Disney World is known as the happiest place on Earth, so there’s nothing more frustrating than when you plan your trip, take your family to Florida or California, and promise your kids you’ll have dinner at Chef Mickey’s or Be Our Guest – you discover there aren’t any reservations open for your entire trip!
To avoid a vacation disaster, use MouseDining.com, a site (and a mobile optimized web app!) where you can snag reservations for many popular Walt Disney World or Disneyland restaurants.
Here’s how it works:
- Select a Restaurant: Simply start typing the name of your desired restaurant, and MouseDining will suggest restaurants you might want. You can also see a full list of the restaurants available here.
- Pick a Date: Specify the date of your visit. By default, MouseDining looks for a party of 4. If you’d like to change that number, create an account. You can then change the number of your party on the account page.
- Scan for Availability: MouseDining will pull up any available times within 14 days for the restaurant you want.
- If Available, Book on Disney’s Website: If MouseDining finds an available time slot with your specifications, you’ll receive a notification. The alert will guide you to the Walt Disney World or Disneyland website to book a reservation.
- If Not, Get Alerts: If MouseDining does not find availability for the restaurant and times you specified, you can set up alerts for the restaurant and date where you want to eat on your Disney vacation. Our site monitors the availability of the restaurant you choose and sends you an alert if a reservation becomes available.
With these five easy steps, you can use our site to plan your perfect trip to Walt Disney World or Disneyland. Don’t let the stress of planning a vacation become too much – let MouseDining do the work for you!
How frequent do you check reservation status? I have done some random checking myself and noticed a few that slip through the cracks. Thank you!
Hi Andy! There will always be some that slip through the cracks. We’re sent new data approximately every 5 minutes; MouseDining is not a real-time service. If you’re seeing this occur frequently without any alerts or notifications, please report this via our contact form and we’ll look into things. That way we’ll have specific restaurants, dates, meals, and party size information to replicate the issue and further troubleshoot. Thank you for your vigilance!
When selecting “Anytime”, is that anytime within the Breakfast timeframe, for example, or does it truly mean anytime on the specified date? Thanks!
Hi Miranda! Anytime is a segmentation of time for a meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner). It does not mean anytime for a particular date. For example, if you wanted to dine a Be Our Guest for any meal on a particular date, you’d have to set up 3 watches: Breakfast – Anytime, Lunch – Anytime, Dinner – Anytime.
Many users prefer to dine at specific times, so we allow you to narrow results to a 2-hour window. By selecting “Anytime”, however, you’re increasing the likelihood that you will get an alert since the odd hours are those we see open up most frequently.
How does it work during the Candlelight processional? For the Candlelight Dining package?
Hi Julie! Currently MouseDining does not support Dining Events such as the Candlelight Processional. These events are handled differently than the typical reservations Disney has year-round at their restaurants. We hope to support Dining Events in the future, but for now you’ll have to check availability for those manually on Disney’s website.
A couple years back there were similar sites available (dining buddy) that were providing this service. They have since been shut down by Disney. How is your site different?
Hi Lisa! MouseDining is a free service with a paid upgrade option for bulk users (primarily targeted at travel agents). Additionally, MouseDining is merely a notification service; we do not guarantee you a reservation like some of the previous services. We understand that they were “scalping” popular ADRs instead of giving everyone a fair chance at getting the reservation.
Frankly, the only reason we charge for the service is to cover the costs of texting and development. We’re still not in the black, so we have some exciting changes coming that should help with that.
I have gotten alerts by text, but when I click on the link, it just takes me here with no way to actually make the reservation. ????
Hi Teresa! Our alerts will send you back to our site, yes. If you’re logged in, you should be taken to your watchlist with any available watches listed first. Otherwise, you’ll need to log in and go to your watches page and click the time that you’d like to reserve. If you have no times available, the reservation has been filled. Try to respond as quickly as possible to our alerts, as we don’t hold the reservation for you. We’re simply a notification service that alerts you when we see an opening, but anyone can snatch it if they’re quick!
So when an alert comes through my email, I am then sent to this webpage and I will need to book it through mouse dining or do I go through the disney world website to book?
You’re not booking the reservation through MouseDining; we’re just alerting you when it is available to book on Disney.com. Use our links and we’ll send you right to the page on Disney.com where you can complete your reservation (after logging in, of course).
I received a text alert around 6:30am EST. I immediately went to the Disney app to make reservations but there was no availability. What’s the actual delay between the reservation opening up and individuals receiving the text. I subscribed for the paid service. Thanks.
Depending on the restaurant you received an alert for, they can fill up before you actually receive the alert. Be Our Guest is one of the most popular and I often have to got 4-5 alerts before I can successfully get a reservation. So try again with a few more alerts and contact our support team if you continue to have trouble and are responding immediately.
How does this work for dinner shows with categories? Is there a way to specify which category you would like – for example, Mickey’s Backyard BBQ has category 1 and 2, we’d like to book if/when a category 1 opens up.
MouseDining only helps you get the time slot reservation. Seating is handled on Disney’s website, where you can select a category based upon availability. Once you receive an alert for a time via MouseDining, head on over to Disney’s site (must be logged in) and select your time. Only then will you be able to view and select seating. Also, this particular event requires pre-payment. Hope that helps!
How do your alerts come through r they email or text? I’m in the UK so email would be good thanks
Hi, Naomi! MouseDining supports both text and email – exclusively or simultaneously. Up to you and how you want to receive them!
Whenever I get an alert, the “book it” hyperlink brings me to my alert page on Mouse Dining’s site with no other links or anything to follow. Since time is of the essence, please consider changing the hyperlink to the landing page for the restaurant in question!
This is planned for a future update. Appreciate the suggestion.
How can I change my alerts? It’s not showing up which I have selected and I have the $20 plan….
Hi Emily! Sorry, we don’t check here for comments often. For any issues, it is best to contact support at https://mousedining.com/contact. Thanks!
Every time I click on a time, with every single restaurant, I receive the ‘We Had to Duck Out
We apologize for the temporary inconvenience, but disneyworld.com is not currently available. Please check back in a few minutes.” page. I have no problems logging directly into My Disney Experience.
This sounds like Disney’s site is just having some temporary issues. My Disney Experience is through their application and behind a login wall, so these are not the same experience. Try visiting https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/dining/magic-kingdom/be-our-guest-restaurant/ to see if you continue to get an error. Contact support (support@mousedining.com) if you continue to have issues. Thanks!
Can I have my number on two different accounts and still get notifications from both?
Yes, your phone number can appear in multiple accounts since phone numbers are all secondary notification methods. Email addresses are the same, but each MouseDining account must be set up under a unique email address.
Where do you setup the phone number?
You can add your phone number once you upgrade to a subscription from your account page, https://mousedining.com/account and then clicking on the Manage option.