Reservations How far apart

twooley2

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jul 15, 2005
Messages
1,187
How far apart do you usually book your meals? I am having problems deciding how far apart to schedule 3 meals or even 2 each day. I know it takes some time to be called for a reservation and time to eat. We still want to do touring too and see the parks.
 
My family does not eat a TS breakfast, so we usually schedule lunch early (usually around 11:30 am - that's when World Showcase usually starts serving meals). We allow about 90 minutes for lunch.

Dinner tends to be on the late side, between 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm, depending on what else we want to do that day. For example, we tend to aim for the last possible dinner seating at Epcot (assuming we've already seen Illuminations earlier in the trip) so we can spend most of the day in the park and then still have a nice TS dinner. For dinner, we allow about two hours.

The amount of time for a meal largely depends on how busy the resturant is and how many courses you order. We often have an appetizer, entree, and dessert, so TS meals can take a while.
 
We only do 1 TS meal per day..Dining adrs can take up to 90 mins each( takes into account getting seated late etc).If we did more than one TS per day we would spend all our time fretting about getting to our next one.We did do 2 TS meals in one day last trip we did a breakfast at 805am and a dinner at 530p and we felt like all we did was sit ina restaurant all day
 
We did 3 TS meals per day last trip and plan to do it again for our next trip. I try for about 6 hours between each one. Like we did breakfast around 8, lunch around 2 and dinner around 8. We never went into a meal starving but we could always eat. We also never left a meal feeling miserably stuffed.
 

3 TS meals a day will take a good amount of time away from park touring.
 
3 TS meals a day will take a good amount of time away from park touring.

I think that depends on how you plan and park hours when you go. We went during the off season and the parks didn't open until 9 most days and they closed between 7-9 (with the exception of AK) every night. So, we only lost park time during lunch and that was usually only about an hour in most cases.

ETA: We didn't utilize EMH because honestly our kids couldn't have managed if they got up any earlier or went to bed any later.
 
We also did breakfast @8am, lunch around 1pm, and dinner @7-8pm. We were able to get so much done by eating breakfast before the park opened, hitting all the busier rides when others were still just arriving. By the time 1pm came around we were ready for a break. Had a nice relaxing lunch then hit the parks with renewed energy.We were there in December so crowds were light and we did not wait more then 15min for any ride or show. It was more helpful with the kids to take those nice breaks from all the constant stimulation in the parks and it showed because they had a blast and didn't have any breakdowns.
 
our rule of thumb is to have absolutely minimum of 5 hrs between ADRs, preferably 6 to 6.5 hours. Even on DxDDP, we tend to just eat very small breakfasts most days (not hungry!) like a pastry & coffee. Then table service lunch around 11:30, table service dinner no earlier than 5:30 (depends on evening plans...if we're going to a park that closes early we might just have a snack around 4 & not have dinner ADR until 7:30 or 8:00 if staying at a park until 7:00 PM closing.
 
Last trip there were a couple of days where we had breakfast and dinner ADRs for TS... it was so much food! I came home and immediately cancelled half of the breakfasts for my trip in March because of it. :lmao: I just can't make myself try that again - we had leftover CS credits AND snacks too such a shame
 
I booked us a 8 or 9am breakfast ADR and then a 7-8 Dinner ADR - we will just wing it :rotfl2: for lunch (most days prob a CS). I did book a few lunches at about 1 and then we have a later dinner..
 
We only eat two meals a day at Disney, and most days it is either a later breakfast (10ish) or early lunch (11-12ish) and then dinner around 6-7. We do the deluxe plan and seldom eat any counter service at all; I make our two ADRs per day and then we use snack credits in between.
 
I would do a early breakfast at around 8am and dinner around 6-6:30pm. I donk know that I would enjoy doing 3 TS meals in one day, but if you feel you have to I would suggest BK around 7-8, lunch at 12-1, dinner at 7 or later
 
We love the deluxe dining plan and like to do an early breakfast 7:30 to 8. If we do a lunch then it will be about 1. Dinner about 7:30-mostly signature meals. It helps spread out the meals and we get to the parks about opening time.
 





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