FP+ and dinner observations

[horizons82]

I was somewhat surprised to see that FP allows there to be a dinner reservation at the same time there is a FP reservation. At one point I had a 4pm dinner reservation along with a 4-4:20pm FP for a show and I expected that one would have canceled the other out. (Although since there is a no-show fee for dining I guess the system leaves it up to the guest which to do).

Also, does the FP system take into account dinner and 'block-out' certain times around dinner to allow for a meal? I've noticed having a hard time getting FPs in the 4:30-6pm range and wondered if FP takes meal time into account at all.

 

[JohnD]

They're separate systems. It allows it because that is something you may choose to do. I could have a FP+ for Maelstrom from 7:00-8:00 pm, for example with an ADR at the Mexican restaurant at 7:45pm. Hop on Maelstrom at 7:00 and walk next door in time for your ADR. Personally, I prefer having that flexibility and the fact that I get to make those decisions and not some computer system.

 

[Rob562]

I was somewhat surprised to see that FP allows there to be a dinner reservation at the same time there is a FP reservation. At one point I had a 4pm dinner reservation along with a 4-4:20pm FP for a show and I expected that one would have canceled the other out. (Although since there is a no-show fee for dining I guess the system leaves it up to the guest which to do).

Also, does the FP system take into account dinner and 'block-out' certain times around dinner to allow for a meal? I've noticed having a hard time getting FPs in the 4:30-6pm range and wondered if FP takes meal time into account at all.

The FP+ does take meal reservations into account when auto-scheduling, but you can manually change things after-the-fact if you want. I don't know the exact windows, though.

So if you already have an ADR and you go to select FP+, it'll ignore any available FP+ times that have an active time within a set window that is from slightly before the ADR to 1.5-2 hours after the ADR. But you can then go in change the FP+ and make it closer to your ADR. I think it warns you of the conflict, but you can click an Ignore button and continue.

If you make your FP+ reservations before making the ADR, I haven't heard of any conflict warning mechanisms to inform of the conflict when making the ADR.

The system is there to basically keep first-timer visitors with a 7pm ADR at Chef Mickey's from making a 6:45pm FP+ at Splash Mountain and then getting angry once they're there when they realize it's physically impossible to make both of those and one or the other gets cancelled out because they didn't use it and they can't get re-accommodated.

-Rob

 

[horizons82]

Now it all makes a little more sense--thanks for the clarifications and for taking the time to explain it in detail Rob and John.