Originally Posted By LuvsDsnyTrips Yeah, Hans...I don't think so. While at DW this past December....and while waiting for our (reserved...6 months in advance table).....I heard over and over people being turned away... They were not being told in maybe an hour wait ....they were being told........we are booked for the night...
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>I'm on an anti-Disney rant this week, so take this with a grain of salt, but if Disney weren't so hell bent on capturing every penny in your pocket they'd set aside a decent number of tables each day during busy times for walk-ups. Maybe they are doing this, but it doesn't sound like it.<< I don't nessecarily think it's even about reserving some tables for walk-ups, since I'm sure most of the restaurants could easily fill them. Instead, the Dining Plan is a way to help managers predict the crowd size, and staff the restaurants accordingly. If it looks like there won't be a ton of guests, then they don't need a full staff and they don't need a fully stocked kitchen; if it's going to be busy, they fill all of their positions. And because so much of the staffing is based on the reservations, there could be plenty of empty tables in the restaurant for walk-up customers, but nobody to wait on them. Similarly, they use the Dining Plan to spread dining reservation times around, forcing guests to eat at off-peak hours, so that they can maintain lower staffing levels than would be needed to accommodate all guests during the big dinner rush. While I can certainly appreciate the advantages from this standpoint, it really can have some negative impacts to your visit.
Originally Posted By sjhym333 That is true. The standard answer is No, we have no availability tonight. I have asked, I told them I would wait, the answer is no. And to add another point to it. I have a friend who is a mgr at Le Cellier and I asked as a favor if he could squeeze us in for a last minute special occasion. His response was "Can't, don't want to lose my job"
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "Before Fastpass, what was the average wait for big rides like Space Mountain?" That was a long time ago, but what I remember is that in the summertime the wait was really long (an hour or more), so not much different than it is now. What is clearly different to me today is that there are more people than ever in the parks - even with an additional Disney park next door. Last year over 20 million people went to the DLR compared to 9-10 million back in the late 70s and early 80s. I think the sheer number of people flooding the place shuffling between the two parks every day has had a bigger impact on overall standby wait times than Fastpass.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>They were not being told in maybe an hour wait ....they were being told........we are booked for the night...<< Some times they do have some extra tables that can be obtained that day, so you can walk by the restaurant in the morning and ask. I find that if you call the dining reservation phone line in the morning (perhaps on your way into the park), you can usually find something; if your preferred restaurant/time is full, they're good at finding alternatives for you. By dinner time on a moderately busy day, I just assume that all of the table service restaurants are full.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "I don't nessecarily think it's even about reserving some tables for walk-ups, since I'm sure most of the restaurants could easily fill them. Instead, the Dining Plan is a way to help managers predict the crowd size, and staff the restaurants accordingly." You can still do that and set aside a small portion of tables for walk ups, especially if it's a hotel that is booked solid. In those cases the restaurant manager obviously knows that he or she will need every table for breakfast that day, so they set aside a few for the people without ressies and staff accordingly. It's not complicated.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I think the sheer number of people flooding the place shuffling between the two parks every day has had a bigger impact on overall standby wait times than Fastpass.<< I think it's probably both, but Fastpass has created a lot more congestion. Instead of absorbing thousands of people, those folks are walking around, which I think also adds to the overcrowded feeling to the parks.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance "I'm on an anti-Disney rant this week, so take this with a grain of salt, but if Disney weren't so hell bent on capturing every penny in your pocket they'd set aside a decent number of tables each day during busy times for walk-ups. Maybe they are doing this, but it doesn't sound like it." They probably don't need to do this as no-shows/last minute cancelations probably do it for them.
Originally Posted By sjhym333 Again. Its about taking care of their most important guest... the resort guest. They are paying for their rooms, buying multiday tickets, using the dining plan. Its where the $ is. Not a judgement. Just a fact
Originally Posted By Princessjenn5795 "5) Disney Dining Plan - From the homoginization of menus, to not being able to visit favorite restaurants because they were completlely booked 6 months out the dining plan has changed how we dined at Disney...and not for the best for me." I both love and hate the dining plan. If you use it right, the dining plan can save a lot of money on meals. So that part I love. The part I hate most is having to book your dining reservations for popular restaurants at 7am ET 180 days out from your trip or risk not getting a table. That really is a little ridiculous! As far as the homogenization of the menus is concerned, I have no way of knowing what the menus were like before last year, but I can say that overall I was pretty disappointed in the food. DL has been updating their menus over the past few years, and now they have a pretty good selection of healthy food options, and the food in general is a much higher quality than I found at WDW. There were a couple of meals at WDW that I really enjoyed (Restaurant Marrakesh, O'hana, and the breakfast buffet at Tusker House). Since I was there for 10 days and ate every meal on property having only 3 really good meals is pretty bad. Most of the meals we had were decent, but nothing more, and a few were downright gross.
Originally Posted By tashajilek ^^ Agreed the food in general wasnt very good. The only place we found food was pretty good was Epcot and the rest of the parks the food was on the gross side. We are lucky that we always rent a car and we ate a lot of dinners off property.
Originally Posted By tashajilek Honestly though i dont find the food at Disneyland anything special either. I dont care for a lot of their fast food choices like the burgers with their nasty whole wheat buns. They do have soom good sit down dining like Cafe Orleans. In general the food at Disneyland is still better than WDW. I guess the older i get the more of s food snob i become.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Personally, I think the food at WDW is much better than at DL. While DL has some good quick service options (French Market and Paradise Garden come to mind), most of their food is quite forgettable. They've used the recent healthy initiave to justify menus with fewer options and higher prices; plus, it seems like all of the food is the same between the two parks. The table service options are pretty good, but there are so few of them (and also pretty tough to do last-minute) that I rarely eat at them WDW on the other hand has a ton of variety. No, it might not all be great, but DL doesn't have anything that compare to the likes of Flame Tree or Sunshine Seasons, or any of World Showcase. Add in a ton of table service restaurants in each park (and the hotels), and to me WDW is the clear winner. I guess it's different for different people
Originally Posted By tashajilek I was referring to the quick service options at DL vs WDW, but im sure the sit down options are much better. Sadly with the prices at the sit down restaurants and the whole making the reservations six months in advance i might not get a chance to try many of them.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA <I think Fastpass might be the greatest theme park invention ever.> Even more than those injection machines that make wax figures of animals?
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I think the difficulty of getting a dining reservation is much exaggerated. Perhaps it is at peak times, but not all the time. I just went to the Disney Dining website and could have booked at Le Cellier for either lunch or dinner tomorrow - 6/6/13. Three times were available for lunch, two for dinner. You do not need to hold a hotel reservation to making a dining reservation, so a local could easily find a time on relatively short notice most times of the year. Will you be able to just stop in and get a table whenever the mood hits? No. But a minimal amount of advance planning should make it possible to get something you want. For me, the hardest reservation to get has always been 'Ohaha for dinner. That held true... I had to go out to 6/16/13 to get a time available.
Originally Posted By sjhym333 "Even more than those injection machines that make wax figures of animals?" FP isnt even close. Don't you love the smell of those figures?
Originally Posted By Yookeroo "Even more than those injection machines that make wax figures of animals?" OK, 2nd greatest.
