Christmas Week Dining Reservations

[Steven Johnson]

My family will be visiting WDW from 12/20/17 to 12/30/17 to commemorate and celebrate the birth of our first Grandchild (baby girl!) last month. We are approaching the opening of our 180-day window for making dining reservations. We've been trying some "test" runs online and through the My Disney Experience app but literally NONE of the places we'd like to get reservations for have any availability. We are staying off-site at a vacation rental home since there are 9 of us in our party and we'll be visiting for 10 days. I understand Disney online reservations begin at 6am ET each day and phone reservations open at 7am ET each day. Is this accurate? Does anyone have any "best strategies" or tips to give us our best chance to secure our dining choices? We're going for some pretty popular places...Beaches & Cream (dinnertime), Chef Mickey's (breakfast), Cinderella's Royal Table (Christmas morning), Candlelight Proc. Christmas evening, Akershus Royal Banquet Hall (breakfast).

Thanks in advance for any tips and/or advice !

Steven

 

[shanew21]

Book the hard to get ressies further out in your trip. Ideally your Be Our Guest/Ohana/CRT/AK would be on the 27th-30th.

There are some people who are staying from, for example, the 16th to the 26th that have already been able to book Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

EDIT: Oh, I did not see that you were off site. In that case you're probably SOL for the hard to get places right now. I would try touringplans reservation finder once you book to hunt those hard to get ones. You're pretty much only going to get them that way.

 

[monique5]

You'll need Lots of pixie Dust for the reservations you want for those dates. Congratulations on the grandchild.

Although anything is possible, I wouldn't hold out hope on those hard to get ones seeing that you are off-site. You will have to be committed to checking daily and up until your trip, if necessary.

Your times for booking are correct. However, you will have to go online/call daily for every day of your trip since your are offsite -- book 1 day at a time. Whereas, if you are onsite you can book @ 180+10D. Example, I'm going 12/16-12/17. I made ADRs yesterday for 12/16-12/26 and booked today for 12/27 since it's the 11th day of trip. As OP stated, I'm one that has booked for Christmas Eve, Christmas & 26th, but no CRT for us this CRT. We are trying something different this time. We did it on our last Christmas visit.

Happy planning!

EDIT: Beaches & Cream is hard in general b/c it's small. You might be okay with Akershus & Candlelight Processional. Akershus is not fully released for after December 15th as of today. Candlelight Processional packages won't be released until July, so that would be past your booking window, so everyone booking at same time. Have a back up plan that you will love instead of CRT for Christmas morning. Also, consider that if you do not get to the park before 10am, it may not matter if you have a reservation or not. MK always has closures on Christmas day and it occurs in 4 phases, so staying offsite, you will have to be aware of that and of the time you get to the park; and an ADR will not automatically gain you entry once they start the closures. Depending on phase of closure guests are not allowed into parking lots.

 

[monique5]

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