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![]() Disney dining for Walt Disney World can be very confusing and stressful (who knew booking reservations for be so nerve-racking!) but in this post I will go over some tips and tricks I wish I had known before our advanced dining reservation day!
Recently we booked all our reservations but we encountered a few problems on our 180th day.Both the Walt disney world website and the my disney experience app crashed so it was stressful- this was first time booking reservations so I had no clue if it was just me or if others had experienced this too. For anyone who doesn't know, you can book dining reservations on the 180th day before your holiday, but for only the first ten days of your trip. After your 180th day, if you are going for longer than ten days you need to book reservations day by day. Also there is a lot of confusion as to when reservations become available online. Conflicting articles say 11am UK time whilst others say 12pm UK time. The tips and tricks in this post will hopefully help you to clear up any last minute questions and worries you have about booking reservations. 1. Plan your reservations with dates and times!If you know me you'll know I did this and I loved it! Planning the days of our holiday according to reservations was so much fun! But specifically we wrote down the ideal times we wanted each reservation. This made it very simple and quick for when we came to booking. 2. Have backup plans for the popular restaurants!I made sure we had second choice restaurants for all of the popular ones, just in case we didn't get a reservation. On the days of booking, there wouldn't have been anything worse if we couldn't get a popular restaurant and then had to frantically decide what restaurant to replace it with! Plan as specifically as you can I would stay. Having said that we got 100% of our first choice restaurants (with our ideal days and times too!) which is so surprising as we have a lot of popular ones! So you might find that you don't have to use the second choices but it's better to have a back up plan just in case. 3. Be online on both the website and app!I was stupid on the 180th day and thought 'oh I'll just book things on the website I don't need the app'. However I was sooo wrong. I was online at 11am but I couldn't seem to book anything apart from the first day of our holiday. I kept refreshing the website for 45minutes before looking on the app to find that I could book restaurants! So hindsight I should have been on the app from 11am instead of the website! Which brings me onto the next tip... 4. You can book reservations from 11am UK time! (from my experience)When the website wouldn't work I doubted myself and thought 'maybe it becomes available at 12pm' but again I was wrong. In my experience I could book reservations from 11am so definitely be online at or even before 11am! 5. Sign into your account before 11am!Okay this one I already knew to do before but I wanted to include this anyway. It's an important tip and can save you a lot of time. Make sure you are signed in and all ready to go before reservations become available. This means you can quickly book places without having to type in your log in details constantly, as well as making it easy for your reservations to pop up in the 'my plans' section of your account. 6. Have a credit card linked to your account beforehand!I also knew to do this beforehand but again it's a timesaver!! Dining reservations now require you to have a credit card linked. This is in case you do not inform the restaurant ( have to cancel up to 24 hours before!) that you will not be turning up. They can then charge your credit card for not showing. So make sure you have linked your card to your account before you book to save you a lot of time. Otherwise you may have to type in card details every time you make a reservation. 7. Booking reservations does not take long at all!Obviously this does depend on when you're holiday is (busier times may be harder), but I found that once the app was up and running again it was so simple to book reservations. You select the number of people you want the reservation for, scroll over to your chosen date then select the time (see next tip for more info), choose your restaurant. Then you can select any dietary requirements/ allergies, select your card details and click book! 8. Choose a specific time for each reservation!When you come to book, select your specific time (for example 8am) in the tab on the app or on the website. This enables all the restaurants which have reservations at that time to pop up. It is a lot easier than choosing the 'breakfast' tab for example because normally (from what I've found) times after 9am will pop up. This means that if you are wanting an 8am for example it might not show up and you may miss out! Make sure you be specific! 9. Phone up guest services if you encounter any problems!As I mentioned earlier the app and website stopped working for me. So I decided to phone guest services for help as I wasn't sure what to do. They were so helpful. They confirmed my reservations for me and reassured me that both would be up and running soon. If you have any problems definitely give the dining reservation guest services a call as they will be able to help you in the most magical way possible. You can even book reservations over the phone (from 12pm however) so bare that in mind too! 10. Didn't get the reservations you wanted? Keep checking!If you didn't manage to get your ideal restaurants/times/days don't worry! Reservations do become available the days (or even months) after your 180th day. People do cancel reservations for various reasons so keep checking because you might find the exact one you are looking for! I hope you found these tips and tricks helpful! Good luck and happy booking!! Lidia xx Social media:
2 Comments
Jodie
17/4/2019 11:10:09 am
Hi Lidia !
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Hi I'm Lidia, a 21 year old English graduate from the UK. Blogger of all things lifestyle, disney, reviews and travel.let's get social:Categories
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