Does the GAC apply to dining??

We are planning a trip with our kids for May 2012. Our 4 yr DS just had left temporal lobectomy and resection of the occipital and parietal lobes in his brain, as well this past June. We are celebrating his 5th birthday at WDW with our 18 yr DS and 15 yr DD. As I am reading this section I see we could use the GAC for rides, but would they do the same for dining. My husband and I went this past Dec for our 20 yr anniversary and made reservations MONTHS ahead of time, yet still waited quite a while at a lot of places. Ian has been diagnosised with ADHD, bi polar, ODD, anxiety disorder as well as intractable epilepsy. He is a wonderful mess. But has NO patience!! On top of this, his verbal communication is that of about a 12 month old. He does comprehend everything, but gets extremely frustrated trying to get us to understand what he wants. So, my concern is waiting for food could certainly trigger a day ending episode for us. We purchased the Deluxe dining so we can all experience the character dining, but I am very worried about the wait time the 5 of us might have. Anyone have any suggestions???

Hi and :welcome:

I don't think the GAC is for dining. I would make your ADR's (advanced dining reservation) for where you want to dine. When you go to check in, let the CM know of your situation. Hopefully they will help you out.

You can't use the GAC for dining, but what I would suggest that you do is to make your reservations for places as early as possible. Say if the restaurant starts serving dinner at 4:30pm, I would try and get one of the earliest ones I could get as close to opening time. If you wait until 5:30-6:00, you will most likely be waiting.

Something that may help is to have things for him to snack on while waiting, or only one of you wait in the restaurant for the table to be called and the other one keep your son busy outside, but close by.

I would suggest calling Disney and asking to speak to someone about accommodating your DS' special needs. Disney is amazingly responsive and even if they can't help with each and every meal, they may be able to help accommodate you for a few special meals throughout the visit. My aunt and uncle solely vacation with my cousin at WDW because they are so wonderful with her!

No, the GAC will not help with dining.

When you say your son has NO patience, what do you mean? I have to say, with the Deluxe dining plan, you are going to spend a LOT of time sitting and waiting, whether you are waiting to be seated for a meal, waiting for a server to take your order, waiting for food, waiting for the characters to come around, waiting for the check, etc. It's a lot of waiting.

We have two special needs kids, both on the Autism spectrum. We honestly keep the table service meals to a minimum when we travel. They do much better with eating when they are hungry, wherever we happen to be (we do a combo of Counter service meals, snacks, and we stay club level for the availability of the food in the lounge). On our last week long trip, we only did three TS meals, and that was pushing it. They have very short attention spans and about the longest we can expect them to sit at a table is 45min-1 hour, and doing that even once a day is hard for them.

My advice to you would be the following (i.e. this is what I would do if I were you)

Drop the Deluxe Dining Plan. Make ADR for ONE character meal, preferably breakfast, and as EARLY as possible.

Make a few more ADRs at "must eat" restaurants, and as a previous poster mentioned, make the reservation for the first available mealtime seating (usually 11am for lunch, and 4pm for dinners). Eat a combination of counter service and snacks the rest of the time.

Use the money you save to upgrade your resort. If you are already staying deluxe, upgrade to club level. If not, upgrade as much as you can using the money you had earmarked for the dining plan. The resort will likely be much more important overall than the food.

The GAC will help you with waiting for RIDES only, and it won't work for character meet and greets or parades, FYI. Definitely get a GAC, but be prepared to have to wait for some things if you really want to do them, otherwise just skip the things that might send your DS into a tailspin (parades, character meets, etc.)

First off, :welcome: to Intercot!!

Second, :ditto: to everything Natalie said. The Deluxe Plan really wouldn't be a good thing in your situation. Keep things as "unplanned" as possible and that will help make the trip much less stressful for you.

Have your tried teaching your son sign-language? My DW works with children with various disabilities and has had great success with sign language with children who, like your son, comprehend but have limited verbal ability.

Thank you all for responding. Ian does some sign language, he cheats alot. Mixes 2 or 3 signs together...he's a goof that way. By his patience being short I mean having to stand in the line like my DH and I did for Chef Mickeys. I know we went at Christmas time, but we were there almost an hr before getting seated. And it was just 2 of us. We want to do the shows and the character meals so we felt the Deluxe package would be best, especially since we are bringing the teenagers with us. They can EAT! Ian is a good boy most of the time, especially since his surgery. I am not as concerned about him getting hungry while waiting just being over stimulized by all that is going on around him and not being able to go or do much while waiting. We are slowly developing a plan, up early and eat-parks before regular hours and back to the resort during the busier part of the day. He will love to swim. And then back to the parks starting with an early dinner. My DH is the planner so I will leave that to him. This is a BIG celebration for us, Ian prognosis wasn't good at all without the surgery, he has the worse form of seizures that affect his development. Since then we have seen quite a bit of improvement. Even several random words together that he is using correctly and appropriatly. So, we want to make sure he has plenty of fun as well as thinking of our teenagers. Who have been wonderful through all this as well. I feel a celebration at Disney is perfect for us. Just trying to think of anything and everything we can do to make is easy on him. Any one else have advice, please feel free to let me know.

As for Ian's diagnosis, he wasn't placed on the Autism spectrum because he is too social and finds ways to communicate fairly well considering his limitations. He does have some sensory issues, but his wonderful OT and DT keep tackling them each week. We are planning at staying at Pop Century, my DH liked the resort especially for the money. I might show him this post though....and try to get him to upgrade to the Poly!! Thats where I want to stay. It would be best for Ian, he is OBSESSED with trains. Thank you all so much!!

It sounds like you know your son very well and know his limitations.

I think you should really re-evaluate the deluxe dining plan, though. It really does take a lot out of the day, because it's set up to do 3 TS meals per day. You can count on each meal lasting anywhere from 1-2 hours, plus transit time to get to all those ADRs. That's up to 6+ hours of time in restaurants, rather than out having fun. Honestly, you can eat just as well, but on your own schedule without the plan. I know what you're saying about the voracious appetites of your teens, but even the regular dining plan is a LOT of food. I can't even imagine the Deluxe one. I think I'd be waving the white flag by day two. It's very difficult to be on the go all day long while being overly stuffed.

I'd go for the resort upgrade, because that will really make your vacation. If you're staying at POP, you are getting two rooms already, no? You could all fit in one room at the Poly. And dropping down to, perhaps, the Quick Service dining plan (if you must have one), you could come out even or slightly ahead staying at Poly. The monorail will be so much fun for your son, and the pool there has a nice zero entry.

Be sure to take your son to see the huge model train layout at the Germany Pavilion! He will probably love it. Also, there is a room at the Wilderness Lodge called the Iron Spike Room. It's basically the lobby of the Villas side, and it's full of old train artifacts and models from Walt's collection! Really neat. :mickey:

Hi! Your DS sounds a lot like my DS, except my DS is also physically disabled.

For the character meals, try to make an ADR for the first available time slot for the meal you'd like to have. We just had a 5pm dinner at Chef Mickeys and it was so wonderful! We were seated right away and within 30 minutes we had met with all 5 characters. The restaurant was partially empty when dinner began, making it easy to get through the buffet and also much less stimulating than in the past. We have dinner there every trip and there have been times it has taken close to 2 hours to meet every character!

This will be our character meal game plan from now on!

Have a great time! Your family certainly deserves it!

Another thing-you should be able to use the disabled sections for parades. Ive always met children there with various " hidden" disabilities. Just talk to a cm.

Sometimes these sections are absolutely packed, but sometimes they are almost empty. Usually right before the parade starts a cm will open the section if there's room. By that time the wait will be over and your son can enjoy the parade!

I have a son with many medical issues also. He has A brain tumor, severe ADHD, senceory depravation, and PDDNOS among some others. We have done the Deluxe Dinning Plan and had a great time with it
We called Disney Dinning and spoke with a person who put on our reservations the accomaditions we needed.
We showed up to our reservation only 5-10 min early
We told the host what was supposed to be on our reservations and also our waiter/waitress