Disney World dining reservations open 60 days before your check-in date at 6:00 AM Eastern. If you’re staying at a Disney Resort hotel, you can book your entire stay ( up to 10 days) that same morning. Enter your date below to see exactly which morning that is.
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The 60+10 rule, explained
If you're staying at a Disney Resort hotel, you don't book dining one day at a time. Sixty days before your check-in date, you can book restaurants for your entire stay in a single sitting — up to a maximum of 10 days, counting your arrival day and your departure day.
Disney fans call this the 60+10 rule, though that name oversells it slightly. It isn't a flat 70 days. A four-night trip gets 60+5, not 60+10, because you only get your actual length of stay. The 10 days is a ceiling, not a bonus.
Disney World Dining Reservation Example
You check in on September 3 for five nights, leaving March 8. Your booking morning is July 5 — 60 days before September 3. On that one morning you can book every restaurant from September 3 - September 8.
Notice what that means for the back half of your trip: on July 4 you're booking a September 8 dinner that is 65 days away. An off-site family can't touch that same table until July 10. Those five days are the entire advantage.
If your trip runs longer than 10 days, the window still closes at day 10. Dining for day 11 onward has to be booked separately, 60 days ahead of each of those individual dates.
On-site vs. off-site
This is the single biggest variable in Disney dining, and it's where most of the confusion lives.
| Disney Resort hotel guests | Off-property guests | |
|---|---|---|
| When the window opens | 60 days before check-in | 60 days before each dining date |
| How much you can book | Your whole stay, up to 10 days, at once | One day at a time |
| Booking sessions | One morning | One morning per trip day |
| Time it opens | 6:00 AM Eastern | 6:00 AM Eastern |
| Practical effect | First crack at the last days of your trip | You're competing against people who already booked |
If you're off-property, you need a schedule rather than a single date — a list of which mornings to set an alarm for and which dining date each one unlocks.
What time to actually be online
The window opens at 6:00 AM Eastern on the Walt Disney World website and in the My Disney Experience app. But "opens at 6:00" is a target, not a promise — inventory sometimes appears a few minutes early, and the site can get slow right at the hour.
- 5:45 AM Eastern — be logged in already, with your party size and dates loaded. Don't spend your first minutes typing a password.
- 6:00 AM Eastern — the window opens online and in the app. Book your hardest reservation first. Not your favorite, your hardest.
- 7:00 AM Eastern — the phone line opens: 407-WDW-DINE (407-939-3463). Calling puts you a full hour behind everyone who booked online.
One piece of strategy that saves people: have a ranked list written down before you start, and book strictly in order of difficulty. The reservations that vanish inside the first five minutes are a short list, and everything else is still available at 6:20.
Which restaurants actually need the alarm
Most of Disney World's hundred-plus table service restaurants are bookable a week out without much drama. A much smaller group genuinely disappears at 6:01 in the morning:
- Cinderella's Royal Table — the hardest booking on property most of the year
- Space 220 at EPCOT
- Be Our Guest at Magic Kingdom
- Topolino's Terrace breakfast at Disney's Riviera Resort
- 'Ohana at Disney's Polynesian Village Resort
- Story Book Dining at Artist Point
- Chef Mickey's at Disney's Contemporary Resort
- Oga's Cantina at Hollywood Studios
- California Grill at Disney's Contemporary Resort, especially fireworks-window tables
- Victoria & Albert's at Disney's Grand Floridian, which runs its own booking process
Everything else (Sci-Fi Dine-In, Le Cellier, Garden Grill, The Boathouse, Homecomin') is worth booking early but rarely worth reordering your morning around.
What counts as a "Disney Resort hotel"
This is where people get burned, because the answer isn't the same for every booking window Disney runs.
Clearly included for the 60+10 dining advantage: every Disney-owned-and-operated resort, Disney Vacation Club stays, Disney Swan and Dolphin and Shades of Green.
The hotels worth double-checking
The Disney Springs Resort Area hotels sit in a grey zone. They're Disney-adjacent and they do receive some on-site benefits, but the dining rule and the Lightning Lane rule don't always treat them identically, and published guidance disagrees.
If you're booked at one of these, confirm your dining window directly with Disney or with your travel agent before you build a plan around it. Being wrong here costs you five days of head start.
Split stays and two check-in dates
If you're changing resorts mid-trip, you have two reservations and therefore two check-in dates (which means two booking mornings), each opening 60 days before its own check-in.
There's a small piece of strategy here. Your first booking morning covers your stay at the first resort, and depending on length it may reach into the second stay as well. Run the calculator once per check-in date and compare the coverage. Often the earlier morning is the one that matters and the second is mostly cleanup.
If you missed your window
Missing 6:00 AM is not the disaster it's made out to be. Tables come back, reliably:
- Cancellations cluster in the final 48 hours. Disney charges a no-show fee, which pushes people to release tables they won't use, and that happens right before the date, not months out.
- Use the Reservation Finder in My Disney Experience to search all available times across a range of days instead of checking restaurants one at a time.
- The Walk-Up Waitlist in the app opens same-day and regularly gets people into restaurants that showed nothing online for weeks.
- Check the lounges. Several share a kitchen and much of a menu with the restaurant next door, and take no reservation at all.
Don't forget the other things that open at 60 days
Dining gets the attention, but the 60-day mark also unlocks Enchanting Extras, guided tours, recreation, specialty cruises, and experiences like Savi's Workshop and Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. If one of those matters to your trip, it belongs on the same morning's list.
Lightning Lane runs on an entirely different clock, and so do final payment and online check-in. To see every window for your trip in one place, use the Walt Disney World date calculator.
Common questions
Can I book dining before I book my hotel?
You can book 60 days before any dining date as a general guest, but you can't claim the on-site 60+10 advantage without a resort reservation attached to your My Disney Experience account. If you're planning to stay on property, get the room booked first. Otherwise you lose the head start.
Do I need park tickets to make dining reseravtions?
Not for most restaurants. You will need valid park admission to actually reach anything inside a theme park, so a reservation at a park restaurant assumes you have a ticket for that day. Resort and Disney Springs restaurants need no ticket at all.
Is there still a 180-day window?
You can book 60 days before any dining date as a general guest, but you can't claim the on-site 60+10 advantage without a resort reservation attached to your My Disney Experience account. If you're planning to stay on property, get the room booked first. Otherwise you lose the head start.
What happens if I miss a reservation I booked?
Most table service restaurants charge a per-person no-show fee if you don't cancel in time. Cancel through My Disney Experience or by phone rather than simply not showing up, and that same fee is why so much availability reappears in the last two days before a date.
Can my travel agent book dining for me?
Yes. If you booked through an Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, your agent can plan and place your reservations on your booking morning, which is the whole point of having one. There's no extra cost for it.
Does this calculator work for Disneyland dining?
No. Disneyland runs on its own rules and its own opening times. Use the Disneyland date calculator for a California trip.
Rather not set a 5:45 alarm?
MouseTimer tells you when to book. Mouseketrips can do the booking for you. We've been planning Walt Disney World, Disneyland and Disney Cruise Line vacations as Authorized Disney Vacation Planners since 2002, at no extra cost to you.
Booking windows last verified September 2026. Disney changes these rules without much notice, however, we re-check this page constantly, but always confirm in My Disney Experience as your date approaches.