If arriving EARLY for reservation...odds of being seated immed vs waiting til original time?

searavens

Earning My Ears
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
I know this is an extremely vague question, but just wondering if anyone has had experience with arriving too early but being seated anyway. Do you think there's a Disney policy against it? Does it depend on whether it's a Disney restaurant or an independent (like Disney Springs) operation? Varies with season? Have reservation for tomorrow night but it's rather late for kids who want to be at Hollywood Studios crazy-Rise-of-the-Resistance-early the next morning. Thank you in advance for sharing any experiences or advice.
 
You can always try but it will really depend on how booked the restaurant is. They may be able to fit you in early, may not.
 
It really varies based on the restaurant and how full they are.

If you're looking to sit down at say 5pm and have a 6pm reservation there is a chance you get in at 5pm. For instance at Flying fish we're always able to get in at the 5pm time even if we had something for 6pm. If your reservation is 7:30pm and you should up at 6:30 your luck may not be so great.

Around holiday time when the restaurants are completely booked we've had them tell us to wait until 10 minutes of our ADR time when we showed up 15 minutes ahead of it.

Best plan is to try it and shoot for when the restaurant will not be as busy which means 5pm or so.
 
As previous poster said it's very variable. I've been seated early and I've also been turned away at a restaurant in MK and told I can't check in until 15 minutes before my reservation time. If you're going somewhere busy and you had a late reservation and want to instead be seated during prime time, it might be tough. If it's a disney springs restaurant did you check to see if it had any availability at a better time on open table?
 


Thank you all very much for your replies; I appreciate them all. After reading, I decided to check the website to see if there was an earlier time at that same restaurant...and there was! So I booked that one and cancelled the later time. Now we can breathe a little easier. Thank you again.
 
I've never had luck with it honestly. Usually reservation is for say 630 and I get there at 615 and not only don't they seat us early, but we end up waiting 15 to 20 minutes past the reservation time. Maybe at a place with low demand that would work, but any of the character meals/scifi diner etc I'd say probably not.

TREX is the worst offender of all. Get there, get in line to tell them you have a reservation, then wait so they can call you to the next ginormous line and wait some more.
 
On my most recent visit, we had several drastically different experiences:

Arrived at Chef Mickey’s 30 minutes before our dinner reservation (we were staying at Bay Lake and had nothing to do). We were told to return within 10 minutes of our reservation time. We were seated almost immediately when we returned.

Arrived at ‘Ohana 15 minutes before our breakfast reservation time, waited in line 10 minutes to check in with the hostesses, got called back 45 minutes after our reservation time.

Arrived at 1900 Park Fare 1 hour before our dinner reservation because my kiddo was just done with the MK crowd. They seated us after about 5 minutes of waiting.
 


Check to see when the restaurant begins serving-if you are arriving for breakfast or lunch about the time they begin serving those, we have found we are usually seated early-arriving at Sci Fi at 11am for an 1130 seating we were seated within 10 minutes. Arriving at Akershus at 8a for an 830 eating we waited again about 5 minutes. But arriving at Tusker House at 1215 for a 1230 seating-we waited over 30 minutes to be seated. Lunch at 11 and dinner at 5 are what we always shoot for now.
 
As others have mentioned, it's very variable. On our last trip Le Cellier refused to check us in until 15 minutes prior to our reservation, so when we turned up early we had to go and watch the Circlevision movie to kill time. But quite often if you show up early, especially if you have young kids, smile, say you're sorry, tell them you know you're early for your reservation but your kids are very hungry, you will have a very good chance of being seated early.
 

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