Pretty annoyed right now, Disney dining reservations. How do you guys do it?

[BernardandMissBianca]

I had a group of 16, 10, 20 when a bunch of DIS'ers head down to scrapbook. We've eaten at Cape May Cafe (16), 1900 Park Faire(10) and Ohana(20) (all for breakfast). At CMC we got a long bench(bench on one side, chair on the other) with separated tables but all together in a row, Cape May cafe we were at a huge round table, and Ohana we were all at one long table.

I called grand gatherings and they offered the first seating or the last seating of the meal, we always took the first.

I hope you enjoy your vacation!!! I love going in big groups!

 

[RangerPooh]

As others ahve said, they can't guarantee that you'll be seated together. We've traveled with groups of 8 and have sat together and apart depending on the restaurant. You might try to reserve the first seating of that meal, ie: 4:30 for dinner, as a way to guarantee that you'll all be together. I realize that it's early, but if you are concerned about sitting together that might be an option for you.

 

[bicker]

This is the case because Disney's restaurants (just like their hotels) are very heavily patronized. By keeping dining parties to 4 or less, they can serve more guests than they could if they were continually adjusting the seating to serve larger parties. Imagine that you've got dozens of people outside waiting to have a meal; does it make sense to leave a 4-top idle for 20 minutes while the patrons at the table next to it are finishing up, so you can put two tables together? Generally not. By the same token, luckily, Disney restaurants seem to move guests through meals efficiently enough such that almost every time we've had a large party, two tables next to each other were finishing their meals at roughly the same time, so we've only been split into two tables once.

 

[SunshineOR]

We went in '08 with 9 people and ate a lot of early meals, but usually sat together. Many times, they'd tell us they couldn't promise us we could sit together, but I can't think of a single time we weren't tabled side-by-side. We actually enjoyed it as we had fun mixing and matching group members for different meals. I remember we were kind of worried about it, but it turned out to not be a problem at all.