What’s Up With ADR Availability?
Advance Dining Reservation availability can be limited or inconsistent, especially for certain parties and restaurants, prompting questions and concerns from Walt Disney World fans. This post attempts to answer all of that with our experiences, ADR searches we’ve conducted, what readers have shared, and what’s happening ‘on the ground’ with WDW dining.
The troubles with Advance Dining Reservation availability are yet another issue that has morphed over time. When Walt Disney World first reopened, physical distancing and a significantly smaller slate of operational restaurants meant that demand far exceeded supply. This was true even as the parks operated with capacity caps and the resorts seldom were anywhere close to fully booked.
Obviously, a lot has changed since then. For the last year-plus, reduced restaurant capacity problems have persisted because of staffing shortages. If you’re wondering why Walt Disney World has not yet brought back something, there’s a 90% chance that’s the answer. (The other 10% is money…which also plays a role in the staffing shortage.) There is more than enough demand to bring back everything at this point. The biggest impediment is that operational locations are short-staffed and ones that have yet to reopen need to hire and train new Cast Members.
This is hardly unique to Central Florida or Walt Disney World. You’ve probably seen similar stories on your local news about the hospitality industry having a tough time finding workers. We’ve also discussed it in countless articles. Nevertheless, it’s worth reiterating yet again for those who are new to the site. Disney has left a lot of money on the table by virtue of the staffing shortages. (Point being: they are absolutely not by design.)
The primary limiting factor is a lack of Cast Members. Unfortunately, the company was caught off-guard by the speed of America’s reopening and labor market realities. The company has brought back and ramped up the College Program and international programs, while also undertaking a hiring blitz and offering hiring bonuses. That has all helped, but only so much. (Disney is also experiencing unprecedented employee turnover, which has hurt.)
Staffing shortages persist for several key positions, including on the culinary teams. CEO Bob Chapek has directly addressed this problem, stating that Walt Disney World’s capacity constraints are self-imposed, and due to insufficient restaurant capacity to serve more people.
In short, dining capacity is still pretty far from 100% of what it was pre-closure. For the sake of discussion, let’s just arbitrarily say it’s around 75% due to reduced hours, missing meal services, staffing shortages, closed locations, and other assorted inefficiencies. (From what I’ve heard, this arbitrary number is actually not that far off.)
It’s one thing to reduce capacity on a ride or show; wait times go up until enough people balk and opt. Eating is not the type of “experience” that people visiting theme parks opt out of doing. The distribution of people can be reallocated to something more efficient, like Cosmic Ray’s or Pecos Bills, but few people visiting Magic Kingdom for the day will be discouraged from dining by ADR availability or Mobile Order return windows.
One thing we’ve noticed lately is that last-minute availability is often better than booking a few weeks or even a full month or more in advance. In fact, we’ve been able to score same-day or night-before reservations to some of the most difficult ADRs (by post-reopening standards) in the last two months.
To put this theory to the test that ADR availability is better last minute than it is at the one month mark, we conducted dozens of searches today. (Actually, not just today–this article has been a work in progress for 3 weeks, and keeps getting pushed back. I’ve done these same searches two other times, and the results have been more or less consistent with what’s below).
In searching for ADRs today for a party of 2, we found 32 restaurants with availability when we simply searched for “lunch.”
That number jumped to 53 when looking for dinner, which likely reflects more restaurants being open for dinner. It’s also slightly further into the future–at least some restaurants are likely doing Walk-Up Waitlist for those lunch openings.
Readers often comment that we have better luck since we’re a smaller party. In actuality, the opposite is true right now. During this era of limited capacity, Walt Disney World’s booking engine actually prioritizes larger parties. (For a while, it was impossible to book certain restaurants as a party of 2. We didn’t eat at Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant for almost 2 years because of this.)
When increasing our party size to 4, the options for lunch increased to 46 restaurants with availability and 65 at dinner. That’s definitely the sweet spot, as a party of 6 had 40 lunch options and 59 restaurants with availability at dinner.
Availability was even better when searching tomorrow, which is a Saturday–prime date night for locals. For a party of 2, lunch restaurants with open ADRs increased to 42 and dinner to 60. This included plenty of popular picks, like Beaches & Cream, Chefs de France, Oga’s Cantina, ‘Ohana, and more.
For 4, there were 60 restaurants with availability at lunch and 74 at dinner. Again, this included the hard-to-book restaurants you see in the above screenshot, plus Boma, Cape May Cafe, Flying Fish, Garden Grill, Topolino’s Terrace, and Tusker House. All of the aforementioned restaurants had multiple ADR times, too.
Even for a party of 6, there are still 44 choices at lunch and 65 dinner ADRs available for Saturday night. That’s really good by historical standards, and even better relative to recent limitations.
One thing to keep in mind here is that I’m simply searching for “lunch” or “dinner” to simply this process. If you search for specific times or specific restaurants, that can yield different results or show availability for specific times that did not previously appear.
Advance Dining Reservation choices for Sunday are slightly lower across the board, but still showing healthy numbers. You’d have a number of good options regardless of your preferences and party size–lots of character, buffet, mid-tier, Signature, etc. restaurants.
Monday is when we see the biggest drop. My first thought was that this might be because that’s a weekday, and restaurants allocate their limited (staffing) resources to weekends v. weekdays. However, next Saturday also shows diminished availability as compared to this Saturday. There’s no historical basis for this–neither in ADR booking trends nor anticipated attendance/occupancy levels.
Jumping a full month into the future, and availability looks similar to next Saturday.
It’s actually slightly worse across the board, but only by a few ADR options. Look closer and you’ll see that the specific restaurants available–and unavailable–is actually quite different despite the total numbers being similar.
Finally, we look as far forward as the calendar allows–to November 15, 2022.
This produces the most interesting results. A few restaurants for which we had seldom seen near-term availability (e.g. California Grill) have ADR openings. Conversely, many that we know are not popular have nothing. This list is longer and includes Amare, City Works, Coral Reef, the Edison, Skipper Canteen, and more options in Disney Springs. The third party restaurants are easy to explain away–the way some of those release reservations differs from Disney-operated locations. The others, not so much.
A few days earlier is Veterans’ Day weekend, which we’ve flagged as being a particularly busy time at Walt Disney World.
However, ADR availability is not materially better or worse that Saturday. This is especially true for a party of 4 (consistently the sweet spot for the best selection), but even parties of 2 and 6 have plenty of choices.
From all of these test searches and our own firsthand experience since the start of summer, there are a few lessons that can be learned.
First, smaller parties are penalized. Thankfully, there are ways to circumvent this, but it’s still frustrating for a couple to be penalized by the system when the table space exists. (Although you probably disagree if you’re a larger family!)
Second, some restaurants release all or most of their reservations at the start of the booking window, and seldom offer reservation refills. The main ones that come to mind here are Chef Mickey’s, Artist Point, Cinderella’s Royal Table, Space 220, Topolino’s Terrace (breakfast), and California Grill.
You either need to book these at 60 days, or hope for the best with cancellations the night before. Walk-Up Waitlist is another option, and we’ve seen a few of those restaurants (and other tough ones) available via Walk-Up Waitlist that have not done day-of ADR drops.
Third, a lot of restaurants aren’t releasing all or any ADR availability at the 60 day mark. Throwing out third parties as obvious anomalies, this is still happening with many Disney-owned restaurants.
The big one we’ve seen holding back ADRs (probably more noticeable in part due to the alphabetical ordering when we search!) is Be Our Guest Restaurant. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen nothing at 60 days, but there are numerous times for lunch and dinner released the morning of or one day in advance.
While availability dumps are most common same-day or 1-2 days ahead of time, that’s not always the case.
We’ve heard reports (and seen ourselves) instances of certain restaurants holding back all or most reservations, and then releasing them 20-30 days in advance for a wide range of dates.
All of this is almost certainly a result of the staffing shortages. (This isn’t really speculative–we’ve had Cast Members at multiple locations confirm as much.) We once again discussed staffing shortages at length above, and that’s because they’re a big deal when it comes to ADR availability.
It used to be the case that we recommended searching for last-minute ADRs due to cancellations. That advice still applies, but the bigger reason is restaurants opening up more reservations. That is more much more significant, and it’s a relatively new phenomenon. Maybe it happened before to some extent, but I don’t recall restaurants “holding back” ADRs being a thing on a widespread level.
Finally, ADR availability or lack thereof is not really conclusive of crowds. It’s generally true that fewer seating options at table service restaurants is suggestive of higher crowds and more options means lower crowds. If we’re painting with broad strokes, that’s still–largely–the case. But the two are more disconnected than ever before, and there are variables and other externalities (e.g. EPCOT festivals, conventions, weather, holidays, etc.) that change the equation.
There’s also the reality that only a fraction of all guests dine in table service restaurants. The available total table service capacity, even when firing on all cylinders, is a small percentage of the total park capacity. Moreover, when a restaurant like Cinderella’s Royal Table is booked up, there’s no telling how much demand exceeded supply. Maybe in September, it’s fully booked and had another ~125 families who would’ve made reservations if they could’ve. But in November, it might’ve had ~250 parties who were shut out each day. Excess demand for ADRs is not something we can measure.
Similarly, this is also why Disney Vacation Club availability offers almost no insight into crowds. Sure, if there’s a lot of availability, it probably says something about attendance being low. The opposite is not true, though. DVC almost always has excess demand–that’s just the business model (coupled with inventory issues).
We mention this because a lot of people point to DVC or ADR availability as indicative of crowds. That’s not even remotely the case with DVC, and even with ADRs, the correlation is tenuous at best.
Ultimately, there are a couple of key takeaways from this. The first is that Advance Dining Reservation, as a whole, is markedly better than it was one year ago. Even excluding the current off-season, which was super slow last year, too. This is not an entirely new trend, and we’ve been having a lot more success booking ADRs since May–including summer season. There also continue to be good options and availability during the holiday season.
The second is that not every restaurant at Walt Disney World releases reservations in the same way. Some should–or must–be booked 60 days out. Otherwise, you’re not going to get them because there’s so much excess demand and certain popular restaurants seldom release more reservations. Then there are other locations, that don’t release their full slate of ADRs until only a few days in advance (or the same-day) when their scheduling and staffing situations crystalize.
Accordingly, the best approach to booking ADRs is scoring some at 60 days and booking others at the last-minute. Of course, this itself can be stressful and not work well with other vacation plans you might make. Personally, I would book all or most of my ADRs at the last minute unless character dining were a top priority.
With every other type of restaurant, there are typically sufficient options 0-3 days in advance and some of the least popular ADRs are actually the best restaurants. Advance Dining Reservations are one of many aspects of Walt Disney World vacation planning that I don’t think are worth stressing out over (again, unless character dining is important), and I’ve felt that way for a while.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
If you’ve visited or booked ADRs for Walt Disney World in the last few months, what has been your experience? Have you had success at the last-minute (0-3 days in advance)? Had challenges at the 60 day mark? Notice any differences in the dynamic as compared to pre-closure? Think staffing shortages explain most of what’s happening with fluctuations and limitations in Advance Dining Reservations? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Now that we’re 30 days out, we’ve been making a lot of changes to our ADRs as some of the highly coveted ones become available later in the game. Here’s the really odd things I’ve discovered:
There’s really no difference in availability between three or four guests. There is, however, a huge difference between two and three.
50’s Prime Time Cafe is an example of three, but not two. Every now and then there will be availability for a party of two, but the times will be totally different than the times available for a party of three. Other three but not two availabilities are Be Our Guest, Chef Art Smith’s, and Cinderella’s Royal Table. It seems as though the most popular aren’t available for a party of two, but a party of three is okay.
Go ahead and book for a party of three even there’s only two of you. I’ve found that every time I did that, I could straight into my MyDisney app or account on the website and change the reservation. So, to book it originally for two, you can’t; but you can change it two once it’s been booked for three (sounds confusing because it is!).
I’ve also found that if an ADR I already have shows availability for a better time than the one I had, if that better time is for a party of three, neither the app nor the website will let me change my ADR unless I change the size of the party along with the time. Then, again, I have to go back in after exiting and change it back to a party of two and it’ll let me.
This is a pain, but it’s gotten me the ADRs I’ve wanted without worrying about reserving for an amount of people that isn’t accurate. I can’t speak for larger parties, but if you’re searching for ADRs, search the next party size up and see what’s available. The dining site isn’t too terribly accurate since you change your party size after booking, even though it says there aren’t any available in the restaurant listings. Hope this helps.
So today is my 60 days out for ADR’s on our Trip to Disney World for week of Thanksgiving, was up at 5am central time to make my picks and through all of the changes it seems that they like penalizing the people who used plan ahead so hopefully my post can help some people out with the frustration, we are a party of 5 on our 4th trip to DW staying at Caribbean . The first thing is be flexible because some ADRs are available on different days others not at all , Example: we arrive on Sunday the 20th and wanted to go to Rose and Crown for Lunch and San Angel for Dinner for some reason R&C is not available the entire week we are there and Chef de France was available but not SA, it was available on Thanksgiving and so we swapped our plans for France on Thursday to Sunday. Disney Springs has lots of availability almost every night So I got Morimoto (mon), Boathouse(tues), Jaleo (wed). Hollywood Studios had no availability all week for either primetime or scifi at lunch or dinner, but was able to snag Brown Derby for Friday night. Most Lunches available are showing 1-4pm and dinners are showing 7:30-10pm. I have teenagers so we can work with this but it would be tough if they were still little. Topolino terrace was not available all week for Dinner or for the character breakfast. We always end our trip with a character breakfast but all we were able to get on Saturday morning was the Disney Junior one so I’m going with three teenage girls to see Sophia, Doc, and Manny I can see the eye rolling already. An odd one was we were able to get BOG lunch on Friday which is always a hard reservation to get, not sure if its because of the price fix. Hope this helps with your planning
We’re down to less than 30 until our trip and it’s been the same for us and different. Rose & Crown hasn’t been available for lunch or dinner for our entire 10-day stay. I thought it was due to the queen’s death, but they weren’t available before then, either. Sci-Fi has only been available for parties of two. It’s a harder one to get for larger parties because of the table size. San Angel was available for us but not nearly as often as it usually is. The character meal at The Crystal Palace has a good variety of availability, so look for that one. Winnie the Pooh is still better than the Disney Junior characters for teenagers.
It’s going to be harder for you because you’re visiting during a high-crowd time. But don’t give up. People often over book then start canceling when it starts getting closer to their visit. So keep checking!
I think this advice applies to Disneyland as well. I am going in November for my birthday, and was upset that there were no reservations for Lamplight Lounge for the 3 days I am there. I read this article and just kept checking, and a few days ago a bunch of reservations were released. I was able to snag one at the time I wanted.
An additional issue I have found recently when it comes to lack of ADR availability is they they have several Facebook groups meant to trade ADRs. When they can’t get the one they want they will pick up every hard to get reservation, whether its character meals, Capture Your Moment, etc and offer to trade with others meaning they drop it in the hopes the other person can get it, which doesn’t always work. You will see lists posted of up to 10 a day they are willing to “trade”, effectively eliminating the ability of dozens of family to secure these reservations in advance. Hopefully Disney puts in a fix to this issue in the future, knowing that they cannot be at a resort and 2 other parks simultaneously.
I plan to be at WDW the first full week of December with a family of 8 (children and grandchildren). I am quite concerned about getting my grandchild a character breakfast reservation. I fear the larger the group the less chance of getting the ADR. Any thoughts on this?
We enjoy your blog, but I am not impressed with your restaurant selection try Rose and Crown fireworks dinner or Space 220. You state that Disney was surprised by the quick recovery why these people make the big bucks they should have anticipated the comeback. I ask you why they can’t call back the people that they had pre shutdown? What are they living on? Oh Biden bucks? I can tell you one thing our annual pass expires on 12/7 and that’s all folks! We’re done with Disney. Weve been there over 30 times since 92 so we have experienced the decay firsthand.
bye
Btw, “that’s all folks” comes from Warner Bros, not Disney.
The BIGGEST problem with advanced dinning reservations is the WINDOW to make reservations. People and FAMILIES that make and early vacation plan and make reservations… PLAN & PREPARE a YEAR or so in advance. Make a Resort reservation and have a few days or week should be able to make and early dinning reservation as well. Disney used to have a 180 Day Window to make a reservation and NOW only have 60 Days. This causes great hardship as you compete then with a lot of local or last minute Charleys and in most cases you can not get in. (Example) You make a resort reservation a year in advance hoping to go to SPACE 220… on your first MINUTE of your 60 day window SPACE 220 does not have one reservation available. Give us poor people the 180 window so we have a better chance to make our reservations.
As someone who books most ADRs 0-3 days ahead of time, I don’t really have a dog in this fight–both timeframes are way earlier than I plan when/where I’m going to eat.
I just chuckle at the notion that the 60 day window is viewed as “last minute” or appealing to locals. That’s definitely not the cause of these issues.
60 days is last minute? I can’t get on board that particular train.
I recently booked ADRs for 4 in early November. We have a longer trip and booked at 60+8. No problems getting:
Ohana dinner, Toppolino dinner, flying fish, citricos, teppan edo lunch, CRT lunch.
I could only get party of 2 at Victoria and Alberts at 60+7, nothing for 4 and they aren’t open Sunday and Monday so we did not end up booking that.
California Grill isn’t loading their reservations until midnight at 60 days. When I booked before 6 am there were multiple times available around the fireworks. I kept watching and the good times were gone by 6:30 am, by 9 am at 60 days everything was gone.
We had our last night as a split stay so couldn’t book BoG until 60+1 lunch had availability, dinner did not.
When I was searching for ADRs for a hoped for trip this month (Sept), the most difficult to find at 60 days were Homecomin’, Artist Point and Space220. for Homecomin’ and Artist Point, only late night after 10 pm slots were available and very few at that regardless of the number of guests I searched for. Perhaps not a surprise as Homecomin’ is wildly popular with locals and Artist Point is a newish character dining experience that actually has good food. These 2 restaurants should be prioritized and if no luck def check the day before for cancellations, walk up lists and openings. Space220 was completely unavailable for any time, any day or any number of guests. The Sept trip didn’t work out – for many, many reasons – but its been 4 years since my last visit and I’m much less concerned with returning than I was 2 years ago.
Had a really hard time scoring anything I wanted at 60+ for a party of 8 arriving 11/13. I wasn’t prepared to strike out at Space 220 at 68 days. Nothing in category 1 at Hoop Dee Doo my entire trip. Something is weird with big parties. If I can’t sort it out by 2 weeks out we’ll just cancel and try again in January.
Not just big parties. I was up at 5:45 AM refreshing the page over and over and I still couldn’t get Hoop-De-Doo for 6:15 AM
Last week of Aug we got Sci Fi the day before for 4 @ 5:55. We also got a Beaches and Cream at dinner via the walk up list at 6pm. Nearly every single restaurant had availability the day before and at decent times. Not 9:30pm.
Our window opened this morning and I logged in at 5:45 MT. I could see open times for most of the restaurants I tried but couldn’t make a single reservation – I kept getting an error “We seem to have run into a problem booking your dining reservation. Please try again later or call (407) 824-1391.” I called and was told it was a 45 minute wait, so while waiting I tried 2 other browsers and got the same results. Then I tried the app, and there I was able to book just about everything we wanted quickly and with no errors including BOG, SciFi, Garden Grill. We even got dinner at Ohana the last night of our trip! So I’d recommend trying the app first.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Disney’s site and app are always glitchy, but it’s been worse than usual the last couple of days. There was even a wide-scale outage yesterday. I haven’t heard anything aside from this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more problems this morning.
That’s because you can’t, in spite of what all the vlogs and blogs say, book an ADR until 6am. The app and website won’t allow you to book at 5:45. You’ll get the error message, but all you have to do is wait for 6am.
Are you staying at Swan & Dolphin? Same thing happened to me and I was told it’s a known glitch that the system doesn’t recognize S&D reservations for the 60+ length of stay benefit. The rep had to do it manually and even ask for assistance to bypass the system, at which point all the good stuff was booked. This is very disappointing as it is an advertised benefit of staying at Swan & Dolphin.
Had very limited success for our party of 5 (nothing like the 90s TV show). Most times were either 4 pm or 8 pm which is not desirable for kids. The other thing is location. Personally I don’t want to take a bus just to go to dinner. I prefer on site or on park for convenience. The good news is I will save some money because we are doing mostly QS meals this time. Miss the dining plan where I ate high on the hog with a Table restaurant every day.
It’s a common problem for availability to be “hidden” from odd number party sizes. Just go up one when booking ADRs and then modify down when doing online check-in for the restaurant. Table is the same size for a party of 5 v. 6 (or 3 v. 4) so it makes zero difference whatsoever. Just odd programming in WDW’s system.
I would add that if you have a family of 5, you will find nothing, but you can reserve for 6 without penalty.
This is true for all odd party numbers–just go up one when booking ADRs and then modify down when doing online check-in for the restaurant. Table is the same size for a party of 5 v. 6 (or 3 v. 4) so it makes zero difference whatsoever. Just odd programming in WDW’s system.
Good tip! 🙂
Been trying to get an ADR at Homcomin’ for Nov 5 or anytime over the following week since Sept 6 (the 60-day mark). None available, any time. This has been extremely helpful, as I just assumed all ADRs were dumped at the 60-day point. But I just checked out a few days from now, and plenty were available. More if I changed our party of 2 to a party of 4. So does anyone know what happens if I make a rez for 4 and only 2 show up?
Unless the rules have changed, as long as one person whose name is on the reservation shows up, the reservation is honored and there is no penalty.
By doing that you are just making the problem worse for everyone in my opinion.
I would see if you can change your reservation to three people. Then it’s only one not showing up. We’re a party of two and couldn’t get a reservation for 50s Prime Time or Chef Art Smith’s Homecoming until I booked for a party of three. I’ve found the same amount of availability for the same restaurants with a check for three people as for when I checked for four people. But as long as someone shows for the reservation, it’s all good. though I’d personally feel more comfortable with only one not showing than two not showing.
The difference of tables for a party of two and a party of three shouldn’t be an issue in any place other than Sci-Fi, where the car tables really can only fit two comfortably. If a place has big size diff between two or three people, then I’d want the three-person table anyway, even with two people. I don’t want to be cramped with no place to put the purses and backpacks.
Tom, Do you have an opinion about the proliferation of Dining Reservation swap sites on FB and others? I wonder how much capacity is being grabbed up by people wanting to swap or sell their reservations?
My opinion is that those people suck, but also that Walt Disney World has the ability to easily address and stop this if it’s really that big of a problem.
As for the impact, I’m guessing it actually isn’t that significant. WDW diehards have done things like this for ages, it’s just more visible and sophisticated in the era of Facebook. It’s still a small minority of all guests, and it doesn’t alter capacity one way or the other (as compared to staffing shortages, which do).
Tom, since it’s tangentially on topic, would you be willing to share which, if any, ADRs you would be trying to get for NYE at WDW? Wondering if there’s somewhere particularly festive, firework views, etc. thanks!
Any of these: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/best-restaurants-magic-kingdom-fireworks-views/
Beyond that list, my *personal* picks would be Topolino’s Terrace or Toledo (big sleeper pick there).
We’re going to Disney the end of October. Here’s what it looks like for us a month out for two people:
Sci-Fi, which used to be an incredibly difficult ADR to snag has had availability every meal, every day.
Once Hollywood & Vine reverted back to a buffet in August, all availability dried up. When I checked last night around 7pm, still none. When I checked again around 11, there was availability for every meal, every day. It’s still showing that today.
Cinderella’s Royal Table isn’t available, but Be Our Guest is doable for lunch
T-Rex, for some reason, is not available for any day at any time, even with a Landry’s Club membership.
Via Napoli, surprisingly, is an easier ADR to get than Rose & Crown.
I don’t think Hollywood & Vine is *actually* suddenly more popular, I think something is up with the way that restaurant is releasing ADRs. I’m not quite sure what, but it seems like there’s some funny business happening there.
T-Rex has been odd for a while. I don’t have a good explanation there beyond more “funny business.”
Very helpful, I know! 😉
For the last couple months, the ONLY SciFi Dine in availability I have been finding is for parties of 2. (We are a party of 4.) We snatched a reservation at 60 days, but by that evening the supply was showing openings just for 2 tops.
If you continue to not have success, consider making the ADR for 2 and modifying during online check-in. That has worked for us in the opposite direction, and might there as well. (Failing that, see the podium at the restaurant in the morning.)
Not sure if it’ll work at Sci-Fi, but potentially worth a shot. That restaurant has been weird with ADRs for the last 2+ years.
The problem with Sci-Fi is their table sizes. The car tables really can only fit two comfortably (three if one is a small child), so a party of four would need two and would, understandably, want the entire party seated in one car (there’s two tables for each car), which would be difficult since the restaurant is pretty popular. The other option is to be seated at an umbrella table at the back of the restaurant, but there aren’t a lot of those. Sci-Fi isn’t a restaurant where tables can be pushed together to seat a larger party.
We had a two week holiday to disney world recently, last two weeks of August into early September. I got all the table service restaurants we wanted when booking at 60 days out for the duration of our holiday, we got space 220, teppan edo, prime time, sci fi, trattoria, BOG – we got this for the first day we were there. Whilst there we booked biergarten and paddlefish. I think we got space because of the duration of our stay and booking it later on in our stay, and BOG we booked for a MNSSHP day at 2pm.