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tod
12-27-2004, 11:19 AM
The tod Family went to The Park on Christmas, got there in the late afternoon, apparently just before they closed the gates to new entry, and after a few hours mostly on Main Street (decorating cookies, watching them make peanut brittle at the Candy Palace, hearing the Merchants' Band and the Dickens Carolers) we headed off to the Hearthstone Lodge for our Christmas appetizers (Stoli gimlet for me, hot buttered rum for The Lovely Mrs. tod, soft drinks for The Little tods and crunchy cheese things for everybody) and Storytellers Café for dinner.

We had made reservations for 7:00, so we figured we would get right in. Ha ha. The harried lady at the front desk -- which had been moved outside -- had a big line in front of her, and when we got to the front of the line, which took 10 or 15 minutes so we got to her at about 7:05, she told us that she had our 7:00 reservation and there would be a 20-to-30-minute wait.

Say what?

I know they've got you right where they want you in a situation like that, but do they have to act like it? We could have walked straight into Napa Rose for the $65 prix fixe dinner, but we didn't want to spend that kind of money, and wine wasn't included. The "Priority Seating" rules precluded changing our plans and walking in anywhere else like Goofy's (although it didn't seem to have impeded anyone else, looking at the full house and the small number of reservation slips) .

We were disappointed that the regular menu was offered -- although the buffet offered turkey, none of us wanted to have the buffet -- and we settled into our usual Stroryteller's choices. If I never have four-cheese ravioli again, that's okay, I've had plenty of 'em in my lifetime.

By the way, if you want to try Francis Coppola's Bianco wine, I suggest getting a bottle at Trader Joe's. It's cheaper, so you won't feel so bad about throwing half the bottle away.

Are we the only ones who were disappointed by "Priority Dining" reservations?

--t

CrystalSkull
12-27-2004, 11:33 AM
Well you have to remember, that Priority seating is defined not as a reservation, but a placeholder for the first available seat. Even during the off-season I have waited a good 10-15 minutes for a seat at the Blue Bayou with priority seating. So a table at the Napa during the peak season could easily be about 25 minutes compared the 2-3 hour wait for everybody else.

cstephens
12-27-2004, 11:36 AM
Are we the only ones who were disappointed by "Priority Dining" reservations?

Is this the first time you've done priority dining? They make it a point of saying it's not a reservation, so you may have to wait even if you get there when you have your time for. It's basically a front-of-the-line reservation. I'm not crazy about it, but the alternative can be that if you don't even have that, a particular restaurant may not take walkups and you don't get in at all, or if they do take walkups, the wait time can be extremely long. Whenever I've done priority seating, we usually make sure to get there about 15 minutes early, so by the time we get seated, it's about when we had our reservation time. With a major holiday like Christmas, and since you arrived after your priority seating time, I'm not surprised you had the extra half-hour wait, though I can certainly understand being disappointed if you're not familiar with how it works.

vangrizz
12-27-2004, 11:37 AM
While I don't understand why they can't use a normal system (just take a reservation will ya people?), I've always have good luck with priority seating. I've never had to wait more than a couple of minutes for my table, and they have always been able to accomodate if we arrived early.

Sorry your Christmas dinner didn't work out that well. But if you're really swearing off the four-cheese ravioli...send em my way will ya? They're great!

tod
12-27-2004, 11:40 AM
Sorry your Christmas dinner didn't work out that well. But if you're really swearing off the four-cheese ravioli...send em my way will ya? They're great!

Thanks.

And I like 'em too -- but enough already.

--t

3894
12-27-2004, 11:45 AM
Pass me a ravioli, please?

It's a shame about your dinner, tods. In October, I was part of a party of maybe 10 with a 6:00 reservation - pardonnez-moi, priority seating - at Storytellers. We weren't seated until about 6:30, no apologies or nothin'.

CrystalSkull
12-27-2004, 11:46 AM
The reason they don't use a traditional reservation system is because most people assume that somewhere inside Disneyland won't offer reservations. That would be expected from a restaurant like Bucca di Beppos down Harbor Blvd. Most of the people are just going to be walking in. If it was all reservations, anybody not in the know about priority seating would be totally screwed. At least this way, they can still eat at the restaurant in question, they'll just have to wait.

cstephens
12-27-2004, 11:54 AM
If it was all reservations, anybody not in the know about priority seating would be totally screwed. At least this way, they can still eat at the restaurant in question, they'll just have to wait.

Yeah, so don't make it a total reservation system. Easy. Worked fine at Blue Bayou for many years - they took so many reservations, but they also reserved a certain percentage of tables for walkups. If you had a reservation, great. If you didn't, you just knew you had to wait. But now, since they've changed that at Blue Bayou, you can be screwed if you don't have a PS, and I believe it's like that at Goofy's Kitchen now as well. The all-PS system was one of the things I absolutely hated at WDW.

marktips
12-27-2004, 12:11 PM
In order to do a true "reservation" an empty table would need to be waiting for you at your arrival time. That would mean leaving tables empty for people until they showed up. 5 to 10 mins without someone sitting at a table seems like nothing but over a day it adds up to several missed meals - so priority seating came into play.

You will be seated at the next available table at your time and you need to arrive a few minutes prior to check in.

This way, no tables sit empty, and the Disney math-gods don't even book every table every few mins - they calculate how long the party size at the table will take roughly and space out when certain tables are available and not. It's complex to look at, and who knows how they figured it out, but for the most part it works. People are usually seated right away or within a few minutes.

Without it - everyone who wants to eat at 6pm shows up at about 6pm. That's going to make a hour or so long line. You've got 8 people? Well, there's only a few tables for a parties of 8 - it'll be an hour no matter what. So, PS spaces people's arrival times out (How many times have you called and asked for 6pm and been given 5:50 or 6:10?) and doesn't have people waiting forever for larger tables and such. They'd have you arrive approximately when the table would be free.

The small problem being that some parties linger or food is behind, what have you, and the tables begin the backup. The later you go during a dining period the longer your wait will be.

Some restaurants have it down to a science. CRT for example, seats the main floor, the wing, the other wing, the main floor, and cycles and has the characters follow the seating pattern. This way everyone sees Cindy and everyone eats and almost everyone sits down when they're supposed to.

The Lovely Mrs. tod
12-27-2004, 12:37 PM
Is this the first time you've done priority dining?

Gee...NO. We've been doing Priority dining for quite some time now, you know, Thanksgiving two years ago, Candlelight, Christmas for the last TWO YEARS...

If they're going to overload the system with walk-ins then priority dining should be abolished. The point is, we HAVE done priority dining, on MORE than one occasion, and never been so shuffled and dismissed as we were Christmas. Not only that, there were no pagers available, so, looking down a 30 minute wait we were stuck, and I do mean stuck standing around outside Storytellers waiting for someone to poke their head outside and holler "Tod, party of 4!"

And I've worked in food service, I do NOT expect my table to be empty and set up and waiting for my very special reserved backside to be plunked down at 7pm precisely. I do expect to be seated within 10 to 15 minutes, I expect to be able to check in with some expediency and I expect an apology if the wait is going to be abnormally long.


The reason they don't use a traditional reservation system is because most people assume that somewhere inside Disneyland won't offer reservations

Assume? Based on what? The very use of the word "assume" implies that no one has any concrete figures or facts regarding how any guest thinks about dining. Someone just assumed that we're all such bumpkins that we wouldn't even ask if restaurants accepted reservations.

My first annual pass cost 50 bucks, I've been around that long. I was finishing up a honeymoon at DL before a lot of CM's and padders were born, as a child I shook hands with Walt. I remember when DL was not run on someone assuming that they knew what guests thought.

Don't mind me, I'm just showing my age, and old foggyness (okay, I made that one up) I guess.

-TLMt

CrystalSkull
12-27-2004, 12:40 PM
I'm just saying that Priority Seating is a relatively new thing. Most people don't expect to pay 50 dollars to get into a theme park then have to also make reservations to eat somewhere. I'll bet we could talk to any Blue Bayou CM and hear their horror stories about getting yelled at by guests because they didn't know about priority seating.

The Lovely Mrs. tod
12-27-2004, 12:44 PM
I'm just saying that Priority Seating is a relatively new thing. Most people don't expect to pay 50 dollars to get into a theme park then have to also make reservations to eat somewhere. I'll bet we could talk to any Blue Bayou CM and hear their horror stories about getting yelled at by guests because they didn't know about priority seating.

Yes, but you're still operating on ideas that you think people have. Not on any concrete evidence that that is the way it works. Maybe there are facts and figures somewhere about the guest dining experience but you're simply saying that this is the way you think other's think. Guess what? If I go in somewhere and see a line to get into a restaurent the first thing I think is "maybe we can make a reservation and come back a little later." But then, maybe I'm just a very old aberration.

marktips
12-27-2004, 12:46 PM
And I've worked in food service, I do NOT expect my table to be empty and set up and waiting for my very special reserved backside to be plunked down at 7pm precisely. I do expect to be seated within 10 to 15 minutes, I expect to be able to check in with some expediency and I expect an apology if the wait is going to be abnormally long.

Many people do expect this as this is how many metropolitan restaurants work.

CrystalSkull
12-27-2004, 12:59 PM
Maybe Disney should make the phone number, (714) 781-DINE, available to guests here for just a few days, who didn't plan their trip through a travel agent or anything. I've no less than 10 groups of guests ask me where the Blue Bayou is during a Fantasmic! shift then have them come back and tell me they need reservations.

tink1234
12-27-2004, 01:30 PM
tod--I walked right by there on Christmas Day around that time. We were staying at GCH so I made a few trips near Storytellers!

olddumbguy
12-27-2004, 01:34 PM
I was part of a party of 6 that had PS for the Blue Bayou on Saturday, Feb 21 of this year. I has made reservations for 3:00 in the hopes of missing both the lunch and dinner crowds. I checked in 15 min early and was told I could not check in early. I came back at 3:00 and was told 20-30 min wait, that ended up being at least 30 min from what I remember. It was a rainy day and the wait area was packed.

The Lovely Mrs. tod
12-27-2004, 01:35 PM
Maybe Disney should make the phone number, (714) 781-DINE, available to guests here for just a few days, who didn't plan their trip through a travel agent or anything. I've no less than 10 groups of guests ask me where the Blue Bayou is during a Fantasmic! shift then have them come back and tell me they need reservations.

There's a button on every pay phone in the Resort* that will connect you directly to Disney Dining without even putting in a nickel. I don't know what else Disney could be expected to do...

--TLMt
*That I've seen, at least.

CrystalSkull
12-27-2004, 01:36 PM
A flyer with your ticket. Or a flyer at the parking lot would suffice nicely.

Most people have cell phones these days and payphones aren't used as extensively as they once were.

Walt'sbirthdaygirl
12-27-2004, 02:14 PM
We had an awful time with PS last spring at Storyteller's, party of 10 with 4 smallish children and after check in a 45 minute wait. Also I have a had PS's at Goofy's kitchen and had to wait 30-40 minutes on more than one occasion. I guess the solution would be to dine at odd hours of the day. (not right at 8am, noon, 6pm) When we have done that, no problem at all, we ate a Blue Bayou at the beginning of this month had a 1:10 PS and we were seated by 1:15, we had tried to walk up to the Blue Bayou for lunch in september and we were told we could come back at 3 at the earliest and that was at 11am.

The Lovely Mrs. tod
12-27-2004, 03:53 PM
Many people do expect this as this is how many metropolitan restaurants work.

Yes, it's like that at Spago (at least the times I've been there, there are exceptions to everything) and it IS very nice!

-TLMt

sediment
12-27-2004, 04:00 PM
My tip is to make sure you're in the first seating of the restaurant. This isn't so easy with an always-open restaurant such as those in DLr.
With large parties, you should try to keep the management aware of your arrival. And someone in the party should arrive early.

cstephens
12-27-2004, 04:33 PM
I'll bet we could talk to any Blue Bayou CM and hear their horror stories about getting yelled at by guests because they didn't know about priority seating.

CMs get yelled at by guests for the stupidest things, things that aren't even the CMs' fault and sometimes for things that are the guests' own fault. That shouldn't be used as part of the reasoning for how to run things.

I don't have a current park map with me (I knew I shouldn't have taken it out of my purse this morning) so I don't know if it's still on there, but for a while at least, they had the Disney dining information and phone number printed on the park maps.

At, at some point, the guests have to take responsibility for finding out information on their own. Disney can't possible force feed them every bit of information. But yeah, the CMs can't exactly tell them that.

bandboy1985
12-27-2004, 06:31 PM
At, at some point, the guests have to take responsibility for finding out information on their own. Disney can't possible force feed them every bit of information. But yeah, the CMs can't exactly tell them that.

as one who hosts many characters, this is very true. for instance, when we host princesses around the castle, we create the lines and exits out of preexisting paths, and it can be difficult for guests to maneuver through or around the queue. however, we hope guests will treat that waiting period as if they were in a formal, roped location (ie critter country, mickey's house, etc.) and remain orderly and not cut the line simply because it's in a traffic area and it's difficult to patrol. we can't put up signage directing people, and not even if we could, there's no way we could post all the desired protocol for greeting and meeting characters in all the various locations.

guest initiative is a great thing; a lot of guests just treat us like we don't exist- and that just sucks. december 25 is christmas for us, too.

Flint
12-27-2004, 06:56 PM
this has nothing to do with the topic, but as a born-and-raised southern Californian, I have to correct your Valley Speak.

"as IF" must always be followed with either a proper name, or an interjection.

examples:
"As IF, Becky!"
"As IF, oh my gaww!"
"As IF, t'yeah!"

Don't even get me started on the proper usage of "like".

:p carry on.

Shinku
12-27-2004, 07:24 PM
And then? I was like? and you were all....? Tch? You know! ;)