Okay, let’s pretend for a moment you’re me. (I’m sorry.) You are going to Walt Disney World, theoretically and vaccines willing, in April. Your travel buddy is on top of the vast majority of dining reservations, but just to be safe you have been given one, and only one job: secure the ADR for Oga’s Cantina. Mission date: February 16. You put a reminder in your phone and carry on your merry way.
Of course, February 16 arrives. You remember nothing of your assignment. You get up at 5:30am, cheerily slap together your morning’s outfit and provisions, and set out on an 11 mile run. Your bothersome heel is taped up, you’re wearing your newest Brooks Ravennas, and you’re feeling good.
Until 7:30am,* when the reminder you set all those day ago pops up on your Garmin: Oga’s Cantina ADR. Thirty minutes. You have a little over 2.5 miles to go.
You can do this.
You – not really you; take a deep breath and remember that for you this is strictly a mental exercise – don’t want to blaze it because of that whole left heel thing and you don’t want to risk an injury. But you trudge out your last mileage under mild stress and come screeching into the alley next to your apartment building with scarcely any time to spare.
No problem! You have the My Disney Experience app in your phone and you know how to use it. OR DO YOU? Because you open it up with your thumbprint and tap furiously through to the Oga’s Cantina ADR screen only to discover that it’s not giving you the day you need. Why isn’t it giving you the day you need? Is the app angry?!
You race through the gate and into the elevator to hit up your computer, feverishly checking your email while you’re at it to make sure you’re trying for an ADR on the correct day. You confirm that you are as you slide in front of your laptop and whip through the MDE login screen. Ah, there’s Oga’s Cantina, and there’s the day you wanted!
But wait… the calendar on the website won’t load?!
You hit a hard refresh while you thumb through the MDE app on your phone and discover that while you were logged into the app, you were somehow not logged in ENOUGH, and the app didn’t register the hotel reservation that should open up the extra ten days of ADR openings. You fix this problem and now you can access the correct date. You select 1pm per the agreed upon early afternoon time slot preference. Hooray!
Hold on. It’s not loading? Switch back to the website. Ah, yes, there’s the calendar. Refresh. Okay, 1pm is gone, but there’s 1:20pm. GO THROUGH, DAMMIT!
Okay, back to the app. How about 1:40pm? No? 11:25am on the website? Fine. No, not that either? 2:30pm on the app? 3PM ON THE COMPUTER???
Ah, whew. That one finally went through. You did it! You did it! It’s a bit later than originally intended, but you did it! DJ Rex, save me a seat!!!!!!!
Sit back. It’s over. You’re not me anymore. Sweet.
Hmmm. It’s hard to tell, given how far up Disney’s butt I have crawled over the last 15 years or so, but this might be one of the most inside-baseball blog posts I’ve ever written. But then I suppose you’d have to be pretty inside the baseball yourself to get to the end of such a melodramatic tale. The point is, I got my coveted ADR. Now who’s got a vaccine they’re not using?
*Yes, you’re right – the Disney reservation system opens at 7am. PR doesn’t do daylight savings and is therefore currently 1 hour ahead of… everybody else, basically.
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Okay I definitely relate to this lolol. Hey I'm good with the 3pm! I also had issues that morning with the app, and then the computer… I had to use a few different browsers before finding one that worked. Disney's website, always a pain!
It's that dang Stitch and his page-eating. Give it a rest, man!