Online dining reservations...beating the system?

[k5thbeatle]

I'm sure this has been asked so I'm sorry if this is a repeat but I am confused about the current dining reservation system. I have heard several "views/opinions" but was wondering what the facts are regarding the following: can people make several dining reservations for the same date for the purpose of having several options on the dates of their trip?

What stops someone from reserving one place, having a spouse reserve an alternate, and having other family reserve yet other alternates? The problem of course is that if this is possible to do then reservations are taken up by people who will not use them and prevent those who really want them from getting them?

 

[TDC Nala]

Yes, it CAN be done. No, nothing stops it. There has been some discussion of reservations using the same name, time and party size being cancelled but there is no confirmation that this will definitely happen in all cases. The online system notifies you if you make two reservations within a couple hours of each other but I do not know if that means they will be cancelled.

There must be room in the system for parties to split up and book different reservations for different party members, so other than having some system to track reservations made under the same name for the same time, there really wouldn't be any effective way to control it (other than no-show fees for all restaurant bookings)

 

[ThanksForNoticingMe]

The answer is there is technically nothing to stop someone from making multiple reservations...however if a person who going to do this the nice thing would be to cancel the other reservations once their plans are firmed up.

 

[k5thbeatle]

The answer is there is technically nothing to stop someone from making multiple reservations...however if a person who going to do this the nice thing would be to cancel the other reservations once their plans are firmed up.

...but knowing human nature the more likely scenario is they'll wait until the moment when it is convenient to decide and either not cancel or cancel when it will not do many others any good?

 

[scgustin]

This may be a well-known trick, but if not, maybe it will help someone out:

I have been searching for the past two weeks for a reservation for 2 people at Ohana on May 26. On accident, when I thought I was selecting 8 pm, I actually selected 8 people. Low and behold, it came up with a reservation at 8:30 p.m. for 8 people.

Confused, I went back and searched the same time-period for 2 people and it had no availability. So basically, Disney said "We have room for 8, but no room for 2."

So, I went ahead and booked the 8-people reservation (even though there is only two of us). Once I got the confirmation #, I called into WDW Dining and changed the party size to two people. It worked like a charm.

I'm not sure if this is common, or just a one-time thing, but it worked for me.

 

[kjs1976]

I was noticing the same thing. We first had a party of 5, with the thought my parents might join us. I was looking at any where from 5-8 people for reservations and would get different responses. I some times split the party up and looked for 2 somewhere. It just all depended.

 

[MrsLS]

Nothing stopped that when it wasn't online reservations, 2 different people could call &/or just use a different phone number or whatever to reserve.