DINING RESERVATIONS ARE A MUST HAVE!
(That was all caps, bold, underlined, AND italic ... I'd do more, but we don't have any other attention-grabbing tools here.)
A
really cannot say this strongly enough, if you want to eat at table
service restaurants, then you should make reservations as far in
advance as possible. You can do this by calling 407-WDW-DINE or now online via the individual restaurant pages on the WDW website.
Those
scouting folks had it right when they said, "BE PREPARED." With a meal
reservation, you are prepared to eat where you want, when you want.
Without the reservation, you could end up waiting hours for a table or
wasting table service meal credits on counter service hot dogs.
So,
make the reservations. If you find that you're not where you expected
to be on a certain day, you can always call Disney Dining and cancel
your reservation or ask to change it. There are only a very few dining
experiences at WDW that require a credit card to hold the reservation
(the princess meals, the dinner shows, the Fantasmic packages, and the
California Grill). With these, you need to make sure you cancel or
change your reservation within a specified time window to avoid
incurring a penalty. Otherwise, if your plans change, you can cancel
or modify a reservation up until the last minute. Disney Mom Kim
explains this very well
here.
It
doesn't hurt to make the reservations and it can only help to make your
vacation less stressful by giving you one less thing to worry about
while you're on your trip.