Disney World Canceling ADRs Made During Glitch
Those who got up early on November 3, 2020 might’ve had surprise success scoring Advance Dining Reservations at difficult to book restaurants. That’s because Walt Disney World released a ton of new ADRs for pretty much every table service restaurant for the remainder of the year. (Updated November 6, 2020.)
We were among those early risers, able to finally book the new modified character breakfast at Chef Mickey’s after striking out several times in the past. (Never thought I’d consider the chance to dine at Chef Mickey’s as a “consolation prize” for anything, but 2020 is nothing if not full of surprises!)
While new Walt Disney World Advance Dining Reservation “availability dumps” have occurred a couple of times in the last month or so, those have been limited to certain restaurants or for hours later in the day, usually due to extended hours. This was an across the board increase in ADR inventory, potentially signaling something different…
Our immediate impulse was that Walt Disney World had opted to increase table service restaurant capacity. That seemed like the most plausible explanation for why every restaurant would suddenly have more ADR times open up.
That would be possible due to Florida Entering Phase 3 and Fully Reopening. This occurred in late last September when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order removing capacity restrictions on bars, restaurants, stores, theme parks, and more. As part of that final phase, all restaurants are now able to fill all tables and use only limited physical distancing protocols.
Back when Florida entered Phase 3, Walt Disney World released the following statement: “We received the Governor’s executive order and are evaluating it to determine what it may mean for our business. We are not making any immediate changes. As a reminder, face coverings are still required at Walt Disney World Resort.”
Subsequent to that, Disney CEO Bob Chapek claimed Walt Disney World Capacity Is Still Capped at 25%. In an interview with CNBC last month, he stated that this number has not and would not be increased, and these limitations will exist until the CDC and other health experts indicated that they were no longer necessary.
As we’ve noted several times attendance at Walt Disney World has increased in the last two months, despite that statement. That’s true even on some days that were fully booked across all categories of Disney Park Pass theme park reservations.
Walt Disney World has reopened more restaurants and shops to help soak up the crowds, and each time that or a park hours extension occurs, more Disney Park Pass availability has been released. There are a variety of potential explanations for this, all of which are beyond the scope of this post.
Accordingly, our assumption was that Walt Disney World was either using similar “fuzzy math” to up the capacity at table service restaurants, or just doing it outright because they can while still adhering to Florida’s reopening plan.
The other very obvious possibility of a technical glitch didn’t even occur to us until DisneyWorld.com and My Disney Experience both disabled dining reservations later in the day.
If you attempted to book Advance Dining Reservations during the glitch, you’d be greeted by error messages. The My Disney Experience pop-up read: “Dining reservations are temporarily unavailable. In the meantime, you can learn more about dining experiences at the Walt Disney World Resort.” (If people want to make an ADR, you’d think they already did the “learning” part of the process, but whatever!)
Given the error messages, this was obviously a technical difficulty of some sort. The silver lining is that, even if this was yet another Walt Disney World IT error, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the Advance Dining Reservations will need to be cancelled. To be sure, some almost certainly will be cancelled.
However, one thing we’ve noticed in recent weeks is a lot of “Now” availability in the Mobile Dine Walk-up Waitlist feature in the My Disney Experience app. It seems a big part of the reason why Advance Dining Reservations are increasingly difficult to score is because Disney is allocating more inventory to day-of guests.
We’re huge fans of that and hope it becomes the norm going forward since it allows for more spontaneity (another topic for another day…). In this case, it also provides a potential “buffer” or safety net.
Rather than cancelling all of the new Advance Dining Reservations, some of them can potentially be filled from the allotment previously set aside for the Walk-up Waitlist. While normally we’d prefer to see that inventory preserved for a “best of both worlds” approach, satisfying the newly-made ADRs is the better near-term solution from a guest satisfaction perspective.
With that said, it’s unlikely that there’s enough Walk-up Waitlist inventory set aside to fulfill all of the new Advance Dining Reservations made this morning. For one thing, not every table service restaurant is available via that feature.
November 6, 2020 UPDATE: Walt Disney World has begun cancelling Advance Dining Reservations that cannot be fulfilled, and issuing guests $25 gift cards for each ADR that must be cancelled. Here’s the message we received upon learning that our Chef Mickey’s reservation had been cancelled:
We are so thankful to have the opportunity to make magic for guests like you every single day and we love being a part of the special memories you make at our dining locations and bookable experiences.
We are deeply sorry to share with you today that we are reaching out about a recent dining reservation and/or experience booking you made through your My Disney Experience account.
On Tuesday, November 3, our dining reservation and experience booking system unfortunately experienced an unanticipated technical issue for a short period of time, and while we worked as quickly as possible to resolve this, during that period the system displayed reservation times at locations that were unavailable and fully booked.
As we continue to limit attendance and promote physical distancing, we are not able to keep reservations made during that period of time and we will unfortunately be automatically cancelling the following dining reservation(s) and/or experience booking(s):
We are incredibly sorry this happened and recognize how much excitement, thought and time goes into planning visits to Walt Disney World Resort. We know this may have altered your plans — and as a thank you for making us part of your day — we will be sending you a $25 digital Disney Gift Card from Disney Gift Card Services you can use during your next visit.
We have since resolved this issue and encourage you to visit DisneyWorld.com or the My Disney Experience app to check availability and book new dining and experience reservations.
Ultimately, we suspect Walt Disney World will continue sorting out these dining issues over the course of the weekend, with more cancellations going out and gift cards being issue. Just another roller coaster day in the life of Disney’s online systems! We’ll keep you posted if/when we learn anything new. Fingers crossed our Chef Mickey’s reservation doesn’t get cancelled. (It did get cancelled!) Again, more words I never would’ve expected to type–further proof that 2020 is an agent of chaos.
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Your Thoughts
Were you able to score any hard to find Advance Dining Reservations this morning? Received a cancellation yet? Expect to receive one, or think Walt Disney World will honor these ADRs? Any theories of your own as to why this happened? 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!
I was able to score Chef Mickeys character breakfast. I guess someone cancelled so just keep trying every day multiple times a day. You may get lucky!
One thing I noticed is that there is plenty of availability for restaurants at Epcot and Disney Springs. Constantly reminded of that as every time I do a search Biergarten is right there at the top of the list. Park hopping would help.
Mine are all cancelled too. I had cancelled previous reservations and now they’re gone and cannot rebook. I hope they’re giving me a $25 gift card for each cancelled reservation (x4). This is upsetting. Anybody know how the gift cards are going to be distributed?
Disney has to do better. I understand the unprecedented issues, however prior to the pandemic their website crashes and has been riddled with mistakes. Thanks for the 6 gift cards but I would like for plans to be intact.
I had 4 canceled around 3 today and within an hour received 4 $25 gift cards in my email.
ALL CANCELED TODAY. ☹ï¸
So 3 of 4 reservations I had for week of December 7 were cancelled in the past hour. Just scrambled to get 2 of them back, but at odd times. These were reservations that I mostly modified to add my son on Nov 3. Just have to keep checking to see if I can improve them.
Update-I was able to get one back close to where it was, still working on one more. But I did get emails about the 3 cancellations and will have $75 in digital gift cards to use. So overall, not too bad. Just more work on my end.
I had 7 reservations canceled- we are there the last two weeks of the year. I had been wanting particular reservations on Christmas Day, which I couldn’t get originally, and then got it on 11/3, so then I moved around plans on the other two days we will be in MK, and had to give up the original reservations to get the new ones. Now they’ve canceled them, so I have nothing on the 3 days of our trip we are at MK, including Christmas Day, and there is NOTHING available at any MK restaurant at any time for the 3 ddifferent days we are there. (And lost the original reservations i had that i had to give up to get the ones i got on 11/3). I’m a huge Disney fan, but am livid. I get that it was a glitch, and they are social distancing. But it’s not my fault Disney IT screwed up. I’ve had this resort reservation for two years (had to postpone from last year), and I have been screwed by Disney IT three times this year for this trip. And now I have no reservations for our family to celebrate Christmas Day, which was one of the main reasons we planned this trip (the other being NYE for the first time,, and now that’s a bust too). I’ve never been the type to get mad at Disney, but I am seriously considering canceling the whole trip, and the cruise I have booked for next year, and the trip booked for the Poly next fall. This is really unacceptable.
Andrea W
Have you tried calling Disney and explaining that you did have reservations that you had to cancel to get the new ones which they cancelled. You’ll obviously have the original reservation numbers so they know you are telling the truth. Maybe they can work something out with you. It doesn’t hurt to try. Just make it clear that it’s not the ‘glitch’ reservations you want back, but the legitimate original ones. Fingers crossed
Reports elsewhere are now saying that reservations are being canceled if this caused a restaurant to be overbooked, and they are giving people $25 gift cards to make up for it.
Is Via Napoli doing any outdoor dining? Rose and Crown? Thanks!
No doubt you’re glued to the election calls. Thanks a lot FL! But I just was curious if you’re now eating indoors or are you still sticking to outdoor dining? We’re up in NJ, and we’ve cancelled 3 trips since Covid reared it ugly head. We’re still living in quarantine mode and will be for the foreseeable future. So we are living vicariously thru your reports, Tom!
We’re still only dining outdoors. Chef Mickey’s is something of an exception because it’s open air.
I’m pretty comfortable doing a lot more than I was even a few months ago, but indoor dining is not one of those things. Don’t see that changing in the next few months.
I have to agree with Tom. We have stopped indoor dining. Florida is very transparent with the numbers for Covid, but not great at the tracing. California has shown that a lot of their recent cases have traced directly back to restaurants. And cases are rising here again. I live in Polk Co, about 35 minutes from Disney and we had 8 people die yesterday. So sad.
At about 3 am this morning I made dining reservations for Thanksgiving evening at DS – seemingly there wasn’t a lot of Choice or availability at that time ( although I got my preferred time and second choice restaurant )
https://wdwnt.com/2020/11/update-technical-issue-triggered-sudden-dining-reservation-availability-walt-disney-world-not-increasing-dining-capacity-at-table-service-restaurants-at-this-time/
Found this
I adjusted all of our ADRs for next week & added in harder to get ADRs & also cancelled original ones. I can’t wait to see how this all shakes out.
Yes, I cancelled my original reservation based on the new, better time. Was trying to avoid Disney Springs but will probably end up there doing QS. I guess that will mean we can eat outside?
I know people are disappointed but everyone needs to RELAX. Most restaurants have availability the week before and especially the night before because people cancel before midnight to avoid incurring a penalty. Disney is being quite generous here. We (and thousands of others) had all of our dining reservations for August cancelled so Disney could implement capacity caps and could not replace them all and didn’t get a penny.
I got a touringplans.com notification this morning at 5am that the ADR’s i was looking for were finally open. I was able to get 50’s Sci Fri, and CRT for the week of Thanksgiving, AND was even able to get Yak and Yeti for Thanksgiving. Super happy!
I was notified at 5am that there were adrs available. Got everything I wanted for the week of New Years. Never got an error, never thought it was an IT glitch either, until now… I sure hope they honor my reservations! I moved some to better times and added some as well.
Hi what did you use to be notified of available ADR’s?
Jennifer,
Mouse Dining
I was able to book a reservation for dinner at Be Our Guest on Sunday 11/29. I just clicked “dismiss” when it said dining reservations were unavailable and it took me through every step of the process. Got the confirmation email and everything. Not holding my breath though! It was more of an experiment rather than, “Yes! I want to dine in a closed space with tons of other people on a holiday weekend!”
“Yes! I want to dine in a closed space with tons of other people on a holiday weekend!”
Haha–same with me and the Oga’s Cantina reservation. One way or the other, that’s getting cancelled–I just wanted to see if it would work!
My son decided to join us on a trip week of Dec 7 and yesterday I was struggling to get him added to a few dining reservations that I had and ended up with some not so ideal times and places. So when I saw all the availability this morning, I was able to get them back to decent times and was very happy about that. I will be very disappointed if those are cancelled due to a glitch.
I have hope as we were able to get fast passes (remember those?) for Mickeys runaway railway, slinky dog Rollercoaster, smugglers run, plus a few wild cards due to a glitch earlier this year.
I received an email at 4:45 AM notifying me of openings and was able to secure the breakfast at Topolino’s and then saw lots of other coveted restaurants and times come through a little later. I adjusted multiple reservations for next week at 6:00 AM and then around 9 tried to again move breakfast after an alert only to find the crash.
It was like Christmas morning this morning , we leave in 11 days and I was able to grab a few lingering dining reservations we were looking for. Hoping they don’t get canceled !
Following
Ugh now I’m nervous! Saw all the posts this AM about new availability so I jumped on and modified nearly all our previously made ADRs to more convenient times…never occurred to me it might be fluke and I’d certainly rather have the old times than none at all! Guess I’ll see how it plays out…
Hindsight is always 20/20. In your defense, there was no reason to think this was some sort of error. It’s not the first time they’ve released ADRs in the last few weeks, and I didn’t give it a second thought at the time.
In your case, I’d imagine there will be a recovery option if WDW does just mass cancel all the new reservations (and that’s still very much an if at this point). You might have to wait on hold for a bit, but they should be able to accommodate you.
We did the same thing this morning! Our original reservations were all at wonky times because they were set before Disney extended the park hours. (Ex: a dining reservation set at DS for after AK closed at 6, only it’s now closing at 8 during our trip.) By the time Disney changed the park hours, we were not able to get later dining reservation times (or any other times at all for some days of our trip) until this morning. Problem is is that Disney is changing things so frequently that it makes it near impossible to plan an out-of-state trip. I don’t want our previous reservation times back – those don’t work anymore either. They should’ve extended park hours before the 60 day dining reservation day. If we can’t keep these reservations, we’ll just go cheaper & cancel all of our ADRs all together.
does anyone happen to know, if they DO end up mass-canceling ADRs made as a result of a tech error, do they email to let you know, or am I gonna notice the ADRs all of a sudden just missing from My Plans?
A question to ask yourself at work, if in a tech field. Stolen and tweaked a little from a great sitcom:
“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, ‘Would Disney IT do that?’ and if they would, I do not do that thing.”
Too bad we can’t pay for meals at Walt Disney World with Schrute Bucks! 😉