I Genuinely Can't Go to Disney World the Same Way After Using This Hack

We know, we harp on you all the time about planning your Disney World vacation in advance.

We remind you to make your Disney Park Passes (even though that won’t be quite as relevant in 2024), to book your hotel ahead of time, and to snag those dining reservations at the 60-day mark. But what about the people who prefer to fly by the seat of their pants? Believe it or not, sometimes WE are those people. And we’ve got a Disney World hack that changed the way we plan our trips.

When you’re trying to decide where you should eat during your Disney World vacation, you’ve probably got a few table service spots on the short list. The most practical way to secure your place at the restaurant is to make a dining reservation 60 days in advance of your trip.

But sometimes life gets in the way of that. Maybe you forgot to make reservations or you planned your trip at the last minute and now they’re all gone. What do you do? Well, we have a solution that works a fair amount of the time.

One of the best additions to the My Disney Experience app in the past few years is arguably the Mobile Dine Walk-Up Waitlist. This tool is pretty much exactly what it sounds like — a way to get your name onto the digital waitlist for a table service restaurant.

Instead of having to walk up to the podium at the restaurant like you used to, you can simply check the My Disney Experience app. All you need to do is search for the restaurant’s name in the app, then click “Join Walk-Up Waitlist.”

Sometimes, the wait list will be full if it’s a particularly busy season or it’s later in the day, so we suggest checking early. And on some occasions, we’ve had luck with checking at the restaurant’s podium to get on the wait list…even when the app said it was full. It all varies depending on the day.

Using the Walk-Up Waitlist, we’ve been able to score dining at many popular restaurants without having to wake up at the crack of dawn and pull reservations two months ahead of time. It’s not a foolproof system, but it’s a great way to get spontaneous reservations if you’re flexible with where you want to eat.

However, there’s one caveat to this system — you’ll need to be near the restaurant to join. This typically means AT the hotel or park where the dining spot is located.