Hey Howdy Hey Patricia and welcome to planDisney!
What better way to celebrate your husband's big day than being in Walt Disney World! I love that you have the family coming to celebrate with you as well, this sounds like it is going to be a spectacular celebration!
Dining reservations in Walt Disney World do tend to be a little tougher the larger the party is, but there are always ways to give you the best chances of scoring these hard-to-get reservations so let's jump right into strategy.
The first thing when trying to plan your reservations is knowing the lay of the land with the restaurants. Both
Cinderella's Royal Table and
Citricos, both phenomenal choices by the way, have options for larger parties, but not as many so accommodating the full 18 in one party might be tough. What I would recommend is dividing your party up into smaller groups, say 3 groups of 6, which will give you so much more availability and options when it comes to making these hard-to-get reservations. When you go to check-in for your reservation, you can let the host know you have multiple parties and are celebrating a birthday. The Cast Members will try to get all parties as close as they can depending on availability.
These restaurants are also very popular and reservations often fill up extremely quickly. As long as you are staying at a Disney Resort Collection hotel, you can make your dining reservations 60 days from your date of arrival. From that 60-day mark, you also have 10 extra days in the future for reservations to try and get your full length of the stay covered. So say your 60-day mark falls on a Monday, you not only can make your reservations on that Monday but also 10 days from that date as well to hopefully cover your full trip. Where this comes into play, when you are making your reservations at the 60-day mark, try to make them at say day 62 or later as there will be more openings to get your reservations.
The final tips I have are on execution. Make sure you are online at 7:00 a.m. EST at the 60-day mark to try and get your reservations. With your party that big, even with smaller groups, you also would want to try to get reservations for off times, such as dinner at 4:00 p.m., as the traditional meal times fill up very quickly. While reservations are most easily made online, feel free as well to call Disney at (407) WDW-DINE (939-3463) and a Cast Member will be able to help you out with your larger party.
OK, one final suggestion. No birthday party is complete without cake right? So how about a quintessential birthday celebration with your very own Mickey-inspired cake? You can pre-order these
Specialty Cakes or talk to the host at check-in about them as well. There is a big list of restaurants throughout Walt Disney World that participate in cake delivery and may just be that little Magical extra for an appropriate Disney celebration!
Best wishes on the continued planning and hope you are able to get the reservations you are looking for. Let us know if there is anything else we can help you with!
Happy planning,
Nick