Getting a seat at a popular Walt Disney World Restaurant can sometimes feel like winning the lottery. While Disney World has an endless selection of dining options, some are more popular than others and you are competing with everyone else staying at the resort in addition to locals just looking for a night out, for a relatively small number of seats. You almost always need to get a reservation well in advance of your visit.
Well, things just got slightly better for reservation seekers as the popular restaurant reservation service, OpenTable, has added a number of Walt Disney World restaurants to its platform.
Now, guests to the Walt Disney World Resort can use OpenTable on their smartphone or computer and book a reservation at a bunch of popular restaurants on Disney World property. It is unclear how far in advance a reservation can be made, but I’ve seen a number of reports that the booking window is quite a bit shorter than the 180 day window that is available through Disney’s Advance Dining Reservation (ADR) system.
I did some searching around on OpenTable and here are the Disney World restaurants I found currently available for booking:
- Artist Point – Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- Big River Grill – Disney’s BoardWalk
- Boatwrights – Disney’s Port Orleans Riverside Resort
- Bongos Cuban Cafe – Disney Springs
- Flying Fish – Disney’s BoardWalk
- Frontera Cocina – Disney Springs
- Garden Grove – Walt Disney World Swan Resort
- Grand Floridian Cafe – Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort
- House of Blues – Disney Springs
- Il Mulino New York Trattoria – Walt Disney World Swan Resort
- Jiko – Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
- Kona Cafe – Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
- Morimoto Asia – Disney Springs
- Olivia’s Cafe – Disney’s Old Key West Resort
- Paddlefish – Disney Springs
- Planet Hollywood – Disney Springs
- Raglan Road Irish Pub – Disney Springs
- Sanaa – Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
- Shula’s – Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort
- STK Orlando – Disney Springs
- The Boathouse – Disney Springs
- The Wave – Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- Todd English’s bluezoo – Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort
Granted, there is no Be Our Guest or Le Cellier here, or any in-park restaurants currently available on OpenTable, but a number of these are very good dining options that usually need a reservation during peak dining hours. Personally, I am sticking with the Disney ADR system so I can manage everything through MyDisneyExperience, but at least there is now a decent alternative for booking reservations.
