Online ADR Tutorial Part 1 - Setup and Searching
So, your 180 day mark is coming up and you just need to get those ADRs taken care of. Well, the first step is to set your alarm! Online ADRs rollover (that is, become the next day) at 6am Eastern (yes, those poor west coasters have to do it at 3am!).
Before I continue, I ask that any of you who have parties of 10 or more to please raise your hand. All of you have to call! Sorry, the online system only supports parties of 1 - 9. If you have 10 or more, you are directed to call Disney to make the ADRs. Sorry, but them's the breaks.
After you get your coffee, juice, soda, what-have-you, open up a browser window and head over to the
Walt Disney World website. Put your mouse cursor over "WHERE TO EAT" along the top, and click the "Make Dining Reservations" link in that menu.
This will open up the main restaurant listing. You can filter the options down by using the menu system on the left. For this tutorial, I have just gone through making an ADR at 1900 Park Fare here, so that was not necessary.
Tip: If you right click on the "Book a Reservation" link, you can select it to open in a new tab if your browser supports tabs (Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 2.5+, Chrome, Safari). This will prevent the list clearing your filter selection each time you visit the page.
Go ahead and click on "Book a Reservation"
At the top of the next screen, you will see this little tidbit:
See that green link (it's normally not green, it turns green when the mouse hovers over it), that's where you go to link your resort reservation. So, let's go ahead and do that now, shall we?
Note: If you do not have a resort reservation, or you wish to skip linking this, please disregard the next few steps.
So, you click on the link and are presented with a page similar to that shown here:
Enter the proper information (no, that is not a real confirmation number, before you try and ninja my trip!) and then click "Retrieve"
If you see that Disassociate Reservation, you have successfully linked! Way to go! Give yourself a pat on the back!
Now, for all you non-linkers, you may once again join the class, as now we're going to try and find an ADR for us! The first thing is to choose a date. This should be a date that you want to dine at this location, as otherwise it'd be pretty silly.
Now, you may ask "What if I want this sometime that I'm there, but I'm not too picky on the date?" (You may not ask that either, but I'm going to assume you did, otherwise I can't explain this next part!) Well friend, that's what the "Date Range" checkbox is for! You click that, and a handy-dandy second calendar pops up on the page.
This part is purely optional as well, if you just want to search a single day, leave the Date Range unchecked.
(Note: it is currently a limitation of the system that we cannot search for any time within the date range... we have to use the 2 hour blocks as given. More on these blocks below.)
So, know we know what day we want to go, but what about when? Well, that's what the time selection is for.
Select a time, yadda yadda yadda. Note that the system will also search roughly 1 hour before and 1 hour after the time you enter (that is the "2 hour block" mentioned above!).
Enter in your party size:
You must include all members of the party that you are planning on having there. Infants, those not staying with you, those not on the
DDP but you are, etc. All of them must be accounted for. If this number exceeds 10. Then you should have stopped reading when I mentioned that at the start. You're going to have to call the number in that screenshot (or whatever number it changes to if it changes).
So, since it's been asked several times before, to reiterate. If you're a family of four, but Uncle Joe and Aunt Betty are joining you with their 18 month old, you would put 4 adults, 3 children and mark the ages. It doesn't matter if they live in Orlando and are just visiting for the day, they should be on the ADR
Once all that is taken care of, click on "Check Availability" and see what you get. Looks like I got lucky here!
(Note: Since my real resort reservation includes a dining plan, you see that notated here. Your screen may or may not depending on your current resort reservation (if any!))
The site will typically offer up to two closest availabilities to what you entered. In this case, I have opted to go with the 9:05 AM time. Click into the button next to the time ("Raido button" for all you computer savvy people out there, savvy?) and then scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Here you will see the "Security Check". If you are familiar with CAPTCHA stuff, you know what to do. If you are not, well, you just type both of those words that are shown here in the box, and now you are familiar with it! Isn't learning fun!
After typing in the two words, click Add to Dining Cart and you'll be wisked away to your cart.
From here, you can either continue searching for more ADRs, or check out. Take a note at the first line under "Dining Cart". ADRs will be held until you check out, 2 hours of active site usage, or 20 minutes of idleness, whichever comes first.
A special note, if you choose to continue searching, but then decide to check out without adding more ADRs to your cart, you will have to mouse over the "My Disney Vacation" image in the top part of the website, and then click "Dining Cart" from there.
), I also don't have 2 children, so really, this ADR just isn't for me. Who knows what to do now?
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I followed your instructions and had every ADR I wanted half an hour before the phone lines ever even opened up.
