Candlelight Processional Dining Packages Reservations Now Available for Booking, But Selling Out Fast
Today is supposed to be the Advance Dining Reservation ‘drop day’ for Candlelight Processional Dining Packages, but vacation planners have been treated (or tricked?) into another day of WDW ADR difficulties on both the website and My Disney Experience app. Here’s everything we know.
The last time we reported on something like this, it was a system crash for the original launch day of Beak & Barrel Advance Dining Reservations. Rumors were flying during and after that–about unprecedented demand, bot farms overloading the system, etc.
I’m not sure what was actually true, but it wasn’t the biggest shock to anyone battle-hardened by a Disney Drop Day. We’ve experienced similar issues with the launch of other reservations in the past, ranging from the Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween Party to GEO-82 to the reopening of reservations for the parks.
8 am UPDATE: It appears that Candlelight Processional Dining Packages are finally, fully loaded into the system and Advance Dining Reservations are now available:
You should be able to see availability and go through the booking flow for actual Candlelight Processional Dining Packages (as opposed to just the restaurants themselves–see below).
Availability is incredibly limited, but it’s not clear to us whether that’s because ADRs are still loading into the system or demand is sky-high. We have found some dates with absolutely nothing, and others with only a scattering of options across showtimes, and this is true whether searching for parties of 2 or 4.
Past precedent suggests it could be either high demand or throttled availability. We already know that demand is high, both because it always is and because the system was slowed to a crawl for ~90 minutes due to everyone trying to make ADRs at the same time.
One thing to note is that several readers reported being able to make Candlelight Processional Dining Packages as early as 5:15 am (so 45 minutes before ADRs were supposed to open) by going directly to the restaurant page. Depending on how many people succeeded via this method over the course of the last ~2 hours, it would explain why availability is already so limited.
Nevertheless, we’ll keep checking back to see whether more ADRs appear. Last year, there was still availability in the hours and even days after reservations launched; in previous years, all ADRs were gone much faster. It’s both a matter how demand and how much inventory is allocated to the Candlelight Processional Dining Packages.
As is often the case, Walt Disney World also might opt to throttle availability now and release more reservations later. Likewise, in the mad dash to get something, anything booked, planners might scoop up more ADRs than they need, and cancel later. One or both of these possibilities are likely, so it’s recommended that you keep checking for availability if you’ve been shut out, or didn’t get your ideal restaurant, ADR time, or showtime.
Finally, although Walt Disney World has not stated as much, Candlelight Processional Dining Packages are subject to the 60+10 rule for on-site guests, which means that on ADR drop day, on-site guests will be able to book for the next 10 days of Candlelight Processional and off-site guests won’t.
Candlelight Processional Dining Packages will continue to be released on a rolling basis each day after ADRs first go live on October 14, 2026. Keep in mind that this is still subject to the 60+10 rule for on-site guests, so if you’re staying off-site, you very well might get shut out even at the 60 day mark for those later dates during the peak weeks of Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Everyone will be able to book 60 days in advance all at once on October 14th, though. This means that everyone is competing for Black Friday through December 13, 2026 all at once, with no on-site advantage. If you’re staying on-site in the ~10 days after December 13th and you don’t care which celebrity narrator you see, we’d recommend booking later in your trip on October 14, 2026 for the best availability. It’ll get less competitive the further out you look. (Of course, that only helps with a longer trip.)
Here’s the 2026 Candlelight Processional celebrity narrator lineup:
- November 27 & 28, 2026 – To Be Announced
- Nov. 29 – Dec. 1, 2026 – Gary Sinise
- December 2 & 3, 2026 – Benjamin Bratt (NEW)
- December 4 & 5, 2026 – Whoopi Goldberg
- December 6 & 7, 2026 – Robin Roberts (NEW)
- December 8 & 9, 2026 – Jason Kelce (NEW)
- December 10-12, 2026 – Neil Patrick Harris
- December 13 & 14, 2026 – Josh Groban (NEW)
- December 15 & 16, 2026 – Lauren Daigle
- December 17-19, 2026 – Ralph Macchio
- December 20 & 21, 2026 – Henry Winkler
- December 22 & 23, 2026 – Lacey Chabert (NEW)
- December 24 & 25, 2026 – Jodi Benson
- December 26 & 27, 2026 – Simu Liu
- December 28-30, 2026 – Eva Longoria
As a reminder, celebrity narrators, dates and other entertainment are subject to change or cancellation without notice. And in fact, this already has happened, with Auli‘i Cravalho exiting (hence the TBA for the first two nights of the season).
Here’s the list of participating restaurants for the 2026 Candlelight Processional Dining Packages:
- Akershus – Norway Pavilion
- Biergarten Restaurant – Germany Pavilion
- Chefs de France – France Pavilion
- Coral Reef Restaurant – The Living Seas
- Garden Grill Restaurant – The Land Pavilion
- La Crêperie de Paris – France Pavilion
- Le Cellier Steakhouse – Canada Pavilion
- La Hacienda de San Angel – Mexico Pavilion
- Nine Dragons Restaurant – China Pavilion
- Regal Eagle Smokehouse: Craft Drafts & Barbecue (same-day only) – American Adventure
- Rose & Crown Dining Room – United Kingdom Pavilion
- Spice Road Table – Morocco Pavilion
- Shiki-Sai: Sushi Izakaya – Japan Pavilion
- Teppan Edo – Japan Pavilion
- Tutto Italia Ristorante – Italy Pavilion
- Via Napoli Ristorante e Pizzeria – Italy Pavilion
Choose from a variety of EPCOT eateries that offer Candlelight Processional Dining Packages. Here’s what’s included with your meal:
- At Spice Road Table: 2 small plates, a shared tagine, a shared dessert platter and a nonalcoholic beverage (or alcoholic beverage for Guests 21 and older)
- At Other Participating Restaurants: An entrée and dessert, or a full buffet (where applicable)—as well as a nonalcoholic beverage (or alcoholic beverage for Guests 21 and older)
Plus, you’ll get one (1) guaranteed seat per person to one Candlelight Processional performance on the same day.
What follows is our original story from early this morning, when the system kept crashing, preserved for posterity…
In this case, it doesn’t appear to be any of that. It seems likely due to sky-high demand crashing the system. Sometimes, Walt Disney World’s dining reservation system fails to even load on the website (instead displaying a blank screen and no error message).
Other times, a character from Monsters, Inc. (whose name I’ve forgotten) appears with the following message:
These outages happen from time to time with Disney IT. Any longtime Walt Disney World fan probably has their own horror story with system outages. These woes are much less common than they used to be a few years ago, as Disney IT seems to have upgraded from the ‘ole Gateway 2000 they use to run the Go.com servers.
Nevertheless, problems still occur from time to time. In addition to the Beak & Barrel launch, Walt Disney World had issues with the Parisian Breakfast Buffet at Chefs de France and had to delay the ADR drop day for that by a day. So perhaps the company upgraded from Gateway 2000 to regular ole Gateways, circa 2001.
The good news is that, as of a little after 7:30 am, the system appears to be slowly coming online. Here’s a look at results, seemingly showing Candlelight Processional Dining Packages:
The bad news is that, while the restaurants that offer Candlelight Processional Dining Packages are available to book, the packages themselves are not. These are two distinct reservations–you cannot simply book an ADR for a restaurant that offers a Candlelight Processional Dining Package.
Your reservation needs to actually indicate that it’s for the Candlelight Processional Dining Package. Perhaps that will happen next, and by the time I hit publish, this post will already be obsolete.
Regardless, I feel like this is something worth calling attention to, because this exact same scenario has played out before. Many fans were able to book reservations for the restaurants in question, but not Candlelight Processional Dining Packages. That’s not ‘good enough.’ You need to book an actual Candlelight Processional Dining Package ADR. You could’ve been the restaurant reservation itself yesterday!
This is a developing story. We’ll update accordingly when Candlelight Processional Dining Packages are actually available. Here’s hoping that’s very soon, as we’re getting close to the point when Walt Disney World might pull the plug and opt for a delayed ADR launch date. (They really should’ve done this one at night, just like the Diamond Horseshoe Lounge!)
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
Did you experience problems trying to make Advance Dining Reservations this morning? Successfully score Candlelight Processional Dining Package ADRs already?!? Do you 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!
Oh yeah and the main restaurant page even didn’t show it as an option. It only appeared AFTER a time was selected. I don’t think it was that way in years past.
I am making notes so next year I’ll remember these tricks.
Very disappointing, being on the west coast and having to deal with it being 3am in the morning when Disney try’s to drop ADR’s and the system sits and stares at you and nothing happens….. for 3 hours…. And the whole time random people are being able to book?
Should be only one way to make a reservation, not all these work arounds and stumble into ways of getting a reservation. Might as well be working with Ticketmaster
And No never even got close to getting a reservation
We have been annual passholders almost 15 years and believe it or not, we have never seen the Epcot Candlelight Processional. This was a disaster this morning. I logged in around 5:45 am. I was eventually able to book reservations for two separate dates, but both ended being booked as regular dining reservations and not the Epcot Candlelight Processional Dining Package. I spent 5 hours on the phone trying to reach Disney and was disconnected twice after being on hold well over one hour each time. Now there is no more availability for the dining package. I am going to cancel our regular dining reservations, and we will do something else on those days. Disney needs a better system.
WOW…didn’t realize there were issues until I read Tom’s blog. Breezed right thru at 5:45 this morning. It was a bit confusing as it was backwards in choosing the dining package, but got what I wanted. It can be so frustrating dealing with Disney. I wanted a 55 year Dooney only to find out they were sold out the Saturday before October 1. The early bird really does get the worm…..or purse….or dining package!
My experience for what it’s worth: I was using my phone so the dogs wouldn’t think it was time to get up for the day if I went to the computer. 🙂 Anyway, I logged onto the app originally at 5:45am EST and refreshed the CLP page a few times. This is my first time booking this, so I wasn’t sure if it would be that page or the individual restaurant pages. At 7am, I refreshed a couple more times and it still said to check back on Oct 14th. So I went to the Spice Road Table page to see what was there. Only ADRs were for before 5:30pm, so I chose 5:25pm. The next page asked if I wanted to add the Candlelight Processional dining package to my reservation. I said yes. It only gave me the option of 8pm, but I took it. Confirmed, and voila. When I went to check another restaurant to see what was available, I got Hei Hei’s unfortunate message. All this to say, I think I got really lucky, and my ignorance worked in my favor since I was already prepared to check different ways to book it.
I hate that it’s such a crapshoot for everyone. It would have been nice if it was available to book on a rolling basis from the beginning so it was available in everyone’s original 60-day window.
I tried from 5:55 to 6:30AM Eastern (on both app and website), and it said to come back on October 14 to book the dining package. Tried again around 7:00-7:10 AM, and intermittently after that, and got same message. Tried again at 7:50 and hooray! Site showed you book dining package. Shows all these open days. But then when you actually try to book something, no availability.
Disney has had a trash website for years, and in spite of all the profits that Disney parks are making, they are unable to invest in making it work properly? Come on!
I snuck a peek at 12:05 AM to see if Disney would pull a fast one then went to bed.
Was up at 1:30 and checked then went back to sleep.
Was up yet again at 3:30 and didn’t bother.
4:30 I was up using both the phone and the laptop searching for the golden fleece. I passed some time reading Tom’s half read book report on a book I’m never going to read because…
1) I only have about 12 years tops left so I have to choose how I spend that time wisely. Like forgoing a good nights rest to book a CPDP
and
2) there are only so many times you can balance a check book at 5am with $68 in it.
9AM
EUREKA (who uses eureka anymore?) but something as rare as a CPDP deserves to be celebrated with an equally rare exclamation!!!!
I have the restaurant I want (Biergarten) on the day I want at a time I want but here’s the rub – it’s for 5 people. I had earlier booked 6 people at Akershus at a time and date I was not thrilled with. So I’ve already downsized my imaginary party.
It would seem from the comments that a good number of readers have also booked reservations for non-exisstant people.
We got completely shut out of Candlelight Dinner packages for our entire stay. Tried starting at 7, repeatedly ever since. No availability. Also got completely shut out at 7 am 60 days before our stay for Savor the Savannah, Narcoosees, and Glittering Greenhouses. Very discouraging as in past years we were able to get reservations when we planned ahead and checked online at 7 am. Nothing at all for our entire stay in First week of December this year.
I have had good luck in the past getting Candlelight after the fact by frequenting other Disney forums (not that I don’t love this site the most, but it’s different than a true message board). Often there will be a thread of people who got reservations that had their plans change and they will arrange a time with you to drop their reservation so you can be looking at the same exact time to pick it up. No guarantees, but it has worked for me in the past. Obviously, don’t ever agree to pay someone for that service, but there are some helpful people out there!
ADR time is now 6am Eastern. I don’t know your time zone, but I learned the hard way back for my January trip. I logged on around 6:45am to check things and there was already ADRs available. I looked it up, and I completely missed the announcement that they moved the release time to 6am EST from being 7am forever.
I know WDW is always the informed vs the uninformed, but this was especially egregious. I was able to do the “hack” after I saw it on another forum, but that still took another 40 minutes of refreshing while I hoped that my date and party size hadn’t loaded yet. It finally worked. But that was so unfair for everyone just following Disney’s page saying to check back and not knowing to check discussion boards or social media. I feel sorry for anyone who checked, thought it just hadn’t loaded yet, and went back to sleep and slept through the booking.
Wow, I am so disappointed. I checked the CP page at 5:55am, then 6, then maybe a couple dozen times before dozing off, now 8:55 and literally everything is sold out other than the two TBA days.
After trying at least 50 and maybe 100 times, I finally was able to book a package for 12/12 (NPH) ~7:15am. Not an ideal meal time but the restaurant and show time we wanted so taking the win. It was pure luck … the package option seemed to come up randomly. We were considering trying to go twice but not seeing anything for the other dates we considered. Absolutely infuriating that Disney IT still hasn’t figured out how to manage this process and we have to crowd source tips on fan sites to figure it out!!!
I was able to book a reservation at 5:48 this morning for beer garden with no problems
Thanks for everyone for reporting your results!
Most of you did much better than me, as I kept alternating between a blank page and that monster when searching for any ADRs. Although admittedly, I was half-awake (at best) when starting this process at 2:35 am and went back to sleep for a bit once 3:05 am rolled around and I was still getting nothing but glitches.
It’s been a looooong morning! Did finally get a reservation on our preferred date but had to book for 3 instead of 2. Any suggestions on how to modify the reservation? Thanks!
I see that it’s booking “normally “ now although most are sold out and zero availability ever was out there for 2. I happened to see on the app at 5:37 am ET that some of the restaurants in the regular dining list (not under cp) said dining packages available. Curious…I clicked spice road table. There was a box there to choose cp then it had me choose show time and dinner time. Only available was 4 pm for the 6:30 show so I did it. I now see on a few other dates that other options ran to 4:15 which either means they weren’t loaded or others saw that even earlier than 5:37 am
I feel this is truly unfortunate as the link on the cp page was continuing to show check back after oct 14 well after many ppl figured this out. Maybe they will drop more adrs? Just hoping they give us a table even though we’re 2 ppl. I guess if I have to pay annextra $65 or so I will but it seems wrong
I had an alarm set for 5:40 this morning. I just happened to wake up at 5:15 and figured I’d check and sure enough, the ADR’s were open. I got Gary Sinise for the day, restaurant and time I was hoping for but I feel bad for people that got on at 6:00 and missed out. They really should stick to the advertised time.
Matt was it under the cp page or the restaurant page with a box to choose cp when you get there? I agree I feel bad that Disney didn’t stick to a) their posted time and b)the place the reservations should appear but instead said check back when hordes of ppl were already booking
Liz, it was under the candlelight page.
Matt….but it was NOT under that page on my computer. On my computer and on the app there was no button or way to actually book through the candlelight page. That was on two computers both on and off an incognito page. From about midnight off and on all the way until whenever it started working after 7:30 am there was absolutely no way for me to book directly through the candlelight processional page.
The way I figured out to do it around 5:45 am was to click on spice road table on the app and then when I did it let me pick which show time and then which dinner time. By then the only dinner slot available was 4 pm for the 6:30 pm show AND I had to say we were 3 people so fingers crossed that they let us eat. If they force me to pay for the 3rd person I will but I want 2 more small plates and another drink lol!
I think it’s clear that different things were working for different people. I see some were even able to do this as early as 5:15 am (when I was ALSO online) but I could not.
It’s unfortunate that this has caused disappointment for a great many people and hopefully they will be releasing more availability as time goes on.
I only wish I would have been able to do this on my adr date last week so that I could have kept my onsite advantage and been less stressed about it but who knows.
I got Kelce…definitely would not have been my top choice (oh why can I not be there for Josh Groban??!!) but clearly many others thought Kelce was a top pick since his dates sold out fast.
I was able to grab a reservation for Gary Sinise after 1.5 hours, but only by changing party size from 2 to 3. With party size 2 it still said “check back on October 14!”.
I was able to get Le Cellier lunch at 3 pm with a 6:30 show – 6 am on the dot this morning.
Unfortunately my travel buddy wants a different time (good luck with that as it shows no availability at all now!)
You CAN book the dining package but you have to do it differently than everyone was expecting. There is no link on the Candlelight Processional Dining page. You have to go directly to the restaurant you want, pick a time, and then it gives you the option to book the dining package IF it is available. I had to try multiple restaurants, times, and ultimately book for 3 instead of 2 – but I finally got a package booked. Very frustrating!
YES!!! After an hour I finally figured this out and was able to book a package. Glad you were able to get a package
Edit to add that I just checked back and there is now FINALLY a reserve dining button on the Candlelight Dining package page. But very limited availability left. Glad I finally figured out how to do it the other way!
I tried the other way and failed, maybe a bad combination of restaurant choice and party size. I was eventually successful through the main CP link.
We were only able to snag La Hacienda de San Angel for 3:15PM, and it was by booking the restaurant as a regular ADR. The dining package appeared as an option. It wasn’t working the other way. Showed as sold out by 7:45AM for 12/10.
After a long time waiting for the CP page to stop trying to tell me to wait until Oct 14, I finally read advice to go into the individual restaurant page. That worked for some but not others. The restaurants I wanted, La Creperie or Via Napoli, never showed it as an option. I got into Garden Grill thru their main page.
What a mess!! For those who couldn’t get in KEEP CHECKING. Many people snagged what they could get and will make changes later. Disney may also add inventory.