Signing Up for My Disney Experience

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like David Freeman through our wedding planning.

I joked earlier in this blog about going through Disney World Withdrawal, and it's not a joke. All of the honeymoon planning that I've been doing has really been making it worse, though. It's gotten to the point where, during a slow moment, I pull out my iPhone and fire up the Disney Parks app, then look at the wait times at various rides of showtimes of various shows, kind of like scrying on the parks through a crystal ball from a distance. I know that sounds sad, and it is, but it's the closest I can get to Disney World for the next 10 months.

As I was doing some more honeymoon planning research, I came  across the My Disney Experience website. This looks like a planning website for anyone (not just Disney wedding people) to help plan out your vacation. It is compatible with an app (named the same thing) for iOS that is like the Disney Parks App on steroids. Plus, this is the app that the MagicBand technology is going to be tied into, which will allow you to book Fastpasses and restaurant reservations. I actually really like the idea, but it seems to touch on something very, very important that I did not realize before: online ADR booking.

Enjoy this image of Future Me after booking ADRs.

See, up until this point, I'd planned on getting up at 6 AM Pacific/9 AM Eastern 6 months to the day before our trip begins to call Disney's dining reservations line and book all of our Advanced Dining Reservations. Thanks to reading up on My Disney Experience, I have discovered that you can make your ADRs at midnight that night instead of waiting until morning. This is a big deal, especially since I'm trying to get a reservation at Victoria & Albert's Chef's Table for some time during our stay, so now I'm going to try and book it all online. The one takeaway I did get from other folks' experience is that, even when making your ADRs online, you should still call the next day and ask them to put a note that you are there celebrating your wedding/honeymoon at Disney World, just so the staff at the various restaurants knows that you're celebrating a special occasion.