After 5 Years of Disney Dining Reviews: Our Biggest Lessons Learned

Addicted to the Mouse: Disney Podcast | Disney World, Universal, & Cruise Vacation Planning

The hosts of the Addicted to the Mouse podcast reflect on nearly five years and 218 episodes of Disney dining reviews, sharing hard-won lessons about navigating Walt Disney World's

Key takeaways

• Dan and Leslie have completed 218 Disney dining reviews since early 2022, eating at every table service restaurant on property multiple times.
• Disney changed the advanced dining reservation window from 180 days pre-COVID to 60 days prior to check-in for resort guests, significantly reducing booking stress.

Main topics

• Disney dining reservation strategies and policy changes
• Table service vs. quick service vs. lounge dining options

Notable quotes

"If you don't get on right at 6 a.m., 60 days prior to your check-in, all is not lost."

Conclusion

This episode serves as a comprehensive, anxiety-reducing guide for Disney visitors looking to

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) One of my favorite subjects is food, and to make it even better, Disney food. Hello and welcome to Addicted to the Mouse. Today is Sunday, October 4th. You're listening to episode number 838, and this is everything we've learned after nearly five years of doing Disney dining reviews. Speaker 1 (0:30) Hey, everybody. Dana Leslie here. Thanks for joining us today. It is crazy that we have been doing dining reviews for five years. We Speaker 2 (0:37) just recorded our 218th Disney dining review. And then we've also done universal dining reviews, off-property dining reviews. So we've done a bunch of dining reviews, but we started nearly five years ago. It was early in 2022 that we started our dining reviews. So if you haven't checked out that series, please join us over on YouTube. There is a YouTube channel called Addicted to the Mouse, funny enough, and you can find all of the dining reviews plus all of our travel vlogs where we take you with us on our cruises and ABDs and all of the things. Yes, yes. Speaker 1 (1:08) And speaking of, so we are pre-recording this because as this airs, we are sailing the high seas celebrating Halloween. Speaker 2 (1:18) Yeah. So we're on the Disney Wish for a Halloween on high seas sailing. And that'll be our next podcast is a review over that. But yes, we were recording this before we got on the ship on Friday and it's just a three night sailing. So we'll be back pretty quick. Speaker 1 (1:31) Yep. So all that to say, we're not doing news. So if something released after we recorded this, we will get back to it next Wednesday. But I do have a quick review. This is from. Palm Mom 2232, and it's titled My Comfort Go-To. I discovered Dan and Leslie around late summer 2022 and have been a listener since. I took my mom on a trip that September, and we had the best time listening to them on the way to the airport. It is now me and my mom's tradition to listen to their latest episodes on the way to the airport with each Disney trip. Listening in twice a week feels like catching up with family. I enjoy hearing Disney news, food recommendations, and hearing about their kids growing up and following their dreams. I love that they have excellent up-to-date information and also an amazingly helpful and dependable agency. Sweetest people keep up the great work, Lowry's. That is so nice. So nice. Yes. Thank you. That Speaker 2 (2:22) is Speaker 1 (2:22) so Speaker 2 (2:22) incredibly nice. Thank you so much. Gosh, I don't even know how to... Speaker 1 (2:27) Just thank you. Speaker 2 (2:28) That is amazing. I mean, Speaker 1 (2:30) the fact that like you just kind of hit everything and listened to the podcast and travel agency and commented on raising our kids and which obviously like they're like the little light in our lives. So, so, yeah. So thank you so much. Speaker 2 (2:46) Absolutely. All right. Since we're not doing any sort of news, let's just jump right in and have a discussion. So just here's Speaker 1 (2:53) a Speaker 2 (2:53) little bit. of pulling back the curtain, let you see a little bit of our crazy lives. This, this, this, so last week, this week, next week and the week after. So. almost four weeks. It's about three and a half weeks. It is incredibly busy in our household. We have got Aiden's doing HHN. So he's coming and going. He's actually living with us this semester to save money to save up for his own apartment. Jennings is doing a play. And so he's got, that's actually starts this weekend. We get to see it the first night before getting on the cruise ship. But he will be here doing the play all weekend. Aiden will be here working all weekend. So they're going to be watching after the house and the cat and all the things. But we, have had and will have a ton of visitors over this three and a half week period which we love but it just it's a lot of uh going and and entertaining and things and so we um i have done a lot of outlines in the past for podcasts. And that's what I try to do. The last few we've done, you know, very detailed outlines, especially like the compared contrast and ranking and all of that stuff. Tonight is not that night. So we just, Leslie's mom was here for the last couple of nights and she just left this morning and some more visitors are coming tomorrow. So we're in the middle of laundry and all these things. And I had to get a haircut for the cruise. We did a dining review. We, I, oh, I pre-edited the video for Sunday. All that to say, did not have a ton of time to do an outline for a podcast. So Speaker 1 (4:16) he was like, what do we want to talk about? And I was like, can we just talk for a little bit? Like we do those sometimes. Like we just, you know, we'll do like the one about nothing, like just like babble. And so we decided on this topic. Speaker 2 (4:27) Yeah. Yeah. The one about nothings, all of those that we've done in the past, those are just us talking. So it's Speaker 1 (4:31) going Speaker 2 (4:31) to be that style. But yeah, I wanted to talk about. Doing the dining reviews and what we've learned, not specifically ranking any restaurants, although we will talk about our favorites and our least favorites, but I think bottom line, there is so much anxiety around Disney dining, which is crazy. Now, I'm not judging anyone because we had the same anxiety when we were living in Oklahoma coming down here a couple times a year. And we would do the same thing. We would wake up, and at the time, it was 180 days prior to check-in that you had to choose your dining. That's Speaker 1 (5:01) crazy. Six months. six months. And I remember like when we had a trip in 2017 with my whole family and I was like, all right guys, we like, we need to start talking about dining. And I remember my family being like, What are you talking about? We don't go for like seven and a half, eight months now. And I was like, I know, but I got to book it in like a month and a half. And so we got to talk about this because there's 12 of us. And if we want a prayer of eating anywhere good, like we need to get on the schedule. And Speaker 2 (5:30) dining has been through a lot of evolution. So that was obviously pre-COVID was 180 days and then coming, you know, so now we're at 60 days prior to check-in, which is better. It Speaker 1 (5:40) is better. Speaker 2 (5:41) So that's nice because. least you can kind of maybe get excited about the trip. I feel like over six months out, you're still like, it's so like, it's so far away. It's hard to get really into it, but two months out, you can kind of get into it. But even then it feels kind of, you know, high pressure situation because, you know, the whole narrative is if you're not on 60 days prior, right at 6am Eastern standard time, whenever the, the website opens for dining reservations, like you're going to be not able to eat anywhere good. And I think that's the rumor I want to dispel today, the big one. Speaker 1 (6:13) Yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, Disney has done a fantastic job in all avenues of its business with Cruise Line, with World, with Land, with ABDs, with everything. They create this sense of urgency and this, you know, high demand, low supply mentality that makes everyone... um, a little cuckoo whenever it comes to booking every, I mean like myself included, like it makes you just feel all this like pressure of, Oh my goodness, we have to be on like right whenever it drops and we've got to grab everything. If we don't grab it right this second, then we're not going to get anything good and we're not going to have a great vacation and life is going to be ruined. I Speaker 2 (6:53) was actually disappointed whenever I figured out that Hurley Burley did not take advanced dining or was not going to take it. That opens tomorrow. It was not going to take advanced dining reservations because just showing up without a reservation, like that gives me anxiety at Disney World specifically. Nowhere else in the world do I ever get anxiety about showing up to a restaurant without having a reservation. Like if I get there and they're full, okay, great. I'll go around the corner. But at Disney World, it has some sort of like hold or pull on us. And I know that is prevalent across many Disney groups out there. I will give Disney props because even coming out of COVID and changing the dining rules and everything, they have... consistently updated their system. And I know we've complained about Disney technology in the past, and that's fair. They've deserved some of those criticisms. Speaker 1 (7:39) But Speaker 2 (7:39) they have drastically improved the dining reservation system. Speaker 1 (7:43) Yes. Well, and for a while, it got to the point where, because of the way it was set up previously, where you could book multiple reservations at the same time under the same account if you just put a different lead guest on it, it created this loophole. for people out there to grab, yeah, grab all these really hard to get reservations and basically like hoard them, sell them or trade them for something with other people. And it, it was, it was just such a terrible practice. And it was honestly what was making. dining be so incredibly stressful? There's Speaker 2 (8:20) a whole marketplace on Facebook where people would literally like sell these reservations or at least trade them or like, hey, I've got a family. I've got a four-person reservation here at this time, but I'm looking for a four-person reservation over here. Is somebody able to trade with me? And it was like a currency. It was nuts. All that to say, that has been fixed. You can no longer do that and you can no longer... I mean, really like make huge reservations. It's not easy to do it. So I feel like that has improved, which means that if you don't get on right at 6 a.m., 60 days prior to your check-in, all is not lost. Now, the hardest to get reservations, we will talk about those, but... Those you may not be able to find right when you log in. It is possible that those will open up and we can talk about strategies for doing that. But it is much, much easier. So even logging in later in the day or maybe the next day, us, I don't sign up for reservations until maybe a day or two prior to doing a dining review unless there's something very specific that I know we want to hit. Speaker 1 (9:26) Yeah, yeah. And I'd like to bring up a fact, a little... hint, I guess a pro tip for people if you're listening along and you're not super familiar with Disney dining and you're like, wait, I have a large group and I'm going to have to book multiple reservations at the same time. So the biggest tip there is that you have to have multiple people's logins. And so if you have say like a party of 12 people going, typically what I try to do, I like to have two to three log in informations for that family. And then I will go in for the first one and try to get as many people on that first reservation as I can. And then I will go to a different log in and try to fill it in with like around the same time. And then what you have to do is you just have to go whenever you check in at the restaurant, you just have to tell them that you're all together. They can't always accommodate moving you. you know, and having you all be at the same table. So you have to be okay with being split. But I mean, that's just kind of comes with having a large party. I feel like. Speaker 2 (10:29) Yeah. Another good tip is like the standard kind of like the, the most available seating, um, arrangement is a four top. It's a party of four. So like your standard family, you know, uh, what do they call that? The atomic family or whatever, two adults, two kids. Is that what they call it? Atomic family. Speaker 1 (10:47) They call it something. You said atomic and now I can't think of any other words. Whatever. The standard Speaker 2 (10:52) family is a family of four or it was like 3.5 people or something like that. Anyway, whatever it is. So think about that when you're making your dining reservations, right? So if you do have... 12 people, if you only get two people's My Disney Experience and you're like, I'll get six and you get six for about the same time, it's going to be harder than if you have three people's and you're doing four, four, and four. Because there are going to be more tables that can accommodate four people than there are tables that can accommodate six people. So you may end up still having to break it up from a party of 12 down to two parties of six down to three parties of four. And then second tip is you can generally add or drop one person from your dining reservation. So if you do have a party of four and you can't find what you want for all four of you, search for five people and also search for three people. And if you can find a reservation, the one that you want for either three or five people, generally you can show up just right when you check in and say, oh yes, I know it was a reservation for five, but one person couldn't come, or I know it was a reservation for three, but we had one join us. Can you accommodate a fourth? And almost, always they can. Speaker 1 (12:00) Yeah. Yeah. And, um, one interesting thing about that is it's very, very challenging to find reservations for one. So if you are a solo traveler, um, don't be discouraged whenever you look and you're like, there's no, how is there no reservations for one person? Try booking for two or three and I guarantee you, you're going to have much more of a selection. Speaker 2 (12:19) Yeah. And then, um, but it's also, if you're a solo travel, it's a very easy, most of the sit down restaurants, they have a bar and you can generally walk up and just order at the bar and there's a lot of times space. Like Topolino's is a great one. You show up to Topolino's, especially right when they open, there's going to be space at the bar and you can order off the menu. You can get drinks or whatever. I love, you know, we did that Topolino's the last time we went. Yeah, Speaker 1 (12:40) we Speaker 2 (12:40) did. All right. Where do we want to start with? Speaker 1 (12:43) Oh my goodness. There's so many things that I want to talk about with dining. I mean, I think that the, so the dining evolution has been very interesting and all that, just to kind of wrap it up a little bit because of the changes that they've made, it has made dining a little bit more attainable and not as stressful. And so you can usually finagle, even if it's not the exact time that you were hoping for, or maybe the exact restaurant, there's usually like something still very, very good available, even if you're not on right at 60 days prior. So Speaker 2 (13:14) before we get... Speaker 2 (13:17) I guess before we get any further, let's just talk about the ways that you can dine at Disney World. So Disney World, again, 40 square miles. It's massive. There are over 20 resorts and four theme parks. There are golf courses. There are two water parks. There is a whole shopping and entertainment district called Disney Springs. But there are different ways that you can eat. Now, I promise you, if you never make a dining reservation, you can still come to Disney World. You can still eat all three meals a day and you will still leave stuffed and probably get some very good food along the way. The top of the line, or I guess the most expensive that takes the most amount of planning are the table service restaurants. A table service restaurant is one where you are seated at a table, a waiter comes up or a waitress comes up, they take your order, somebody delivers your food, it's all done from the table. It's a table service restaurant. Those are what we're talking about with the advanced dining reservations 60 days prior to check-in. From there, you've got quick service dining. These are most of them where you order at a counter and then you could be given a buzzer or a pager. You could just take your food with you from the counter. You could, a lot of them, you can... mobile order. So getting on your phone, opening the My Disney Experience app and mobile ordering through your phone on the app. And then same thing though, like it's basically just taking the cash register out of the situation in the restaurant. So you just still just walk up to the counter and you show them, you scan your QR code and they hand you your food. And then finally past that, there are snacks and snacks are just like, think like popcorn stand or ice cream stand. You can get snacks in quick service restaurants. You can get snacks in different shops, but a lot of them them happen like in and around the parks with those stands or like Epcot festival stands, that kind of thing. Speaker 1 (15:02) Yeah. And I'm going to add one more to that and that's going to be lounges and lounges. You know, a lot of times I think people think, well, you know, I have my kids with me. I can't do a lounge. We did lounges all the time whenever the kids were little. And it was just a nice place to be. And we would have a little snack. They usually have, you know, a small menu of, you know, different small plate selections as well as drinks, both mocktails, cocktails. cocktails sodas whatever and so it's just a nice place to you know kick up your feet and relax for a little bit and you don't ever need reservations for those although if it is a very