After temporarily removing the ability to search for and secure dining reservations in the My Disney Experience app, Walt Disney World has restored functionality. While never officially confirmed by Disney, it is believed that the ability to make reservations in the app was removed temporarily to ensure that guests trying to secure a Beak and Barrel reservation were pushed through the virtual waiting room. Here’s the latest.
Dining Reservations Restored to My Disney Experience App
As you may know, Walt Disney World had to pull the plug on the first attempt at opening up reservations. While Disney wouldn’t say why exactly they had to postpone (only offering “technical difficulties”), it seems like there were demand-related strains on the reservation system.
To remedy that, Disney took some time to regroup and delayed reservations by nearly a full week as they prepared their systems for a redo. In terms of what Disney did, we tracked that closely. Early in the day, Disney removed the ability to search for and make dining reservations from the My Disney Experience app. Instead, they forced all guests to use a web browser.
From there, Disney implemented a virtual waiting room to manage demand on its website. The virtual waiting room opened about 30 minutes before the planned go-live time of 7pm. The virtual waiting room process seemed to work well. Guests who were able to make it to the reservation page were met with a system that worked smoothly, by and large.
With the initial rush of demand now gone (along with months of reservations), Walt Disney World has restored dining search and reservation availability to the My Disney Experience app.
As you may remember, Walt Disney World made a major update to the dining reservation search system back in June. This update was rolled out to both the Walt Disney World website and My Disney Experience mobile app. The update allowed for much more granular searching, along with expanding search capabilities. The user interface was also updated to put more controls at the fingertips of guests searching for the perfect dining reservation.
As of today, all seems to be back to business as usual.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!