I used the website to book dining and the luau four months in advance. Maybe it can be done sooner than that, but everything I wanted was easily available at that time. As previous poster mentioned, they don't care if you are a regular hotel guest, not a hotel guest, renting DVC, a DVC member when you make dining reservations. You just select the date, time and number of guests and then get an email confirmation. No credit card needed for dining reservations. Luau we had to pay for in full.