Well, my ADR opened up today. 5:45am and both my daughter and I were on a desktop and my cell and one other laptop. Myself a 10 plus year ADR veteran could not get a single reservation. She grabbed us Biergarten for 8 on our arrival day and one of our 2 4 person Flying Fish reservations. Not sure what happened, but I did later get a Fraud Alert from my Disney Visa card when I was finalizing my Hoop Dee Doo ressie.
Anyway, in the end, I got every single reservation but a word to the wise. It was only by calling in at 7am that I was able to get them.
For whatever reason the online booking was not working for me. Even after notifying my cc that the fraud was not fraud (I even bought my park passes with my Disney card), I was trying to book on both mine and my hubby's computer with different cards and nothing was working. Times were showing up, I was clicking and getting Sorry for our Paws with a pic of Lady and the Tramp.
I will tell you that there are definitely some places that will not allow you to book 8 person ressies. However, I have also had lots of success getting hard to get ressies with 8 like at Oga's cantina. I guess they have a couple of those larger tables and we always got in there and sat at one of the two large tables.
Based on my experience booking for 8 in all the places below (minus Woody's - which I would put first if it actually opens in time for your booking window), I would do:
1 - Be Our Guest
2 - Tusker House - Just because I like this one better than Akershus
3 - Akershus
But I think you need to ask your people what their priorities are. If you really want a picture with Belle (which I assume they will do again when Akershus reopens - I haven't reviewed the reports) then that might bump it up.
As far as character meals go, I just have always liked Tusker because the characters look cool in their safari costumes and it's conveniently located inside AK and their juice is yummy and the food is higher quality than some other character breakfasts.
Be Our Guest has been awesome and so so for us, but the Beast is only there during dinner, so keep that in mind when you are booking that one and he really is a cool character to meet.
Finally, keep in mind that if you run into issues, it just might be that you need to call in.
I was still having trouble with my booking while my cast member was getting my reservations with no problem at all and you need to have two different logins if you are going to do a 4 and a 4 whereas the dining line can help you with splitting a large table.
GOOD LUCK!
