Making a dinner reservation at Walt Disney World just got a bit easier with a selection of Disney-owned restaurants now available to book on OpenTable. While many restaurants at the Disney Springs complex and a few at The Swan and Dolphin were already making some seatings available via OpenTable, Disney World had so far kept its restaurants reservations exclusive to Disney’s website and apps.
One of the big differences between Disney’s system and OpenTable is that you won’t need a credit card on file to make a reservation with OpenTables. But if you abuse Opentable’s system you could be blocked from using in the future.
Right now the number of Disney-owned restaurants is fairly limited.
- Grand Floridian Cafe – Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
- The Wave – Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- Boatwright’s – Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside
- Artist Point – Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- Sanaa – Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
- Olivia’s – Disney’s Old Key West Resort
- Flying Fish – Disney’s Boardwalk Inn
- Kona Cafe – Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
- Jiko – Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
We see reservations available beginning in the new year. Availability is fairly limited, but just surfacing these restaurants in OpenTable’s system should help with their visibility.
What is your best plan to reserve dining at Walt Disney World?
Disney had solved most of the problems with getting a reservation back when they started require a credit card to secure a reservation. It became MUCH easier to get a reservation after that. This system seems designed to get more people into restaurants that are usually not fully booked. I’ve never once seen Sanaa at capacity, for example.
Certain restaurants will never be added to the OpenTable system, simply because Disney has no trouble filling them to capacity every day of the year (Be Our Guest being a good example of this). I’d guess that OpenTable will be used to fill available tables at restaurants as the date for that reservation approaches; if 10% of the tables at Flying Fish are still available 60 days out, they’ll be added to the OpenTable system, or something like that. Disney wants every table filled at every possible time, so this is just another way of doing that.
These are all restaurants that have often offered steep CM discounts, so I think they are the ones consistently below capacity.
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