Hi Holly,
Picking the right restaurants and the perfect time is still the most anxious part of my Disney planning. There are so many great choices and guests, and limited space, so as you can imagine it takes some planning, quick dialing and a little pixie dust to get the perfect list of reservations for your family.
I have found the easiest way for us to plan is to start with a list of the locations we want to dine at. If you are not familiar with all your choices I suggest
www.disneyworld.com or
www.allears.net under the dining options. I especially like All Ears ease of maneuvering through menu examples and locations of restaurants. Once I have our list, we mark them according to what meal we would prefer. We enjoy some locations like Chef Mickey's and Cape May Cafe for breakfast, other locations like Mama Melrose and Liberty Tree Tavern for dinner and a few of our favorite lunch spots include Coral Reef, SciFi Cafe or Yak and Yeti. A few locations that are extremely popular, like LeCellier, we list as lunch or dinner and take what is available.
After making our list, we split our choices up according to park days. I use
www.touringplans.com crowd calendar option to pick the park we will be in each day, and then list by day the restaraunt in the park we will be visiting and whether we prefer lunch or dinner there. The most important thing is to have your dialing finger ready at call 407-939-3463 when your booking window opens. I always start with my most popular locations first this way if they are full, I can adjust and book them a different day.
Besides the above suggestions, a few other favorites of my boys are Whispering Canyon, Crystal Palace, 'Ohana and Teppan Edo. Good luck!