A French developer's Disney table-alert app hit #7 on Armenia's Top Grossing travel chart, but it hasn't really taken off yet

DlandTables helps people going to Disney watch for restaurant openings. You pick a restaurant, date, and party size, and when someone cancels, it notifies you. It started as a website built by French solo developer Alban Combaud 2024 years ago, and the iPhone app only came out in Oct 14. In Nov 4 it reached #7 on Armenia's App Store travel Top Grossing chart and also charted in Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and the US. But as of today it has zero ratings, and it has never charted in France, its home market. A few subscriptions can buy those ranks, so they don't mean it's taken off. This business is also already crowded.

A table you can't book

The about page explains the origin: you plan a trip to Disneyland Paris and want to book Bistrot Chez Rémy (the Ratatouille-themed restaurant) or Auberge de Cendrillon in the Cinderella castle, but every slot is full for the next 60 days. "We went through it too, and DlandTables comes from that frustration."

Fully booked restaurants aren't completely out of reach. Someone always cancels, and the freed slot goes back into Disney's reservation system, so whoever refreshes first gets it. The problem is nobody can refresh nonstop. In August 2024, dlandtables.com first appears in web archives, built to do that watching for you: it checks at intervals, emails you when a matching slot opens, and you book on Disney's official site. It doesn't book for you and doesn't guarantee a table.

Two years later, the site says "2,700+ travellers", "1,100+ alerts created", "800,000+ slot checks" (dlandtables.com, 11-06). For a personal project, that counts as a success; as a business, the numbers are still small.

What it is

• What it watches: Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney World in Florida, Disneyland California, and recently Tokyo, which the site added.
• How it alerts you: app push notifications and email. The Oct 21 launch blog states the reasoning plainly: slots go fast, and a push shows on your lock screen so you don't have to wait to open your inbox.
• How it charges: there's no free plan anymore; the site says "the old free plan is no longer available." Premium is €3.99/week (5 alerts) or €49.99/year (15); Premium+ is €4.99/week (10 alerts) or €59.99/year (30). The US store uses the same numbers in dollars, the UK in pounds, and Japan charges ¥600/week and ¥7,800/year (about page, 11-06).
• Languages: 8 in total: French, English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese.

The most interesting part of the pricing is the weekly billing. A Disney trip is about a week long, and nobody wants to pay monthly to book one table. €3.99 a week sits right at the "a coffee's worth for this trip" price point, while competitors charge per alert (DLP Tables starts at €6 per priority alert) or monthly (MouseWatcher from $19/month). Weekly subscriptions auto-renew by default, so people who forget to cancel after the trip will pay a few more weeks (inferred).

How much it grew

An app that jumps from #123 to #7 on a single day means its chart only sees a trickle of purchases, and one €49.99 annual subscription is enough to push it into the top ten. Japan 11-06 is its first time charting, and the timing lines up with the website adding Tokyo and showing yen prices (inference). Whether the Armenian payments come from locals or from tourists using a foreign-store account can't be told from the outside.

The more accurate read: there are a few real payments, but no sign of it taking off.

Where users come from

Mostly search. The site has a page for each of 233 restaurants and attractions, each with menus, prices, how to book, and how to set alerts, multiplied across 8 languages. There's also a set of guides (when to book, what to do when fully booked, how to pick a character meal), plus 4 comparison pages naming rivals directly: "DlandTables vs DLP Tables", "vs MouseWatcher", and each rival's "alternatives" page, all published in Oct 20. Search its brand name and nearly everything that comes up is its own pages; almost nobody else mentions it.

In each store it uses a local name: "Alerte Restaurant" in France, "Aviso Restaurante" in Mexico, "Alerta de Mesa" in Brazil, "レストラン空き通知" in Japan, "Dining Alerts" in the US. It's low-cost ASO that one person can do, targeting the search terms users type in their own language.

After the app launched, it put download buttons on the website homepage and the about page, and removed the free plan, pushing older users toward the app and paid tiers.

No TikTok videos about it turned up, and X, Reddit, and review sites don't index it. The only mention I could find is one post in a Disneyland Paris Facebook group titled "Does the Dland Table app work for booking Disneyland Paris tables?", with the body behind a login wall.

Who it's competing with

This space is already saturated. The US has two parks with established player communities, Paris has long-running local services, and new ones have kept appearing from 2025 to 2026.

In Paris, DLP Tables has something DlandTables doesn't: other people vouching for it. On May 8, English travel creator @chloedisneydreaming posted a video opening with "Have you heard of DLP Tables? This site is the secret trick for getting last-minute restaurant reservations at Disneyland Paris", 34k views; on May 25, Spanish creator @pardeplanes posted "there's a much smarter way to eat at Disneyland Paris", 23k views. Several Spanish Disney travel agency accounts also posted videos on 9 and October teaching people to use it (TikTok). All of this was organic, not bought by DLP Tables.

DlandTables' pitch of "push alerts in Paris too" holds up against DLP Tables, but MagicTable and Stakeout already have apps, and they're just weak in Paris. Its comparison page happens to leave out MagicTable.

What to learn from it

1. A one-time need, priced weekly. Reservations, ticket grabs, visa appointments, popular campsites, concert refunds: these are needs where you want it now and don't after. A small weekly charge is cheaper than monthly, lowers the paywall, and auto-renewal captures extra revenue.
2. One page per venue, multiplied by languages. 233 restaurants × 8 languages, filled from a template by one person, targeting long-tail queries like "[restaurant] fully booked".
3. Comparison pages that name the competitor. People searching "DLP Tables alternatives" already know what they want and only need a reason to switch. These pages convert the most directly.
4. A local name for each store. Rewriting store titles per country costs almost nothing.

None of these four moves is new on its own. What's rare is one person combining them on a very narrow need.

If it were you

C. Worth learning from, not worth chasing Disney reservations. The need is real and the pricing is smart, but after two years DlandTables has only gathered a couple thousand users, and its app hasn't scaled either. Paris already has DLP Tables with built-in creator word of mouth, the US has apps with several thousand ratings, and Thrill Data is a free option that's permanent. Another Disney reservation alert would struggle to find a spot.

Who it's for: indie devs who can write scrapers, do programmatic SEO, and are willing to pick a "fully booked" scenario nobody is watching yet. Examples: popular national park campsites, Michelin or trendy restaurant reservations, visa and driving test appointments, train ticket refunds in a given country.

Who it's not for: people who want to build yet another Disney reservation alert, or who plan to differentiate with "we also have app push".

How to do it:

1. Find a scenario where slots sell out 60 days ahead but people keep cancelling every day, then check whether people on Reddit or Facebook groups ask "is there a tool that watches for openings".
2. Speed of catching openings is the only real moat for this kind of product. Get faster than existing competitors first, then think about everything else.
3. Price like DlandTables: charge per trip, weekly subscription or one-time payment, not only monthly.
4. Web first, app later. The web captures SEO, and the app just delivers alerts faster.

How to get users: programmatic SEO as the base, one page per bookable venue and one set per target language. Then copy DLP Tables rather than DlandTables: find travel creators and travel agencies for the destination and have them demo "what to do when it's fully booked" in short videos. That's the piece DlandTables lacks.

When to do it before: the Disney angle has no window left, it's already sold out. For other scenarios, launch two to three months before the local peak season opens bookings, when search and demand start to surface.

Signs we misjudged: if in three months DlandTables is holding steady in the top 100 of the France or UK travel Top Grossing charts with ratings in the dozens to hundreds, that would mean "multiple languages + weekly subscription + app" can actually take users from DLP Tables in Paris, and then it's worth a closer look. Conversely, if it still has zero ratings and only flickers on small-country charts, the lesson is: winning in this category depends on word of mouth and speed of catching openings, not on pricing or page count.