I know how stressful it can be to try to get ready to make dining and FastPass+ reservations, so I've got some tips today on how to prepare.

I also have a quick tip about a site that makes it easy to look for current dining reservation openings.

These are notes from this episode. There's much more info included in the audio so be sure to listen to the episode for a better explanation.

Preparing for reservations

Before making any reservations, make sure you do these things:

* Set up your My Disney Experience account

* Make sure everybody you want to make reservations for is either listed in your MDE account or you're linked to them as friends

* Use your computer and not the mobile app

* Log out and back in a few minutes before it's time to make your reservations

For Advance Dining Reservations:

* For on-site guests, these can be made online at 6 a.m. eastern time, 180 days before their trip begins. For off-site guests, these can be made online at 6 a.m. eastern time, 180 days before the day they want to eat there.

* The phone lines open up at 7 a.m. eastern time and you may want to have the number handy in case there are website issues - 407-WDW-DINE

* Have your credit card stored in the "Payment Methods" section of your profile page

* The reservations that will require payment at the time of booking are: Cinderella’s Royal Table, Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue, Spirit of Aloha, and Mickey's Backyard BBQ

* Feel free to practice ahead of time by making dining reservations and then canceling them

* Put your dining reservations in order of difficulty, not chronological order

* You can use more than 1 computer at a time to make reservations so do that if you have multiple hard-to-get restaurants on your list

For FastPass+ reservations:

* On-site guests can make these at 7 a.m. eastern time, 60 days before their trip begins. Off-site guests can make these at 7 a.m. eastern, 30 days before the day they want to use the FastPass+ reservations.

* Make sure your park tickets are linked beforehand. If you booked a package, they'll already be linked. If you bought tickets separately, you can link them through the app or website.

* Make FastPass+ reservations in order of difficulty (mostly by just putting Anna/Elsa and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at the top and everything else after that)

* People with room-only reservations can practice making FastPass+ reservations ahead of time (people with packages can't)

* Use this site to monitor FastPass+ availability (Update: this tool is no longer available.)

Quick tip of the day

Try this dining search tool for an easier view of what dining reservations are open for your trip. I don't recommend using it if you're making reservations 180 days beforehand, but I do recommend it if you're under the 180 day mark. (Update: this search tool is no longer available.)

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