Making ADR's

[ColleenMcD]

Working with my Dad on picking restaurants to make ADR's at for our trip in August...

Questions:
1) Make ADR's by phone, online or through our travel agent?

2) According to Disney, we can make our reservations beginning Feb 10th...can we make reservations for our WHOLE trip at that time, or do we need to call back every day to make the reservation for that coordinating day??

3) Our DDP is one quick service/one table service....more than likely, with the exception of the day we want breakfast at Akershus, Table service will be the dinner meal of the day. Do you reccommend we save our CS meal for lunch? Or use it for breakfast either in the parks or at the hotel? (we are staying at POR)

:mickey:

[MstngDrvnDsnyLvr]

Counter Service is a personal choice kind of thing. My daughter and I are going in June and are thinking of sharing several of our counter service meals and of bringing some breakfast items with us to eat in the room.


You can make ALL your ADRs at the 180 day mark - Feb 10th for you. I tried to do mine online and the system bogged down and froze. I ended up calling them and it took no more than 30 minutes to do 10 ADRs for our June vacation.

Have fun!!

[SBETigg]

1. Do it by phone or online, but do it yourself. Don't rely on your agent. I like the online system. They send you confirmation numbers by email.

2. If you're staying onsite, you can reserve for the whole trip on that day up to ten days. If you're vacationing longer than ten days, you will have to make a second call.

3. I like using the CS meal for lunch or dinner, depending on when we do the TS meal. We grab a light breakfast using snack credits most often. Also, you aren't limited by day. You get as many meal credits as nights of stay but you could use one a day or more than one a day and none on other days. The way you spread them out is all up to you.

[MississippiDisneyFreak]

Make your own ADRS and use counter service for lunch. We pack fruit, pastries, etc. and have a light breakfast in the room so we can make the parks at opening and save one big breakfast for the day we check out.:mickey:

[ColleenMcD]

Any Suggestions for sit down breakfast? It would be a Sunday in August - so I am guessing Breakfast at Cindy's would be a hard get...

Already planning Akershus breakfast for our Princess fill and Chef Mickey's Dinner for our classic characters....

Prefer American Cuisine as we are dining with two picky mousketeers (ages 7 and 4)

:minnie:

[mom2morgan]

If your travel agent is a disney specialist, they can do your reservations just fine. Ours easily got us one of the coveted "Cinderella's Royal Table". I am okay with making my own, though - that way I can be flexible in time and location if I can't get "quite" what I want. We used our credits for lunch, which I think is much better value for the money. We actually found that we could often use snack credits to get breakfast! but in essence, you want to use each credit for the most expensive thing it will get...and bresakfasts are relatively cheap to buy out of pocket. Consider the bang-for-your-buck comparison of a piece of chicken, fries, drink and dessert (lunch) compared to waffles and a juice (breakfast). I also refuse to use snack credits for soda - we carry water bottles and individual packs of drink mix powder.

[BelleBeauty]

Everyone else seems to have answered most of your questions, but I wanted to put my vote in for online ADRs. I also highly recommend taking care of this yourself. We planned everything out and made ADRs at the 180 mark. But things got changed around closer to our trip when they extended park hours or added evening entertainment. It was SO easy to change/ cancel/ or check on open reservations with the online system. They also have several ways of organizing restaurants that makes it easier to pick what you need. :mickey:

[ColleenMcD]

Should we make our reservations and plan our parks around our ADR's or plan our parks and hope to get the ADR's we want?

[MstngDrvnDsnyLvr]

Should we make our reservations and plan our parks around our ADR's or plan our parks and hope to get the ADR's we want?

Because it is just my 17 yr old daughter and I for our trip in June, we made the ADRs for the restaurants we want to visit and will be hopping from park to park as we want just making sure we don't miss our reservations and not letting our ADRs dictate our park location. BUT it is just the two of us and we do have park hoppers and I don't have anyone in the single digit ages.

When my kids were younger, I would let the reservations dictate where I was spending my day in the park. But I would also have looked to see which parks offered EMH and use those to also help plan our days.

[markyv]

For a great sit down, you might consider Cape May Cafe at the Yacht and Beach Club. This is an excellent character meal breakfast buffet, and it is a must for our family on every trip. :mickey:

[brivers222]

I change my ADRs way to much have an agent do it... I use the online system.

Also for a breakfast ADR i would skip CRT (2 TS credits for really bad food and same princess interaction as you are getting at the far superior 1TS Akershus) and go with either Crystal Palace and/or Ohana... both character meals and both with better food than CRT!

[mom2morgan]

Should we make our reservations and plan our parks around our ADR's or plan our parks and hope to get the ADR's we want?

I start by planning my parks and what I want to do each day and THEN make my ADR's. Doing it right on the 180 day mark, I've never been disappointed - just had to adjust times, slightly. However, if I couldn't get what I wanted, I'd adjust my ADRs at that point and then change my park plans if necessary.

[Hair_Razor]

If you have park hopper option not as big a deal where you dine. If you decide to save money like our family and do 1 park/ day option then make your plans first then ADR's. Things I take into consideration, avoiding EMH days and making sure my last day is Epcot :D. Also of you are concerned about your dinner on Akerheus day just and FYI you can do dinner there with the princesses. It was something we just changed on ours, we like our TS meal to be dinner. Have fun planning!

[ColleenMcD]

Are there specific time slots for reservations?

Like if I want a late breakfast reservation at Akershus how do I know what the latest breakfast reservation is?

Likewise for early or late dinners?

[Jared]

Are there specific time slots for reservations?

Like if I want a late breakfast reservation at Akershus how do I know what the latest breakfast reservation is?

Likewise for early or late dinners?
For restaurants that serve all three meals, breakfast usually ends at 11 a.m., lunch around 4 p.m. and dinner at 10 (or at park closing). Assuming you make your reservations online, you can search exclusively for times later in the meal window.

[c&d]

I suggest doing it on line. Not only do I get an e-mail confirmation but I can then upload to tripit on my phone. I don't have to worry about printing my reservations out and carrying them around. When at Disney I sometimes forget what time I have made dinner reservations for. :blush:

We usually use our CS for breakfast in our resort and then use the snack in the parks. That keeps us nourished until we go to dinner.

[Janmac]

First, I decide what park we would be doing rope drop for each day because we like to eat breakfast in the park before it opens. On our last few trips we have chosen to avoid the early EMH parks. We usually pay for breakfast Out Of Pocket (OOP) because they can be the cheaper meals. We do usually eat one evening meal as a CS when we eat the Storybook Princess breakfast at Akershus in Norway.

We usually eat supper at an Epcot's World Showcase country every evening. We usually use our TS for supper meals as they are often the more expensive meals.

We generally do eat CS meals at lunch. We have tried to do the light breakfast in our resort room but it's not enough. We like the bigger sit down breakfast, lighter lunch and the different countries at Epcot for supper. We usually use our snack credits for Mickey head ice creams :mickey:, or fruit. Our first snack credits are for water, which we then refill each day.

After I've decided what park we'll be doing each day I'll make the ADRs. I have made ADRs both on line and through Disney by phone call. My favorite is by phone, especially if I get a fun CM. Our 2010 trip we only had one ADR a day, so I did them on line.

For our upcoming April trip we had at least 2 ADRs every day, so I chatted with the fun CM on the phone. Sometimes I will go on line and go through the ADR process to see what times are showing up. But, a by phone CM can sometimes get you a time that is not showing up on line.

Favorite sitdown breakfasts are Crystal Palace, Tusker House, and Storybook Princess breakfast at Akershus. We are trying the Hollywood & Vine breakfast at DHS in April.

For resorts, we like 1900 Park Fare and Cape May for sit down breakfasts.

We have had few problems with younger picky eaters as most childrens' menus have something they'll eat - like PBJ or spaghetti or nuggets or macaroni and cheese, etc. Even at Marrakesh in Morocco, altho the 5 yr old in our group preferred sharing her mom's shish kebobs rather than eating her spaghetti. The nice thing about buffets - even at Norway or Germany - is that the child can see (and smell) what's available, which often makes for easier choosing.

Good luck and enjoy!

Jan

[renecat]

Kona cafe is a great place for breakfast. Also if you are paying out of pocket for this one it's not to expensive. Also as far as perferring american cusine. Most of the resturants offer most of the same thing on the childrens menu.
You should look at some of the menus before you book. We also some what plan our park outing and then decided where to dine for sit down. If you are going to Animal Kingdom I would suggest Flame tree BBQ for your lunch counter service. It is a great one. Hope you have a great time.