questions & feeling a little overwhelmed

[cuppiecakebows]

We're visiting Disney for the 2nd time & used the quick service dining the 1st visit. We're thinking of upgrading the dining to the plus dining plan. We'd like to do some character dining as well. We have no idea what restaurants to use the table service dining for, which require advanced reservations and how to go about making the reservations. We'll be going in June and staying on property 5 days but, only eating in the parks 3 days. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[ses1230]

First, just so you know you have to have the meal plan for your whole stay, not just the 3 days you are eating at the parks. You can make reservations at 180 days from your arrival date. Use this calculator to determine your 180 day mark : http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/dining/pscalc/dispscalc.html

At 180 days you can make your reservaions online at the Disney website at 6 am eastern, or you can call 407-wdw-dine at 7 am eastern.

Although you can get a walk up on the same day, reservations are strongly recommended. If you are willing to eat at non-peak times or travel out of the parks your chances are better for walk ups. You mention character dining, that and dining in the parks nearly always require a reservation.

I suggest you look at some menus here on the DIS or over at allears to see what you like. If you give us a little more info about the makeup of your party and what Characters you want to see, we might be able to make specific suggestions.

 

[aaarcher86]

We're visiting Disney for the 2nd time & used the quick service dining the 1st visit. We're thinking of upgrading the dining to the plus dining plan. We'd like to do some character dining as well. We have no idea what restaurants to use the table service dining for, which require advanced reservations and how to go about making the reservations. We'll be going in June and staying on property 5 days but, only eating in the parks 3 days. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Any TS meal (sit down buffet or menu/server meal) you should make prior reservations for. If you upgrade to the regular DDP you'll get 1 TS, 1 QS and 1 snack per night of your stay. TS credits need to be used for TS meals (you can use as a QS but you'll be cheating yourself out of the money paid for the plan), and QS need to be used for QS meals.

Figure out a plan of where you'd like to sit down and eat and when. Book them when you can. If you stay 5 nights and have 5 TS meals, you can make 5 singe TS credit reservations and use all of your dining plan TS credits.

I'd map out your meals first. If you have more meals than credits you can find the most expensive ones at allears.net in their menu section and pay for those with the credits and OOP for the less expensive meals.

 

[cuppiecakebows]

We are going with our daughter (6) and our son (11). We'd like to have character dining with the princesses for our daughter but would have to do another character dining that our son would enjoy more. I'm thinking Ohana on one of the days we won't have park tickets. I just saw that there was a room only deal with a 4 day ticket which ends up cheaper than doing the 3 day ticket with this option. We'd like the classic characters, mickey, minnie, goofy, donald and pluto. We'll be staying at Pop Century for 6 nights/7days and have park tickets for 4 days...sorry for the confusion. Thanks so much for all of the responses!

 

[ses1230]

For princesses your options are Akershus in Norway, Epcot and CRT at MK. At Akershus you can see 4-5 princesses at once. Belle is the greeter and (usually) Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel and Snow White rotate in the dining room. There is also CRT which also has a number of princesses and is more expensive then Akershus, but the experience of eating in the castle is priceless.

The only place to see the Fab 5 together is Chef Mickey.

You can check here to see where the characters are: http://kennythepirate.com/disney-world-character-schedules/disney-world-character-meal-list/

 

[cuppiecakebows]

Thank you so much!