Hello! Title might be a tad confusing but what I'm trying to find out is this: we are arriving on Thurs, Sept 17th for 10 nts. I can call for dining ressies on June 19th. If I want a popular place, like Le Cellier, etc, am I better off trying to book those for the last few days of my trip? Right now I'm looking at a schedule something like this: 17th: Arrival day(9am) - Water Park for afternoon: CS meals only 18th: MGM - Big River or ESPN at Boardwalk (no worries about ADRs here) 19th: Epcot - 1st choice: Teppan Edo (D or L) OR wherever else in WS (L or D) 20th: AK morning/MK night: Any of the following for D: The Wave/Kona/WhispCanyon/Tony's/Grand FlorCafe...wherever 21st: DTD/DisQuest and/or Water Park kind of day: Turf Club for D 22nd: MGM: 50's PT for D (or L) 23rd: MK morning/AK evening: CS meals only today 24th: Epcot: LeCellier (D) and 9 Dragons (or Teppan Edo if we didn't get on 1st day) (L ) or reversed if LCel only avail for L 25th: Water Park day: Olivia's at OKW for D - boat to DTD after??? 26th: MK: Plaza for L and O'Hana (or Kona) for late-ish D. Will leave MK to watch Wishes from Poly, eat and then cab it back to ASMu. So..I'm thinking LeCellier and O'Hana's may be the 2 more popular places that I've picked. I'm hoping trying to book them towards the end of our trip may help. What do you guys think? Any advice on any of this? Thanks!!!
that sounds like a great plan.The later dates for your 90+10 will be the best chance for the hard to get ones.Good luck, you should do just fine getting those.You have lots of backup plans.
What worked for me last year making ADR's was to plan out, like you have, what restaurant I want to eat at each day....and have a back-up option for that meal if it's not available. Second was to be open for some restaurants on any available day or time - like breakfast or lunch at Royal Table....for us, any day, any open time, for one or the other meal was fine, I'd work around it - and did - we wound up with the only open reservation for lunch the day after we arrived.....I not only booked our trip fairly close to our arrival, I did it not knowing about the 180-day advance (now 90day) for ADR's, so when the CM mentioned how lucky I was there was a reservation to be had that close to our arrival, it was when I realized some folks plan really far in advance! This year, looking at the 'mistakes' I made last year - reservations often too close together, and then even sometimes in different parks......I've taken a different approach - basically planned "days" without specific dates - that I'll use to make the ADR's, looking to reserve the hardest to get restaurants first on days available and continuing with the hardest reservations and then continue once those are made to fill in reservations based on what I've set up as the "day" reservations ... if I can't the other, less difficult reservations for the same day, I'll use the back-up I planned! Hope this helps!
