My Disney Experience Walk-Up Waitlist now available for table service restaurants at Walt Disney World

surfsupdonSep 17, 2020

Can you still walk up and sit at a bar and order dinner, if chairs are available? No reservation needed?? Thinking of places like Narcoossee’s. Thanks.

MisterPenguinSep 05, 2020

People with the title "local guide" should know that QS does not mean 'quality service.' They should also know enough not to eat at peak dining times. They should also know that if you must eat at a peak time at a QS, you to to Columbia Harbor House and eat upstairs where you can find a table.

MrPromeySep 04, 2020

I've been in Starlight when they do this for the area with the animatronic and the stress there is not knowing if you'll find a table with enough space for your group once you're walking around with 1-2 very full trays of food and drinks. Of course, if they managed sales based on available seating like a normal dine-in restaurant does, this wouldn't be a problem. ... but of course, then people are mad because they can't get into even the bad places to order food now... which just shows that they don't provide enough dining capacity for the number of people they're letting into the parks. 🤷‍♂️

Chi84Sep 04, 2020

The second criticism would apply to most, if not all, quick service dining experiences at Disney. I would love it if they went to a system of making people order first, then enter the dining areas after getting their food. It would cut down considerably on the human vulture phenomenon.

MrPromeySep 04, 2020

Just for point of reference, to those who don't understand why I'm bagging on Pecos Bill's so hard, here are the two most recent reviews on Google which echo my sentiments almost exactly:

Chi84Sep 04, 2020

I don't agree that the options are ADR or crap. The exception is MK, where I would argue that all the quick service food options are pretty much crap (other than one or two items at BOG lunch and maybe CHH). At AK, you can walk up at Rainforest and Yak and Yeti (or get immediate seating with a Landry's card). In my opinion, both places are sort of like a Chili's in price and food options. Satu'li Canteen and Flame Tree are both pretty good options, and you can get quite a few great food items at Nomad Lounge. Epcot has several better-than-average options like Tangierine Cafe or the quick serve places in France and Japan. Even HS has the patio at HBD, where we were able to get excellent food without a reservation. The Mara at AKL is one of our favorite places to eat, even though it's quick service. I would never argue against Disney adding more restaurants because I love to try new places, but it's a complete myth that you have to know where you want to eat 6 months in advance in order to get a table service reservation. For people who are flexible and don't care about eating at a particular restaurant at a particular time, there are options to eat at quick service locations or find last-minute table service restaurants through MDE. For those who do want that certainty, no system is going to provide it better than having an ADR.

MrPromeySep 04, 2020

I don't think there is a solution that would be optimal for everyone. That's just not reality anywhere in or out of Disney. I think two things that would help, though, particularly in the parks is more dining, and dining tiers with the top ones kept as ADR-heavy. If we were to compare dining to resorts, it's like we have "value" and "deluxe" but nothing between the two (maybe with the exception of Satu'li Canteen, sort of). So you either need an ADR or your options are sort of crap. It would be nice to see more things like Satu'li Canteen and Beasts Castle (previously during lunch) as options. I think the reason you saw Beast's so full was simply because at about the same price as Pecos Bill's slop-shop, you got something much better and that was obvious to people. Of course, a place like Beast can't handle as many people per hour as Pecos which means it won't be the same runaway profit Disney has enjoyed even if prices are a little higher and that is probably the problem. It's not in Disney's interest to make better options that won't seat as many people and will take more people to staff, even if they are still highly profitable, relative to real-world costs of doing business - not when they could otherwise just sell that person a turkey leg and be done with it. And yes, there is the real estate argument and how these are only going to do good business during meal times but that argument applies to just about every restaurant in the world and somehow, even the ones without all the advantages in cost savings and built-in audiences like Disney manage to make a go of it - even in markets with strong competition. I'm not arguing that Disney make everybody's favorite special places a walk-up or day-of option but I think it would be super-nice if there was something - anything really - (again, particularly in the parks) that was available that was a step above most of what they offer, today. Especially with the app, it doesn't seem crazy to think a check-in or even wait system couldn't be created where the app on people's phones could let them know about how much longer their wait was or even to summon them like a modern equivalent of a buzzer so they wouldn't have to hang out in the front of the restaurant and wait for their name to be called if demand so outpaced supply that waits became a huge problem.* Of course then somebody comes in and asks, how these should fall on the meal plans and you know, I don't know but that's part of the tangled mess of Disney's own design with the current situation. *Again, I think Disney took the wrong lesson away from fast-service at Beast's Castle. I think the popularity should have indicated this is something guests want more of - not that they should get rid of it because it couldn't handle the demand.

MrPromeySep 04, 2020

Such is my life...

Chi84Sep 04, 2020

You wasted 50 words writing about how your post is too long ;) I like the ADRs because I know, not hope, that I will enjoy eating in the Beast's castle instead of sitting on a sidewalk with a turkey leg. The 180 days is arbitrary and seems over-long to me, but other than that, what solution would you suggest that would be optimal for both the guest and Disney? When the parks are at full capacity, I would imagine that any restaurant taking walk-ups would end up with extremely long lines, which doesn't seem like a good idea to me. When we went to Yak and Yeti for lunch, they were quoting 90-minute waits for walk-ups who did not have a Landry's card. And this was in May, when the park was relatively quiet. Disney is designed as a much better experience for people who inform themselves beforehand. After reading several posts here, I checked MDE for same-day dining reservations during our last trip and found plenty of available table service openings for those who don't want to make plans in advance. But for people who care enough to want the most popular restaurants at the most popular times, ADRs are the best way to make that happen.

MrPromeySep 04, 2020

I wrote several lengthy drafts nobody wants to read before settling on just addressing two points of what you're saying here but it's still long. I write like all the words in the world are nearing their shelf life and will have to be thrown out if I don't. I know. Sorry... First, I 100% agree things have to be different in some way from local restaurants. I think it's weird when I get a buzzer to get on Dumbo, although some restaurants in Disney Springs where things operate more like the real world, do use them. That said, Disney World is not a city. Reedy Creek Improvement District where it is located isn't even a city by traditional scale. Besides land, it's not even close. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of city planners who would fall out of their chair laughing if you tried to make that comparison to them. What Disney or Reedy deals with isn't anything even remotely on the scale of what an actual city deals with in terms of utilities and volume of people on a daily basis. Disney's central control over the whole shebang actually makes things easier for them (not harder) than it would be for individual operators (restaurants, in this example) who would in a real city, be competing with each other for their own survival and yet, so many at that level do manage to somehow survive and serve people without asking for any kind of commitment six months in advance.** Disney's "dance" is primarily a conga line snaking it's way towards increased profit over all other considerations. They're a business. I can't blame them for that but because of their unique monopoly-like control over certain things within their bubble, they're able to make choices and decisions that aren't guest-friendly that other's wouldn't get away with. You can go into the Magic Kingdom thinking you might enjoy dinner at Beast's castle and instead after trying a half dozen other options, end up standing on a sidewalk with no place to sit, holding a turkey leg in one hand and your drink in another with Disney somehow not looking at all to blame and them still making more profit off your meal than most independent restaurants actually able to seat you could. For an investor, that's a beautiful thing. For a guest, not so much. Then someone will come along and say, "If you wanted to sit down in air conditioning and eat food off a real plate with a metal fork, you should have known you had to book that six months in advance, silly."* This is all neither here nor there but this entire issue we're discussing is something Disney has created with a combination of dining plans guests are eager to maximize the value of, the rules around ADRs, and the capacity of dining locations - all of which are 100% in their control. None of this is new and in reality, I'm probably talking about solutions to something I doubt Disney even sees as a problem. They've obviously been happy with things or else they'd have changed something over the years to improve the guest experience so unless something crazy happens like a plague across the earth that requires them to totally rethink their business strategies, I guess nothing will ever change. ... Oh wait. :oops: *TerriOfTerror has pointed out she's had good luck getting into Skippers so this isn't 100% universal but you get my point. **Disney bills this as a guest "convenience" but it's a pretty big convenience to them, too, when they can decide staffing that far out to deal with volume which allows them to avoid things like overtime and possibly even the number of full-time employees that they have to provide additional benefits to vs. part time. Six months is plenty time to fully hire and train people for most guest-facing positions if they need to. It's also enough time to negotiate the best price on supplies for putting bulk orders in, bring stuff over the slowest/cheapest way possible from China for merchandise, etc.

Jon81ukSep 04, 2020

I think 60 days ahead is reasonably, the previous 180 definitely felt a bit crazy. I would even consider a system the same as FP+ where onsite guests can make one reservation a day at 60days and everyone else at 30 days. In terms of the dining plan, who knows if that is going to come back even. I do agree that they would need some reservations to make a dining plan work (and thats why its not being offered right now) to ensure people get to eat where they want to. But as others have said, there are guests who don't realise how some places need reservations and how hard it can get to find table service places taking walk-up. I think some people do think that if they are staying at a hotel they should be able to eat there (at city locations as well as Disney etc).

MrPromeySep 04, 2020

We could also be talking about a difference in kinds of restaurants. There are places around here that do reservations and where they're a good idea but those tend to be pricier and higher end locations. I'll say the Cheesecake Factory example (which I don't consider higher end) is kind of a rediculous one because I one time went where they were out of buzzers, took our name, and told us to come back in 30 minutes to get a buzzer because they didn't have enough of them. Cheesecake Factory aside, with casual dining in my part of Florida (and i live in the most densely populated county in Florida) reservations of any kind are absolutely not the norm. Some restaurants will let you "call ahead" to "get your name on the wait list" but that's about it. 🤷‍♂️

MisterPenguinSep 04, 2020

Martin called this as coming soon. And it did.

MrHappySep 04, 2020

TP Rez finder is awesome