Total ADR/DDP Newbie ... Please help!

[Fantasmic23]

Before we go any further, let me first apologize for my cluelessness. I'm sure that many (if not all) of the questions I'm about to ask, will cause some people to roll their eyes. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this post, thank you for your patience and thank you for responding.

For the past hour, I've been thumbing through Birnbaum's Walt Disney World 2010 Guide and Mousejunkies, becoming more and more confused. I know that half of the fun of a Disney vacation is the planning, but I'm about to tear my hair out. In fairness to Disney, this frustration is all my own doing: I know absolute ZILCH about any of the table service restaurants.

BACKSTORY: We are booked at Pop Century from 11/28/10 - 12/4/10 (first time ever staying on-site). We're on the Standard Dining Plan (1 quick service, 1 snack, 1 table service per day). We have 6-Day Park Hoppers (first time having park hoppers). DH has made it clear that he wants all of our table service meals to be for dinner. This is fine with the rest of us since I know we'll never be able to make it on time to breakfast and we usually eat our lunch on the go.

1. How do you begin this whole ADR process? I feel that my family and I should all sit down and decide what park we're going to each day. It's probably not the best time to have a family Disney meeting with all of the end-of-the-school year activities (and the Stanley Cup on TV), but I know what's going to happen. I'll wait and wait to make ADRs and I won't be able to get a reservation anywhere. On previous trips, we just kind of "winged it" ... Whatever park we were in the mood to go to that particular day, we went to. I don't feel we'll be able to "wing it" with the dining plan. My line of thinking is if we want to go to Magic Kingdom on Monday, then I make a reservation at Crystal Palace. But ... (And here we go with the eye-rolling), we can always do Epcot on Monday morning/afternoon and hop over to MK for dinner ... right? Ugh!

2. I'm feeling that this whole trip is going to be revolving around MVMCP ... Which I haven't even made reservations for yet. I know, I know ... Time is a wasting. I have two lines of thought on this: We spend the whole day at MK for whichever (if any) night I can get party tickets for. Then we suck it up and make a lunch table service reservation. OR (drum roll, please) we spend the morning/afternoon at another park, make a lunch res there, and hop on over to MK for the party. I know, I know ... I'm a clueless mess. Thank you for your patience.

3. Restaurant recommendations? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Honestly, the only table service restaurant we know of is the Crystal Palace (friends of ours highly recommend it). Plus, DD and DH are suckers for anything Winnie the Pooh related. I know it all comes down to personal food preference (and a previous restaurant experience), but these Disney restaurants reviews are making me nuts. "50's Prime Time Cafe is awesome ..." "50's Prime Time Cafe is only worth it for the peanut butter and jelly shake". "Hollywood & Vine was our favorite dining experience" ... "I wouldn't feed the food at Hollywood & Vine" to a starving dog."

In my clueless head, I've decided on Crystal Palace for MK, Biergarten for Epcot, 50s Prime Time Cafe for DHS. I'm being warned that no table service restaurants are worth it at AK. That brings us to resort restaurants and ...

4. We're driving from CT Friday morning (11/26). We'll be hanging out in North Carolina all day Saturday (11/27) and continuing to Florida bright and early Sunday morning (11/28). We've done this plan before and have reached the WDW area anywhere from 4:30 p.m. on. Would it be worth it to make a table service reservation for Sunday night? Have a nice dinner and go back to Pop and rest up for Monday? I'm thinking Boma or 'Ohana ... Jeez, I'm just so confused.

Why the !@#$ did DH include the dining plan and why did he ask me to "take care of it"? Disney Dining Plan, and park hoppers and ADRs, oh my.

Thank you, thank you for any suggestions you can give. My apologies again.

 

[Missytara]

I mix my ADR's between parks and resorts.

I make sure I make an ADR at a park that does not have evening magic hours, because I did that once and you felt sort-of rushed.

Be flexible. When you get online, you may not get the time you want. The best part about the online process is that it will give you alternate times, but also alternates places to eat if others are full (like during free dining).

I was happy to go very early to 50's Prime Time Cafe because for me it was all about the experience.

I wasn't able to get Crystal Palace (because it was an evening EMH night), but they suggested 1900 Park Faire, which I would have never thought of. We loved it!

Go in with an open mind... and you won't be disappointed.

 

[vicki_c]

I agree with plan your parks first, and then your meals at places that are convenient - either in that park, or a resort nearby.

As for reviews - don't worry about it. Do what I said above, and that will limit your options for each day quite a bit. Then look on AllEars and review the menus and see what sounds good for your family. Then pick it. Reviews are so subjective - there are very good and very bad reviews for just about every restaurant.

We really enjoyed Yak & Yeti at AK on our last trip, by the way. And I do like your other choices, despite the advice I just gave you above!

I would not book a TS meal on your arrival day unless it was at your resort, and if you're at POP, obviously it's not since they have no TS restaurant. Too many iffy things can happen on travel day - I would just eat counter service @ Pop.

 

[Fantasmic23]

I agree with plan your parks first, and then your meals at places that are convenient - either in that park, or a resort nearby.

As for reviews - don't worry about it. Do what I said above, and that will limit your options for each day quite a bit. Then look on AllEars and review the menus and see what sounds good for your family. Then pick it. Reviews are so subjective - there are very good and very bad reviews for just about every restaurant.

We really enjoyed Yak & Yeti at AK on our last trip, by the way. And I do like your other choices, despite the advice I just gave you above!

I would not book a TS meal on your arrival day unless it was at your resort, and if you're at POP, obviously it's not since they have no TS restaurant. Too many iffy things can happen on travel day - I would just eat counter service @ Pop.

Thank you so, so much!!!

 

[Silver Queen]

My first recommendation would be to consider the resort restaurants as well as those in the park. Inn our opinion they are all interesting and can, in many cases be better than the restaurants in the park. Since you have park hoppers you will be free to go back and forth as you please so that my reduce the stress of planning your park itinerary and ADRs. We enjoy the restaurants at Epcot so it's not a problem for us to leave a park and go over to Epcot for dinner. We also enjoy eating out when we're at Disney so we base our ADRs on restaurants that we want to go to rather than restaurants that happen to be close to where we are. For example we love Boma and visiting the AKL so we'll make sure and go there even if it means traveling from another park.
The menus on the WDW dining site should help you decide where you'd like to go. This forum (along with the food photos thread) should also give you some good ideas. Good luck and have fun in the process.

 

[sndral]

I love the DP and never thought I would. All the xmas decorations are up and it's a great excuse to see the resorts by having ADRs there.
Unlike an earlier poster I start w/ evening extra magic hours, like you we aren't morning risers. I'm going about the same time you are. These are our overlapping days:
11/29 MK EMH open 'till midnight
11/30 MK closes @ 7 pm due to MVMCP
12/1 AK EMH closes @ 8 pm
12/2 MK closes @ 7 pm (MVMCP)
12/3 MK closes @ 7 pm (MVMCP) Epcot EMH open 'til 12:30

Right away you know you'll do MVMCP 11/30, 12/2 or 12/3. I'd eliminate 12/3 because Epcot's open late. Whatever night MVMCP is I'd want an early (5:30) ADR @ Crystal Palace or @ a monorail resort - 1900 @ GF, Ohana @ Poly, Wave @ CR, etc - so get on line and see what's available for 11/30 or 12/2. One day decided.
11/29 MK open late - pick another MK or monorail resort restaurant or catch the boat out to eat @ Artists point @ wl & you get to see WL's xmas decorations too.
12/3 Epcot late - try for Biergarten, and have backup possibilities - whatever appeals to you - look @ the Epcot area resorts too, like Cape May clam bake.
two days decided.
12/1 AKL open till 8, try something in AKL? Head over to Boma & see AKL's Xmas decorations?
You want 50s prime time 12/2 looks good, HS is open 'till 8 pm.
Hey, that leaves 11/30 as the logical MVMCP day.
Remember, you can always cancel and change your ADR's, the sooner you start, the more choices you'll have.

 

[3prettyprincesses]

I'm reading Mousejunkies right now too! Anyhow, I have a couple of questions for you. How old are your kids? What type of meals do they normally like?

I agree, your plan of picking parks first and then planning your meals around it are perfect. For your MVMCP, I'd do a different park that morning and then late afternoon return to your hotel for a nap. Then I'd book a dinner either on the monorail loop (Contemporary, GF, or Poly) or at MK (Liberty Tree Tavern or Tony's Town Square).

I think what you've picked thus far sounds fabulous. We love Crystal Palace too. Biergarten is one we're trying for the first time this Oct. 50's Prime Time is an all time favorite. For Animal Kingdom, we've done Tusker House for lunch and Rainforest Cafe.

Our favorite resort restaurants are Ohana (we do this one our first night every trip), GF Cafe, Kona Cafe, Narcoossee's, 1900 Park Fare. I've heard great things about the Wave at the Contemporary too but have yet to try it.

It is very overwhelming, isn't it? I'm the uber planner in our family so in some sick way I guess I enjoy it! Do you already know when your ADR window is? Try not to stress over it, just pick places where the food appeals to you and is close to where you're going to be for that day. Check out the menus either here:

http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/dining/disneydining.cfm

or

http://allears.net/menu/menus.htm

Good luck!

 

[wizzzzzard]

Howdy there! Let me see if I can help.

BACKSTORY: We are booked at Pop Century from 11/28/10 - 12/4/10 (first time ever staying on-site). We're on the Standard Dining Plan (1 quick service, 1 snack, 1 table service per day). We have 6-Day Park Hoppers (first time having park hoppers). DH has made it clear that he wants all of our table service meals to be for dinner. This is fine with the rest of us since I know we'll never be able to make it on time to breakfast and we usually eat our lunch on the go.

First up, your DH is right with making your TS cedits for the dinner meals. You are maximizing your value with the DDP this way.

1. How do you begin this whole ADR process? I feel that my family and I should all sit down and decide what park we're going to each day. It's probably not the best time to have a family Disney meeting with all of the end-of-the-school year activities (and the Stanley Cup on TV), but I know what's going to happen. I'll wait and wait to make ADRs and I won't be able to get a reservation anywhere. On previous trips, we just kind of "winged it" ... Whatever park we were in the mood to go to that particular day, we went to. I don't feel we'll be able to "wing it" with the dining plan. My line of thinking is if we want to go to Magic Kingdom on Monday, then I make a reservation at Crystal Palace. But ... (And here we go with the eye-rolling), we can always do Epcot on Monday morning/afternoon and hop over to MK for dinner ... right? Ugh!

OK. First thing you need to do, is look over where you would like to eat. Or pick a general plan of which day to do which park. Let me explain furhter by showing you how we are planning our August vist. We are staying from Aug 22 to Aug 30. With 6 day Tickets. (Our DS with autism doesn't like to change parks.)

Our 6 day ticket shakes down like this:

2 Days @ MK (DD & DW favorite parks)
2 Days @ EP (DS & My favorite parks)
1 Day @ AK (although it closes early we get enough of this place in 1 trip)
1 Day @ DHS

We also do a day off for DTD or the pools (usually both!), so we usually do a resort restaurant this day as well.

We enjoy many of the TS in EP, so we know we're going to book two ADR's here. MK has only so much in the way of TS that we really like, so we decided that on our 2nd MK day, we'd do a TS at a resort. Since AK tends to close early, we are doing a TS at a resort (Chef Mickey's). My wife absolutlely loves 50'S PTC, so that's a gimme for our TS on whatever day we do DHS.

So, narrowing down what we need, we pick our restaurants.

MK:
Liberty Tree Tavern. We like the food, and it's got a nice theme to it.
Resort Choice: 1900 PF @ GF. It's on the monorail loop, and easy to get to. It's a character meal for our DD, so that works. It's a buffet so that's good enough for me & DS.

EP:
Le Cellier. Our family's favorite restaurant. Hands Down. Bar none.
Teppan Edo: We did this for ths first time last year, and we loved it. We're going back again.

DHS:
50's PTC. A must do for DW. I admit I like the 'comfort foods' they have here. DW always gets the Pot Roast, and I've sampled the meatloaf, the steak, and the fried chicken. All good.

AK: We like the Yak & Yeti, but a 5pm close time is too soon for us to eat dinner. So we're headed to Chef Mickey's in the Comtemporary. We like visiting this hotel (wish we could stay here), and since it's a buffet chracter meal, it's likable for the whole family.

OK. So now we know where we'd like to eat. DW calls up the dining reservation line, and starts asking about availability for the places we want. Le Cellier? The only slot available in our week was on the 28th at 8pm. So that's one of our 2 Epcot days. 50's? Thare was a spot at 7pm on the 25th. Done! As we filled in days with our ADR's, our schedule made itself.

22-Aug-10 Arrival (Ohana*)
23-Aug-10 AK (Chef Mickey's at 'Temp)
24-Aug-10 EP (Teppan Edo)
25-Aug-10 DHS (50's Prime Time Cafe)
26-Aug-10 MK (Liberty Tree) (We did lunch for this one, we could not get get a good dinner ressie.)
27-Aug-10 DTD (No park.) (Maya Grill @ CSR)
28-Aug-10 EP (Le Cellier)
29-Aug-10 MK (1900 PF @ GF)
30-Aug-10: Check out. CS Breakfast at Pepper Market before we leave.

* We arrive at 2:30pm and have a 7pm ressie for dinner. Plenty of time to make this.

2. I'm feeling that this whole trip is going to be revolving around MVMCP ... Which I haven't even made reservations for yet. I know, I know ... Time is a wasting. I have two lines of thought on this: We spend the whole day at MK for whichever (if any) night I can get party tickets for. Then we suck it up and make a lunch table service reservation. OR (drum roll, please) we spend the morning/afternoon at another park, make a lunch res there, and hop on over to MK for the party. I know, I know ... I'm a clueless mess. Thank you for your patience.

Having never done MVMCP, I can't really offer help here. We never park hop thanks to our son, but we don't mind.

3. Restaurant recommendations? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Honestly, the only table service restaurant we know of is the Crystal Palace (friends of ours highly recommend it). Plus, DD and DH are suckers for anything Winnie the Pooh related. I know it all comes down to personal food preference (and a previous restaurant experience), but these Disney restaurants reviews are making me nuts. "50's Prime Time Cafe is awesome ..." "50's Prime Time Cafe is only worth it for the peanut butter and jelly shake". "Hollywood & Vine was our favorite dining experience" ... "I wouldn't feed the food at Hollywood & Vine" to a starving dog."

Read my schedule above. We love these places. Except for Ohana, we've been to all of them before.

In my clueless head, I've decided on Crystal Palace for MK, Biergarten for Epcot, 50s Prime Time Cafe for DHS. I'm being warned that no table service restaurants are worth it at AK. That brings us to resort restaurants and ...

4. We're driving from CT Friday morning (11/26). We'll be hanging out in North Carolina all day Saturday (11/27) and continuing to Florida bright and early Sunday morning (11/28). We've done this plan before and have reached the WDW area anywhere from 4:30 p.m. on. Would it be worth it to make a table service reservation for Sunday night? Have a nice dinner and go back to Pop and rest up for Monday? I'm thinking Boma or 'Ohana ... Jeez, I'm just so confused.

Thank you, thank you for any suggestions you can give. My apologies again.

I've got to head home for now, but when I get there, I will edit my reply with more info.

Edit: OK. Too much to do at home.

Crystal Palace is good. We've done it many time. Our kids are little old for Pooh now, but we've had good meals there. Never had Beirgarten. 50's PTC is a great choice. We love it. It is our favorite 'theme' restaurant.

#4: Well, I would say yes, but I would build a window into your arrival. We allow a 3 hour window when arriving by plane. You are driving by car, so you don't have the same limits, but you have greater chances for other interruptions. If you can eat for 6:30pm or 7pm, then go for it.

My Family also loves the following TS places:

AK: Yak & Yeti
MK: Crystal Palace
EP: San Angel Inn, Akershus, Coral Reef.
DHS: Hollywood & Vine.
Resorts: Chef Mickey's, Maya Grill

Hope this helps you!

 

[Fantasmic23]

I love the DP and never thought I would. All the xmas decorations are up and it's a great excuse to see the resorts by having ADRs there.
Unlike an earlier poster I start w/ evening extra magic hours, like you we aren't morning risers. I'm going about the same time you are. These are our overlapping days:
11/29 MK EMH open 'till midnight
11/30 MK closes @ 7 pm due to MVMCP
12/1 AK EMH closes @ 8 pm
12/2 MK closes @ 7 pm (MVMCP)
12/3 MK closes @ 7 pm (MVMCP) Epcot EMH open 'til 12:30

Right away you know you'll do MVMCP 11/30, 12/2 or 12/3. I'd eliminate 12/3 because Epcot's open late. Whatever night MVMCP is I'd want an early (5:30) ADR @ Crystal Palace or @ a monorail resort - 1900 @ GF, Ohana @ Poly, Wave @ CR, etc - so get on line and see what's available for 11/30 or 12/2. One day decided.
11/29 MK open late - pick another MK or monorail resort restaurant or catch the boat out to eat @ Artists point @ wl & you get to see WL's xmas decorations too.
12/3 Epcot late - try for Biergarten, and have backup possibilities - whatever appeals to you - look @ the Epcot area resorts too, like Cape May clam bake.
two days decided.
12/1 AKL open till 8, try something in AKL? Head over to Boma & see AKL's Xmas decorations?
You want 50s prime time 12/2 looks good, HS is open 'till 8 pm.
Hey, that leaves 11/30 as the logical MVMCP day.
Remember, you can always cancel and change your ADR's, the sooner you start, the more choices you'll have.

All of you on the DIS are so helpful and beyond awesome!! Thanks so much!!

 

[Fantasmic23]

Howdy there! Let me see if I can help.



First up, your DH is right with making your TS cedits for the dinner meals. You are maximizing your value with the DDP this way.



OK. First thing you need to do, is look over where you would like to eat. Or pick a general plan of which day to do which park. Let me explain furhter by showing you how we are planning our August vist. We are staying from Aug 22 to Aug 30. With 6 day Tickets. (Our DS with autism doesn't like to change parks.)

Our 6 day ticket shakes down like this:

2 Days @ MK (DD & DW favorite parks)
2 Days @ EP (DS & My favorite parks)
1 Day @ AK (although it closes early we get enough of this place in 1 trip)
1 Day @ DHS

We also do a day off for DTD or the pools (usually both!), so we usually do a resort restaurant this day as well.

We enjoy many of the TS in EP, so we know we're going to book two ADR's here. MK has only so much in the way of TS that we really like, so we decided that on our 2nd MK day, we'd do a TS at a resort. Since AK tends to close early, we are doing a TS at a resort (Chef Mickey's). My wife absolutlely loves 50'S PTC, so that's a gimme for our TS on whatever day we do DHS.

So, narrowing down what we need, we pick our restaurants.

MK:
Liberty Tree Tavern. We like the food, and it's got a nice theme to it.
Resort Choice: 1900 PF @ GF. It's on the monorail loop, and easy to get to. It's a character meal for our DD, so that works. It's a buffet so that's good enough for me & DS.

EP:
Le Cellier. Our family's favorite restaurant. Hands Down. Bar none.
Teppan Edo: We did this for ths first time last year, and we loved it. We're going back again.

DHS:
50's PTC. A must do for DW. I admit I like the 'comfort foods' they have here. DW always gets the Pot Roast, and I've sampled the meatloaf, the steak, and the fried chicken. All good.

AK: We like the Yak & Yeti, but a 5pm close time is too soon for us to eat dinner. So we're headed to Chef Mickey's in the Comtemporary. We like visiting this hotel (wish we could stay here), and since it's a buffet chracter meal, it's likable for the whole family.

OK. So now we know where we'd like to eat. DW calls up the dining reservation line, and starts asking about availability for the places we want. Le Cellier? The only slot available in our week was on the 28th at 8pm. So that's one of our 2 Epcot days. 50's? Thare was a spot at 7pm on the 25th. Done! As we filled in days with our ADR's, our schedule made itself.

22-Aug-10 Arrival (Ohana*)
23-Aug-10 AK (Chef Mickey's at 'Temp)
24-Aug-10 EP (Teppan Edo)
25-Aug-10 DHS (50's Prime Time Cade)
26-Aug-10 MK (Liberty Tree) (We did lunch for this one, we could not get get a good dinner ressie.)
27-Aug-10 DTD (No park) (Maya Grill @ CSR)
28-Aug-10 EP (Le Cellier)
29-Aug-10 MK (1900 PF @ GF)
30-Aug-10: Check out. CS Breakfast at Pepper Market before we leave.

* We arrive at 2:30pm and have a 7pm ressie for dinner. Plenty of time to make this.




Having never done MVMCP, I can't really offer help here. We never park hop thanks to our son, but we don't mind.



Read my schedule above. We love these places. Except for Ohana, we've been to all of them before.



I've got to head home for now, but when I get there, I will edit my reply with more info.

Thanks so, so much for all of the information and advice you have given me!

 

[Fantasmic23]

I'm reading Mousejunkies right now too! Anyhow, I have a couple of questions for you. How old are your kids? What type of meals do they normally like?

I agree, your plan of picking parks first and then planning your meals around it are perfect. For your MVMCP, I'd do a different park that morning and then late afternoon return to your hotel for a nap. Then I'd book a dinner either on the monorail loop (Contemporary, GF, or Poly) or at MK (Liberty Tree Tavern or Tony's Town Square).

I think what you've picked thus far sounds fabulous. We love Crystal Palace too. Biergarten is one we're trying for the first time this Oct. 50's Prime Time is an all time favorite. For Animal Kingdom, we've done Tusker House for lunch and Rainforest Cafe.

Our favorite resort restaurants are Ohana (we do this one our first night every trip), GF Cafe, Kona Cafe, Narcoossee's, 1900 Park Fare. I've heard great things about the Wave at the Contemporary too but have yet to try it.

It is very overwhelming, isn't it? I'm the uber planner in our family so in some sick way I guess I enjoy it! Do you already know when your ADR window is? Try not to stress over it, just pick places where the food appeals to you and is close to where you're going to be for that day. Check out the menus either here:

http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/dining/disneydining.cfm

or

http://allears.net/menu/menus.htm

Good luck!

Again, all of you on the DIS are so awesome and so, so knowledgable!! THANK YOU! DD is 11 and DS is 8. DD and I are more adventurous when it comes to food. We're suckers for Mexican (the hotter, the better!) and we enjoy trying new cuisines. DH and DS are less adventurous, especially DH. DH is strictly a meat and potatoes type of guy while DS is in his chicken nuggets only phase.

 

[3prettyprincesses]

Again, all of you on the DIS are so awesome and so, so knowledgable!! THANK YOU! DD is 11 and DS is 8. DD and I are more adventurous when it comes to food. We're suckers for Mexican (the hotter, the better!) and we enjoy trying new cuisines. DH and DS are less adventurous, especially DH. DH is strictly a meat and potatoes type of guy while DS is in his chicken nuggets only phase.

Your welcome! Your request for help was so polite too! Let's see, given that you're family has split tastes, I'd try to opt for buffet type of dinners. You've already suggested Crystal Palace and Biergarten. 1900 Park Fare has a nice dinner buffet and the characters are hilarious! They have a good prime rib station with horseradish sauce. My whole family adores Mexican food so we always, always eat at San Angel Inn at Epcot. And I'm pretty sure their kids menu has chicken tenders or something like that. Plus the atmosphere inside is incredible!

 

[wizzzzzard]

Thanks so, so much for all of the information and advice you have given me!

You're welcome. I updated my post.