Now this is a terrific idea - Magic Kingdom eateries take control of seating

[ERJDriver]

I don't really know how I feel about this, we only go during non busy times, and tend to eat early so we haven't experienced a time when we couldn't find a table, or had a time when we held a table when there were none available. I can see where this would be advantageous to Disney, because it smoothes the flow, and it keeps people from tying up a table for 15-20 min waitting for there food that someone else could be using. As far as the horrors of having your child wait in line with you for food, if you're there during a time of year that this would be in effect, didn't you just wait in line 2 hours to ride Dumbo? How is this different?

[seanyred]

I don't really know how I feel about this, we only go during non busy times, and tend to eat early so we haven't experienced a time when we couldn't find a table, or had a time when we held a table when there were none available. I can see where this would be advantageous to Disney, because it smoothes the flow, and it keeps people from tying up a table for 15-20 min waitting for there food that someone else could be using. As far as the horrors of having your child wait in line with you for food, if you're there during a time of year that this would be in effect, didn't you just wait in line 2 hours to ride Dumbo? How is this different?

Excellent question. I'm sure there are those who can justify one and not the other. But I know this much when we are at WDW we don't hold ourselves to a schedule and having that flexibility makes everything easier.

[Ian]

This is simply 100% about shoving as many paying "guests" though these CS restaurants as quickly as possible in the way that is most convenient for the restaurant and 0% about improving the experience for the "guests".

Yeah, that's pretty obvious ... they make virtually all of their decisions this way now. Typically, they're preceded by some "survey results" that explain to everyone how their guests were really just dying to be led around their counter service restaurants like cattle.

As far as the horrors of having your child wait in line with you for food, if you're there during a time of year that this would be in effect, didn't you just wait in line 2 hours to ride Dumbo? How is this different?

Easy ... my kids can stand in the Dumbo line because, at some point, they're allowed to sit down and cool off in a counter service restaurant while I'm up getting the food.

And just to be clear ... I'm not really worried about my kids. They're troopers. If they had to stand in line they would and they'd behave just fine. My point was more, why make 6 people stand in a line and clog up what is already a very, very crowded area? That just seems like it's making a bad situation worse.