Well hello, welcome to my new post all about booking your dining reservations when booking holiday through Magic Breaks.

Now the past 2 DLP holidays I booked I have done so through the company Magic Breaks, which is in partnership with Thomas Cook. This post is all about booking the dining reservations after using Magic Breaks, I don’t know if the process is the same if you booked with a different travel company etc, but I am just writing about my experience and how i did it through Magic Breaks.

If you have booked your reservations for your DLP holiday with a different travel company, please feel free to share it with me below, or if you have any further advice or tips on what i did please share I am always happy to learn new things and tips and tricks.

So let me start by saying we have been to DLP the past 2 years and both holidays I have booked it through Magic Breaks. Previous to this, pre- children, we have been and booked the basic standard room which came with a breakfast in your hotel – which was much like a cattle market in the mornings. Now they have introduced the different dining plans which depending on which plan you were on allowed you to basically pay for your dining before your holiday and not needing to pay at the end of the meal. Different plans have different dining options (explain in a different post), so the last 2 years we opted for the Half Board Premium Dining Plan and we love it. 

This plan allows us to have 1xLunch OR 1xDinner per night of your stay. You are also allowed to upgrade 1 breakfast to a character breakfast and you can book a lunch with the princesses and a dinner with the characters be it in inventions restaurant or in Cafe Mickey. There are many other places you can eat using this plan too, but i do highly recommend booking your reservations in advance.

How i planned our reservations before booking.

Right so you have booked your holiday and your dining plan, now you are allowed to book your reservations 60 days before your arrival, yes 60 days. I know it seems crazy to know where you want to eat in 60 days time and throughout your stay but if you have a rough idea what you would like to experience, whether it be lunch with the princesses or dinner with the characters or just that one restaurant that you have to go and see, put them into your itinerary and work around them.

This is what I did, I also took into account when we wanted to watch the fireworks display in the evening and made sure we had a later dinner than usual so the kids would have a full tummy to watch the show and to go to bed afterwards as the fireworks tend to be late in the evening.

I then planned our days and depending on which park and what attractions we wanted to do I tried to include a reservation not far from where we were planning to be. So for instance we wanted to split the Disneyland Park in half and concentrate on the Fantasyland and Tomorrowland one day and then Frontierland and Adventureland another day. So on the day we were concentrating on the attractions in Adventureland and Frontierland I put a reservation into my mock itinerary in the Silverspur Steakhouse which is in Frontierland.

TIP: If you are arriving at your resort hotel in the afternoon (like 2pm) book a reservation somewhere to eat that evening as the dining plan is activated as soon as you check in. We booked Cafe Mickey at 7.30pm so it got the kids ready to see characters and in the magic of Disney, plus everyone probably hasn’t eaten properly all day, so you are all refueled ready for the next day. We chose Cafe MIckey because of the character encounters plus it was closer to the resorts, it being located in the Disney Village, less walking for the kids.

Now that you have worked out a rough itinerary with the places you want to eat, time to book them. 

TIP: When planning your reservations have a back-up plan incase the reservation you would like is fully booked. I had 3 copies of my itinerary printed out, one of my ideal plan, one with any adjustments noted on it Incase something wasn’t available, so i could see what to if i needed to swap any over and a blank one ready to write and confirm what I did manage to book and on what days.

When you receive your holiday booking confirmation it tells you that you need to call an 08448 number to book your reservations. This is the number i have called the past 2 years to book all my dining reservations, it puts you directly through to DLP and you need to select the reservation option.

TIP: Make sure you have a mobile number to hand as they sometimes take this as a reference to book reservations instead of a name, and with language barriers too i think its an extra precaution.

Something I have found out recently, during booking my last trips reservations is that if you want to book the character dining you can call MagicBreaks 0330 number and they call DLP direct and can book the character dining reservations for you. However, if you wanted to book “normal dining” you will need to call DLP directly on the 08448 number.

The reason for finding this out was after booking directly with DLP directly the princess lunch, they gave me a 6pm time slot. 2 weeks before leaving for holiday I was checking our details etc again and the MagicBreaks site stated that the princess lunch seating was only until 3pm (last seating)…So you can imagine my horror and PURE PANIC!!! No princesses at our time of booking…couldn’t get hold of anyone on online chat as it was past 10pm so sent an email through the online chat ready for a reply in the morning. What a restless night sleep I had. At around 8.15am, I tried online chat again and got through. PHEW! They advised me to ring DLP direct to check and if any problem to cancel the appointment if no princesses and call Magic Breaks and they would try and help me book them. As it happens the princesses attend every sitting through the day and evening. All was ok and no need to change any plans we were ready to go.

GOOD TO KNOW: By booking directly with DLP may work better in your favourite because they have all the times available to them whereas, by the look of it, MagicBreaks are given certain times they can book reservations and they have a cut off time. This is why on the site it says seating until 3pm but you may be able to get later bookings like i did by booking direct with DLP. It’s up to you, try both, but my advice is to ask, when on the phone and you are unsure of the time they give you for character dining, if the characters are available.

Hope this post has been useful, and thank you for reading.