Priority Seating Dining questions!

sushi the cat

Earning My Ears
Joined
Oct 14, 2015
Hi all,

Posted this on Reddit but figured I'd get more information here

We'll be heading to Tokyo Disney for 4 days in our Japan trip this year and I was wondering if anyone has some experience with making dining reservations there. We'll be there 12/18-12/21 (Mon-Thurs), staying 12/18 in Mira Costa and 12/19-12/21 in the Sheraton.

-So am I only able to book dining reservations through the Tokyo Disney site with my associated booking for 12/18, no other days?
-How bad is it to book a seating day-of, is availability very lacking?
-I saw somewhere that you can book them online in Japanese, has anyone tried this, or are we better off just trying to get a reservation day-of?

The restaurants we are interested in for priority seating are:
Blue Bayou
Magellan's
Ristorante di Canaletto
Hokusai

Thanks for any info, we're looking forward to our trip!
 
I can't answer most of your questions as I've never stayed in one of the "official" Disney hotels, only a good partner hotel.

You can book online, but you need a Japanese keyboard installed on your computer / phone (to enter your name in Japanese) and someone who can read Japanese.

In terms of booking on the day ... it's not the best. Previously, you could book as soon as the park opened. So, one person could grab Fast Passes while the other person made reservations. It was a pretty good system.

But, I *think* it's now only possible to make reservations after 10am. That can be a major pain. For example, at DisneySea, I grabbed Fast Passes for Toy Story Mania which took 45 minutes. Then went to Magellan's and stood in a (short) line for reservations for 15 minutes (i.e. until 10am). Then I waited as they processed the people who were first in line only to then find out that there were no vacancies available. All up, it's possible to "waste" 30 or more minutes, which is very valuable time first thing in the park given how quickly standby lines escalate.

Availability varies greatly. On our most recent trip, we missed out on the first day, but got reservations for Magellan's on the second day. If you can't make a reservation, you can try "stand by" for the restaurants, especially if you are willing to eat outside of peak time. For example, on a prior trip, we couldn't make a dinner reservation for Ristorante di Canaletto, but we tried out luck as "stand by" around 4:30pm and they let us in to eat.
 
You can make reservations for your check-in day and your check-out day (so that would be 12/18 and 12/19 for you).

I tried to make a same day reservation for Ristorante di Canaletto around 10-11 am (on a Monday, early June) and was offered 4 pm.

If you can't get all of them - the counter service restaurants are really great too. :)
 
Hey! You are correct you'll only be able to make reservations for your check in and check out day and it can only be done 30 days in advance.

My booking window opens on 10 August so will report back on availability and ease of booking process then.
 


You can make reservations by calling Tokyo Disney Resort. We did this for our recent trip. The number should be +81 45-330-5711.

There is an option to choose English as your language. However, you might end up with a CM that does not speak English and then they will add in a translater (I was put on a short hold until the translator was available). This worked very well and I was able to get two reservations as I wanted. I called twice because I wanted to ensure to definitely get the first one, so called on the first day it became available. And then had to call two days later for the other reservation as well. Both times it took about 15-20 minutes, but it worked without problems.

I used Skype to call. If you have a Skype account you can put money on it and then call landlines in most countries for very little money. We used this also to call home from our hotels.

We got a reservation for lunch at Magellan's. We had the more expensive of the two lunch set meals and it was 3500 Yen. This included unlimited soft drinks, tea and coffee (hot or cold) and you could change up your drinks. We thought the food was excellent, on par with WDW signature dining and the price was really good, too, as it was just over 30 US$ for a three course meal and drinks. There is no tip or tax added to the price.

The other reservation was for the Sailing Day Buffet. This was a little cheaper (I think 2800 Yen?) and was a very good buffet with a lot of variety. It also included soft drinks.

All in all, we thought it was absolutely worth the slight hassle of the long phone calls. I saw however that dinner prices are much higher for dinner (very common in Japan generally), so in the future I will stick to sit down lunches.
 
If you booked through Tokyo Disney Resort your MiraCosta stay and not via a 3rd Party you can book on-line from the TDR site pretty easily. I did it for June 2017 and I didn't need to enter any information in kana. I want to say everything was in English because I did it via Safari vs Chrome with its easy translation feature. (For some reason Disney sites and Chrome don't get along on my laptop.)

I logged into my account on the TDR site using the credentials from my regular Disney account. I saw the TripCase tab and opened it and was at 30 days out easily able to book things. Cancelling is also easy, since I did that as I rethought choices. You do not need to call unless you feel more comfortable doing so.
 
Thanks all, this info is super helpful. We did book through the TDR site for the Mira Costa, and I've made some reminders on my calendar to book the restaurants before we leave on November.
 


Restaurant bookings for non hotel guests are HORROR if you need to call: poor English and very slow, often things are already full once outside guests can book. The website only works in Japanese and for the name you can only enter Japanese signs...
If you book your hotel through the website it all goes smoothly but for character dining, make sure to book as soon as you can!
 
Restaurant bookings for non hotel guests are HORROR if you need to call: poor English and very slow, often things are already full once outside guests can book. The website only works in Japanese and for the name you can only enter Japanese signs...
If you book your hotel through the website it all goes smoothly but for character dining, make sure to book as soon as you can!

Thanks for the tip. When does the period for non hotel guests open if the hotel guests can only book 30 days out? Character dining isn't a priority for us, so that's not a concern.
 
Thanks for the tip. When does the period for non hotel guests open if the hotel guests can only book 30 days out? Character dining isn't a priority for us, so that's not a concern.

Non hotel guests can also book 30 days out for restaurants. At least I was able to do so and had no issue with anything being booked up. I called exactly at 30 days out, but not in the morning as that would have been the middle of the night for me here in Europe. From the US the time difference would work better. 9am Japan time in summer would be 8pm EST the previous day(!!). After daylight saving time ends, it should be a 14 hour time difference. Remember the date change! So, if the booking window opens at 9am Japanese time on September 15 for you, you can call from the US East Coast already at 8 pm on September 14.

For Magellan's I called a few hours after booking opened for our day and could not choose the exact time that I wanted, so had to "settle" for 1:50pm instead of 2pm. For Sailing Day Buffet I called about 5 days after the window opened and was able to get the exact time I wanted without issue. We were there during a slow period though, parks were not very crowded mid-week in early July.

For me to call really was not an issue. Yes, it took long because of the translator, but it all worked very well.
 
the one time I did it over the phone cause of staying outside they didn't involve a translator. It was a CM directly 'that spoke English'
For me it's one of the reasons to opt for a Disney hotel, the convenience of booking everything online yourself.... that's how traumatising the call was.

Last year, I did a tour to all Disney locations spread over 2 months for my 35th bday, I had to call them again... even though I was staying onsite concierge level, I had to deal directly with banquet services. I wanted to book the private birthday party package with Minnie. It was a big hassly cause you need to be 6 ppl and I only had 4 local friends to invite...even though a packageprice incl food for 6 ppl they first refused to book me. In the end I lied about having found a 6th person and just showed up that night with 5 ppl.
But the booking process over the phone was not smooth neither... It took me 3 calls to banquet services before someone called me back that 1. was allowed to take the reservation (needs to be a certain level of CM) and 2. spoke English
Even when the booking was made he insisted on getting the phone number of one of my Japanese friends to double check everything... that was very odd cause Japanese are very much about their privacy so giving out someone's phonenumber and number is very much not done...
 
Last edited:
I had no problem in May 2017 booking on line from the TDR website in English from my reservation page on the TDR website. I also booked my hotel with a Visa when I booked it in April. I just had to log in and click on some links. It was not super intuitive, but it was readily doable in English and without having to switch my keyboard. The reservation was directly connected to my Hotel reservation. Cancelling was more challenging because I had to go through several screens and keep confirming repeatedly I really wanted to cancel.

I did this in May 2017 for a June 2017 trip. I found doing it on-line was much easier than calling because the majority of cast members in Japan don't speak English and the one time I did call, I had to speak to a cast member who spoke English who would then translate what I said, tell it to the cast member I first got, then listen to her response and then translate back to me. It took forever and he insisted on translating even when I sort of got the original cast member's response.

I personally think TDR has changed some of its procedures since last year which explains why I could easily book restaurants on line and others could not. I also think it was in the last 3-4 months TDR changed to a policy where only hotel guests can book 30 days out to give people staying on property more benefits. Though it's funny, I thought the 15 minute early entry was useless and I ended up loving it.
 
The current site for hotelbookings is indeed not too bad and there you can add restaurants and dinner shows if you ve booked a stay.
The Japanese only website is for non hotel guests.
Early 15 is a great way to get a jumpstart from the hundreds of people waiting in front of the gate and head to that fastpass or line that gets crazy during the day.
 
Sorry. To echo Chipmunkmaniac - it's the website for non hotel guests which is ONLY in Japanese and which requires a Japanese keyboard / characters.

A very helpful cast member tried to help us to make a booking for Magellan's online on our first day while we were waiting in line (i.e. before 10am) and they got pretty far - until they had to enter our names and the booking form wouldn't accept English alphabet characters.
 
I haven't tried to make a Disney dining reservation on the Japanese site. But I did make an activity reservation for CupNoodles Museum in Yokohama online in Japanese. What I did for the name was to Google translate my name (it gets translated phonetically) and then copy and paste the Japanese characters into the field.

I don't know if this will work for Disney, just suggesting a possible work-around if anyone wants to try.
 
I located a guide on how to book reservations for the other two days we'll be there, so if anyone needs it in the future:

http://tdrexplorer.com/how-to-make-dinner-show-restaurant-reservations/

I also stepped through entering my husband's name by finding a translating keyboard online that pulled up the correct characters. Honestly, the rest of the process actually is pretty easy with Google translate on chrome.

The one surprise was that I need a different account to book this, I can't log in with the account we've created for booking the Mira Costa. I'm guessing the servers are different for the English vs. Japanese site, so we'll make another email to get this done. So we'll book two reservations in English and two in Japanese. The most difficult part is making a Japanese email address that will be accepted because of the captcha

Anyway, thanks for all the anecdotes. I feel much more confident about booking our reservations.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!






Top