Big Party Reservation Questions

[HoneyBee1991]

We are planning a trip where we invited our extended family along. I was playing around with availability and once you go over 4 or especially 6 people the dinning options are not great.

I have specific (hard to get) restaurants I want to eat at for my family unit. To get it we will most likely need to split our family up by groups. What is the polite protocol here? What would/do you do?

Also, when I put in a dinner table for 3 people there were 0 results. But then I changed the party size to 4 and there were dozens. Why? Also, do I need to count my daughter if she is under 3 and will be sitting either with us or in a high chair?

Thanks!

 

[Tuvalu]

You must include everyone...even infants, toddlers or lap sitters....in your reservation. Accurate count is necessary due to limited dining capacity (and fire code issues in non-pandemic times.)

I was able to book for a party of 7 exactly 60 days out and get every ADR I wanted. If your party is more than 7-8, you may need to split your group in two and search for overlapping times. At check in you can tell the CM you are one large party and they will do their best to seat you together.

You can also call Disney Dining at 7 am on Day 60. You may have better luck working directly with a CM.

 

[danyoung56]

Also, when I put in a dinner table for 3 people there were 0 results. But then I changed the party size to 4 and there were dozens. Why?

Disney's reservation system is famous for that. I'm a single park stormer, and quite often I'll find no availability for 1, but plenty of choices for 2. And then when I show up I say "There will be only one dining", and have never been refused a table.

 

[nickys]

Right now a lot of restaurants have a hard limit of 6 people per reservation, due to having to space out the tables.

I would definitely call and get help booking, but you may need to split into two groups anyway, depending when your trip is. ADR booking is 60 days out now.

 

[RememberWhen]

We’ve traveled with large groups before. Occasionally you can get a reservation for 10+, but generally that’s tricky. We’ve had success booking two reservations at the same time and arriving a little early to ask if we could please be seated near each other. I don’t know how this would work in covid era with mobile check in and distanced tables. Guess we may find out in October (we’ll have a group of 15).

 

[carriebeth]

We have 8 children so have always booked for large parties pre COVID without much issue at all. There are a couple locations that do not allow for bookings of larger parties and they recommend you split into 2 reservations. I know coral reef was one and I believe tutto was another. When we checked in they were able to seat us together mostly probably because the vast majority of our party are children and they can easily squish together a bit and fit on a bench row seating situation. Looking at dining for an upcoming family trip this year, however, dining for 10 is very very very limited and basically the majority of it is places we don’t really care to dine at. We already informed everyone that this trip will be different than every other year’s. We are only going one week instead of 2 and most likely will have to eat mostly counter service as table is too limited splitting into 2 reservations isn’t easy as the app only allows you one dining reservation per time period. Even if your full party isn’t on the first reservation. So you have to call in or have more than one person with a Disney account to book.