You'll want to make your dining reservations via the DME website or app. (I've used both, although I prefer the website because I'm a fast and accurate typist, but a fat-fingered oaf on the phone). If you run into trouble or have questions, the disney dining telephone line, through which you can ALSO make reservations, opens up an hour after the online system.
The touringplans reservation finder tool is a last resort, if you find a restaurant you want is totally booked already. The reservation finder is just that: it notifies you if it finds a later opening on your desired day/time, and gives you a link so you can make the reservation yourself on Disney's website. It does not, and cannot, make reservations for you.
The advice (
especially if you are visiting during a busy time of year, or during a free/discounted dining promotion, when competition for ADRs is exponentially higher!!!) is to be at your computer/on your smartphone, logged into DME, precisely at 6:00am EST, 180 days from your arrival at WDW to begin making your ADRs. Ideally, have your fellow diners already programmed into DME in your "friends and family" list, so you can select them easily when reserving, and don't have to enter in their information, but if you don't, that's okay, too - you can always add it later. (If you are staying onsite, you'll be able to make all of your ADRs for your stay, for up to 10 days, at that time. If you are staying offsite, you can make each reservation 180 days from your desired
dining date, so you'll have to come back each day for a few days, reserving one day at a time.)
If you're able to make all your ADRs at once, then have a written list of the restaurants, days and times you want. Start with the ones that will be the most difficult, either because the restaurant is in high demand or has very low seating capacity (e.g., Be Our Guest, Cinderella's Royal Table, Le Cellier, 'Ohana for dinner, Beaches & Cream, etc.), or because the reservation falls earlier in your vacation, meaning that a larger number of people with a 180+-day window have had a chance to book that date. If there's an ADR you think you might not be able to snag, have a back-up venue in mind. (It's not from this year - and is out of date to the extent that is says Skipper Canteen doesn't take ADRs, because now it does - but this article lists some of the more popular ADRs, and suggests some similar alternatives -
http://blog.touringplans.com/2016/02/09/disney-world-hardest-dining-reservations/)
thank you so much for that great imput.. the only thing you lost me on was this statement
"Ideally, have your fellow diners already programmed into DME in your "friends and family" list, so you can select them easily when reserving, and don't have to enter in their information"
Once you've made your reservations (you'll receive confirmation e-mails, and be able to see them listed on MDE under your Reservations), if there's something you didn't get but would like to keep looking for, then give the touringplans restaurant reservation finder tool a try.
