Did you know you can make dining reservations before your next trip to the Disneyland Resort? The resort’s dining line can help you to make reservations at character dining restaurants and other table-service restaurants, in addition to answering questions about menus, food prep, special dietary requests, and so much more. (714) 781-DINE. (Reservations can also be made online by clicking here.)

It is important to note that if you do not show up for your reservation you will be charged a $10 fee PER PERSON. The same can be said for reservation made in person the day of your visit. No matter what, a dining reservation can only be made by providing a credit card number to hold your reservation time. Last year, we made a reservation for seven at Carnation Cafe for lunch. The reservation agent on the phone accidentally made the reservation for Carthay. (Since they both start with “C,” I’m sure that happens a lot.) When we reached Carnation that day, the hostess informed us that we didn’t have a reservation and after some quick investigating, she found that the reservation had been made for the wrong restaurant. She assured us that she would cancel the Carthay reservation, we would not be charged and squeezed us in for our early lunch.

I suppose she got busy and never cancelled the reservation, and we ended up getting charged the no-show fee of $70 (for seven people) even though we spent a hefty amount on lunch at Carnation. While I was very easily able to clear this mistake up by calling the Dining Line after finding the charge on my bill, I felt like I should share this with all of you as a cautionary tale. If you make ANY dining reservations at Disneyland, I highly recommend checking your bill over very carefully after your trip to make sure there are no no-show fees charged to your bill. I am really bad at checking over my statements, and realized the mistake several months after the incident. Like I said, Disney was great about clear it up, but it did take some extra steps because of the time that had lapsed.