ADR Day AKA Disney IT Screws With Me
I was up bright and early this morning, and I dragged hubby up with me. He was... less than thrilled but willing to go along with my crazy. Getting up at 5:50 on vacation isn't something he does voluntarily but he is willing to accept my assertion that, if we weren't up at the crack of dawn, we wouldn't get all of the reservations we wanted.
I gave him a small section of my list and took the real prize for myself: Cinderella's Royal Table at 12:00pm on my +1 day. I knew that this was a pretty unlikely get given how early in my schedule it is, but I really wanted CRT here. It fit better into my schedule here from a planning perspective and I wanted the girls to start the trip off with a bang. I mean, what better way for a five year old to spend her first day in WDW than going to Magic Kingdom and having lunch in the castle?!?
As soon as I got in at 6, I started there. Lo and behold, there was an 11:45am still available! I grabbed it, started clicking through the screens, and got an error saying there was an issue with a member of my dining party. My husband was getting the same error on his BoG reservation, too. I tried selecting us again and hitting next, but it wasn't going to work. We both had to close the tabs and start over.
Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, the 11:45 reservation was gone when I searched again. I had to settle for 2:20pm. While I'm disappointed that I had a better time in my hands and it slipped out of my grasp, I can adjust the plan and make the late lunch work. We'll just have to have a couple of late morning snacks, maybe split a QS flatbread from Pinocchio Haus, to make it to 2:20pm. I know that, in the grand scheme of things, I'm lucky to have CRT that early in my trip at all. That doesn't mean I'm not bitter about that 11:45!
Luckily, that was out last hiccup on the site. We got everything else we wanted within 15 minutes of where we wanted it. Here's how the dining plans look:
2/26/2019
10:30am Crystal Palace
2:20pm CRT
2/27/19
11:50am Garden Grill
5:15pm Askershus
2/28/19
12:35pm BoG
4:15pm 'Ohana
3/1/19
12:05pm Tusker with RoL
3/2/19
8:45am Trattoria al Forno
3/3/19
10:30am Crystal Palace
12:00pm CRT
3/4/19
11:45am Garden Grill
5:25pm Askershus
3/5/19
12:00pm H&V
3/6/19
8:00am BoG
12:00pm BoG
In the morning rush, I decided to go ahead and book my double reservations in EP and MK so that I can really take the time to look at my plans before deleting duplicates. I'll end up doing CP one day and CRT the other, same with GG and Ask. The CRT at noon later in the trip is much better in terms of my girls' stomach clocks (they're very precise!) so I'm going to really look at my plans and see if it could be better there. Since I don't want to do Ask and CRT on back to back days, that one decision dominoes into where I put both of my EP meals in addition to the CP breakfast.
The double BoGs on our final day are a hedge in case Disney bumps the park hours that day. I want the 8am PPO, but if 8am becomes the opening time, we'll cancel the breakfast, RD, and do the lunch instead. I'm holding both of those until the last minute, because I know they're notorious about changing park hours late in the game.
I'm pretty happy overall. I'll put the CRT on a TP reservation finder and hope for an earlier time, but I at least have something I can work with on the books.