Dining Reservations at Walt Disney World
Character dining reservations can be made in advance
As of the 27th October 2009, advance dining reservations (ADRs) for Walt Disney World restaurants can be now made 180 days in advance. Some popular dining options can sell out in minutes, Cinderella’s Royal Table, located in Cinderella’s Castle in The Magic Kingdom is one such option.
Dining reservations can now be made online here or by calling (407) WDW-DINE. Online reservations can be made as early as 6am Eastern time – earlier than the telephone reservation department opens, bear this in mind when searching for those popular reservations!. Both options are available to you when staying at Emerald Island.
Sometimes it may be better to call for a reservation rather than book online. If you are looking for a dinner reservation at the Contemporary’s California Grill at the same time as the fireworks, only the live operator will be able to tell you what time the fireworks are that night.
Even at slower times of the year, advance dining reservations are a must. If you are a compulsive planner or want specific reservations (for example character dining), you will want to get your Walt Disney World dining reservations in place early. It is feasible to get reservations the day prior, even for large family groups. You have to be flexible on restaurant and time, but it is not an impossible mission.
We tend to be flexible guests at Walt Disney World, preferring not to plan our every day down to the last second. A tactic that has worked for us is to book a couple of key dining reservations for specific events that we definitely wanted to experience during our trip. These might be character dinners or reserved seating at Fantasmic. These days are booked for that event and park, but the other days we leave flexible. Then as our plans firm up during the week (which park we want to go to on which day), we phone up and get perhaps a dinner or lunch reservation for the next day or two. (This has worked, even with a group of 15 of us!) Usually we book lunch in a nice restaurant which gives us a welcome mid day break from the hustle and bustle. Dinner is usually off site at one of the many restaurants in Kissimmee / Orlando or a take out eaten at the vacation home.
Don’t forget about dining options in the resort hotels themselves or at The Boardwalk or Downtown Disney. Windsor Palms Resort guests can still dine at Boma, The Wave and any of the other resort restaurants. Great for those quiet non-park days.
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