Online Dining Reservations!!?? GRRRR!!!!! Dining Discuss Online Dining Reservations!!?? GRRRR!!!!! in the Vacation Planning forums; [rant]This has got to be one the worst things Disney has ever created!!!!! I have been trying for 2 weeks to find dinner and breakfast dining at the resorts and ...

[ToddBreakey]

[rant]This has got to be one the worst things Disney has ever created!!!!! I have been trying for 2 weeks to find dinner and breakfast dining at the resorts and so far...NOTHING!!!

I know I am late in trying to book them being as it is only 30 days away now, but come on! You can't tell me that there are NO available reservations for dinner on the 28th of Sept or breakfast on the 30th at ANY resort sit down restraunt!

Half the time when I click on the Make Reservation button, it tells me that the system is too busy and to try again later. I have tried at all times of the day. Early in the morning, middle of the day, late at night, even at midnight EDT.

Here is where I would *like* to eat. Dinner at either Ohana (I know it's popular) or at Whispering Canyon and breakfast at Chef Mickey's (same thing, I know) or Kona Cafe. The system is telling me that there are *NO* reservations available at all during the meal times? [/rant]

Sorry for the rant but the system is beyond frustrating. Disney needs fix the system and upgrade it to be able to handle the capacity!

Keep in mind, Disney does VERY little wrong in my eyes. I love Disney and love Disney customer service, it just makes no sense that they would have a system that is this poor.

[Stitch]

That was me the other night. I wanted Whispering Canyon for either lunch or dinner on the 27th of Sept. Nothing. Pick up the phone and call... it's much, much easier.

[Spodie]

I have actually found it much easier to go online, but I may have just had good luck in the times I've used it. A few weeks ago, I sat on the phone for an hour trying to get reservations at places for dinner for September 18-21. I eventually gave up on what I wanted and just asked the representative to try and find us SOMETHING for anytime we were there. About a week later, I decided to play around on the dining reservations site and see if I could find a cancelled reservation for San Angel Inn, which had no availablility the week before, and was able to find several reservations throughout the day. The only thing I can figure was that Disney opened up some reservations because it got closer to the date, but I digress.

I think that it's weird that you can't get on the site, because I've never had that problem, but I'm not surprised that you can't get any reservation times at the places you want when you want them. Those restaurants are some of the most popular in all of WDW and you really need to book those reservations a few months out if you want to eat there. Another reason why it's so busy is because it's the first weekend of the Food and Wine Festival and it's during Free Dining.

The best advice I can offer you at this point is to keep calling Disney for reservations because they can look up reservations in bigger blocks of time, other than the hour window on either end of your requested time that you select online. Also, some people will cancel their reservations as the date gets closer, so if you're persistant, you'll be able to snag something that you really want!

[NC_WDW_Daddy]

Sounds like there are stil a few bugs to work out although some of the early reports when the online first started were positive. Maybe it is just the volume that is slowing it down for now.

[kat228]

Sorry, but welcome to free dining. Waiting until 30 days out is your problem. And currently you have people booking the 90 days for Thanksgiving weekend, which is undoubtedly overloading the online system. If you're having trouble, call them. In my opinion, the online reservation system is a tool, it is not perfect and the safest option is always to give them a ring.

[beja]

I was happy that Disney implemented an online system; however, I'm not happy with what they're currently offering. I think that with the system being new, it'll take some time to work out the kinks, but here are my current issues:

1) I wish they would allow you to select a range of times. For instance, if Le Cellier isn't available at 5:00pm, what about 7:15? It's a pain having to keep going back and selecting new times. They allow a range of days, why not times? I plan my trips around my dining reservations, so I'm open to eating at any time of day that I can get to my favorite restaurant.

2) I would like to see them require a deposit for reservations made online. This way you either get the deposit back when cancelling, or when you show up for your reservation. I know they do this for select restaurants, but if implemented for all restaurants, it would stop those people who make 50 reservations for a two day trip, just to make sure they cover their bases.

3) You should be able to cancel easily by logging into your account. From my experience (and I may have missed something) I had to use the confirmation numbers to retrieve my reservations and then cancel. Would have been easier to just have all of my reservations pop up when I logged into my WDW account or used my trip confirmation number, and be able to select those I wished to cancel.

[thokecin]

I don't think the main problem is the system, although I did have an issue this morning. The Web site hung after I had 3 ADR's in my Cart but before I was able to checkout, so I had to redo those 3.

I think the main issue is that the Dining Plan has become wildly popular and thus more and more people are aware of table service restaurants and are filling them up. We just hit our 90 day mark today and I was online at 6 am, on the phone at 7 am, and only got about 3/5 of what I originally had set out to reserve. I had to find 2 alternates.

Supply is greater than demand. Good luck on your search!

[lizdarren41]

We booked all our dining reservations on line 90 days before we were due to travel (October 14th....YIPEEE) & did not really have any problems other than if you rush the pages the site seems to crash. Let the pages fully download before moving on to the next stage, it seemed to work fine then.
We got all the restaraunts we wanted to visit although we were not able to get all the times we wanted. That does not matter really it's just been there that counts to us....true escapism, immeresed in Disney for 2 weeks.
40 DAYS TO GO!!!

[zima-cheryl]

I would encourage you to try again today... For the past 4 or 5 days I've been unable to pull up existing ADR's, to the point where I called to verify they still existed. Yesterday when I got to the dining web site the interface the page was totally different & working well. I don't know what, but I think something was wrong/broken on the on-line site for the past few days.

And if you can't get something on-line, remember you can still call & get a cast memeber to help you out.

[2tinners]

I had no problems booking for the entire week of Christmas through New Year's. I did have an issue the first day wanting the Liberty Tree Tavern for Christmas Day but a few days later went online and someone must have cancelled for that day as I got Christmas day at the perfect time. If you don't get what you want online try calling.