My Disney Experience Walk-Up Waitlist now available for table service restaurants at Walt Disney World

[MrHappy]

Your smile, while like a warm hug, makes me uneasy. Why the smile?

 

[Hockey89]

I think you're pretty much spot on with everything you've said.

For people not coming from major metropolitan areas and accustomed to eating only at the finest and trendiest hot-spots, the notion of having to have reservations for dining outside of special times of year like holidays, is kind of alien.

I mean think about it: I get that some people here are way too good to ever grace the doorsteps of a Chili's or Olive Garden or even say a Cheesecake Factory but none of these places offer advanced reservations of any sort. In my area, the Cheesecake Factory can easily have more than an hour wait during dinner time on many nights but they still don't take advanced reservations.

For someone who has fallen into this mindset of planning their meals 6 months in advance because they go to Disney every year, it may seem obvious but to a lot of people - especially people who are not staying on property and did not book their vacation through Disney - it's not.

If you haven't experienced it before, it's weird to buy a ticket day-of to a park, go in and find that they have NOTHING for you but fast-food options despite the park map clearly showing plenty of table-service restaurants.

And let's face it, for the most part, your choices are all either fast service (usually lower quality fast-food style) or something you have to have booked months in advance. There is no in-between.

Obviously not every sit-down restaurant at WDW is a "signature" experience but even the restaurants that are on par with a Chili's expect an ADR.

The fact that this situation also usually includes every, or nearly every restaurant in all of the parks, just adds to the problem.

Maybe a solution would be to look at the table-service restaurants and designate some as ADR and some that are only walk-up or same-day reservation?

Scifi is a great example. It's a cool experience but it's basically fast-food. Oddly, we've never had an ADR and always been able to get squeezed in there as a party of just two or three (at weird times on occasion but still).

Maybe that's a good location to be a walk-up or day-of reservation type place since they seem to be able to turn tables and make it happen faster than their reservation system allows for, where Brown Derby would still operate as-is?

I can hear the 180-day booking commandos flipping their wigs right now but whatever solution (if ever there was going to be one) isn't going to please everyone and the way things are, I see people on almost every visit being turned away from restaurants like they were somehow supposed to know that lunch in a theme park had to be booked last season.

Why do they even post menus outside for people to stare at, only to have them decide after looking to eat there and be told no? I see this ALL THE TIME and the castmembers just stand there at the podium smiling and looking around while you can clearly hear the people looking at the menu discussing if they want to eat there - they know those people are about to walk up to them and they will then be turning them away but they still let the people look, find what they want to eat and wait for them to walk up and ask to be seated before popping their balloons.

Maybe Le Cellar will never be able to accommodate walk-ups or same-day gusts but from a customer service perspective, it sure seems better to be able to say "but there are tables available at (for example) Restaurant Marrakesh or Via Napoli rather than saying... "Well, have you checked out Electric Umbrella?"... Or maybe this is just a missed opportunity to expand dining options for a market that probably finding their meals off-property when they run into stuff like this.

With this approach, they could take down those menus from places nobody can ever walk up to and they could indicate on the map ADR required or highly recommended for the places where that's still the normal play and make things a little smother for a lot more guests.

I guess some areas of the country don’t do res???? I can’t remember that last time I went out to dinner without one and if I did where I live I wouldn’t get into anywhere I want. I can’t imagine going to Disney and hoping I can get into some places. I would never wait an hour for anyplace on Earth unles El Bulli came back.

 

[MrHappy]

I guess some areas of the country don’t do res???? I can’t remember that last time I went out to dinner without one and if I did where I live I wouldn’t get into anywhere I want. I can’t imagine going to Disney and hoping I can get into some places. I would never wait an hour for anyplace on Earth unles El Bulli came back.

Some people don’t get that when a city called Disney World has so many guests, systems are required to prevent chaos and promote efficiency. I’m sure he understands that waiting with a buzzer for 2 hrs with children like at his neighborhood Applebee’s would not be acceptable or efficient at WDW where the dance of time, quality and quantity have been examined to a formula that we know today. If you miss your 180 day window, then you probably didn’t care enough to eat at places you didn’t know required them. Sorry, that’s how Disney feeds millions of people on time.

 

[Chi84]

We’ve missed the 180 day window more often than not, and we’ve always been able to get our favorites. TP reservation finder helped us get ‘Ohana and Cali Grill brunch a few weeks out when we decided on a last minute trip. People modify and cancel all the time. Of course, it could be more difficult in the busiest seasons or if you have a large party. Also, Disney Springs restaurants are almost always available without much advance planning.

 

[MrHappy]

We’ve missed the 180 day window more often than not, and we’ve always been able to get our favorites. TP reservation finder helped us get ‘Ohana and Cali Grill brunch a few weeks out when we decided on a last minute trip. People modify and cancel all the time. Of course, it could be more difficult in the busiest seasons or if you have a large party. Also, Disney Springs restaurants are almost always available without much advance planning.

TP Rez finder is awesome

 

[MisterPenguin]

Your smile, while like a warm hug, makes me uneasy. Why the smile?

Martin called this as coming soon. And it did.

 

[MrPromey]

I guess some areas of the country don’t do res???? I can’t remember that last time I went out to dinner without one and if I did where I live I wouldn’t get into anywhere I want. I can’t imagine going to Disney and hoping I can get into some places. I would never wait an hour for anyplace on Earth unles El Bulli came back.

We could also be talking about a difference in kinds of restaurants. There are places around here that do reservations and where they're a good idea but those tend to be pricier and higher end locations.

I'll say the Cheesecake Factory example (which I don't consider higher end) is kind of a rediculous one because I one time went where they were out of buzzers, took our name, and told us to come back in 30 minutes to get a buzzer because they didn't have enough of them.

Cheesecake Factory aside, with casual dining in my part of Florida (and i live in the most densely populated county in Florida) reservations of any kind are absolutely not the norm. Some restaurants will let you "call ahead" to "get your name on the wait list" but that's about it.

 

[Jon81uk]

Well, an ADR at 60 days is still an ADR. The person I was asking seemed to be saying a system of no ADRs would be better and I was wondering how that would work.

I would normally agree about guests of a resort getting preference, but 'Ohana is not a typical hotel restaurant. It has quite a following with Disney guests. I don't care for it personally, but some members of my family love it and would be disappointed if we couldn't eat there. Same with Chef Mickey's and Cali Grill. I suspect guests of the Poly and Contemporary can dine at the resorts without a reservation, just not necessarily at those restaurants. I suspect the people who stay at those resorts may disagree, and that's fine - it's up to Disney.

I would be most concerned if I had the dining plan. Whenever we have it, we usually eat at the more expensive places to get the most bang for our buck. I wouldn't make any sense to have it if we were stuck eating at places like the Plaza or Nine Dragons or Sci Fi. Or even worse if we couldn't get in anywhere! I also feel like this would be more difficult to do at resorts. Do you have to go to the resort before you can join the waitlist? Or can you do it from afar? I would hate to get all the way to Boma for example only to find out there is no availability left for walk ups. Also what happens if they call your party and you're on an attraction, or in line for one? So many questions from me

I think 60 days ahead is reasonably, the previous 180 definitely felt a bit crazy. I would even consider a system the same as FP+ where onsite guests can make one reservation a day at 60days and everyone else at 30 days.

In terms of the dining plan, who knows if that is going to come back even. I do agree that they would need some reservations to make a dining plan work (and thats why its not being offered right now) to ensure people get to eat where they want to.

But as others have said, there are guests who don't realise how some places need reservations and how hard it can get to find table service places taking walk-up. I think some people do think that if they are staying at a hotel they should be able to eat there (at city locations as well as Disney etc).

 

[MrPromey]

Some people don’t get that when a city called Disney World has so many guests, systems are required to prevent chaos and promote efficiency. I’m sure he understands that waiting with a buzzer for 2 hrs with children like at his neighborhood Applebee’s would not be acceptable or efficient at WDW where the dance of time, quality and quantity have been examined to a formula that we know today. If you miss your 180 day window, then you probably didn’t care enough to eat at places you didn’t know required them. Sorry, that’s how Disney feeds millions of people on time.

I wrote several lengthy drafts nobody wants to read before settling on just addressing two points of what you're saying here but it's still long. I write like all the words in the world are nearing their shelf life and will have to be thrown out if I don't. I know. Sorry...

First, I 100% agree things have to be different in some way from local restaurants. I think it's weird when I get a buzzer to get on Dumbo, although some restaurants in Disney Springs where things operate more like the real world, do use them.

That said, Disney World is not a city. Reedy Creek Improvement District where it is located isn't even a city by traditional scale. Besides land, it's not even close. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of city planners who would fall out of their chair laughing if you tried to make that comparison to them.

What Disney or Reedy deals with isn't anything even remotely on the scale of what an actual city deals with in terms of utilities and volume of people on a daily basis.

Disney's central control over the whole shebang actually makes things easier for them (not harder) than it would be for individual operators (restaurants, in this example) who would in a real city, be competing with each other for their own survival and yet, so many at that level do manage to somehow survive and serve people without asking for any kind of commitment six months in advance.**

Disney's "dance" is primarily a conga line snaking it's way towards increased profit over all other considerations.

They're a business. I can't blame them for that but because of their unique monopoly-like control over certain things within their bubble, they're able to make choices and decisions that aren't guest-friendly that other's wouldn't get away with.

You can go into the Magic Kingdom thinking you might enjoy dinner at Beast's castle and instead after trying a half dozen other options, end up standing on a sidewalk with no place to sit, holding a turkey leg in one hand and your drink in another with Disney somehow not looking at all to blame and them still making more profit off your meal than most independent restaurants actually able to seat you could.

For an investor, that's a beautiful thing. For a guest, not so much.

Then someone will come along and say, "If you wanted to sit down in air conditioning and eat food off a real plate with a metal fork, you should have known you had to book that six months in advance, silly."*

This is all neither here nor there but this entire issue we're discussing is something Disney has created with a combination of dining plans guests are eager to maximize the value of, the rules around ADRs, and the capacity of dining locations - all of which are 100% in their control.

None of this is new and in reality, I'm probably talking about solutions to something I doubt Disney even sees as a problem. They've obviously been happy with things or else they'd have changed something over the years to improve the guest experience so unless something crazy happens like a plague across the earth that requires them to totally rethink their business strategies, I guess nothing will ever change.

... Oh wait.


*TerriOfTerror has pointed out she's had good luck getting into Skippers so this isn't 100% universal but you get my point.

**Disney bills this as a guest "convenience" but it's a pretty big convenience to them, too, when they can decide staffing that far out to deal with volume which allows them to avoid things like overtime and possibly even the number of full-time employees that they have to provide additional benefits to vs. part time.

Six months is plenty time to fully hire and train people for most guest-facing positions if they need to. It's also enough time to negotiate the best price on supplies for putting bulk orders in, bring stuff over the slowest/cheapest way possible from China for merchandise, etc.

 

[Chi84]

I wrote several lengthy drafts nobody wants to read before settling on just addressing two points of what you're saying here but it's still long. I write like all the words in the world are nearing their shelf life and will have to be thrown out if I don't. I know. Sorry...

First, I 100% agree things have to be different in some way from local restaurants. I think it's weird when I get a buzzer to get on Dumbo, although some restaurants in Disney Springs where things operate more like the real world, do use them.

That said, Disney World is not a city. Reedy Creek Improvement District where it is located isn't even a city by traditional scale. Besides land, it's not even close. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of city planners who would fall out of their chair laughing if you tried to make that comparison to them. What Disney or Reedy deals with isn't anything even remotely on the scale of what an actual city deals with in terms of utilities and volume of people on a daily basis.

Disney's central control over the whole shebang actually makes things easier for them (not harder) than it would be for individual operators (restaurants, in this example) who would in a real city, be competing with each other for their own survival and yet, so many at that level do manage to somehow, survive and serve people without asking for any kind of comitment six months in advance.**

Disney's "dance" is primarily a conga line snaking it's way towards increased profit over all other considerations.

They're a business. I can't blame them for that but because of their unique monopoly-like control over certain things within their bubble, they're able to make choices and decisions that aren't guest-friendly that other's wouldn't get away with.

You can go into the Magic Kingdom thinking you might enjoy dinner at Beast's castle and instead after trying a half dozen other options, end up standing on a sidewalk with no place to sit, holding a turkey leg in one hand and your drink in another with Disney somehow not looking at all to blame and them still making more profit off your meal than most independent restaurants actaully able to seat you could.

For an investor, that's a beautiful thing. For a guest, not so much.

Then someone will come along and say, "If you wanted to sit down in air conditioning and eat food off a real plate with a metal fork, you should have known you had to book that six months in advance, silly."*

This is all neither here nor there but this entire issue we're discussing is something Disney has created with a combination of dining plans guests are eager to maximize the value of, the rules around ADRs, and the capacity of dining locations - all of which are 100% in their control.

None of this is new and in reality, I'm probably talking about solutions to something I doubt Disney even sees as a problem. They've obviously been happy with things or else they'd have changed something over the years to improve the overall guest experience so unless something crazy happens like a plague across the earth that requires them to totally rethink their business strategies, I guess nothing will ever change.

... Oh wait.


*TerriOfTerror has pointed out she's had good luck getting into Skippers so this isn't 100% universal but you get my point.

**Disney bills this as a guest "convenience" but it's a pretty big convenience to them, too, when they can decide staffing that far out to deal with volume which allows them to avoid things like overtime and possibly even the number of full-time employees that they have to provide additional benefits to vs. part time. Six months is plenty time to fully hire and train people for most guest-facing positions if they need to. It's also enough time to negotiate the best price on supplies for putting bulk orders in, bring stuff over the slowest/cheapest way possible from China for merchandise, etc.

You wasted 50 words writing about how your post is too long

I like the ADRs because I know, not hope, that I will enjoy eating in the Beast's castle instead of sitting on a sidewalk with a turkey leg. The 180 days is arbitrary and seems over-long to me, but other than that, what solution would you suggest that would be optimal for both the guest and Disney? When the parks are at full capacity, I would imagine that any restaurant taking walk-ups would end up with extremely long lines, which doesn't seem like a good idea to me. When we went to Yak and Yeti for lunch, they were quoting 90-minute waits for walk-ups who did not have a Landry's card. And this was in May, when the park was relatively quiet.

Disney is designed as a much better experience for people who inform themselves beforehand. After reading several posts here, I checked MDE for same-day dining reservations during our last trip and found plenty of available table service openings for those who don't want to make plans in advance. But for people who care enough to want the most popular restaurants at the most popular times, ADRs are the best way to make that happen.

 

[MrPromey]

You wasted 50 words writing about how your post is too long

Such is my life...

 

[MrPromey]

I like the ADRs because I know, not hope, that I will enjoy eating in the Beast's castle instead of sitting on a sidewalk with a turkey leg. The 180 days is arbitrary and seems over-long to me, but other than that, what solution would you suggest that would be optimal for both the guest and Disney? When the parks are at full capacity, I would imagine that any restaurant taking walk-ups would end up with extremely long lines, which doesn't seem like a good idea to me. When we went to Yak and Yeti for lunch, they were quoting 90-minute waits for walk-ups who did not have a Landry's card. And this was in May, when the park was relatively quiet.

Disney is designed as a much better experience for people who inform themselves beforehand. After reading several posts here, I checked MDE for same-day dining reservations during our last trip and found plenty of available table service openings for those who don't want to make plans in advance. But for people who care enough to want the most popular restaurants at the most popular times, ADRs are the best way to make that happen.

I don't think there is a solution that would be optimal for everyone. That's just not reality anywhere in or out of Disney.

I think two things that would help, though, particularly in the parks is more dining, and dining tiers with the top ones kept as ADR-heavy.

If we were to compare dining to resorts, it's like we have "value" and "deluxe" but nothing between the two (maybe with the exception of Satu'li Canteen, sort of).

So you either need an ADR or your options are sort of crap. It would be nice to see more things like Satu'li Canteen and Beasts Castle (previously during lunch) as options. I think the reason you saw Beast's so full was simply because at about the same price as Pecos Bill's slop-shop, you got something much better and that was obvious to people.

Of course, a place like Beast can't handle as many people per hour as Pecos which means it won't be the same runaway profit Disney has enjoyed even if prices are a little higher and that is probably the problem. It's not in Disney's interest to make better options that won't seat as many people and will take more people to staff, even if they are still highly profitable, relative to real-world costs of doing business - not when they could otherwise just sell that person a turkey leg and be done with it.

And yes, there is the real estate argument and how these are only going to do good business during meal times but that argument applies to just about every restaurant in the world and somehow, even the ones without all the advantages in cost savings and built-in audiences like Disney manage to make a go of it - even in markets with strong competition.

I'm not arguing that Disney make everybody's favorite special places a walk-up or day-of option but I think it would be super-nice if there was something - anything really - (again, particularly in the parks) that was available that was a step above most of what they offer, today.

Especially with the app, it doesn't seem crazy to think a check-in or even wait system couldn't be created where the app on people's phones could let them know about how much longer their wait was or even to summon them like a modern equivalent of a buzzer so they wouldn't have to hang out in the front of the restaurant and wait for their name to be called if demand so outpaced supply that waits became a huge problem.*

Of course then somebody comes in and asks, how these should fall on the meal plans and you know, I don't know but that's part of the tangled mess of Disney's own design with the current situation.


*Again, I think Disney took the wrong lesson away from fast-service at Beast's Castle. I think the popularity should have indicated this is something guests want more of - not that they should get rid of it because it couldn't handle the demand.

 

[Chi84]

I don't agree that the options are ADR or crap. The exception is MK, where I would argue that all the quick service food options are pretty much crap (other than one or two items at BOG lunch and maybe CHH).

At AK, you can walk up at Rainforest and Yak and Yeti (or get immediate seating with a Landry's card). In my opinion, both places are sort of like a Chili's in price and food options. Satu'li Canteen and Flame Tree are both pretty good options, and you can get quite a few great food items at Nomad Lounge. Epcot has several better-than-average options like Tangierine Cafe or the quick serve places in France and Japan. Even HS has the patio at HBD, where we were able to get excellent food without a reservation. The Mara at AKL is one of our favorite places to eat, even though it's quick service.

I would never argue against Disney adding more restaurants because I love to try new places, but it's a complete myth that you have to know where you want to eat 6 months in advance in order to get a table service reservation. For people who are flexible and don't care about eating at a particular restaurant at a particular time, there are options to eat at quick service locations or find last-minute table service restaurants through MDE. For those who do want that certainty, no system is going to provide it better than having an ADR.

 

[MrPromey]

Just for point of reference, to those who don't understand why I'm bagging on Pecos Bill's so hard, here are the two most recent reviews on Google which echo my sentiments almost exactly:

 

[Chi84]

Just for point of reference, to those who don't understand why I'm bagging on Pecos Bill's so hard, here are the two most recent reviews on Google which echo my sentiments almost exactly:View attachment 495159

The second criticism would apply to most, if not all, quick service dining experiences at Disney. I would love it if they went to a system of making people order first, then enter the dining areas after getting their food. It would cut down considerably on the human vulture phenomenon.

 

[MrPromey]

The second criticism would apply to most, if not all, quick service dining experiences at Disney. I would love it if they went to a system of making people order first, then enter the dining areas after getting their food. It would cut down considerably on the human vulture phenomenon.

I've been in Starlight when they do this for the area with the animatronic and the stress there is not knowing if you'll find a table with enough space for your group once you're walking around with 1-2 very full trays of food and drinks.

Of course, if they managed sales based on available seating like a normal dine-in restaurant does, this wouldn't be a problem.

... but of course, then people are mad because they can't get into even the bad places to order food now... which just shows that they don't provide enough dining capacity for the number of people they're letting into the parks.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Just for point of reference, to those who don't understand why I'm bagging on Pecos Bill's so hard, here are the two most recent reviews on Google which echo my sentiments almost exactly:View attachment 495159

People with the title "local guide" should know that QS does not mean 'quality service.' They should also know enough not to eat at peak dining times. They should also know that if you must eat at a peak time at a QS, you to to Columbia Harbor House and eat upstairs where you can find a table.

 

[surfsupdon]

Can you still walk up and sit at a bar and order dinner, if chairs are available? No reservation needed?? Thinking of places like Narcoossee’s. Thanks.