Enhancements to Advance Dining Reservations Rolling Out at Disney World & Disneyland

Aug 04, 2023

Disney has officially announced the start of enhancements and updates to the Advance Dining Reservations systems at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland, which are seemingly small changes that could end up having big-picture impacts. Here we’ll share the old & new policies and offer commentary about whether these updates are good or bad, and the potential impact on ADR availability.

Let’s start with the official announcement. Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort continue to roll out enhancements to simplify planning and make the guest experience more convenient, so guests can spend more time enjoying their visit with loved ones.

In the coming days, we will update how Guests book dining reservations to make it easier to discover and book reservations on the Disneyland website and Disneyland app, as well as on the Walt Disney World website and My Disney Experience app.

These ADR updates include:

These updates will roll out in phases across the Walt Disney World and Disneyland websites and iOS and Android apps for each coast.

Above are screenshots of the current vs. new Advance Dining Reservations systems for the My Disney Experience app.

As you can see on the left, searching for “lunch” yields three times for each restaurant chosen by The Algorithm™️. It doesn’t matter how many times are actually available, you get three results.

In our experience, The Algorithm™️ displays the least desirable times. If we had zero experience with Disney IT, we’d say this is a clever move to redistribute demand throughout the day at less busy times. But we do have experience with Disney IT, so we’re guessing it’s accidental or coincidental.

Same deal with the screenshot above, except for the Disneyland app.

You’ll notice that the new side displays all available time slots, and scan be scrolled left to right. For unpopular restaurants like River Belle Terrace of Splitsville, you’ll literally see spots every 15 minutes for each meal service.

Same deal on the Disneyland official website, but with a different display.

It’s difficult to discern in the screenshots, but the new system has the option to click to “show ___ more times” after the first four slots. Again, River Belle Terrace and Splitsville are extreme examples, as they typically have endless availability.

Same deal with the official Walt Disney World website.

Akershus Royal Banquet Hall actually would be a good example, but naturally, it’s cut off in the screenshot above. Still, same idea–you’ll see 4 time slots with the option to reveal all of them for each meal service.

Beyond the obvious upside of being able to see all available time slots rather than ones chosen by The Algorithm™️ either at random or strategically, this should also eliminate an issue with ADR searches. Right now, if you search for 1 pm, it’s all too common to get a “sorry…no reservations available” message. Change that search to “lunch” and, boom, 3 different times display.

That’s just one of many examples of frustrating…let’s be charitable and call them “quirks”…to the ADR system. It’s why #9 on our Guide to Advance Dining Reservations at Walt Disney World is using the refresh method of toggling between times and meal services. If you tinker around with the system enough, ADR availability can sometimes magically appear out of thin air.

This is a wrinkle with which many Walt Disney World fans are familiar. But if you’re not a seasoned planner, you might search for one time, find nothing, take the results at face value, and assume nothing is available. So this will be helpful to first-timers and other people who don’t read blogs like this one. It’ll also be a light ‘quality of life’ improvement even for Walt Disney World and Disneyland diehards, as it should streamline the process, resulting in less clicking and wasted time.

It’s worth reiterating that making Advance Dining Reservations is surprisingly complicated and unintuitive for Walt Disney World first-timers. You may not recognize this or think the system is great as-is, but as a reader of a site like this, you are almost certainly a power user. As with all facets of visiting Walt Disney World, knowledge has been a big barrier to entry.

Many visitors are unaware that it’s even possible to make ADRs a couple of months prior to their trips, or the ins and outs of booking reservations. These first-timers or casual guests are at a distinct disadvantage as compared to power users who book far in advance and find loopholes for securing multiple simultaneous reservations.

For its part, Walt Disney World has done a lot to even the playing field and make it easier for casual guests to dine at table service restaurants. When the parks reopened, Disney shortened the ADR window from 180 days to the current 60 days. While some fans bemoan this, it has been a positive change for most average visitors. It’s difficult to make firm plans at Walt Disney World that far ahead of time given all of the moving parts of the vacation destination. (Not to mention that few people know where they want to eat 60 days beforehand!) These changes are another step in the right direction for first-timers.

In isolation, these are incremental improvements to the ADR process that probably don’t deserve a ton of fanfare. With that said, it’s our understanding that these are the first of multiple phases of planned improvements to the Advance Dining Reservations systems on both coasts aimed at making the process easier for average guests. If all goes as planned, other upcoming updates should address pesky problems about which readers complained in response to changes in the ADR modification and cancellation policies that rolled out late last year.

(On a not-unrelated note, Walt Disney World recently made different backend changes that took down third party apps and services that interface with Genie. Some of those are already back up…for now. We’ve been asked about these and would caution against purchasing anything far in advance of your trip. Perhaps these services will be around for years to come with the workaround–or maybe Disney intended to send a message subtly, and will follow-up more directly with cease & desists for those businesses that didn’t take the hint. It would not be the first time.)

Ultimately, we’re pleased with the announced enhancements and looking forward to seeing what else changes (or doesn’t!) with the Advance Dining Reservation systems at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. While we are big fans of last year’s updates to the modification and cancellation policies, we have to concede that that did have unintended consequences–even if it was a net benefit for most guests.

Previously, we said “so long as tables are not going unfilled as a result of this policy change (and, again, they won’t!), it’s a zero-sum game. If you’ve complained about Disney requiring too much pre-planning or being too stressful, this is them listening to you.” Well, as it turns out, we were wrong.

It’s our understanding that tables actually have gone unfilled as a result of the changes, meaning that it has not been a zero-sum game at some restaurants. Walt Disney World’s backend systems are a bit of a patchwork, and podiums aren’t always updated with last-minute cancellations with sufficient time to offer Walk-Up Waitlist availability.

You might’ve noticed in that our recent Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restaurant Review discussed how Walt Disney World has gotten “aggressive” with ADRs at many restaurants to avoid tables going empty, which can result in longer wait times to be seated. That’s not a totally new phenomenon, but it’s gotten worse in the last few months and is seemingly an informal solution. To make a long story short, we’d expect more changes to the ADR system that fix this and other issues. We’ll keep you posted!

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

What do you think about these enhancements to the ADR systems at Walt Disney World and Disneyland? Any other procedure or policy changes on your ‘wish list’ for Advance Dining Reservations? Is this a good, bad, or neutral news from your perspective? If you’ve visited or booked ADRs for Walt Disney World in the last few months, what has been your experience? Have you had success at the last-minute (0-3 days in advance)? Had challenges at the 60 day mark? Notice any differences in the dynamic as compared to pre-closure? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!

My wife’s biggest problem with ADR is there is no consideration given to guests staying at the resort for reservations to the onsite dinning. She was upset that we paid $750 a night to stay at the Poly for three nights but could not get a reservation at O’hana even 63 days out. I thought I read a while back that Disneyland would hold back some dining reservations for hotel guests, but saw no sign of this on our last trip to DLR. I hope they implement something like this at both DLR and WDW.

Being able to book at 63 days as opposed to 60 days is the on-site advantage. Definitely stinks that ‘Ohana wasn’t available even at that point.

Disney has been holding back more ADR availability, but unfortunately, that’s not for on-site guests. I’ve always thought it was odd that the resort concierges didn’t have access to a special pool of ADRs for guests staying for the restaurants at each resort.

Thanks for all of the kind words and constructive criticism about the writing on this blog.

For whatever it’s worth, the key considerations for me when writing are clarity and cadence. Can the average reader make sense of what I’m trying to say? Does it flow? To the extent that grammar, spelling, and style have a bearing on any of those answers, I care. Otherwise, I do not. (Brevity should be another of those key considerations, but…c’mon…you’ve all read this blog!)

Technical writing soured me on stringent rules, and my experience was that it worsened my prose rather than strengthened it. Probably took several years to undo that damage. I think it’s important to learn all of that via formal education, but those who are still sticklers about it as adults in informal writing are often overcompensating.

You mentioned Disney IT taking down backend sites that interface with Genie. Did you hear if they also took down the pay-sites that grab dining reservations? That would be helpful, as would somehow stopping hoarding of reservations. I’ve seen people make ADR’s they have no intention of using just to use them as collateral to trade for what they really want.

That non sequitur was included for a reason–should have more consequential ADR updates soon! 🙂

They should Really make another CHANGE!! I come to DisneyWorld EVERY year and stay at least 12 or More days! They only allow you to make a Dining reservation for your First ” 10 DAYS ” , then I have to get up befor 6:00 AM Each day after to make a Dining reservation for the rest of my stay !! This is just horrible to have to do this. They are making More money on my yearly stays, So why can’t you make a Dining reservation for ALL 12 or more of your WHOLE Disney Hotel Stay !????????? Can someone tell Disney to try and change this system.

This seems like a good change and I’m kind of surprised by the various “hot takes”. On the topic of length of stay reservations, if you think waking up at 6 am 2-3 days a year is just horrible and have the need to yell about it on a Disney Blog you ma take a lot in life for granted. I for one don’t plan to give in to your demands and won’t ask Disney to make this change.

Arguably if WDW adopted the DL model of requiring reservations every day it would level the playing field for everyone (and no doubt upset the power users).

This is probably the only time I would say this, but I wish dining reservations on MDE looked like the Disneyland Paris app (and to be fair, this is getting closer to that). Usually that app actually makes me appreciate MDE(!!!), but I do like how DLP’s dining reservations clearly lay out all the time slots for a given meal period. I don’t know is MDE is adding this extra step to “see more” beyond four options instead of jumping straight to that.

I’m worried that these changes will make it easier for bots to snag reservation times as part of the secondary market. In the end, it makes it harder for average visitors to get reservations. Also, writers still need to work a lot on syntax and grammar. For example, @”That’s just one of many examples of frustrating…let’s be charitable and call them “quirks”…to the ADR system.” Ellipses are used to indicate omission of words from a direct quote. They are not appropriate here. Parentheses should have been used. However, the sentence should stand on its own without the parenthetical, but “That’s just one of many examples of frustrating to the ADR system” is not a complete sentence. An example of correct syntax would be “That’s just one of many examples of frustrating deficiencies (let’s be charitable and call them “quirks”) in the ADR system.”

I’m a trained professional writer and English major and you’re totally wrong about how ellipses are used in modern informal writing. I use them all the time in emails, texts, social media posts, etc. Bloggers like Tom use them to convey ideas in a “train of thought” style that only succeeds when specifically diverging from formal style guidelines. Tom isn’t composing research papers or graduate dissertations (or legal briefs/filings, of which I know he’s familiars). Here’s a quick summary from one grammar site:In general, informal ellipses serve three main purposes:1. To show a trailing off of thought or dialogue2. To indicate confusion, a stutter, or unformed or broken thought3. To show a pause in narration or dialogue

Tom isn’t a perfect grammarian but if he tried to be we’d probably get 1-2 posts a week vs (often) 1-2 per day. My experience following this Blog started in 2014 and while he’s always been informative and insightful, Tom’s writing craft has steadily improved and evolved since then (particularly in areas like “food criticism”). Maybe the best compliment I can give him is that since my one-day WDW visit with my little ones in 2014 (when I was desperately searching for last-minute tips) I’ve spent a grand total of 9 days in Disney parks, a few other half-days exploring the resorts, and one 4-night Disney Cruise. Yet despite my very infrequent visits, for most of those 9 years I’ve visited this site almost daily. Yes, I’m always curious about what’s happening in the parks but the reason I keep coming back is the quality and delightfulness of the writing.

1 a: the omission of one or more words that are obviously understood but that must be supplied to make a construction grammatically completeb: a sudden leap from one topic to another2: marks or a mark (such as … ) indicating an omission (as of words) or a pause

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ellipsis While it may not be the OED, it is a pretty good reference for modern (formal and otherwise) English grammar and syntax (yes, there is some redundancy using those two words together).

Since the current system can be gamed by a variety of gimmicks which can be, and apparently already are programmed into bots re: Tom’s reference to backend data extraction, I think making it easier for humans to snag reservation times is the right move. (Disney was trying to save billable hours by using IT instead; I guess software requirements changes can be issued to fix almost anything!)

Pretty sure no one asked for your critique.

“Writers still need to work a lot on syntax and grammar.” (says the person who doesn’t capitalize a proper noun i.e., his name)Well I truly enjoy reading Tom’s blogs just the way they are. His writing style is genuine, not stuffy. He comes across as friendly, casual, humorous, satirical, and intelligent all at the same time. I read other WDW blogs on occasion, but Disney Tourist Blog is by far the most informative and fun to read. You’re a talented writer, Tom (and Sarah). Don’t change a thing!

This seems good? I rarely make ADRs, but it’s always been such a pain to find times at a particular restaurant. Hopefully this is a net-positive for those trying to make reservations.I am an enthusiastic user of a (now non-functional) third party Genie service, in order to avoid the MDE interface. Can we read anything into the more user-friendly dining reservation interface for future Genie+ tweaks? (Especially if there is pre-booking for Genie+ on the horizon?)

“Can we read anything into the more user-friendly dining reservation interface for future Genie+ tweaks?”

Uhhh…really hard to say. This is not ‘evidence’ of that, if that’s what you’re asking.

Last I heard, there wasn’t even a concrete plan about how to implement pre-arrival Lightning Lane bookings. (From what I’ve pieced together, it sounds to me like making that happen was a mandate from on high, and the teams tasked with implementing it were left to figure out the “how” of it after the fact. I can’t confirm whether that’s actually true, but it tracks with some of the other recent systems changes.)

I am a solo traveler and frequently when looking for dining reservations I put in 1 adult and no openings. If I change it to 2 adults “bam” tons of reservations open up. So unfair Disney.

That’s happened to me, too, and at busy times nothing came up with 2 guests. I ended up looking for a party of 4 and was able to get times and then modify the reservation to 1.

Same here….and it’s so frustrating. Certainly qualifies as a form of discrimination in my book!

I’m a trained professional writer and English major and you’re totally wrong about how ellipses are used in modern informal writing. I use them all the time in emails, texts, social media posts, etc. Bloggers like Tom use them to convey ideas in a “train of thought” style that only succeeds when specifically diverging from formal style guidelines. Tom isn’t composing research papers or graduate dissertations (or legal briefs/filings, of which I know he’s familiars). Here’s a quick summary from one grammar site:In general, informal ellipses serve three main purposes:1. To show a trailing off of thought or dialogue2. To indicate confusion, a stutter, or unformed or broken thought3. To show a pause in narration or dialogue

Tom isn’t a perfect grammarian but if he tried to be we’d probably get 1-2 posts a week vs (often) 1-2 per day. My experience following this Blog started in 2014 and while he’s always been informative and insightful, Tom’s writing craft has steadily improved and evolved since then (particularly in areas like “food criticism”). Maybe the best compliment I can give him is that since my one-day WDW visit with my little ones in 2014 (when I was desperately searching for last-minute tips) I’ve spent a grand total of 9 days in Disney parks, a few other half-days exploring the resorts, and one 4-night Disney Cruise. Yet despite my very infrequent visits, for most of those 9 years I’ve visited this site almost daily. Yes, I’m always curious about what’s happening in the parks but the reason I keep coming back is the quality and delightfulness of the writing.

Gosh darn it…somehow my comment appeared under the wrong comment. Re-posting above.

To Janet…Totally agree! I will be arriving 2 days before the rest of my family in October. I have been “practicing” booking dining reservations, as I can actually book starting this Saturday. My family does not like Storybook dining & I love it! So I wanted to go there before they arrive by myself. But so far, nothing shows up for 1 guest until like 8:45 pm. I want to dine there but not that late! So I am assuming they hold the earlier time slots for “families” because it is a character meal. That is so not fair! There are plenty of adults who travel to Disney alone & they should be able to get a dining reservation where they want, when they want, the same as families can! Gotta love Disney! I’m curious if I book for multiple people, if I can modify it later or what happens if 1 person shows up for a dining reservation that was originally booked for 2 or 3 people?? Anybody know?Tom…any thoughts????

Kay, I usually book it for 2-4 people and then when I get there I just say the other 2-3 people had to cancel. It’s usually not a problem. But if u try and modify online it may not let u. Sad that Disney makes u have to go through all this.

Thanks for the info Janet! Good to know! So far I have only seen that I can book for 3 people for the time slot that I would like, so I will just do it that way!I appreciate your help!

I know we have to grade Disney IT on a curve, but really, this is basic restaurant reservation functionality. It’s honestly embarrassing they are only now adding something as simple as “show all available timeslots” to the booking process.

Also, if I jumped through all the hoops to get an ADR and then had to wait 20-30 minutes after it started to be seated, I would be pissed. Hopefully the upcoming updates cumulatively work together to make that a less common occurance.

This will also make booking multiple tables for larger groups easier!

I just read this on Allears – love this update!

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