On the morning of Tuesday November 3rd, I woke up with alerts that Disney increased occupancy in their restaurants and there were a ton of availability for November, December and early January. Like everyone else I was overjoyed and grabbed a bunch of Dining reservations for my family between Christmas and New Year’s. Everything from Topolino’s Breakfast, Beaches and Cream, and Cinderella’s Castle was wide open!
While, the reports were wrong! As we all learned Disney had a technical glitch and released reservations that were not really there. For the past couple of days, I sat wondering how they were going to fix this problem, they can’t make tables appear and make sure social distancing was still taking place.
Well, everyone got there answer today with an email from Disney Stating the following:
We are so thankful to have the opportunity to make magic for guests like you every single day and we love being a part of the special memories you make at our dining locations and bookable experiences.
We are deeply sorry to share with you today that we are reaching out about a recent dining reservation and/or experience booking you made through your My Disney Experience account. On Tuesday, November 3, our dining reservation and experience booking system unfortunately experienced an unanticipated technical issue for a short period of time, and while we worked as quickly as possible to resolve this, during that period the system displayed reservation times at locations that were unavailable and fully booked.
As we continue to limit attendance and promote physical distancing, we are not able to keep reservations made during that period of time and we will unfortunately be automatically cancelling the following dining reservation(s) and/or experience booking(s):
Your Cancellation Confirmation Number is ************
Reservation for 5 on 1/2/2021
Sanaa – Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas – Kidani Village
6:40 PM
We are incredibly sorry this happened and recognize how much excitement, thought and time goes into planning visits to Walt Disney World Resort. We know this may have altered your plans – and as a thank you for making us part of your day – you will be receiving a $25 digital Disney Gift Card sent by Disney Gift Card Services that you can use during your next visit.
Reservations are cancelled, and availability is back to being slim. Good news though, I had 5 reservations booked so after confirming with Disney, we will be receiving a total $125 in Disney Gift cards! Right now, since there are a ton of reservations that were cancelled reservations are moving around and I was still able to secure some reservations today.
For the guests that cancelled reservations, because they thought they received better reservations, unfortunately there is no way for Disney to get the original reservations back. Guests are frustrated and I understand that, but $25 Disney gift card for EACH reservation is a pretty good deal. Disney, unfortunately, does not have the money to be doing this, and it goes to show their commitment to customer service.
Within 3 hours of the cancellation email I have received all of my Disney gift cards!
So, like many others I will be going back to searching the Disney Dining Reservations, but with a little extra money in my pocket!
