Hello Ian! Welcome back to the Disney Parks Moms Panel! Booking Disney Dining experiences is one of my favorite parts of planning a visit to the Walt Disney World Resort!
At the present time, the
Disney Dining Plan is not available for Guests to book. I encourage you to continue to visit the
Disney Dining page of the Walt Disney World Resort website and the
Disney Parks Blog as updates are made available. You have plenty of time before your December 2021 visit. Perhaps Remy will have successfully persuaded our friends at Disney to make the Disney Dining Plan available as part of vacation packages!
In the event that the Disney Dining Plan is once again made available, you will find in most cases that you will have to add gratuity at the end of your meal. Your meal entitlements will cover your meal, but your meal entitlements won't cover gratuity. For this purpose you should have an additional form of payment available. If you want to avoid carrying around a different form of payment, you can always provide a credit card at check-in (or link your credit card to your
Magicband in your
My Disney Experience account) to charge incidentals and other expenses to your room. That is what I do as I don't really want to be troubled with bills while on vacation or with carrying my wallet.
Ian, with over a year to go before your visit you have plenty of time to come back with more planning questions! Come back as often as you wish!
Hakuna Matata! Jonathan G.