Disney Just Updated How Guests Manage Dining Reservations; But Is It for the Best?

Planning a trip to the Walt Disney World Resort can often feel like a daunting task, especially when it comes to making and managing both dining and theme park reservations.

While theme park reservations are still a rather new concept for most Guests at Walt Disney World, dining reservations have been a part of the planning process for decades. The process itself has been updated over the years, and the latest update just confirmed by Disney will give Guests some added flexibility in changing their plans (though it could also make finding reservations more challenging…)

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Last week, Guests noticed a change in the My Disney Experience app that allowed them to cancel dining reservations within two hours with no penalty. In the past, reservations could only be cancelled in the app 24 hours in advance. Beyond that, a cancellation would require a phone call, or if Guests did not cancel and instead no-showed, they would be charged $10 per person listed on the reservation to the credit card left on file.

Many Guests who found themselves needing to cancel within the 24-hour window took advantage of a fairly well-known hack in which they would modify the reservation to a different date then cancel the new reservation. With the latest, now confirmed, change to the dining reservation process, it seems this hack will no longer be necessary.

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When the two-hour cancellation change was introduced in the app last week, many speculated that it was a glitch where Disney did not officially confirm that this update was happening and the app was known to have been undergoing maintenance work at the time.

Theme park reporter Scott Gustin has since confirmed with Disney that this change was intentional and will be in effect going forward:

Disney has also officially confirmed the change I mentioned a few weeks ago about dining reservations being available to cancel up to 2 hours prior to your reservation time. I know a few people assumed this was a glitch – it's not.

— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) November 15, 2022

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This change to the dining reservation planning process should give Guests more flexibility for times when plans change while they are on-the-go in the theme parks. The one downside to this update, which some speculated before the change was confirmed, is that by making dining reservations easier to cancel more Guests could book reservations they likely will not keep causing others to struggle to find the reservations they want earlier in their planning.

If you find yourself unable to secure reservations at your favorite restaurant, we recommend that you keep checking the app for new openings, especially with this update as others will likely cancel and a time that works for you could open up.

We will continue to monitor changes to the Walt Disney World planning process here on Disney Tips, and will report back with new information as we have it.