You’ve made your travel plans, picked the perfect days to visit the parks, and gotten your tickets.  You’ve even planned out your outfits for the park.  What’s left to do?  Dining, of course!  One of the fantastic benefits of choosing a Disney vacation is the multitude of dining options they offer in the parks and resorts.  Disney World accepts advanced dining reservations for most of the table service dining locations up to 180 days in advance.  The most popular ones may book up before the day of your visit.  So, how can you get a reservation to make sure you have the best dining experience possible?

There are three ways to make a dining reservation: 1) You can make reservations in person at Walt Disney World by visiting your resort concierge or a Guest Services location.  The disadvantage of this approach is that if you wait until your trip, you might not have a wide selection.  2) You can call 1-407-WDW-DINE(939-3463) and make your reservations over the phone.  3) You can visit the My Disney Experience Website (or the associated My Disney Experience App) and make your reservations online.  We will step through that process now to show you how easy it is.

Go to the My Disney Experience website and select the Sign In or Create Account button.

Once you’ve selected the Sign In button, you will get see the login screen.  If you’ve never created an account, you can do so here.  If you already have one, go ahead and log in so you can get started!

After you log into the My Disney Experience web site, you will see the Welcome Screen.  If you scroll down just a bit, you will see the My Plans section of your account information.  Select Find a Table under the Make Dining Reservations area.

You will get a screen that shows every table service location and/or dining experience on Disney property, which is a bit overwhelming.  Thankfully, Disney has added the ability to filter down the list to specific areas of Disney property.  Just select the All Parks & Resorts pulldown to select a smaller list.

We will narrow this down and just select a dining location at Magic Kingdom.  You can select the restaurant and even read some of the dining reviews.  Looking through the top of the available list, we can see The Crystal Palace.  We’ve never been there, so we are going to give it a try!  Just select the arrow to the right side of The Crystal Palace portion of the list.

After selecting The Crystal Palace, we get a more in-depth look at the restaurant, including price ranges, access to menus, and pictures as well.  In order to begin the reservation process, you can fill out the date, time, and party size before selecting Find a Table.  Once you select Find a Table, you will see some of the available times close to what you requested.  Since we put in 6:00 pm, the system actually found a reservation for us at that time.  If you’d like to take the time offered, just click on the time and you can complete the reservation.

After selecting one of the suggested times (or changing the time and looking again), you will now have to enter the members of your dining party.  If you’ve already got the members in your My Disney Experience account, then you can just select them.  Otherwise, you will need to add them to the reservation.  After selecting the party, select Next as the bottom of the screen.

Disney has instituted a credit card guarantee for almost all dining reservations.  Disney was attempting to stop people from making multiple dining reservations for the same night, selecting one at the last-minute, and abandoning the other reservations.  Disney will charge your credit card a cancellation fee of $10 per person on your dining reservation if you don’t show up or cancel by 11:59 pm the night before your reservation.  Having said that, we have called to cancel the day of a reservation when one of our children was sick and weren’t charged the fee.

Once you enter your credit card information, you can select Next at the bottom of the screen to move to the next step.

Once you’ve entered all the requested information, you will get one last chance to look over your reservation, including time, date, place, credit card information, and contact information.  There is also a place where you can enter in any information related to special access or dining accommodations related to your party (for example, wheelchair access or allergy/food intolerance information).  You must agree to the Guest Policies listed near the bottom of the page, and you can select Reserve at the bottom to confirm your reservation.

This step may take a bit of time, but you will eventually get a Congratulations screen with a confirmation number.  We always write down our confirmation number as it makes it easier if you need to call in to cancel the reservation.  You should receive an email confirmation as well.

Once you’ve completed the reservation, you should see the reservation on the My Disney Experience mobile application as well.  Once the date and time of your reservation comes, you can go to check in at the dining location.  You will be on your way to enjoying a fantastic meal!

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