Welcome back to planDisney, Kelly,
Yay! In less than two months you will be having the time of your life at
Walt Disney's Original Magic Kingdom. I’m grateful for the chance to help you with your preparations.
As the Disneyland Resort progresses through its
phased reopening, you may notice a few things have been modified or suspended for the health and safety of Guests and Cast Members. In some cases, that may include reduced capacity at many
dining locations throughout the Disneyland Resort. That seems to have made an impact on dining reservation availability. Your strategy of seeking dining reservations early is wise.
While the Disneyland Resort does not formally publish the specific time that new dining reservation inventory is released to the
online reservation system, the experience that my fellow planDisney Panelists and I have had is that reservations seem to be made available at 6:00 AM Eastern time. We don’t know for sure if that has changed to the later 9:00 AM Eastern time that you experienced today. So, as much as I’d love to save you some sleep and sanity, I think I would still plan on the earlier time, just in case. I’d feel really bad if I made you miss out on winning a reservation at one of your preferred restaurants.
Tony’s Tip: Booking dining reservations at the Disneyland Resort has been a topic of interest for many Guests lately. If you don’t happen to have luck finding what you are interested in, I would still recommend repeatedly trying. My family has been fortunate enough to find reservations available for preferred dining locations such as
Lamplight Lounge well under 60 days before our visit. You never know when other Guests might decide to cancel. Another trick that seems to help us is to select individual hours for requested reservation times rather than the generic “breakfast,” “lunch,” and “dinner” collections of times. We also find that the quick service options at the Disneyland Resort are quite amazing. And
Mobile Food & Beverage Ordering makes it so convenient to dine at some of our favorite restaurants such as
Jolly Holiday Bakery Cafe. Many table service restaurants and lounges also offer a limited number of dining opportunities to walk-up Guests on a first-come basis.
I hope that this helps a bit as you plan your visit to enter a “world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy” at the Disneyland Resort, Kelly. We hope to hEAR from you again soon if you have any more questions or requests for recommendations.
~Tony