ADRs vs. Counter Service vs. Snacking

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Lizzy_B's picture
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ADRs vs. Counter Service vs. Snacking

There are just so many awesome food choices at WDW that I find it super hard to fit it all in. I know that we're big on ADRs here, but do you also "plan" to eat snacks for meals, or counter service sometimes? Like skip the ADR in favor of a turkey leg or a hot dog at Casey's Corner? What's your strategy for fitting it all in, besides a LOT of walking? Smile

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I make one ADR per day of my trip, and then jot down dining suggestions for the counter service / snacks for the other two meals of the day, so I have some options with the non-ADRs. It leaves us open for the non-ARD meals, but gives me some ideas of where I may want to head when I'm getting hungry.

subvetss's picture
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Jan and I made 56 trips to the World. 4 a year starting 12 years ago. About 7 or 8 years ago we gave up making ADRs.The reason was that in many cases, and in that many trips there were many cases, we found even if we had reservations we still had at least a half hour wait after our given time. If we just went to to a place to eat without reservations we seldom had to wait any longer and avoided the need to watch the clock.
Joe

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Other than breakfast, I don't normally plan for counter service meals. I don't plan for snacks either other than planning for what I want to try. I usually don't get a lot of snacks since I'm too full from the meals. Dole whip is another story though. There's always room for Dole Whip.

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subvetss wrote:
Jan and I made 56 trips to the World. 4 a year starting 12 years ago. About 7 or 8 years ago we gave up making ADRs.The reason was that in many cases, and in that many trips there were many cases, we found even if we had reservations we still had at least a half hour wait after our given time. If we just went to to a place to eat without reservations we seldom had to wait any longer and avoided the need to watch the clock.
Joe

This is a really good point. I'll go to a place walk-up and be like "oh I can't wait 30 minutes!" Then I arrive on time for my Sci-Fi ADR and wait 30 minutes. For some reason it's more okay in my mind to wait with an ADR.

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We love certain restaurants and always make ADRs for them. We fill in other dining as it comes. Only rarely have we ADRed for breakfast or lunch-just special things like birthday or if we couldn't get a dinner ADR, we MIGHT go at lunch if served.

BUT, When on the DP, we choose a place for dinner every night and ADR for each night. We also choose later dining and have never waited more that 5-10 minutes. Heck - we waited for a BREAKFAST ADR the longest last year. 20 minutes at GF cafe. Generally it has been 'right this way'.

Because we eat later in the evenings, we can eat or snack as we want during the day, but we have a rule of no big meal after 2:00pm, no snacks after 3:00pm so we know we'll be hungry for our signature dinners. Smile

And the snacks we don't eat become take home treats!

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This year we are making just a few ADRs (now we're at 4), and the rest will be counter service or snacks for dinner. WE don't really plan them for the most part (with a few exceptions - first lunch at MK has to be Cosmic Ray's, and I want Yorkshire Fish & Chips, and a Mickey Pretzel or 2 will be lunch or dinner one day. And I want to try Casey's Mini Corn Nuggets & Fries!)

So we have some general ideas of where we want to eat, and then just try to work it into our daily plans. But I can easily get sidetracked with something else in a heartbeat, so nothing but the ADRs are in stone awesome

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I always make the rule that if we're doing 1 park per day, on the Epcot day, we don't make an ADR because I would rather snack my way around the world and I want to actually be hungry for my ADR. So if we make an ADR, its for a day we're not at Epcot.

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I always plan out most of our counter-service..in the past we would do one ADR a day and I knew which CS I wanted to hit. Usually because we have our favorites that we don't want to miss out on....and as far as snacks..there are usually snacks that I have to get (Dole Whip) and I'll make sure they happen.

This is why I go home from Disney 10 pounds heavier than I was when I got there.

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During our trip we plan an ADR for each night except the first night we are there. We usually arrive around noon the first day and by then had already stopped at a Bob Evans for an enormous breakfast so all we really need is an afternoon snack and by dinner time a quick service is perfect. We never really plan our quick services as we are kind of go with the flow kind of people. Plus it is fun discovering new places to eat at. We finally ate at Casey's and oh wow those hotdogs are amazing. We discovered tortuga across from pirates of the carribean and really liked that as well. With snacks we always plan on having a dole whip, pretzel, double expresso, iced mocha latte, and cookies. We share our snacks as they are huge servings and that way our snack credits go farther. (except for the caffeine laced drinks you can't pry that out of my hands hahahaha)

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We get the deluxe dining plan so we make at least 2 ADRS a day. This coming trip we have 2 days with 3 because of some character breakfast that we really want. The last 2 day I don't have a lunch planned because I am not sure what park we will be revisiting but we will decided when we are down there and do walk-ups for lunch those days. Last year that resulted in one counter service meal and one table service. There are always snacks I want to try and this year we have 48 snack credits to use so I am sure we can accomplish eating some good stuff, but it is not planned.

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We will only be doing 3 ADR's come this November, so we will be hitting more Counter Service places. So this will be a bit different for us. One... we can choose where we want to end our day at when in the past.... our ADR depended on where we ended up. So that will be great because unless HS has late hours... I love ending up at Epcot, and they have a couple Counter Service places I wanna try.... especially in China.

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This has always been hard for us. We have always had the deluxe dinning plan so we always booked 2 ADR per day. Usually breakfast and dinner. That left us very little tummy room for lunch or snacks. We are not going to have a dinning plan for our May trip though. We swore we were going to try our last trip without it and then caved in and bought it two weeks before we left. This time, we swear we are going to give Tables In Wonderland a try. I have also not booked as many ADRs as usual.