Voice of Travel

This is a tip that will help anyone whether you’re staying on Disney property or not…and even if you’re just visiting for the day!

If you plan on eating at a table service restaurant, (i.e. a restaurant where you sit down and they come and take your order), you’re going to want to make a reservation ahead of time. (It doesn’t matter if you’re on a Disney dining plan or not.)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in Disney World – and I’m talking about all 4 of the parks, Downtown Disney, and even some of the hotels – and I’ve seen people turned away because there wasn’t a single table available for the rest of the evening, no matter how long people were willing to wait.

Because it’s possible to make dining reservations 6 months out, and people know that they could end up not getting to eat in the restaurants of their choice, they are making reservations themselves.

So if you’re interested in going to a table service restaurant, make your reservation as soon as you can (up to 6 months in advance.)

You may not believe it, but there are multiple people who will be staying up late exactly 6 months before the first day of their trip, so that they can enter in all of their dining reservations as soon as they open. (I may, or may not have done this once or twice myself to make sure I got into a restaurant I wanted!)

Hint: Once the first day of your trip arrives, you can book your dining reservations for the entire trip.

Don’t get me wrong. For most restaurants you don’t need to book exactly 6 months out.  I’ve booked reservations at 3 months out and got into most of the restaurants that I wanted.  But there are some restaurants, like Cinderella’s Castle, that are VERY popular, and reservations for places like that go really fast. Others you won’t have an issue with, especially if you’re willing to be open to slightly different dinner times than you might have been looking for.

If you’re now worried that you’ll have an issue if you change your mind once you’re in Disney World, don’t be.  Quite a few times I’ve gotten down to Disney World, and have decided on the first or second day that I wanted to change a reservation for later in the week.  As long as it wasn’t a very popular restaurant, it wasn’t a problem at all!

But if you have specific restaurants that you’d like to eat at, or you always want to eat at a certain time, please make your reservations as soon after the 6 month out mark that you can!

Here’s a link that will take you to Disney’s site where you can book your Disney reservations – or least start looking around so you can figure out where you want to eat!

If you’d like to see other tips as they become available, check out 365 Days of Disney World Tips!

Enjoy,