Last year at this time, I was helping a friend plan her Disney trip. She was going in November of 2016, taking her daughter, and had been planning for almost 6 months already. She had come to me when she first started planning, as this was to be her daughter’s first trip, and she wanted it to be amazing. I taught her everything I knew about Disney. She was (and is) a great student, and she could easily do what I do now.
Now she is a client, and we have been planning her October 2017 trip for about 4 months now. We’ve been back and forth on plans, and what parks what days, have secured her rooms, and done everything you can do leading up to day 180. What’s day 180? DINING DAY!
Dining reservations at Walt Disney World open up 180 days in advance. That means the hardest reservations to get are open six full months ahead. Which is why when you want to have breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Table or dinner at Be Our Guest in the Beast’s Castle, you have to make these reservations at day 180.
Before I get into the story of day 180, let me share with you the post she put on her Facebook page after we were done.
“Happy Disney Dining Day! What a difference a year makes. Last year I was up at 5 am…I had my cell phone…laptop and computer on the MDE…stressing about getting everything booked. This year I was able to sit and drink my coffee and relax while the legend Jim Linsky worked his magic. Thinking of heading to Disney? Reach out to Jim Linsky to help you plan. #sohappy #disney #disneydining #day180 #disneymagic#disneyplanning Jim Linsky with Ears Of Experience ”
On day 180, I was up at 5. Actually I got out of bed at 5, I’d been up thinking about it since 4. There were some heavy hitters on her list. O’hana breakfast , 1900 Park Fare Character dinner, Sci Fi Dine in, the Hoop De Doo Revue, and the mother of them all, BE OUR GUEST. Not only BE OUR GUEST, but a dinner reservation on the same night as Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. I was relieved that she had been to Cinderella’s Royal Table last year, so it wasn’t on her list this year. She had 4 others on her list, but these were the ones we had to get first.
If you have a resort reservation, your window for Dining opens at day 180 from your check in date, but you can make reservations for your entire trip. We had planned BOG (our common name for Be Our Guest, we Disney Freaks talk in abbreviations) for the last day of her trip in order to make it easier to get. People who were travelling before her would have had access to that day, but not as many as the first day of her trip. The plan was to work backwards from BOG, in order of difficulty, and to adjust times we wanted to accommodate availability.
I opened up her account, got settled in, entered my dates, and the party size and started hitting the refresh button on BOG at 5:55. I clicked about 900 times. Her window opened promptly at 6. When it did, her 4pm time showed as available. Oh the adrenaline rush! I hit 4pm, and the page changed to the dining party section. I clicked through all the names and hit the NEXT button. and then it all went bad. The little spinning dots just started spinning on the page. and spinning , and spinning. They spun for about 4 minutes. I didn’t dare back out of it. Clicking out meant starting over, and starting over meant there was no way I was going to get this.Then I got this…
Like I don’t hate Stitch enough already, it’s perfect he is the face of frustration. I clicked the back button in desperation, but to no avail, my reservation was gone. I started over, but at 6:08 am, all the reservations for a party of 5 on her date were already gone, It was over that quickly. Done in by a system failure.
Heartbroken, I proceeded through the rest of her reservations, making them with no issues, except having to skip entering the names of her party, for every time I did I got Stitch. I then went back into BOG and tried again. Miraculously her 4pm was there and I grabbed it. The vision of me checking BOG every day for the next 6 months if this didn’t work vanished as I got my confirmation. In the end we got everything we wanted , at exactly the time we wanted.
I sent my friend a text, and told her she was all set. She said she had been sitting with her daughter, relaxed, watching the confirmation emails show up every time I secured a reservation.
The point to all of this is she was sitting having coffee, with her child at her side, watching with delight, while I was freaking out on the other side, frantically navigating the system to get her what she wanted. Last year it was her freaking out, not getting what she wanted, spending three months going in, adjust times, canceling and booking reservations over and over until she got what she wanted. This year if it didn’t work out, it would be me going back in over and over, checking for her times, her dates, her places if it didn’t work out.
The reason you come to me to plan your trip is so I can freak out, not you. You let me worry about all the details, while you relax. We still have a lot of work to do. There are discounts that aren’t out yet for her dates that will have to be applied when they are released. There’s Fastpass day (almost as stressful as Dining Day, but not quite).All of this is fun for me, probably not so fun for you if you were doing it yourself.
So come to me. Let me help you. Have a cup of coffee and relax on day 180. I got this.
