What times to Book Dinners

[cbe2000]

Hi Guys, I haven't been to Dinsey in ages and I've never done the dining plan. We're planning to go in Apr. I was wondering how on earth do you plan out all your sit down meals and the times? How do you know what exactly you'll be doing around those times. I feel like we'll be afraid to go on a ride or be too far from the restaurant. Like let's not do this or that becasue we have to eat in a half hour. I don't know it just seems like a lot of planning to be around the restaurant at the precise time. Any opinions on times for the restaurant. I have 3 children 2 six year old and a DD who'll be 5.

Thanks

 

[hansel1]

It really depends on how long your stay is. We took seven days on our last trip to hit all the parks. That way we didn't feel like we had to get in everything at one park AND make our reservation. We finished the parks in 5 days and then revisited the parks the last two.

Try to plan restaurants that are in a particular park you want to visit for mid to late afternoon. It kind of gives you a break before returning to the rides at night.

You will be fine!

 

[daisyduck123]

We don't plan our park days at all based on our dinners...here's what we do...

1) We get up & go to a park early.
2) After counter-service lunch there, head back to the resort to swim or go to a waterpark.
3) About 4:00...head to our room to shower & clean up.
4) Then we head to dinner. So we are always coming to dinner from our hotel room, so what park we are at that day doesn't matter at all.

*Like an above poster said...we also spend a lot of days in the park (8 or 9), so we are never rushed to see a lot in one day.

Easy for us!! Have fun planning your ADRs. There are so many great places to eat.

 

[Mom of Sleepy Bashful and BabyDoc]

It really depends on how long your stay is. We took seven days on our last trip to hit all the parks. That way we didn't feel like we had to get in everything at one park AND make our reservation. We finished the parks in 5 days and then revisited the parks the last two.

My planning is sort of like above. We have 11/12 days in the parks. I have never done a sit down EVERY day, so it should be interesting if this works out.

What we plan on doing is being at park opening everyday. We'll take about 2-2 1/2 hours to ride all the rides we want to for that day. Then we'll do lunch and go back for a swim/nap (we'll need this with it being summer and later park hours.......not sure in April if you will need this).

Our dinner ADR's ..........all 10 are AT or BEFORE 5:45pm with the exception of 7:20pm at Rose and Crown for Illumination Fireworks. Not everyone likes to eat that early but it works well for my family. We pretty much always eat at 5:30pm at home.

Then, we'll shop, re-ride some rides if the line isn't long, maybe catch some shows and wait for the parades/fireworks, get a snack (if we need it)....etc.

The trick for me was deciding what park to be in each day so I could plan our ADR's accordingly. That's why I needed TourGuideMike's help.

But we'll see if this all works. I will report when we get back.

 

[siouxi31]

Our dinners are pretty much around 7PM with the exception of two that only had openings at 4:30PM.

7PM was a good choice for us because we eat breakfast late, eat lunch late, head back to the resort to take a swim and then it would be time for dinner. If we make it too early, it's tough to get that swim in which is important to the kids.