Must-have dining tips and tools to help you book your next Walt Disney World dining reservation. It doesn’t have to be so hard!
Booking dining at Walt Disney World is no easy task. While there is certainly no shortage of dining options across all four parks and resorts, Guests still face the dreadful challenge of securing their first, second and third dining options when it comes time to book.
Must-Have Dining Tips Overview
Dining is a huge part of the Walt Disney World experience. And finding the perfect dining reservation is all part of the planning process. But that process has gotten even more challenging in recent years. It’s not as “easy” as it used to be. You have to be strategic and quick to land that illusive dining reservation. Knowing all the options, tips, tricks and tool can and will help. We’ll explore all of those here in this article.
What’s Changed?
When the parks reopened in July 2020, after the pandemic shut-down, they reduced the booking reservation window from 180 days to just 60. That’s a 6-month window down to 2. It makes a big difference. While it’s nice not to have to plan what you are going to eat 6 months in advance, shortening the booking window made it all that much harder to get dining reservations. And if you are unaware of the timeframe or miss it completely, it could mean difficulties reserving your favorite restaurants, or any restaurants for that matter. Even the PROs have a hard time securing their favorite places to eat.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean you are out of luck. There are tips and tools to help to find what you are looking for. And if that doesn’t work, I have a few plan B options that could work, too.
Let’s jump in!
When Can You Book?
There may be many of you reading this that already know the window for booking dining reservations is 60-days. What often trips people up is knowing when that 60-day window actually opens in relation to the first day of your planned Walt Disney World vacation. It can be tricky. And if you miss the opening window, you could miss out of some of your top picks.
There is a handy calculator that can help you confirm the exact date your dining window opens. This is a pretty cool page to bookmark and keep on hand. Just enter your arrival date to Walt Disney World and it will auto-calculate when your dining window opens up. It also provides a few other important dates that you should know, so this is a pretty cool resource.
Mouse For Less Planning Date Calculator
Be sure to put a reminder on your calendar/phone so you be sure to get up on time to book. Or if you use a travel agent/advisor, like Love of the Magic, they will remind you of specific dates you need to be aware of for your trip.
Booking opens at 6:00am EST every single day. It’s been said that sometimes dining for certain popular restaurants open even a little earlier than that. My recommendation, start refreshing the reservation page around 5:45am EST. You’d be surprised by how many times you get one of your top picks by doing this. There is no guarantee, but sometimes it works.
Resort Advantage – On-site vs Off-site
Guests staying at a Walt Disney World Resort have the biggest advantage when it comes to booking dining reservations vs those staying off-site. While either Guest (on or off-site) can begin booking dining at the 60-day window, the on-site Guest can book dining for the entire duration of their stay. The Guest staying off-site will need to book every day for the length of their trip.
This means the off-site Guest is booking a dining reservation each day and picking from a pool of less reservation availability because the on-site Guest had priority in reserving their dining reservations. In most cases, the extremely popular choices are booked before the off-site Guest even has a chance.
If dining is important to you when visiting, you’ll need to decide if staying on-site is worth it to you for the dining reservation benefit.
Must-Have Dining Tips for Searching for Reservations
- Whether you are using the My Disney Experience app or the Walt Disney World website, the search tools and tricks are pretty much the same.
- Before you start searching, be sure to be logged into your My Disney Experience account. If you do not have an account, create one. Logging in ahead of time saves you time on the morning you need to book reservations.
- If this is your first time making dining reservations, I suggest doing a few practice tries first. It’s very easy to cancel reservations, it’s all through the app or website, so you can easily create a few and cancel.
- Start searching before 6:00am EST. As mentioned previously, sometimes reservation windows open before 6:00am. Start your search around 5:45am. Keep refreshing. You never know what is going to pop up.
- You can search on your laptop and phone, or both.
- There are a few ways to search. You can search by all Disney dining or by a very specific restaurant. I prefer to search by a specific restaurant by entering the name in the search bar. This will save some time of scrolling through all of the other restaurants to get to the one you want.
- If you are trying to get several of the very popular dining choices, I recommend using your phone or web browser vs the app. You will be able to open several tabs in your browser, one for each of the specific restaurant pages you are trying to secure. When you start searching, you can refresh multiple tabs and you may have a better chance as reserving some of your favorites. With the app, you can only search one at a time.
- You can search by “Lunch” or “Dinner” for availability, but I always seem to have luck just searching by a specific time. For example, instead of “Lunch”, search for 12:30pm. Sometimes times will pop up that way instead.
- If nothing shows up for your size party, consider decreasing the number by 1. For example, instead of search for 3 people, try searching for 2. When you “check-in” for the reservation, you will be able to add or decrease the number of people in the reservation by 1.
Must-Have Dining Tips if You Can’t Find a Reservation
It happens! But not to panic. The best advice I can give in this situation is to keep looking. People change their plans all the time and cancel reservations, so things open up. Sometimes there are technical glitches that prevented openings from showing and they suddenly pop up, or often restaurants will add more tables and now there is more availability. Check every single day. Sometimes multiple times a day. Be persistent! It does and will pay off.
Know that you will also usually find something within 24-hours of when you want to dine. This has happened to be often. When Guests receive the reminder of upcoming reservations, they often cancel, and that’s your chance to grab it. Frequently I have found dining reservations later in the evening on the day before I want to eat somewhere specific. It’s not a guarantee, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
Canceling Reservations
Most dining reservations at Walt Disney World can be canceled within 2 hours of your reservations via the Walt Disney World website or My Disney Experience app. There are a few exceptions to that rule. When making your dining reservations, please note the cancelation policy so you are aware. For the full list of exceptions, see here.
Reservations for Larger Groups
When making dining reservations, finding availability for larger groups (6 or more) is nearly impossible. Your best bet is to break up the reservation into 2 different ones and book that way. The only way to do that however is to have 2 separate accounts (perhaps a friend, husband, wife, etc.) open on a different device, because one account can’t have overlapping reservations. The reservations don’t have to be perfect, but as long as they are within an hour of each other, that should work.
My suggestion is to not check in on the My Disney Experience app, rather do it in person. Alert the Cast Member at the check in desk of the situation and most often they are able to sit the party either together or at tables next to or near each other. It doesn’t always work, so be aware of that, but most often it does.
If you have a very large group (10 or more), I highly recommend using a travel agency to help support planning the trip. It can be quite overwhelming planning for so many people. Rely on the experts for help.
Must-Have Dining Tips & Reservation Tools
There are several tools and services that can help you find the right reservation at the right time. While none of them are full-proof and a guarantee, they are pretty good and helpful. I’ve used several of these and have had luck finding hard-to-get reservations for my upcoming trip(s).
Let’s take a look at the options.
Mouse Dining
Tried and true. This one I have had lots of success using the last several years. I have only used the free version, they have a paid version as well. Let’s break down the differences.
If you use the free version, you are limited to only 6 alerts via email. You have to stay on top of your emails too because if you receive an alert, you have to jump on it immediately. Reservations go quickly! And I mean lightning fast. If you are someone that doesn’t stay on top of emails as often, you may prefer text alerts. Text alerts require the paid service. For $9 month, you get up to 50 alerts and you can have up to 3 phone numbers added for texts. This widens your chances of grabbing a hard-to-find reservation. You still need to move quickly, but texts might be easier than email.
Either way, this service works and is very helpful. Especially if you are someone that doesn’t want to or can’t persistently check the dining reservations availability every day.
Here is a link to their website where you can sign up. I personally think signing up for a few months leading up to your trip might be beneficial so you can try to get the dining reservations you want for your trip.
Stakeout
This one I haven’t personally tried yet, but I heard it’s a great resource. It’s less cost effective than Mouse Dining, as the fee for 10 searches is $10 a month. Otherwise, you only get one search/alert. This is also an app only, so you’ll need to download to this from the App Store or Google Play.
Touring Plans
This is another one I have used, but unfortunately I haven’t had too much success. I subscribe to Touring Plans, but if you don’t you can still use their reservation finder, you just need to sign up for a free account. You only get two reservation alerts at time, but they do text you, so that’s good! Text is always better than email. Here’s a link to their site to give them a try.
When All Else Fails
There might be times when none of these above outlined options work. There is one last ditch effort you can make to try to get into your favorite restaurant. On the day of, check in with the host or hostess at the restaurant and see if they are accepting walk-up reservations. It never hurts to ask. There is definitely no guarantee here, but it could work in your favor.