What's the company...

[recmouse]

What's the company that will let you know when a reservation you're looking for opens up? And do they make it for you? TIA

 

[catastrophecanyon]

There are multiple, Touringplans, Mouse dining, and Mouse watcher. None of them book the reservation for you, they merely notify you if a reservation becomes available. Some of them are free with limited alerts, some you can purchase a subscription to allow more alerts.

 

[fbarker]

how do these sites get reservation information. Is Disney selling it to them?

 

[Disturbia]

Stake out app is also good

 

[Disturbia]

how do these sites get reservation information. Is Disney selling it to them?

They just search periodically and send an alert. You have to be quick to grab one though.

 

[Disneydawg74]

how do these sites get reservation information. Is Disney selling it to them?

The workings of each service isn’t known to me. They use a bot of some sort. How often it checks is unknown as well. As Disturbia mentions, even if you’re notified, so is everyone who signed up for that same alert for the restaurant, day, and time, so you don’t get the reservation unless you are the first one to grab it.

 

[_19disnA]

Isn't a service I would pay to use. If they are sending out thousands of notices to all of their users, it still becomes some sort of race to be the first to grab an available reservation. Many older threads discuss where people have good luck finding an apparently sold out reservation @ Disney a few days prior since those who have finalized their plans cancel in order to avoid the no-show fee.

 

[Best Aunt]

Isn't a service I would pay to use. If they are sending out thousands of notices to all of their users, it still becomes some sort of race to be the first to grab an available reservation. Many older threads discuss where people have good luck finding an apparently sold out reservation @ Disney a few days prior since those who have finalized their plans cancel in order to avoid the no-show fee.

With Touring Plans, you create an alert. I think you can have 2 or 3 going at once. The bot searches maybe every 30 or 45 minutes. If it catches the resie that you wanted, it notifies you and everyone else who set up an alert for that time at that restaurant. I never thought there would be thousands who set up an alert for that time at that restaurant. You only get notified if you set up an alert. It's not like they have a mailing list and notify everybody of every opening that comes up.

The problem is that random people are searching on their own. So if Person A cancels a resie at 10:05, the app might notify Person B at 10:06. But by the time Person B sees the notification and goes to the Disney app or website to try to make the resie, Person C might have already seen it and grabbed it.

 

[Mrs.AMC]

It's all just a matter of good luck/timing
Using one of the services is nothing more than adding to your odds.
Want to do it all yourself, more power to you. Good if you got the time to check as often as one of the services checks
Majority of us have lives that won't allow that kind of continually checking for a dinning reservation
Want to wait to see what pops up closer to the date? Good chance there that you'll find one too. Depends on how big a gambler you are and how bad you want that specific ADR because that's still not certain.
Bottom line, use the services as another tool in the arsenal but none of the will get the ADR better than another and all work as well as checking yourself if you are diligent.
Arm yourself with enough services checking, along with checking yourself, right up till the day you want to dine and yeah, I think you'll get most any ADR you want.
Try to do it all one way, and you do stand to loose out on some of the most desirable (like the sought after CP narrator dining packages)

 

[lorileahb]

When a reservation pops up that I want through MW, if I click on the link within seconds (literally seconds of the notification) I'm probably able to book about 75% of those reservations. I have less luck with MD / Touring Plans - even when I click in the same "within seconds".

I typically subscribe to MW for 1 month ($19) and it will continuously search for 5 restaurants/dining packages at a time (multiple days and meal times)... once I have what I want at one place, I can deactivate that alert and add another. Then I cancel my MW subscription (can cancel at anytime). For me, it's worth the $19 to snag those hard-to-get-reservations.

Our trips are usually only 2-4 days so the 60+10 doesn't usually get us what we are hoping for at 5:30/6 a.m. when reservations open for our window.

With MW, I've been able to get every reservation we have been wanting for a trip (and usually at the time we wanted) including: Chef Mickey's, Candlelight Processional Dining, Cinderella's Royal Table, O'hana, Crystal Palace, Tusker House, Beaches & Cream, Toppolino's, Liberty Tree Tavern, etc.

Some trips I don't buy it, and just search a lot the week right before we go because things do open up. But if I am traveling with a group and we want what we want - and want to be done with planning, $19 works for me.