Total Disney newbie needs help planning!!!

[wow_stars]

Hi,
We are planning a trip for a couple years from now, yea I know we're planning really early but that's how my husband and I are We are wanting to go in September preferably when Disney usually offers discounts on rooms. We are Florida residents and do not want the dining plan because tables in wonderland seems more cost effective for us. We are worried about not being able to be spontaneous when we go with our dining. We have not officially gone for something like grad night or a chorus trip in about ten years or so and this will be our daughters first trip so we want the relaxation of being able to be spontaneous and not tied down to a hundred reservations because Disney offers free dining at this time. We want to go for 10 nights and we want to go around the cheaper and less crowded times of year and be able to try the water parks too so is this time of year crazy for dining reservations? Is it really crowded and worth going at a slower time of year without free dining? And how hard and time consuming is it to actually get to a reservation? Does it seem like all you do is rush to get to restaurants? We want to go to the more famous ones like Chef Mickeys and Coral Reef and Shulas and Cinderellas Royal Table and The Crystal Palace and popular ones like that. Thanks so much!!! Any tips and information or even links to where I can find this info will be so greatly appreciated!!!

 

[3pletprincesses]

well for popular restaurants, no matter what time of year, you need a reservation. I went last fall and it was reall yquiet at the parks. we barely waited in line for attractions but I had a really hard time booking reservations 30 days before our trip. During our trip, I saw many people being turned down because they didn't have reservations but I was eating mainly at peak times. People book 180 days out and if you don't have ressies, you will most likely be turned around. I hate being trapped by reservations so what I do is pick which park I go each day and book the meal at that park or near that park.

I was travelling solo with my 4 yo triplets. I never felt tied down by my reservation because I either booked early breakfast which would be roughly when I would be going to the park anyways or dinner around dinner time. We had so much fun and our reservations didn't cause us any problems except for one. I had scheduled H&V at 12:30 and I felt like all I did was look at my watch all morning and tried to not venture too far into a line because lunch was coming soon. I felt like that morning was lost at worrying about missing that reservation. With Dinner, we pretty had done what we wanted to do at the park and had gone for a swim at the resort and more often then none, we would be getting back to the parks at around our dinner time which was perfect.