If you wish you had a fairy godmother who could help you book dining reservations at Disney World and Disneyland, consider your wish granted. Disney is in the process of updating its dining reservation system to simplify planning your next trip. You may already see these changes on the Disneyland and Walt Disney World websites and their corresponding apps, but if you don’t see it yet, you should within the next few days.
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These updates build upon new features introduced over the past two years that allowed guests to view availability for a specific restaurant for up to 10 days at a time and see all available dining reservations for a specific day at once rather than forcing them to choose a specific mealtime for a particular restaurant.
It can be difficult to snag the most coveted Disney dining reservations, like Cinderella’s Royal Table, Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant or Space 220. That’s because, before these updates, you could only search for one day and one meal period at a time.
When booking popular restaurants, time is of the essence. In the past, so many people clamoring for the same restaurants the moment their booking window opened meant availability would often disappear before you found an open spot.
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With the changes to Disney’s apps and websites for Disney World and Disneyland, those frustrations are becoming a thing of the past. Here’s what you need to know to prepare for your next visit.
Know when you can book your dining reservations
When can you book Disney World dining reservations?
You can begin making dining reservations 60 days before your visit. If you are staying in a Disney World hotel, you can make dining reservations 60 days before your check-in day for your entire stay (up to 10 days), so it’s possible to get a 10-day jump on everyone else waiting for the 60-day window to open if you’ve booked an extended Disney hotel stay.
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Reservations open on Disney’s website and the My Disney Experience app between 5:45 and 6 a.m. Eastern time, or you can call 407-939-DINE beginning at 7 a.m. Eastern time, but coveted reservations may already be snatched up by that time.
You can cancel most Disney World dining reservations up to two hours before your reservation. If you cancel less than two hours ahead, you’ll be charged a cancellation fee of $10 per person. Exceptions will be noted in the confirmation email you receive when booking.
Still, it’s important to know that for hard-to-get reservations like Cinderella’s Royal Table, you’ll be charged the entire cost of the meal if you don’t cancel in time, and for super-gourmet options like Monsieur Paul at Epcot, cancellation fees can reach a lofty $100 per person if you cancel less than three days out. So, be sure to read all the details.
When can you book Disneyland dining reservations?
Guests of the Disneyland Resort can also begin making dining reservations 60 days in advance. Disneyland does not give the same preferential treatment to on-site hotel guests as Disney World does, but hotel guests do get preferred access to a limited number of reservations at select table-service restaurants upon arrival.
You’ll have access to an improved dining availability calendar
Disney’s new and improved dining availability calendar lets you view exactly which dates a certain restaurant has available dining reservations. Dates with a green dot have availability, while those with a grayed out “no availability” symbol do not.
This high-level overview can be especially helpful if there is a restaurant you’ve always wanted to try or if you have your heart set on a certain location and are flexible with when you dine there during your trip.
You can search multiple dates across all dining locations
Disney’s newest dining reservation change is, well, a game changer. Rather than searching for one restaurant at a time, you can now view availability for all dining locations for up to 10 days. Paired with seeing all available reservations for a specific day, this makes it much more likely you’ll get to dine at your favorite Disney World or Disneyland restaurant during your next visit.
You can start your search by choosing a date or date range, your meal time preference (or select “all day” availability) and your party size. From there, you can see dining availability for all available restaurants for up to 10 days (within your 60-day booking window).
Previously, you would have had to perform separate searches for each restaurant. Now, you can view up to 10 days of available dining reservations for all available locations with just a few clicks.
You can join a walk-up list
This option has been around for a while, but it’s worth mentioning here because it can help you get into a particular restaurant, even if you didn’t secure a reservation. When you are in the parks and near the restaurant where you wish to dine, you can check availability via the My Disney Experience app at Disney World or the Disneyland app at Disneyland.
If you see in the app that there is availability on the mobile walk-up list, you can add your party and receive a notification when your table is ready. Walk-up availability can change throughout the day. As they say, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
You can find the closest and earliest available pickup for mobile orders
Mobile ordering has also been available at Disney World and Disneyland for several years, but the parks continually find ways to improve the experience. Hungry Disney guests can use the mobile ordering service in the mobile app to order food from quick-service restaurants at a selected time. Usually, you can find immediate mobile order availability, but when the parks are busy, you may have to wait a while for your meal.
With the most recent update to Disney’s mobile ordering service, you can filter mobile order availability to show only nearby restaurants or those with immediate availability. Sometimes you need to eat before “hungry” morphs into “hangry,” and now you can.
Bottom line
Whether you are planning dining reservations for your next Disney vacation or visiting the parks soon and want to know how to find food when hunger hits, these changes will make quieting that “rumbly in your tumbly” (as Winnie the Pooh would say) that much easier.
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