planning. For example, if you don't have hoppers on your MK day you can try for ADRs on monorail resort restaurants, as well as, ADRs at MK.

Whatever you do decide, have a magical vacation!

 

[Sweet Melissa]

decide at which restaurants we want to eat (sounds funky but I think that's grammatically correct), then which parks on which days based on park hours, then match the restaurant to the park. We like to use resort restaurants as a means of getting from our daytime park to our nighttime park (we always hop).

That's exactly how we do it, too. We also try to leave ourselves at least one "free" day where nothing is planned. Otherwise we always seem to end up with a cancellation somewhere.