What type of ADR planner are you?

[Rach3975]

I voted "Other." We make our ADRs as early as possible, but our upcoming trip is the only one we booked early enough to do them at 180 days. The other 2 trips were 3 and 4 months ahead of time.

Between a food allergy, picky family members, a pescetarian, and some other food-related heath concerns, we're picky about where we're going to eat. So we spend a lot of time looking at menus before we choose ADRs. We don't tweak continually afterwards, but if we weren't able to get our first choices I continue monitoring for our preferred restaurant or time. I may also make changes after our FP day--I try to work around our ADRs, but I'm not going to pass up a hard to get FP that helps us avoid long park lines just because my only option is during an ADR. (But I also won't cancel the ADR right away--I'd continue to try to modify both to make it all work out.)

We're 5 days away from a trip we made ADRs for at 180 days. The reservations that have stayed the same since then are BOG PPO and the parade package at Tony's. Chefs de France and Yak and Yeti were booked at 180, but we've changed times since then. We let Sci Fi go in favor of Oga's plus QS and let Skipper Canteen go in favor of a dessert party.

 

[OhanaMoana]

I like to do lots of research and get as close to my ideal list of dining choices as possible, and I'm definitely a planner by nature, but I've actually never booked a Disney trip more than 90 days in advance! So I end up tinkering a lot because at 90 days I don't get close to everything I want on the first try. For my upcoming 5-day trip (booked 62 days before day one of the trip), I have gotten all of the following (at the time that I want) for a party of 4 via cancelations since I first looked at ADRs at the 58-day mark:
Ohana breakfast
Bon Voyage breakfast at Trattoria al Forno
Crystal Palace breakfast
BoG Lunch
CRT Dinner
Cali Grill Dinner
V&A Dinner
Oga's Cantina (had to settle for slightly less than ideal time on this one so far)

Brown Derby and Jiko are both easy gets, but they were on my to do list and I got them, but I'd say those aren't as "impressive" gets. If you're willing to hunt cancelations you can do really well! But in many of these cases I grabbed a suboptimal time for the meal in question and then kept checking to incrementally improve the timing until I landed in the slot I wanted. I tinker like crazy Even if I couldn't have gotten the time slot I wanted for all of the above, I would have had SOME option to eat at each place (and that's coming from someone whose touring plans totally dictate meal times and the acceptable geography for a dining choice for each meal).

I also took a trip that was planned 36-hours before departure where I literally made zero ADRs for our three nights before day-of in-app additions, but was only able to buy into that approach because I knew I had the above trip more meticulously planned for a mere three weeks later, hahaha.

 

[Miffy]

I voted "other." We make our ADRs after we make our FP+s, usually the same morning. Sometimes we move things around after that and often we move things around while we're at WDW. We've never had a restaurant we wanted that we couldn't get, but we're not looking for difficult reservations, like BOG, for example. This year was an exception to our usual bookings since we made reservations at Oga's the week they became available.

 

[Oneanne]

For a week long trip I book two or three ahead of time but not at the 180 day mark, just whenever I get around to it. I'm usually traveling solo so I get to chose where/when I want to eat. I'll check for TS openings day-of, or my new favorite thing is to hit the lounges.

 

[tguz]

Planning for the trip is more then half the fun for me, so the 6 month ADR thing doesn’t bother me at all. But we are always a party of 9 (me, dh, 5 kids and my parents) so it’s not as easy to get ADRs when and where I want so I’m constantly tinkering and modifying things, sometimes even on the trip, the day before the ADR! We have places that we eat at every trip, then we throw in a couple “new” ones or ones we’ve not visited in a while. We’re doing the new Snow White/Artist Point meal in early December and I’m so excited!

I love the planning of a Disney trip!! I make the ADR's as soon as I can but am willing to change them as time goes by if we see a video or something on a different place that we would like to try or if we see a dish somewhere else that we would rather try. I am a production planner by career so I am pretty good at the planning concept.

 

[kiford]

I make all of our ADRs at the 180 day mark and only make the occasional change close to the day of. Usually because we've decided we're just too tired to get up early to make that breakfast ADR somewhere far away. Occasionally because friends who live locally join us at the last minute so I have to scramble to make changes or make a last minute new one we hadn't intended. I have a long list of places I want to try and an equally long list of favourites so I'm not usually lacking for options. Other than V&A, I have no must-dos that can't be substituted by something else on the list.

 

[L_MD]

I'm a solo-traveller and enjoy doing my ADR's at 180, it's a nice "checkpoint" that I'm getting closer to my vacation!

I log on early, get everything I want, even if it's not really at the times that work for me, and then I tweak over the next few months. I enjoy doing that, and when I finally get my ADR at a time that's perfect for my plan, it's a great feeling.

 

[sullyfam]

I used to be in the option 1 camp but now I'm more of an option 3. I tend to make a few that we really want ahead of time but I've found it provides more flexibility if you keep things open in your schedule and not be running from ADR to ADR. There also seems to be plenty of last minute availability to be able to schedule things when you are there as people cancel all the time to avoid fees. Long story short, I no longer stress over ADRs.

 

[KenHutch]

I have had great success at getting all of my ADR's when I want so in the previous 5 trips I have made them and then I leave them alone. Once time they closed Citrico's for work they called me and suggested Narcoossee's instead which worked well for us.

 

[SinCityMMAFan]

I make ADR's 180 days out but occasionally I'll find myself modifying reservations or cancelling original ADR's in favor of something that I wanted that wasn't available that I wanted at the time of booking. Love the Touring Plans reservation finder to get those hard to get reservations at prime seating times. It's worked out for me on many occasions.

 

[phyllis1966]

Planning for the trip is more then half the fun for me, so the 6 month ADR thing doesn’t bother me at all. But we are always a party of 9 (me, dh, 5 kids and my parents) so it’s not as easy to get ADRs when and where I want so I’m constantly tinkering and modifying things, sometimes even on the trip, the day before the ADR! We have places that we eat at every trip, then we throw in a couple “new” ones or ones we’ve not visited in a while.

I could’ve written this exactly, except for the party of nine part LOL

 

[tinkerbelletreasure]

I usually make at least one ADR for each day at the 180 day mark, but we never get the dining plan and often end up cancelling all but a few in the weeks leading up when we start honing our budget and seeing what our fastpass schedule looks like. Our last trip, I had made 2 lunch reservations at BOG because in previous trips it had been my ex husband and kids favorite meal. We ate there the first day, and the kids unanimously said they didn’t care to come back and my DBF was just kind of Meh. So I cancelled the second one and used touring plans to get a Sci Fi reservation. I also ended up adding Liberty Tree Tavern towards the end of our trip because we ended up splitting some meals and stuff in the first part of the week and our budget was a little looser.

 

[jessg]

So this upcomjng trip will be our 3rd time in Disney and as of now I've yet to plan any ADR for any of our trips. We dont like to be restricted to any certain time frame now be forced to eat somewhere we may not feel like at that day and time. The the most we plan is fast passes. We will eat when we feel hungry and where something we like is available. That's just how we roll. This is one of the reasons we dont do the Dining plan because if we feel like eating on property we will and if we feel like eating at and outside restaurant we will. Its just a we vote and decide at that time type of thing.