Recently I made advance dining reservations (ADR's) for my trip to Disney World in January.
Have I mentioned I'm going to Disney World in January? Oh yeah. My wife and I are running in the Disney World Half Marathon in January.
I'm not really a runner, but I've been training for a while. I've run a few 5K races over the past couple of years and earlier this year I ran a 10K. (For those non-metric readers, a 5K is about 3.1 miles and a 10K is about 6.2 miles. A Half Marathon is 13.1 miles.) I'll write more about that later. This is about making the ADR's.
You can't make Disney ADR's until 180 days (plus the length of your stay) before you arrive at the resort. So, I was counting down the days before we had to make them. The reservation phone lines and web site don't open until 7:00 am. It's sometimes difficult to get ADR's for the more popular restaurants, unless you make them early.
This trip, my wife and I planned to go to very few table-service restaurants. What's a table-service restaurant? Disney has (mostly) two different types of restaurant: counter-service and table-service. Counter-service is where you pick up your food at a counter, such as at McDonald's. Table-service has a waiter that brings you your food. Usually, at Disney, you have to make ADR's for table-service restaurants, but not usually for counter-service.
Anyway, we planned on on only 4 table-service restaurants for the week we're going to be there. We REALLY wanted 2 of them and the other 2 were just an afterthought.
First of all, my wife wanted to eat at Be Our Guest restaurant. It's in the Magic Kingdom and is now the hardest restaurant to get into in Disney World. You get to eat inside the Beast's castle, from "Beauty and the Beast". My wife wanted to eat there for dinner.
Second, I wanted to have breakfast at Crystal Palace, also in the Magic Kingdom. I didn't really care about the food, or the fact that I'd get to see Winnie the Pooh while I eat. The reason I wanted this restaurant was that it opens at 8:00, while the park opens at 9:00. Yes, I'd get to get into the park a full hour before it opens. I hope to get a picture of me in front of Cinderella's castle with NO ONE in the background.
The other 2 restaurants, Tokyo Dining at EPCOT and 50's Prime Time Cafe at Hollywood Studios, were a couple of places we wanted to go to, but if I couldn't get ADR's for, then it's fine.
So, at 6:50 am I was sitting at the computer, ready to start typing. I actually had my information for the Be Our Guest restaurant already typed in, so I could just hit enter. So, at 7:00 I hit enter and got my ADR for Be Our Guest. Great! That was easy.
I checked for times available for Crystal Palace. It was 7:02 and already all breakfast times were taken. WHAT? Already? Crap!
So I moved on and tried my next restaurant, Tokyo Dining. It was then that Disney's web site was overloaded and I got kicked off. I just sat there hitting refresh on my browser, trying to get back in. I also texted my wife, saying what had happened.
Eventually I got back on and tried again. I got my ADR for Tokyo and 50's Prime Time. But that Crystal Palace kept nagging me. So I tried again. Again it said no availability. I accidentally hit refresh instead of back and it came back on with one availability at 8:05. I grabbed it and got it.
ALRIGHT! I got every ADR I wanted.
Unknown to me, though, after I'd texted my wife, she went online and tried to get the ADR's on her own. She was also trying to get the 8:05 Crystal Palace. I actually kicked her off by hitting enter before she was able to. Hehehe.
So, I got all my ADR's and am excited to go to Disney World. I can't wait.
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