Back in December, we learned that select Disney dining locations were added to OpenTable for booking. OpenTable is a great way to find dining reservations for locations all over the world, so it was exciting that Disney locations were added. For my upcoming trip, I decided to hop on the OpenTable site to reserve one of our favorite Disney restaurants, Sanaa (the bread service alone is amazing), only to find no times available.
Out of curiosity, I decided to check the Disney website, just to be sure there wasn’t availability. There were a few times open.
Could this mean that OpenTable is going to stop reserving Walt Disney World Resort dining locations? There was still availability at other locations for the same dates and times.
There was even availability at a few resort dining locations as well.
One theory is that the reservations are not being secured with a credit card hold. These holds are required when booking dining reservations on the Disney website. This is Disney’s security policy for ensuring that people do not over book and then fail to show up for a dining reservation. If you reserve Disney dining and fail to cancel within 24 hours prior to the reservation time, you are charged $10 per person to the holding card, which helps everyone get the dining reservations they are actually going to use. With OpenTable, this hold does not happen. So anyone can reserve dining at Disney and fail to show or cancel if they so choose. It creates empty tables and less profit for the dining locations.
What are your thoughts on the loss of availability at select Walt Disney World Resort dining experiences?
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