Hey Howdy Hey Rebecca and welcome to planDisney!
Planning a trip to Walt Disney World Resort does require a bit of planning to maximize your Magical experience. I love how you are trying to get familiar with booking your
advanced dining reservations early as this can be tricky, especially with planning for a party of 11! Hakuna Matata Rebecca, I've got some tips for you to try to help get the most out of your availability.
First off, I wanted to review some general tips when booking a larger party. If you can, try to find "off times" when eating. Non-traditional times such as breakfast at 11:00 a.m. or lunch at 3:00 p.m. are usually taken last and usually have more availability. Try to split your party up into smaller groups, I will touch on why you are having issues below. Not all restaurants have the ability to handle bigger parties and some are easier to get reservations than others, will review below as well.
With advanced dining reservations, these open at 6:00 a.m. EST 60 days before your date of arrival. You can book these from your
My Disney Experience account or by calling (407) 939-3463 and speak to a Cast Member specifically about group dining. Phone lines open at 7:00 a.m. EST. When splitting up your party, you would need another member of your party to take the lead for the second group. My Disney Experience will not let you hold two reservations at the same time which is why this might not come up when you are trying this currently. As long as you and another member are doing things at the same time, you should see similar availability. Cast Members can override this by the way, so if you did call just yourself, you can have them make the two separate reservations linked together.
Some restaurants are better than others at accommodating larger parties. This usually is due to the physical space for the location. Some of the restaurants with better capacity include:
Selecting these dining locations might also give you a little better chance to book everyone together. You might want to try booking your party all together from your My Disney Experience account at 6:00 a.m. EST at these locations and then follow up with a phone call for the locations you were not able to get. If you did end up booking two separate parties, I would make sure to stop by the Host Stand of your dining location at check-in time and talk to the greeting Cast Member to see if there is the possibility of getting your parties close together. The Cast Members try to make things like this happen but are based on availability and space.
A lot of tips which I hope some if not all of them will help make planning your trip to the Most Magical Place on Earth an extra Magical experience! Best wishes on your continued preparations and if you have any further questions please feel free to reach out, we would be happy to help!
Have a Magical Day,
Nick