Where and when dining reservations..help!

[LondensMiMi]

We are taking our granddaughter the first week of May and are going to purchase the deluxe dining plan. We will have 4day hopper tickets and check in on May 3 Checkout May 6. We will want dinner reservations each of the four nights (including checkout day on the 6th) Please help with these questions: I am so confused!

Can we check in early, early on the 3rd to get our park tickets and immediately go to the parks and be able to use our dining tickets?

Which restruants are the best and what times are the best to make reservations for each park?

We would like to do at least one really nice dinner and or/show, but want to be able to take advantage of the extra hours in the parks....how do we know when and where to be and actually have a shot to get the reservations at this late date? Our dear grandaughter is seven but not a princess fan...she prefers Pirates!

Thanks soooo much for helping!

 

[lovetoscrap]

Moving to the Disney Dining Board

 

[Jenngoofys]

We are taking our granddaughter the first week of May and are going to purchase the deluxe dining plan. We will have 4day hopper tickets and check in on May 3 Checkout May 6. We will want dinner reservations each of the four nights (including checkout day on the 6th) Please help with these questions: I am so confused!

Can we check in early, early on the 3rd to get our park tickets and immediately go to the parks and be able to use our dining tickets?yes you can get your tickets , but check in depends on weather your room is ready or not.

Which restruants are the best and what times are the best to make reservations for each park? Not sure at this late a date and depending on your personal tastes maybe whats left over. You will have to do a search for each day.

We would like to do at least one really nice dinner and or/show, but want to be able to take advantage of the extra hours in the parks....how do we know when and where to be and actually have a shot to get the reservations at this late date? www.disneyworld.com under where to eat to make reservations. you can type in the date and time you want and it will tell you what is available for each day at that time.Our dear grandaughter is seven but not a princess fan...she prefers Pirates!

Thanks soooo much for helping!

while you are there it looks like the best schedule for you would be assuming you are there before park opening on the 3rd.
May 3rd Epcot 8am - 9 pm
May 4th Animal Kingdom 8 am - 6 pm hopping to Magic Kingdom until 10 pm
May 5th Magic Kingdom 8 am - 11 pm
May 6th Hollywood Studios 9am - 9pm
Personally I would skip the park hoppers (save yourself some $$) and do one park a day then on the Animal Kingdom day Head to Down Town Disney afterwards. If you have any other questions PM Me or ask here Hope I helped you

 

[Cafeen]

We are taking our granddaughter the first week of May and are going to purchase the deluxe dining plan. We will have 4day hopper tickets and check in on May 3 Checkout May 6. We will want dinner reservations each of the four nights (including checkout day on the 6th) Please help with these questions: I am so confused!

Can we check in early, early on the 3rd to get our park tickets and immediately go to the parks and be able to use our dining tickets?

Yes, you can check in as early at 6AM or so (probably considerably earlier than you plan ) and activate your tickets and dining plans for the park.

Which restruants are the best and what times are the best to make reservations for each park?

We would like to do at least one really nice dinner and or/show, but want to be able to take advantage of the extra hours in the parks....how do we know when and where to be and actually have a shot to get the reservations at this late date? Our dear grandaughter is seven but not a princess fan...she prefers Pirates!

Thanks soooo much for helping!

This is where it gets tricky. You are going for 3 nights, so on DxDDP that means you have 9 credits to spend each. Generally, the accepted "break even" point for DxDDP is spending 2/3 of your credits at TS locations. With such a short trip, I'd actually recommend adding 1 to that to be on the safe side. So for your trip, that would mean 7 of your 9 credits at TS.

Since your trip is in May, you are well within your 180 day mark to make reservations, but don't panic, there's still likely plenty to be had if you're either willing to eat at less popular times or less popular restaurants.

I would take a look at your park plans and see where you're planning to be each day (or each part of the day at least) and then see what's available based on when you want to eat. Chances are, most of the in-park places may be pretty heavily booked (especially MK), but the MK resorts (Poly, Contemporary, Grand Floridian, and Wilderness Lodge) and Epcot Resorts (Beach Club, Yacht Club, and Boardwalk) should have some openings still.

The easiest way to make (and check) openings is through the Disney website itself (http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/) and click on "Where to Eat". Here you can input the values for what you're looking for for a specific day and see what pops up. You can leave the first section "blank" (or just as default rather) and just choose a date and time and see what's open all around.

Some suggestions:

• Try for at least 1 signature dinner. I personally love Citricos (Grand Floridian) and Jiko (Animal Kingdom Lodge), but Flying Fish (Boardwalk) also gets great reviews (I just haven't been there yet )
• Epcot has a ton of underrated restaurants, try for something that suits your fancy there if your planning on visiting Epcot. (Le Cellier will likely be booked for lunch, dinner may be available as it's now 2TS)
• Be flexible - There looks to be a lot still open for your dates, but know that you may not get first or second choice of times and locations.

 

[PrincessTiffany]

We are taking our granddaughter the first week of May and are going to purchase the deluxe dining plan. We will have 4day hopper tickets and check in on May 3 Checkout May 6. We will want dinner reservations each of the four nights (including checkout day on the 6th) Please help with these questions: I am so confused!

Can we check in early, early on the 3rd to get our park tickets and immediately go to the parks and be able to use our dining tickets?

Which restruants are the best and what times are the best to make reservations for each park?

We would like to do at least one really nice dinner and or/show, but want to be able to take advantage of the extra hours in the parks....how do we know when and where to be and actually have a shot to get the reservations at this late date? Our dear grandaughter is seven but not a princess fan...she prefers Pirates!

Thanks soooo much for helping!

Well, for a trip this short and it being your first time at WDW, I would highly recommend downgrading to the Basic Dining Plan - 1 Table Service/Sit-Down/Character Meal, 1 Counter Service/Fast Food Meal and 1 Snack Per Person. Unless you are doing a large majority of 2 TS credit meal, you can lose money with the Deluxe plan. Also, with such a short time in the parks, you want to utilize your time there, not spend a huge amount of our touring time in restaurants or hurrying from ADR to ADR. My kids enjoy on table service/character meal per day, put would totally revolt if I asked them to eat a 2nd or 3rd TS meal per day. There just too much to see and do in the parks.

First of all, Advance Dining Reservations open up at 180 days out, so a lot of the popular restaurants and character meals may already have limitied availability. You need to decide on your park days and then look at the WDW website and see what availability they have at the restaurants you are interested in. You can look at www.allearsnet.com and get a good overview of all the restaurants and menus. Also, I plan our park days by using the crowd calendar at www.touringplans.com.

Also, as the PP said, I would also ditch the Hopper add on - with you being new to Disney and only being there for 4 days, you really don't need it.

 

[LondensMiMi]

Thanks for the advice! We do want to work in a signature dinner so thanks for that input. We do plan to try to use at least 8 of our meal credits for table service...maybe all of them if we need to use two for a signature dinner. Can't remember the name of the dinner place that is supposed to offer great viewing for illuminations...thinking about that one for Friday night. This is really getting quite complicated and I need to get off this laptop and busy with about 100 other things...like my daughter's wedding next month! All advice is truly appreciated!