Advance Dining Reservations were supposed to roll out today for Beak & Barrel Bar, the new Pirates of the Caribbean tavern coming to Magic Kingdom this Halloween season. Instead, Walt Disney World vacation planners were treated (or tricked?) into another WDW website meltdown. This post recaps how things went and offers commentary on another resounding success for Disney IT! (Updated August 14, 2025 at 1PM Eastern.)
None of this should come as a colossal surprise to anyone who has been a Disney fan for more than a few years. If you’ve never been battle-hardened by a Disney Drop Day, I invite you to read the our Oogie Boogie Bash Party Problems or “We’re in Orbit!” post (or its comments) from Walt Disney World’s reservations launch day or our “A Touch of Disney” post comments or our Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge reservations now live post comments or or or…
Those posts cover some of Disney’s past “slow-motion train wrecks” with drop days. If you’ve been around the block, many of you have probably become intimately acquainted with the details of Disney’s virtual waiting rooms or error message pages (how many of you hate the beloved Big Thunder goat or Stitch?!) while spending multiple hours in a queue only or refreshing a page only to have the system crash. Repeatedly.
This is how it goes from time to time on Disney Drop Days. Some people spend the better part of a day waiting only to come up empty handed. Anyone who has tried to book something on a Disney Drop Day probably has their own horror story. These woes are much less common than they used to be a few years ago, as Disney IT seems to have upgraded from the ‘ole Gateway 2000 they use to run the Go.com servers.
Nevertheless, problems still occur from time to time. Just earlier this week, Walt Disney World reportedly had issues with the Parisian Breakfast Buffet at Chefs de France and had to delay the ADR drop day for that by a day. (I say “reportedly” because we weren’t trying for that, but did hear from several readers who were.) So perhaps the company upgraded from Gateway 2000 to regular ole Gateways, circa 2001. Or perhaps it actually is Hei-Hei’s fault, as he’s the new head of Disney IT. That would check out.
I didn’t plan on writing a post about this as I haven’t personally experienced problems with Disney IT in a while, so I didn’t meticulously document times, but I started checking for ADRs at around 5:55 am. I’ve heard from others who tried even earlier. That doesn’t really matter, though. No matter when you started looking, the end result was the same.
The entire Walt Disney World ADR system crashed right around that time. Guests were greeted by a rotating assortment of error messages, like the one above, on both the Walt Disney World website and My Disney Experience app. Then they pulled the plug completely, putting the system into maintenance mode.
The good news, if you’re looking for a silver lining, is that the selection of characters used this go-round was wider-ranging than in the past. So now you can hate Hei-Hei, Dante, that three-eyed alien from Monsters Inc, and more. I could swear at one point that donkey from Shrek was in there, silently taunting me. Or maybe that was a sleep-deprived hallucination? Probably not.
After a while of this and when it became patently obvious that the ADR system wasn’t working and would be down for the count, I’ll be honest with you: I went back to bed. Yes, I’m guilty of dereliction of duty, but the one thing you must keep in mind is that the Disney Blogger’s Code is really more guidelines than what you’d call actual rules.
By this point, I had already received messages that the phone lines were also slammed. As excited as I am to experience the Beak & Barrel, I’m absolutely not “wait 2 hours on the phone for potentially nothing” levels of excited. (Plus, there’s a very high chance of disconnection and/or getting through but being told the backend is having the same problem. I’m not one to tilt at windmills any more than absolutely necessary.)
It didn’t matter, anyway. When I woke back up after 8 am, the entire Advance Dining Reservation system was still down. It’s now started to slowly come back online, and as I’m writing this, I could now make different ADRs if I so desired. (At least, I assume. I can get entirely through the booking flow–before confirmation–without incident.)
However, it appears that the Beak and Barrel is not one of those Advance Dining Reservations. When I go directly to the lounge’s website, the blue “Check Available Days” button has vanished. I assume this means that we’re getting a redux of the reservation launch day, perhaps tomorrow. Oh joy.
Currently, the red bulletin still reads as follows: “Want to dine at this restaurant during Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party? Starting September 3, 2025, Disney Resort hotel Guests can make reservations—for dates up to 60 days in advance of their arrival, for the entire length of stay (up to a 10-night stay). All other Guests can book starting September 8, 2025. Learn about booking windows.”
We’ve yet to hear from anyone who successfully made Advance Dining Reservations for Beak & Barrel. My best guess is that they never became available, but I’ve thought that in the past, and it turned out that there was a brief window when the system was working and enough people got through to ‘sell out’ all dates. As this is a high-demand meets limited-supply scenario, that’s plausible. (Please share in the comments if you successfully scored ADRs. We won’t direct our ire at you, we promise!)
Walt Disney World has not yet released a statement about any of this. My hope and expectation is that they’ll update the little red bulletin in the coming minutes or hours to reflect the new ADR start date. There’s also a chance that they’ll just quietly released ADRs while I’m in the middle of writing this, and the second I hit publish, this will be flooded with comments saying, “what are you talking about–we just booked ADRs!”
Beak & Barrel ADR Update – 1pm Eastern
Walt Disney World has added the following bulletin to the Beak & Barrel Bar page on the My Disney Experience app (I don’t see it yet on the website, but I’m sure it’ll be there soon): “Due to technical difficulties, reservations for Beak & Barrel will not launch today. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please check back for updates.”
Based on our conversations and multiple reader reports confirming the same, Cast Members are indicating that Beak & Barrel ADRs never fully loaded into the system. That there was no bookable availability, and even if guests saw reservations, they would not be able to confirm them. The above seems to corroborate that by saying that reservations will not launch today, which implies that they have not already launched.
However, we’ve also heard from a couple of readers who were able to make reservations and countless others who saw them for a split second. I tend to believe this, as opposed to the official statement. The system displaying reservations suggests that they were, in fact, loaded into it at some point, however briefly. And if they were loaded, someone (or a few someones) probably got through and booked something.
What remains to be seen is just how many ADRs got booked versus how many are still available. Beak and Barrel Bar is extremely low-supply and high-demand, so it is one of those things that could book up for 60+ days in a manner of minutes. It could be–and will be, when ADRs do go live (again)–a blink and you miss it kinda thing.
What also remains to be seen is when Beak & Barrel Bar ADRs will reopen. As noted above, the Parisian Breakfast Buffet launched one day late, without fanfare. This is different, and we expect Walt Disney World to provide a bit of notice. Our guess is sometime next week, perhaps August 19, 2025. That’s just a guess, though! We’ll keep you posted.
We previously warned that demand for Beak and Barrel ADRs would be sky-high on opening day, August 29, 2025. That is Destination D23 weekend, a time when diehard dorks like me are descending upon Walt Disney World, and there will be thousands of us–along with the usual suspects–who all want to experience the new PotC bar on opening day or opening weekend.
You know how GEO-82 was highly competitive for opening day and is still almost impossible to book unless you’re 60+ days out? Beak and Barrel will be like that on steroids for Labor Day weekend, with demand eventually leveling off a bit (by comparison) thanks to the (presumably) higher capacity and more stringent rules and time limits. But that first weekend, they might as well call it Bleak and Barrel, because that’s what it’ll be like trying to score ADRs.
Even after the initial rush over Labor Day, this is going to be one of the most competitive ADRs in all of Walt Disney World for years to come. All of this assumes that the ADR system actually works, which I guess was a bold assumption given the history of Disney IT.
In any case, I can’t wait to hear from Bob Iger or Hugh Johnston on the next earnings call or CNBC interview boasting about “robust consumer demand” and “brand affinity” for Walt Disney World, spinning this as another rousing success as opposed to another colossal Disney IT meltdown. I wish that were a joke.
We do have to admit that even we did not anticipate the extent of Disney’s IT woes. It’s been a while since we’ve experienced a problem quite like this. Oogie Boogie Bash and all other party ticket sales have been smooth sailing for the last couple of years, as have all discount drop days. Disney does seem to use virtual queues more than I would expect to manage demand–perhaps that should’ve been the case here, too? I guess we’ll find out if the launch day for Beak & Barrel Bar reservations (take two) begins with the “We’re Almost in Orbit!” message. Stay tuned.
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Your Thoughts
Did you experience problems trying to make Advance Dining Reservations for the Beak & Barrel bar? Excited to experience the new Pirates of the Caribbean tavern? Will you be trying to score ADRs for opening day or sometime over the holiday weekend? What do you think about Magic Kingdom getting a Pirates of the Caribbean-themed lounge? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback—even when you disagree with us—is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
