New ADR Procedure

On July 18, making dining reservations just got a little easier. When guests staying at Disney-owned and -operated resorts reach their 90-day booking window for the beginning of their trip, they may now make reservations for ten days' worth of Advance Dining Reservations. The dining agent will confirm your hotel reservation before making the dining reservations. Those not staying at Disney resorts will need to continue making reservations on a rolling 90-day basis.

Apparently, the new policy will not be opening all reservations for a given restaurant for early booking. A sliding percentage of seats will be made available for early booking, with fewer seats opening up for the more popular restaurants. This means that very few seats will be opened up for the Princess character meals at Cinderella's Royal Table and Restaurant Akershus. However, it will give resort guests an additional chance to snag a reservation, first at their 90-day-plus-ten window, then again when the rest of the reservations open up at 90 days out.

While the tough-to-get seats will remain difficult, what the policy does is allow resort guests to make all of their reservations with one call (with the possible exception of high-demand seats), lowering the number of required long-distance calls. While not quite back to the old days of "only resort guests can make advance reservations," Disney has given guests one more incentive to stay on-property.