Whats your thought. Fair, unfair or just the way it is.

[sprocket]

We have a dilemma, probably like many others have. We can book our dinning reservations but not our fast passes. This means we cant be certain where we will be on certain days until 60 days when we grab the premium FPs that we want.

If we wait till 60 days then we wont get the dinning reservations we need.

So the answer is, book more ADRs and cancel later the ones we dont need.

The problem is that this is so unfair for others that may want ADRs as we are holding ADRs we dont need.

Unfortunately I feel its the only thing you can do, but feel so guilty doing it.

On a side note, how many ADRs could you potentially have at one time for the same time. ie, 6pm booking in MK and a 6:15 booking in Springs etc on the same day.
Not that I do that, I feel bad enough booking a restaurant on the Monday and Tuesday knowing I only want one booking of the bookings.
Luckily we only ever want 3 or 4 sit down meals, but those with the full dinning plan must find it so hard to plan ADR and FPs together.

[Tsoski]

Plans change it's not to say you won't get fastpasses for the day you want do book your ADRs as you see fit.

You can't have overlapping ADRs as I recall they need to have a hour spacing at least

[duchy]

People book dining without any concern for fast passes for special meals , birthdays, anniversaries , even weddings , soshouldnt be penalised. The ADRs at 180 days predate the more recent 30/60 days fastpasses and go back to s time of no fastpasses or just on the day anyway.
Personally I think having to book fastpasses at 60 days is a bit ridiculous anyway and spoils spontaneity . I much prefer the same day FP it used to be.

[Andybear]

I book an ADR and if there's no fast pass availability in the relevant park then so be it. I don't change my plans for a 2 minute ride.

[sprocket]

I agree. Its hard to go to Disney and change from the plan, even walking around a park is based on the FPs you have.

Originally Posted by duchy

Personally I think having to book fastpasses at 60 days is a bit ridiculous anyway and spoils spontaneity . I much prefer the same day FP it used to be.

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[THE WIZARD]

We know the restaurants we want to eat in so we book them usually for the times we want, we only had to change two around once we found out about SWGE & had no problem doing so. We eat in the evening so our FP's are usually in the morning, with mabe a fourth in the evening where we are eating. We spend the middle of the day round the hotel pool, so it makes no difference to our day for where our ADR's are as regards where we book FP's for as we like to park hop anyway.
As Tsoski says you cant have two ADRs starting at the same time anyway so if you try to book two for the same night then you will then have to decide which time is to be your priority one should you wish to cancel - so an extra problem for your to think about.

[IndianaMac]

We stay onsite, but with free QSDP - most of our TS meals are therefore OoP, and so we only plan a few (similarly, we'll have a few days pencilled in for off-site meals at Kobe, etc).

Thus our 60FP+ planning is based on a spreadsheet of which park, which day, and doesn't have an awful lot in the way of firm dinner commitments... it's one of the reasons (the others being it makes no financial sense for the number of TS meals we do, and there are some really nice QSDP places, particularly in Springs and Epcot) we'd never upgrade from QSDP to DDP.

Our only set in stone traditions are we'll always try for BoG breakfast on our first full day (bonus that it's on QSDP), and a TS meal on our final night (used to be BoG, but the new Prix Fixe menu didn't float our boat at all). Everything else is subject to change...

Edit to add... can you imagine the planning headache if the ADRs and FP+ were both at the same look-ahead?!? That would be one manic operation of tablets/cell-phones MDE and spreadsheet

[THOscar]

Originally Posted by sprocket

We have a dilemma, probably like many others have. We can book our dinning reservations but not our fast passes. This means we cant be certain where we will be on certain days until 60 days when we grab the premium FPs that we want.

If we wait till 60 days then we wont get the dinning reservations we need.

So the answer is, book more ADRs and cancel later the ones we dont need.

The problem is that this is so unfair for others that may want ADRs as we are holding ADRs we dont need.

Unfortunately I feel its the only thing you can do, but feel so guilty doing it.

On a side note, how many ADRs could you potentially have at one time for the same time. ie, 6pm booking in MK and a 6:15 booking in Springs etc on the same day.
Not that I do that, I feel bad enough booking a restaurant on the Monday and Tuesday knowing I only want one booking of the bookings.
Luckily we only ever want 3 or 4 sit down meals, but those with the full dinning plan must find it so hard to plan ADR and FPs together.

See more...

I've never had a problem booking an ADR for each day and then getting FPs. That's largely because we don't spend a whole day in a park and then go to a restaurant. We usually go to a park in the morning-lunch time, get QS somewhere and then go back to hotel to go back out later for meals. Only exception to this is BOG breakfast and so we just pick up what FP we can for then and queue for something if we really want to.

[Mr Tom Morrow]

Every trip we do I am finding the restaurants onsite quieter and quieter.
So much so in May we were cancelling any ADR's we had booked and then at 7.00pm on the day deciding where to eat, booking an 8.30pm ADR and heading over to it.

I will say though these were not in the Parks but the Hotels.

Unless it was a special celebration or an iconic venue such as the Cali I no longer sweat about them. They are easy to find.

[Gill H]

Originally Posted by sprocket

I agree. Its hard to go to Disney and change from the plan, even walking around a park is based on the FPs you have.

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Doesn’t have to be.

We changed our plan many times while out there. Different FPs, different ADRs, whole days in different parks...

In reality there are a very small number of restaurants and FPs which are hard to get. You won’t starve and you won’t be stuck for rides, if you don’t have everything pinned down in advance!