New Disney Restaurant App Stirring Up Controversy

Laura Begley Bloom
·Editor-in-Chief

A new app will help you get that reservation — for a price. Photo: HarshLight/Flickr)

Desperate Disneygoers who want to snag a coveted table at some of the park’s hottest restaurants and special events have been turning to a clever new app that is causing criticism. The app, Dis Dining Agent, operates like a concert ticket scalper, buying up reservations at hot Disney restaurants and selling them to users for $15 a piece.

Disney opens up reservations at restaurants like Be Our Guest — based on the movie Beauty and the Beast — at 6 a.m. exactly 180 days in advance of the desired date. Some fanatics are known to sit by the keyboard waiting for the exact minute to book a table in the space where the Beast wined and dined and wooed Belle. So it’s no wonder tables go fast.

This isn’t the first digital service to help hungry parkgoers. Sites like Disney Dining Buddy, Disney Dining Scout, and WDW Table Finder charge $1 to $8 to notify guests when a restaurant reservation becomes available through Disney or because of a cancellation.

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A view of the entrance to Be Our Guest restarant at Walt Disney World. (Photo: Jeff Kays/Flickr)

But because DiS Dining Agent books restaurant reservations under fake names, critics are upset.

“It just infuriates me,” New Jersey teacher and Disney Parks Moms Panel member Anna Skamarakas, told the Orlando Sentinel. “They are doing something to circumnavigate the system, which isn’t fair to the rest of us who are trying to play by the rules.”

Disney told the Orlando Sentinel it is investigating the matter. “We are currently reviewing the situation involving third party website dining services,” said spokeswoman Jacquee Wahler. “Disney has no affiliation with these third-party services which can interfere with the guest experience we strive to create.”

In the meantime, that $15 might be worth it to dine like Belle and the Beast.

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