In this post, I’m going to start with a brief discussion of the Disney Dining plan and then provide a day-by-day overview.  I apologize that photos are a bit sparse in this report.  I’ve never really gotten into the habit of taking a lot of photos at restaurants, other than family photos at character meals or other themed locations.  In fact, even the pretty general photos (without my family) of the Sci-Fi Dine-In below are ones that I actually took several years ago.  If I had thought ahead of time of focusing my main trip report on the meals, I probably would have made more of an effort to get at least exterior photos of more of the restaurants.  I’ll try to think of this on my next trip.

Disney Dining Plan

During the last few trips, we have taken part in the Disney Dining Plan, which allows us to pre-pay a fixed per-day amount to cover the majority of our meals.  The plan provides credits for 1 counter service meal, 1 table service meal, and 1 snack item per person for each day of the trip.  The credits are pooled over the length of the trip (expiring at 11:59pm on the departure day), which does provide some flexibility for how they are used.

The dining plan has been somewhat controversial among Disney fans for some reasons that I do think have merit, particularly related to the increased difficulties getting into table service restaurants (at many locations, it is now pretty much mandatory to make reservations 6 months in advance) and it does also seem that some of the menus have been simplified somewhat since the dining plan began.  Overall, the program does work very well for our family and it does save us a considerable amount of money as we tend to order meals that would cost quite a bit more if we were paying directly.

While we still find the plan to be worthwhile, it is unfortunate that some changes were made that reduced the value a bit since it first began.  Originally, the table service meals included appetizer, entree, dessert, non-alcoholic beverage, and gratuity.  A couple years ago, the appetizer and gratuity were removed.  Including both the appetizer and dessert did make for a bit more food than we probably really wanted at some meals.  I do think it would be much better, though, if they would change the plan to offer a choice between the appetizer or a dessert instead of only providing the dessert.  There were a number of occasions where an appetizer (particularly soup or a salad) would definitely have been my preference over getting a dessert.

I’m definitely more torn on the elimination of the gratuity.  On the one hand, I admit that I did notice that service was sometimes a bit lackluster back when the tip was included and, thus, guaranteed.  On this trip, we didn’t really have any experiences where the service was less than good.  On the other hand, though, having to pay the gratuity separately for each table-service meal definitely takes away from the “pay it and forget it” aspect of the dining plan.  Since you calculate the tip based on the original menu prices, it does re-introduce a little bit of a tendency to want to look at the cost of each item ordered and a brings back a little bit of motivation for ordering the less expensive items.

I was also less than thrilled that an 18% gratuity was automatically added to our check at every location.  I’m not sure if that was because of the dining plan or because we had 6 people in our party, but it isn’t a policy that I like very much in either case.  At a few locations, the server did ask me first if I wanted to charge the gratuity to my room charge, but in most cases he/she just brought the charge slip without asking first or commenting.

My main reason for not really liking the automatic gratuity is that I prefer to be able to increase or decrease it a bit based on how the service was.  I also tend to think that 18% is a bit high for buffet meals, but the amount was not lowered at those locations.  I will note that, since the gratuity was charged automatically, I never added anything to it and I’m pretty sure I would have tipped a bit higher at a few locations had it been left up to me.

Day 1: New Year’s Day

We flew in to Orlando fairly late in the evening on New Year’s Eve and had dinner at my parents’ house that night.  Our first full day in the Orlando area was New Year’s Day and we opted to stay near my parent’s place in Clermont, heading over to Disney World on the second day.

During those first two nights, we stayed at the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Clermont, which includes a complimentary breakfast with the room.  The breakfast was served buffet-style in a lounge area next to the hotel’s lobby.  It was ok, but nothing particularly fancy.  It mainly included a selection of pastries, hot and cold cereal, bread for toast, a few kinds of fruit, and other typical continental breakfast choices.  They did have some microwavable, pre-wrapped breakfast sandwiches as well, but I didn’t try them.  I didn’t think the quality was up to what you find at a Holiday Inn Express, which typically have the best breakfasts of this kind, but it was certainly adequate.

Steak ‘n Shake

Lunch was at my parents’ house, but we decided to go out to a Steak ‘n Shake restaurant for dinner.  This is a great chain of diner-style burger restaurants that hasn’t yet made it out here to the western states.  These restaurants have always had a bit of a special meaning to my family.  The original one was located in Normal, Illinois, which is where I was born, and it is an often told story within our family that my parents’ first date was at a Steak ‘n Shake.  Since I’ve been old enough to remember, I’ve never actually lived in a town with a Steak ‘n Shake, so visits there are a kind of special treat when the opportunity arises.

The menu is a pretty straightforward burgers and fries selection, but the food quality tends to be extremely high.  The “steak” in the name of the restaurant refers to the generally high-grade of ground beef that they use to make their burgers and I do think that is reflected in how they taste.  As the name suggests, they also offer a good selection of flavors of real ice cream milkshakes as well.  I was a little disappointed when they had run out of the peppermint milkshakes that they were advertising on the placemats, but I was able to get a mint chocolate chip one that was a pretty darned good substitute.

While the food was great, we were disappointed by the service.  While the waitress was friendly enough, our orders were all exceptionally slow in coming.  We were particularly surprised at how long it took for the shakes to arrive, with them coming after the food.  My sister had a bit of a sore throat from a cold and had asked the waitress to expedite her shake, so she was more than a bit irritated when her shake not only took a while, but actually came about 5 minutes or so after the rest of our shakes were brought!  My parents mentioned that, unfortunately, this slow service is a bit typical of the Clermont location.

Day 2:  First day at WDW!

Chef Mickey’s

We headed over to Walt Disney World fairly early on the 2nd to check into Bay Lake Tower for the rest of our visit.  We have generally found that a character meal or some highly-themed restaurant usually is a great way for us to get into the right mood at the start of our visit, so I had made a reservation for noon at Chef Mickey’s in the Contemporary.

When I made the reservation, I actually thought I was scheduling lunch.  I later learned that Chef Mickey actually doesn’t serve lunch at all and that they simply were scheduling breakfast reservations up until 1pm that day.   We typically like breakfast buffets anyway and have never been all that picky about what time we eat that kind of food.  In fact, we probably have traditional breakfast food (such as pancakes or bacon & eggs) for dinner more often than we do in the morning.

By the time we got to the hotel and finished getting checked in, it was still only a little before 11.  I decided to try asking at the podium to see if they could seat us earlier than our reservation and learned that they actually weren’t that busy and could take us right away.  This would work out well and let us get to the park a bit earlier.  We were also hungry, so we didn’t really want to wait longer anyway.

Before we were seated, we were all guided over to a photography station for a family photo.  This has become a standard part of all the character meals at Disney World (and at Disneyland as well) now.  The photo isn’t on their Photopass system, though.  Instead, someone comes around to your table during your meal trying to sell you a package of printed photos for $30.  One thing we found strange at Chef Mickey’s was that the photo was with a plywood cut-out of Mickey Mouse rather than with the costumed character.

We didn’t purchase any of the photo packages on the trip, even though a couple of the photos were kind of cute.  The price just seemed overly high for what you got, particularly since it didn’t include any digital copy of the photo.  The last couple times we did character meals at Disneyland, I remember that the attendants made a point to specifically offer to also take pictures using our own cameras during these photo sessions.  No such offer was made at any of the Disney World meals and I really didn’t get a vibe that such a request would be welcome.

The meal at Chef Mickey’s was a pretty typical breakfast buffet with the usual selection of eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, pancakes, waffles, French toast, fruit, pastries, etc.  The food was generally good, although nothing overly special.  One odd thing we noticed at this meal as well as the other breakfasts we attended on this trip was that their bacon seemed to be oddly kind of lacking in flavor.  I think my favorite item on this buffet was a potato dish that was mixed with cheese and bacon. The pancakes and French toast were prepared fresh at a grill station, which was nice.  Unlike at Disneyland, the breakfast buffets in Florida usually don’t have omelet stations (I think the ones at the Grand Floridian and the Beach Club are the exceptions), so I’m typically not fond of the eggs available since most people seem to like them more runny than I do.

The primary reason that we go to a restaurant like Chef Mickey’s is the character interaction and that was generally good.  Over the course of the meal, we had visits from Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto.  Besides that the restaurant was located in the resort where we were staying, the fact that it features the core group of Disney characters made it a very appealing first activity.  The characters visits were spaced pretty reasonably and we overall had a really good time.

Liberty Inn

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at Epcot.  For dinner, we decided to eat at Liberty Inn, the counter service location located in the American Adventure building in World Showcase.  It is mostly a burger and fries type fast food restaurant, although we were pleased to find that they did have a couple of slightly more upscale offerings including a roast beef & cheddar sandwich and a barbecue pork sandwich.  In fact, I ended up having the roast beef and my wife had the pork. The food was generally good, something that isn’t always true at Disney’s counter service restaurants.

My only real complaint was that the service was very slow, particularly if you had any kind of special order.  The roast beef and cheddar sandwich normally featured a couple toppings that I don’t generally like, so I asked for it plain.  That wasn’t a problem, but it ended up taking them 10 minutes or so to get it ready.  They held our entire order until that was ready and we had to stand at the counter waiting for it while other customers maneuvered around us to pick up their own orders.  I definitely would have preferred for them to at least give us the rest of the order right away (particularly our son’s), even if they didn’t have the staff available to bring the special order out to us.  We also weren’t warned that the special order would take so long.  I might have opted with something that didn’t need customization, if I had known about that.

Day 3: Disney’s Hollywood Studios

ABC Commissary

On Sunday, we had plans to meet up with some friends who live in the Orlando area and spend the day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  Having stayed out late the night before, we ended up sleeping in a bit and arriving at the park right around noon.  Our friends were already having lunch at ABC Commissary, a large counter-service fast food restaurant themed to Disney’s TV network.  The main decor of the restaurant primarily features posters from current ABC series and video monitors showing promos and behind-the-scenes clips.

Even though Disney’s burgers generally don’t tend to be very good, we all ended up deciding that cheeseburgers sounded the best to us of the restaurant’s menu choices.  To my surprise, the burger was actually pretty decent.  It wasn’t nearly as dry and overcooked as I’ve generally found Disney’s burgers to be in the past, even at that same restaurant.  I don’t know if they have improved the quality or if we just were there on a good day, but it wasn’t a bad lunch at all.

Sci-Fi Dine-In

For dinner, we had reservations at Sci-Fi Dine-In.  This table-service restaurant is themed like an old drive-in movie theater.  The tables are shaped like cars and a large screen in the front of restaurant shows clips of cheesy old science fiction and monster movies, interspersed with the occasional theater refreshment stand promos.

This is probably the best themed restaurant at Disney World and we re-visit it pretty often for that reason, but my experience has always been that the food is kind of mediocre, unfortunately.  On this visit, I ordered the St. Louis-style BBQ ribs.  They were generally pretty tasty and the sauce was pretty good, but I found them to be much more fatty than I would have liked.  My wife had the ribs as well and also noted the same thing.  A couple other members of our party had the Reuben sandwich (something I don’t really like) and seemed happier with the quality.  The hot fudge sundae that I had for dessert was large and really good.

Day 4: Steak, cheese soup, and cake!

Le Cellier

A few years ago, during our first visit to Walt Disney World with our son, we scheduled a date night where we left him with my parents while we went out to a nice dinner.  Having heard very good things about it, the restaurant we chose for that dinner was Le Cellier, the steakhouse located in the Canada pavilion at Epcot.  We enjoyed the restaurant so much that it has now become a tradition to plan a meal there during every visit.

For this trip, we decided to get a lunch reservation for early Monday afternoon.  In recent years, Le Cellier has become one of the most difficult reservations to get at Walt Disney World, particularly since it is among the highest-end restaurants that still only requires a single table-service credit on the dining plan.  We thought it would  be a bit easier to get our choice of day and time if we went with lunch and I did, in fact, have no problem with it, although I did call the reservation line soon after it opened on the first day we could make reservations.

My wife and I definitely tend to be fairly traditional meat & potatoes fans and we both really enjoy a good steak.  The steaks at Le Cellier have been very good and they do offer a pretty decent selection of cuts.  There are plenty of other good places to get steak at Disney World, though, and we generally do end up having it at least a couple times during our visits.  Our experience with the steaks has actually been a little bit hit and miss, in fact.  I recall one previous visit where I had to send it back because it wasn’t cooked right and on this visit I found that the meat was a bit cold, although it wasn’t so much so that I felt the need to get it corrected.

The bigger appeal at Le Cellier that keeps us coming back really are a few of the non-entree selections. In particular, I am a huge fan of their Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup while my wife absolutely adores the Chocolate on Chocolate Whiskey Cake that they offer for dessert.  These actually are individual preferences on our part, though, as my wife doesn’t really like the soup at all while I find the chocolate cake to be a bit too rich after such a big meal.

Another major favorite of ours is the bread.  At the start of the meal, they bring out a basket with several varieties of warm, soft breadsticks including sourdough, multi-grain, and pretzel bread.  The server recommends sampling all three and offers to bring out more of any type.  We now know that the pretzel bread is our absolute favorite and always immediately ask the server to bring us more of it.

I find the decor at Le Cellier to be generally appealing as well.  The layout is organized into sections themed to the Canadian provinces.  Right after you are seated at your table, the greeter gives a short overview of the province for that section.  The overall look has a generally casual elegance to it that I find to be very pleasant.  The only slight negative is that the tables are pretty tightly packed into the restaurant, so it can feel a bit cramped and can occasionally be a bit noisy.  For the most part, this has never been a big problem for us, though.  Our experiences at the restaurant have also always been enhanced by consistently very good and friendly service.

Contempo Cafe

The meal at Le Cellier tends to be quite filling, so we weren’t really hungry again until later than usual.  After lunch, we went over to the Magic Kingdom for the afternoon and stayed for the 8pm fireworks show.  After the fireworks, we walked back over to the Contemporary and had dinner at Contempo Cafe, the hotel’s quick service location.  We had done the same on our previous trip and had found that it worked really well.  Since we were actually staying at the Contemporary Resort this time, it worked even better for us.  It was only about 25 minutes from the time that the fireworks ended until we were seated at the restaurant.

The Contempo Cafe is one of a few newer quick service locations at Disney World that has gone to a touch-screen ordering system.  When you arrive at the restaurant, you go to one of the kiosks to order any entrees/meals.  It then prints out a receipt that you take to a cashier along with any grab-and-go items that you are adding to the order.  The system works okay, although it does feel a bit impersonal and I couldn’t help but wonder if it really saves all that much time and labor cost over simply having the cashier take your order, particularly since they still need to keep an employee near the kiosks to answer any questions or help out customers who aren’t really comfortable with that kind of system.

For dinner, my wife and I both ordered the pepperoni flatbread.  We got a kick out of the fact that the receipt actually said “pepperoni pizza” instead, since that is obviously what it really was.  We were happy that the pizza had a really thin crust, since that is the way we both tend to like it best.  As was typical of Disney’s pizza (and theme park pizza in general), the crust and sauce was pretty bland, but it overall wasn’t too bad a meal.  The portion sizes were generous and made for a pretty filling dinner.

Day 5: A Cold Day at Universal

Mythos

We ventured away from Disney property on Tuesday for a visit to Universal Studios Orlando.  Thanks to a relative that works there, we had complimentary tickets that allowed us to visit both theme parks on that same day.  We also had purchased tickets to see the Blue Man Group show at Universal Citywalk that evening.

During our entire visit to Florida, they were having an unusually extreme cold spell, with temperatures frequently in the 30s or 40s.  The day we were at Universal was especially cold, with a very frigid wind blowing.  Because of this, we decided that a fairly leisurely, table-service lunch at an indoor restaurant sounded good.  We opted to eat at Mythos in Islands of Adventure, which has pretty often been rated towards the top of the quality ratings for theme park restaurants.

While I’m sure that a lot of people were looking for indoor dining choices that day, Universal has a lot of options and the parks were not overly crowded.  Probably because of that, we only had to wait about 15 minutes or so for a table.  Our table was fairly far inside the restaurant, fairly close to large windows that provided a pretty nice view across the park’s central waterway over towards the Super Hero Island section.  The overall decor of the restaurant is bright and cheerful.  There are fountains providing a pretty continuous sound of running water, so it is probably a good thing there are restrooms inside.

After several hours out in the cold, soup sounded particularly good.  I tend to really like tomato soup and saw that was listed on the menu.  When I ordered it, the waiter warned that it contained Italian sausage, which prompted my reply of “good!”  It is definitely wise that they warn about that, though, as people might expect that to be a vegetarian option.  The soup was very good, with a flavor that kind of resembled a rich spaghetti sauce.  A couple thick, oversized croutons were included to help add a little additional bulk to it.  The hot soup was a big help in getting warmed up and one of the highlights of the meal.

While the menu included several entrees that sounded pretty good, I really didn’t have too much trouble choosing once I saw that one of the choices was Blueberry and Pistachio Crusted Pork served in port wine sauce.  Grilled pork is something I particularly like, but don’t get very often and I also really love port wine sauce.  The sauce also had crumbled blue cheese, which is another favorite of mine and a flavor that I think goes especially well with the port wine sauce.  The pork was as good as it sounded.  The blueberry and pistachio crust provided a particularly good mixture of slightly tangy sweet and nutty flavor that really complimented the sharper flavor of the port wine sauce.

Instead of serving the pork with something fairly traditional like mashed potatoes, the included side dish was macaroni and cheese.  The cheese sauce was made with smoky cheddar, a type that I particularly like and which provided quite a bit more flavor than a more typical macaroni and cheese.  While this was a somewhat unusual side dish, I thought it was really good and this was a fairly rare case where I completed finished the side dish with an entree.

While Mythos is a high-end, fairly expensive restaurant, their menu isn’t overly exotic and worked well even for the fairly picky eaters in our group.  My wife had a bacon cheeseburger, which she said was very good and was clearly made with very high quality ingredients.  Several other members of our party had the grilled chicken club sandwich, which they were very happy with as well.

Our excessive drinking straw collection 

One strange part of the meal was that we ended up with an unusually large accumulation of drinking straws.  I had ordered Mr. Pibb to drink and a couple other people in our party ordered Diet Coke.  I guess in order to help the servers identify the drinks, they put 3 straws in the Mr. Pibb and 2 in the Diet Coke.  This was not only the case with the first ones, but with each subsequent refill.  The refills were always brought in new glasses and they didn’t very frequently take away the old one.  Over time, we ended up with a huge quantity of straws and generally amused ourselves by putting them all into one glass.  While it was pretty funny, it also strikes me as being rather wasteful and I think the restaurant really needs to come up with a better system for keeping track of the drink types.

Our only real complaint about Mythos was that the service was a bit slow.  The waiter was certainly friendly enough and they were pretty good about keeping up with drink refills, but it took quite a while before he took our orders and then the time between courses and the time to get the check delivered and processed all seemed longer than they should have been.  While we weren’t in an extremely big hurry, it definitely did seem like the pace should have been faster, particularly in a theme park setting.

Burger King Whopper Bar

After having had a pretty large and elegant lunch, we went to kind of the opposite extreme and just got fast food from the food court at CityWalk.  The food court area is pretty small, with only four restaurants and fairly limited indoor seating.  With a little persistence, we were able to eventually grab a table, so we did at least avoid having to eat outdoors in the cold.  My wife, son, and I all got food from the Burger King “Whopper Bar” while my parents and sister split a large order of nachos from Moe’s Southwest Grill.

The “Whopper Bar” concept emphasized the choices of toppings on the burgers, but really seemed more like an excuse for a Burger King with a drastically reduced menu.  While the name kind of seems to suggest a do-it-yourself topping bar, it really is just a stand where a large menu board lists the choices of toppings and you specify what you want when ordering.  The only available entrees choices were the Whoppers or chicken strips, with none of the other Burger King entrees available.  They didn’t even have kids’ meals available, so our the only burger available for our son was a Whopper, which is a bit big for him.  My wife and I both got chicken strips, since she had a cheeseburger for lunch and I don’t really like Burger King’s burgers very much.  The food was typical Burger King food, although more expensive than usual.

Day 6: Magic Kingdom plus Loud and Raucous Barbecue

Columbia Harbour House

Wednesday was another fairly late start day after the very full day at Universal.  We had made plans to meet up with some friends at the Magic Kingdom shortly after noon and arrived there pretty much exactly the scheduled time.  For lunch, we all decided to go to Columbia Harbour House, a seafood fast-food location in the Liberty Square section of the park.

This is often one of the busiest locations in the park, but it wasn’t an especially busy day which means there were very short lines at the cash registers and we didn’t have any major difficulty finding a table.  I had the fried shrimp for lunch, which was fine for basically fast food shrimp, but nothing to get too excited about.  My wife doesn’t like seafood at all, so she had chicken nuggets.

Whispering Canyon

For dinner that evening, we had reservations at another of our favorite Disney World restaurants, Whispering Canyon at the Wilderness Lodge.  This was a restaurant that I first discovered during a one night stay at the hotel, just a year or so after it had first opened.  At the time, the restaurant was fairly unknown and we got lunch there without any real idea what to expect.  It now one of the best known restaurants at Disney World, but it still remains one of our favorites.

Even the time while waiting for a table at this restaurant is more kid friendly than most.  In the lobby area, they have a big table with a large collection of Lincoln Logs for kids (and grown-up kids) to play with while waiting.  This is something our son finds particularly fun, since he has lots of Lincoln Logs at home as well and plays with them pretty regularly.  He especially enjoyed getting some help from his Aunt, who seemed to have fun playing with them too.

Whispering Canyon is essentially an old western show at a restaurant.  The servers and other staff all stay in western character and  maintain a very fun, extremely rowdy (and sometimes rather loud) atmosphere.  The menu is mainly barbecue with the featured meal the all-you-can-eat Canyon Skillet, which includes BBQ ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket, BBQ chicken, and traditional side dishes including mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, beans, corn bread, and salad.  This is all served family style and you can request more of anything.  While they do have various ala-carte selections on the menu as well, we all ordered the skillet as we usually do.

While there are a couple items included that I’m not entirely crazy about, there is so much food offered that it doesn’t matter much.  In particular, I don’t really like the way they spice the chicken very much and I’m also not that fond of the apple vinaigrette dressing used on the salad (I generally don’t like sweet dressings), but there are other items that provide more than enough to fill me up.  I especially really like the pulled pork and the beef brisket.

Another favorite feature at Whispering Canyon is that it is, I think, the only restaurant that I have ever been to that offers free refills on milkshakes.  They use fairly small glasses for them, so the refills are needed, but it is nice being able to basically pick how much you want.  They also have a pretty good selection of flavors and you can switch to different ones on the refills, if you wish.  I particularly like the orange shakes, which I find especially refreshing and go rather well with the barbecue.

One of the regular activities at the restaurant is broomstick horse races around the restaurant for the kids.  This year was the first time our son was really into it, although last year he did kind of half-heartedly participate.  This year, he was pretty much looking forward to it the whole time and took part with a huge amount of enthusiasm.  Of course, one of the funnier parts of the whole thing is all the parents (or grandparents) chasing the kids around the restaurant with cameras.

Day 7: Breakfast with Donald and Date Night at Downtown Disney

Donald’s Safari Breakfast at Tusker House

Our second character meal of the trip was on Thursday morning at Tusker House in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. This restaurant was converted from a counter service location to a buffet a couple years ago.  We had the lunch buffet (which isn’t a character meal) last year, but this was our first time there for breakfast.  We had also done the previous incarnation of the character meal when it used to be held in the Dinoland USA section of the park in previous years.

This breakfast actually turned out being the one mistake we had made in scheduling out our dining reservations.  Planning an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet the morning after a heavy all-you-can-eat barbecue dinner simply wasn’t a very good idea.  I ended up not eating all that much at this meal and overall can only give a very limited perspective on the food.

Our reservation was right at park opening, which meant that we were actually allowed into the park a bit early.  One of the entry turnstiles was labeled with a sign inviting those with Tusker House reservations and they had a castmember there to check names off the reservation list before letting guests into the park.  More castmembers were stationed along the path to the restaurant to help guide guests to the restaurant.  It was really kind of cool walking through the nearly empty park before it opened.

As with our breakfast at Chef Mickey, they guided us over to do a family photo before taking us to our table.  The featured character at the Tusker House breakfast is Donald Duck and this time the photo was actually with the costumed character instead of with a plywood cutout like it was at the other restaurant.  As before, I didn’t really feel all that comfortable with asking them to take a photo with my own camera as well, but I really wish I had in retrospect.  I didn’t realize that this pre-meal photo was the only opportunity to visit with Donald at the breakfast named for him.

During the meal, we had visits from Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck, and Goofy (all dressed in safari outfits), but Donald did not circulate through the restaurant.  The character interaction was generally fine, but nothing particularly memorable.  I did kind of wish that I had given a bit more thought to which characters appeared at which character meals as the ones we ended up scheduling generally featured the same ones.

As I mentioned, I didn’t eat very much at this meal, but the choices seemed to be pretty standard breakfast buffet options, very similar to what was offered at Chef Mickey.  One highlight of the meal was the “jungle juice” that is served with the meal.  This is a mixture of lemonade and orange, pineapple, and mango juice and was extremely tasty.  I had several glasses of it and my son absolutely loved it as well.

I did have one big complaint about the food.  One egg dish that they offered was labeled simply as a “ham & cheese scramble” and definitely looked like something to my taste.  I took a good sized helping and didn’t discover that it also contained onions until after I had taken a big bite of it.  I have a pretty high sensitivity to onions where even a fairly small quantity can give me some pretty severe indigestion.  I realize that this probably isn’t an extremely common food allergy/sensitivity, but I also don’t see why it would hurt for them to add the words “with onions” to the sign that they had in front of the dish.

Pizzafari

For lunch, we wanted something very light, particularly since we had a pretty big dinner planned for that evening.  We ended up going to Pizzafari, where we realized that we could get away with using our dining credits to get enough food for all of us to share, including my parents and sister who weren’t on the plan.  We ordered two pepperoni pizza meals, which was enough for each of us to have 1-2 slices.  The meals also came with a couple salads and desserts, giving us a bit more food.  We did still get a full child’s meal for my son.  This proved to be plenty of food for all of us.   The pizza was typically bland Disney theme park pizza, but edible.

Fulton’s Crab House

Ever since we started doing trips with our son, my wife and I have always tried to schedule one date night dinner together while my parents babysit.  With Animal Kingdom typically closing fairly early (5pm in the off season), I realized that night would be a good time to schedule this.  With the trip taking place just a week after Christmas, I clandestinely made the babysitting arrangements with my parents (their response when I asked was “We thought you’d never ask!”) and the dining reservation.  I printed out a copy of reservation confirmation, put  it in a box, and then wrapped it and placed it under the tree for her to open on Christmas morning.

After doing some research and exploring a number of options, I ended up making a reservation at Fulton’s Crab House in Downtown Disney.  At first, it might seem like a bit of an odd choice since my wife won’t eat any kind of seafood, but she actually has something of a fondness for seafood restaurants as they pretty much always offer really good steaks, which she absolutely loves.  The restaurant had the added advantages that it was somewhere we hadn’t been before and it is also one of the few Disney World restaurants left that do not take the dining plan making it a fairly easy reservation to get.  I already knew we weren’t going to use a dining credit for this meal, as this gave us one more table service reservation than we had credits.

One challenge to this choice of restaurant was the fact that Animal Kingdom and Downtown Disney are at opposite ends of the Walt Disney World property, meaning that it can take a while to get from one to the other.  This is compounded by the fact that Disney does not run any direct buses between the theme parks and Downtown Disney (probably to discourage people from abusing the free parking at Downtown), meaning that you have to first take a bus to one of the resort hotels and then transfer.

We underestimated the time a bit and ended up about 20 minutes late for our reservation.  Fortunately, I suspect they were pretty used to that, as they didn’t indicate it was a problem at all and we were still seated immediately.  Part of our mistake was choosing Saratoga Springs as the transfer resort.  We picked it because there was a bus already loading when we walked up to the bus stop and because it seemed to make sense, knowing it was the closest resort to Downtown Disney.  What we hadn’t thought about (but should have since we stayed there last time), was that there are quite a few bus stops within Saratoga Springs, which adds a fair amount to the travel time.  It also didn’t help that we needed a restroom stop when we got to Saratoga Springs and it took a little longer to find one than we had expected.  In retrospect, we definitely should have transferred at one of the single bus stop resorts instead.

Fulton’s is located in the riverboat-shaped building in Downtown Disney.  This was originally known as The Empress Lilly  (names for Walt Disney’s wife) and contained a couple restaurants operated by Disney until the mid-90s.  The building was then leased to another restaurant company (Levy Restaurants) that refurbished the structure and re-opened it as Fulton’s.  It definitely makes for one of the most appealingly unusual decors at Downtown Disney.  Our table was on the second level and had a great view across the lake.

As I mentioned, my wife doesn’t like seafood at all and, thus, was very happy to order the New York Steak.  She was very happy with that selection, saying it was one of the best steaks she’d had in a while.  She gave me a little taste of it and it definitely was very good and tender with lots of flavor.

While I don’t like most kinds of regular fish, I really like shellfish a lot.  At a restaurant that had the words “Crab House” in its name, it wasn’t hard at all to decide to order the Alaska King Crab Legs for dinner.  The crab legs were absolutely terrific, with a good flavor that wasn’t too strong.  Other than one time several years ago at a high-end wharf-side restaurant in Seattle, the crab legs that I had at Fulton’s were the best I remember having.

The only minor complaint that I had was that the melted butter came in a container so shallow that it had all spilled by the time the plate was served to me.  The server was quick to replace it while indicating that this happened pretty often.  It wasn’t a big deal to me since I like to use butter with crab legs, but I know some people who don’t and probably wouldn’t have been happy to have it spilled all over the plate.  They should replace the containers with ones that don’t spill as easily.

At the beginning of the meal, they bring out a plate of crackers with a crab and creamed cheese based spread.  This spread was absolutely wonderful.  When they brought it out, they also gave us a card with the recipe on it, so I would imagine that they had received lots and lots of requests for that in the past.  Since it contained crab, my wife wasn’t interested in it at all, but I had no problem finishing it all myself.  They also brought out some fresh bread with butter, so my wife was very happy with that.

Ghirardelli Soda Fountain

While Fulton’s did offer a few desserts that sounded pretty good, we decided to instead go across the way to the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain to get ice cream sundaes.  This turned out to be a great choice.  We were both able to get really good (and fairly large) sundaes customized to our taste and the price was actually a bit less than we probably would have paid to split a dessert at Fulton’s.  The only small down side was that we were only able to find a table outdoors, but fortunately this was the one day of our trip where the weather had warmed up a little bit, making that tolerable.

Day 8: Dinner with the Fishes

Contempo Cafe

For our last full day at Walt Disney World, our main plans were to generally take it easy, but try and catch up with a few attractions that we hadn’t managed to see previously.  We were up and ready to go by mid-morning, so we decided to go over to the Contempo Cafe to get breakfast before heading out to the parks.

Just like at dinner time, the order for the main entree was placed using the touch-screen kiosks and then drinks or other items are gathered and taken to the cash register to pay.  My wife and I both ordered the French Toast while our son got the kid’s meal with Mickey Mouse shaped waffles.  The food was ready pretty quickly and tasted fine, although we found that the bacon was relatively flavor-less, just like at the previous breakfasts we had attended.

One kind of strange thing with breakfast purchased using dining plan counter service credits is that it comes with two drinks instead of a drink and dessert like you get at other meals.  I guess that does make sense for some, since many people might want both juice and coffee with breakfast.  Since none of us are coffee drinkers, though, it would have been much nicer if there had been an option of getting a pastry or something like that instead of the second drink.  What we ended up doing was each getting a bottle of water as our extra drink and then saving them for use later.

Sunshine Seasons (at The Land)

Since we had a somewhat late and larger than usual breakfast and had reasonably early (6pm) dinner reservations, we decided to use up some of our snack credits for a very light lunch.  After a short visit to Disney Hollywood Studios to see the “Lights, Motors, Action!” stunt show, we had arrived at Epcot around 2pm.  We then headed over to The Land pavilion, since we knew the Sunshine Seasons food court there had a pretty broad selection and we could likely come up with good choices for snacks.

My wife and I both ended up getting pastries from the bakery while our son had a pre-packaged fruit plate.  My wife and I also got soft drinks while our son had a bottled Poweraid.  We were able to get all of these items using snack credits and it worked out to a pretty reasonable light meal.  It was probably the best single use of snack credits that we had on the trip.

Coral Reef

Dinner on Friday was at Coral Reef, the restaurant adjacent to the Living Seas pavilion at Epcot.  This was one of our son’s two special requests for restaurants and, unfortunately, the only one we were actually able to do since Crystal Palace (his other choice) was closed for refurbishment.  He had especially enjoyed watching the fish and other sea creatures at Coral Reef during a previous visit there, so he was excited to go again.

Of all the dinners that we had with the entire family on this trip, I think this was the best overall experience.  The atmosphere was as much fun as we remembered and the food and service were both excellent.  While we had enjoyed our previous visit, this one really made a pretty strong impression and I suspect this will move much higher on our list for repeat visits.

While still nominally a seafood restaurant, Coral Reef has shifted its menu in recent years to have a little more broad variety.  I’d guess that only about half the entrees are now seafood and I seem to recall that those were all items like tuna or salmon, without any shellfish options.  All of the adults in our party ended up opting for the New York Strip Steak.  Even my wife, who had ordered steak at Fulton’s the night before, decided that she didn’t want to watch everyone else eating steak without having one herself.  She decided it was hardly a hardship to have steak two nights in a row.

The steak was very tender and flavorful and was cooked exactly to my liking.  The side dishes with the steak were roasted potatoes and a watercress salad, both of which I found very enjoyable and actually finished completely.  The salad was served with a light vinaigrette dressing that gave it some extra flavor without overwhelming it.

Since it is no longer included with the dining plan, I decided to skip an appetizer at this meal, both to save some room for dessert at well as to save the extra cost.  During my previous visit, I had the lobster bisque, which I enjoyed and a couple members of our party ordered it this time as well.  One of those that ordered it was our 6-year-old (appetizer was included on the kid’s menu), who I don’t think has ever found a soup that he doesn’t like.  While lobster bisque is not an item that most would think of as kid-friendly, he pretty much gobbled it right down and seemed to enjoy it immensely.

The Chocolate Wave 

For dessert, I opted for The Chocolate Wave, which is one of the restaurant’s signature desserts.  It is a dark chocolate cake served warm with a Grand Marnier based filling.  It was absolutely wonderful and a great ending to an excellent meal.  Others in our party had ice cream sundaes or the Cremé Brulée and everyone seemed quite happy with their selection.

Of course, the setting is one of the big attractions of this restaurant and we were fortunate to be seated at a table on the first level of the restaurant, fairly close to the aquarium glass.  We were in the second row of tables rather than directly up against the glass, but still had an excellent view of the marine life.  Our only minor complaint was that the large curved booth was a bit cramped for our party of six, but it was definitely tolerable.

The service was very good, with a server that was both attentive and courteous.  We did have a minor issue where the soft drinks didn’t taste right when they first came out.  It tasted like the carbonation had run out or the mixture was off.  The server told us that she would get us replacements from “upstairs” and those were fine.  There was one other occasion where she indicated that something else needed to be retrieved from “upstairs” and it became a bit of a running joke in our meal.  I don’t think we ever did figure out exactly what “upstairs” meant in this context.

Day 9: Hawaiian Breakfast and Returning Home

Lilo & Stitch Best Friends Character Breakfast at ‘Ohana

On our trips, it has become a tradition to schedule one last table-service or buffet breakfast for the morning of the day that we travel home.  We have always scheduled flights for late in the day (departing in the 5-7pm range), which has made this possible.

Since we stayed at the Contemporary this time, we decided to go to the character breakfast at ‘Ohana, a short monorail ride over at the Polynesian Resort.  This is an all-you-can-eat breakfast, where the food is served family-style.  The meal includes standard breakfast items like scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, fried potatoes, waffles, and various fruits and breads.  During the meal, you can ask for more of any items as needed.  They also served what they called “aloha juice”, which I think was pretty much the same thing as the “jungle juice” that had been served at Tusker House.

One advantage of this type of meal over a typical buffet is that there is a little more room for special requests.  Specifically, I and a couple other members of our party prefer eggs to be cooked very well done (not runny at all).  They were very willing to accommodate that request and actually brought out some that were less well-done as well, for the one member of our party that preferred them that way.

Fitting with the Hawaiian theme of the hotel and restaurant, the featured characters at the meal were Lilo and Stitch.  Both visited our table, as did Mickey Mouse and Pluto.  Once during the meal, the characters invited the kids to join in a conga line while “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” (from the movie Lilo and Stitch) played on the sound system.  I think our son was pretty worn out by this point in the trip, though, and he declined to take part in that. 

As with the other character meals, they did have us take a family photo before we were shown to our table.  Strangely, the photo at this restaurant was taken against a fairly generic tropical backdrop and did not involve any characters at all, either costumed or a cut-out.  Because of the generic nature of the pictures, the package was even less tempting than at the other locations.

Captain Cook’s Snack Company

Usually we make one last visit to a theme park (typically The Magic Kingdom) after our breakfast on the last day of the trip.  We had originally planned to do that on this trip as well, but I think we had simply had enough of the cold weather.  The temperature had taken another nosedive on that last day and there had even been some hail and sleet in the early morning.  We finally decided to just stay indoors wandering around the monorail resorts until time to leave for the airport.

We didn’t need to catch the bus to the airport until around 4pm and we still had one counter service credit each left to use for our lunch.  Our first thought was to have one more meal at the Contempo Cafe, but we decided against that due to the temperature.  The 4th floor of the Contemporary (where the restaurant is located) is pretty much open to the elements due to the monorail track and it was rather cold there.  We finally decided to take the monorail back over to the Polynesian and have lunch at Captain Cook’s Snack Company, the quick service restaurant there.  We picked The Polynesian mainly because we knew you had to go outside to get from the monorail station to the quick service restaurant at the Grand Floridian.

Captain Cook’s has a similar set up to the Contempo Cafe, including the use of the touch screen ordering system.  The restaurant is a lot smaller and more cramped, though, and finding a table was a bit of a challenge.  The menu included burgers and pizzas (again referred to as flatbread) as well as some stir-fry choices.  My wife and I both ended up going with the pizzas again and they were basically identical to what we had at the Contempo Cafe earlier in the week.  The restaurant has a bakery case as well and we both had cupcakes for dessert, which were pretty good.

The meal at Captain Cook’s was adequate for our purposes, even if it wasn’t the most exciting final meal for our visit to Disney World.  I did get a sense that this was a restaurant in need of some remodeling, as it definitely seemed pretty outdated and cramped compared to Contempo Cafe or even Roaring Fork, the quick service restaurant at the Wilderness Lodge, where we have eaten a number of times on previous trips.

The Return Home and Conclusions

When reviewing the dining plan status printed on our lunch receipt, I found that we still had six snack credits remaining.  During the last hour before our bus to the airport arrived, I went back up to the Contempo Cafe and used those snack credits to buy three brownies and three Mickey Mouse shaped Rice Crispy Treats.  Actually, the latter were labeled as “crisped rice treats”, so I suppose Disney hadn’t licensed the Kellogg’s trademark.  The brownies ended up working as a snack during the flight home and we ended up eating the Rice Crispy Treats a couple days later.

For the last few years we have flown Delta Airlines to and from Florida, mainly because they have a pretty convenient schedule for direct flights.  Like all the airlines, they have cut way back on the complimentary food services on most of their flights.  On at least one previous trip, this had been pretty rough as we had really not had anything more than small bags of peanuts or pretzels during our flights and we had been really starving once we arrived.  Fortunately, they now offer pretty decent $5 snack boxes that include some cheese, crackers, salami, and cookies.  These aren’t anything too fancy, but they at least helped to make it through the flight. I suppose our last meal of the vacation was a fairly late night dinner purchased at a Wendy’s drive-thru on the way home from the airport. 

Overall, I think we ate really well on this vacation and enjoyed a good mix of re-visits to old favorites as well as a couple new choices.  The dining plan continued to work for us, once again helping to facilitate a trip full of nice meals.  As our son gets older and starts enjoying a broader range of attractions, I suppose that dining could become less of a focal point of our vacation.  For now, this kind of trip report seems to provide the best way to provide a good overview of our trip.

Even on a direct flight, the travel time from Los Angeles to Orlando is nearly 5 hours.  When you add on the three hour time change (as well as the travel time to and from the airport), most of the arrival date is used up.  On our trips, we have typically arrived at Walt Disney World by around 8pm or so Florida time.  After a long day, this is usually a bit late to head into a theme park, so we instead usually look for a fun place for dinner somewhere that isn’t overly far from the resort where we are staying.

This year, our arrival night dinner was at T-Rex Cafe, the newly-opened dinosaur-themed restaurant at Downtown Disney.  Saratoga Springs is just a short bus ride from there, so trying out this new restaurant seemed like an ideal choice for the first night of our trip.  It did turn out to be a good choice and really helped us to transition from the high-stress of travel into the fun of themed entertainment.  Giving credit where credit is due, I should mention here that I was so hungry and hurried to get to dinner that I forgot to take my camera along to the restaurant.  All the pictures in this post were taken instead by my father (most during a previous visit to the restaurant) and I thank him for sharing them with me.

At the time of our visit, the restaurant was still officially in "soft opening" meaning that it hadn’t yet had its official grand opening and would still be operating with a few limitations.  The main result of this was that they were not yet taking any reservations, which did at least increase the potential for fairly long lines.  Even though it was a Saturday night, it was fairly late (around 9pm) by the time we got checked into our hotel room and then found our way over to the restaurant for dinner.  In addition, my sister just met us there instead of coming over to the hotel, so she was able to monitor the wait time and jump into the line as soon as we called and let her know we were on the way over.  This resulted in us getting a table almost immediately after we got there.

One other effect of the restaurant being in soft opening (and so new) was that we actually had a little bit of trouble finding it.  Even though the building is rather distinctive and rather hard to miss, Downtown Disney is pretty tightly packed which means that individual buildings aren’t visible from everywhere.  With the restaurant not yet having "officially" opened, it wasn’t yet on the maps or most of the directional signs.  We even asked a couple employees for directions, but the ones we asked didn’t really seem to know the answer.  We finally found it by simply starting to walk across the complex until we spotted it in the distance.

The restaurant is owned by Landry’s Restaurants, owner of a number of specialty chains.  In fact, the Downtown Disney location is actually their second T-Rex Cafe, with the first one having opened in Kansas City almost a year earlier.  The largest and best known of their chains is Rainforest Cafe and T-Rex is actually somewhat similar both in its menu and the overall atmosphere.  Having dined at the Rainforest Cafe location at the Disneyland Resort on several occasions (we’ve actually never been to either of their locations at Walt Disney World), we did have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

As with Rainforest Cafe, the elaborate theme and decoration is the main reason for a visit.  As the name suggests, the restaurant is decorated with a variety of prehistoric tableaus, including quite a few animatronic dinosaurs.  It is pretty hard to do the restaurant justice in text, so I’m going to let the photos do the majority of the talking here.   The restaurant really is rather impressive in person and I definitely think that they have taken the theme a few notches beyond Rainforest Cafe.

The animatronic dinosaurs are pretty impressive looking.  The range of motion on them is somewhat limited compared to what you would find in the World of Energy attraction at Epcot or the Jurassic Park ride at Universal, but they certainly are pretty impressive for a restaurant.  We were seated at a fairly large booth that was located right in front of a stegosaurus

Every once in a while, the lights dim and various lighting and sound effects are used to simulate a meteor shower taking place (this is similar to the occasional thunderstorms at Rainforest Cafe).  The animatronics are all programmed to become very agitated and go into lots of motion while this happens.  It is kind of silly, but also a bit amusing.  I did think they did this perhaps a bit too often, though.  It happened several times during our dinner and it got kind of old after the first couple. 

The main dining area includes a couple different themed areas, including one room with a sea theme (including a large fish tank, somewhat similar to the ones found at most Rainforest Cafes) and another area that is designed to look like a large ice cave.  In the sea themed area, I particularly liked the lights that were designed to look like jellyfish.

The food is generally adequate, if a bit overpriced, but it definitely isn’t a fine dining location.  The majority of the menu items are essentially fairly typical family-targeted diner items such as burgers and other sandwiches as well as a few pasta dishes and lower-end seafood and meat entrees.  As a starter, the waiter recommended the "Colosso Nachos", which we went ahead and ordered.  This is an absolutely huge appetizer that was pretty reasonably sized for our very hungry party of six, but probably would have been a bit too much for many people.

I had the "Tar Pit Fried Shrimp", which was pretty good although perhaps a bit bland.  The shrimp normally came with fries, but I saw that they had fresh-made potato chips offered with some entrees and I had them substitute those for me instead.  I was pretty happy with that choice.  My wife had the "Bronto Burger" with cheese and bacon and seemed happy with it.  She actually asked for the chips as well, but they ended up bringing her fries instead and she didn’t care enough to go to the trouble to ask them to correct it.  Our son ordered "Cosmos Cheesy Macaroni" off the children’s menu.  I don’t recall for sure, but I think the others in our party all went with either the shrimp or the burger as well.

My wife, son, and I all ordered specialty drinks in unusual souvenir containers that we could take home with us.  The drink I ordered was basically a blue raspberry flavored Icee served in a tall plastic bone-shaped cup.  It was pretty good, although the oddly shaped container actually made it a bit hard to get at the bottom part of the drink.  My wife and son both ordered strawberry smoothies that were served in orange plastic glasses with lights in the bottom.

Of course, there is also a gift shop area where you can purchase all the expected T-Rex Cafe branded merchandise, including t-shirts, hats, plush dinosaurs, and other similar items.  Right next to the gift shop area they also have a fossil dig area for kids to play in. This is a good-sized sandbox with various fake dinosaur bones hidden under the sand.  It is much smaller than the similar area in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, but still a fun diversion where kids could spend some time during the wait for a table or while parents are shopping.

At the back of the gift-shop is "Build-A-Dino", which is run by the Build-A-Bear Workshop chain.  Like those stores, guests select an un-stuffed plush which employees then stuff for them using a special machine.  The guest then sits down at a computer to select a name for their plush (and, of course, get on their email list…) and print out a birth certificate.  The prices weren’t really that bad (only $20 for a fairly large plush), so we let our son get one.  He seemed to have fun with it, although he was engaged in pretty serious concentration in the photos we took.

As far as themed restaurants of this type go, we thought this was a pretty good one.  As is typical of this kind of place, you pay a bit extra for the theme compared to other restaurants with a comparable food selection and quality, but the theme here is well-done and the place is a lot of fun.  I think it is pretty likely that we will visit again on future trips to Walt Disney World.

We have a membership in the Disney Vacation Club (DVC) timeshare and had originally planned to make a trip to Walt Disney World in late June right after our son completed his first year of pre-school.  After our October trip last year, we found that our son had become pretty skittish on rides and attractions and we decided it probably would be wise to delay our trip until December to increase the chance that he would grow out of that a bit.  Canceling that trip meant that we ended up with a number of DVC points that we had to use by August or end up forfeiting them.

My parents live in the Orlando area and they decided to come up to visit us during the same period that we had originally planned our Florida trip.  They were interested in staying down at the Disneyland Resort for a few days, so it then made sense to use up those points with a stay down there.  After researching, we discovered that we had the points available to cover the cost of a concierge-level room at Disney’s Grand Californian hotel for those 4 nights in June with enough left over for the 4th of July as well.  We had used points to stay there on July 4th for the last few years (avoiding the need to drive home after the fireworks) and it was very appealing to do that again this year while also having the chance to enjoy a longer, multi-day stay at the Grand Californian as well.

Instead of trying to test my memory with a day-to-day report on our visit, I’m going to categorize my report.  In this first part, I am going to concentrate on our dining experiences during the trip.  I’ll likely add additional parts to this over the next few days reporting on other aspects of the trip.

Character Dining

My parents arrived mid-afternoon on June 22 and we decided that a character dinner would be a good way to start the trip.  Around the 60 day mark before our trip, we made reservations at Goofy’s Kitchen (at the Disneyland Hotel) for that first-night dinner.  Our reservations were at 6pm and we were happy that they were able to seat us within about 5-10 minutes of our arrival at the restaurant.  Walk-up guests were being told that there was a 90 minute wait, so reservations are definitely a very good idea here.

Before seating, they gathered our family together for a photo with Pluto.  About halfway through the meal someone came to our table to try and sell us a pretty overpriced (around $40, if I recall) package of the photos.  They did the same thing when we did the character breakfast at PCH Grill later in the week (this time with Daisy Duck), so this must now be standard at the character meals.  In both cases, we declined as the packages were pretty costly and the photos weren’t that great.  I don’t remember encountering this there before (although it has been a while since we last did a character meal at DLR) and I don’t really care for this system.  I don’t mind the pre-meal photos, but I’d much rather they use Photopass to sell the photos.  At least at PCH, a CM did offer to also take a couple photos with our own camera, something that wasn’t offered at Goofy’s Kitchen.

The food at Goofy’s was ok, but nothing special.  This was consistent with our past experiences there.  We have always found that you definitely go there much more for the character-experience than for the food.  The food is definitely better than a low-end buffet like a Hometown Buffet, but I would also say it is closer to that than it to what you typically find at a high-end hotel buffet such as at the better Vegas hotels or at somewhere like a Hilton or a Hyatt.  Those used to the Walt Disney World character meals are also apt to be disappointed by Goofy’s based on our typical experiences.

The buffet does feature carved prime rib as a main entree and it was pretty decent.  On my first trip up there, I did get a piece that turned out to be quite a bit more rare than I generally like (and I prefer beef to be medium to medium-rare), but I can’t fault them too much for that since I didn’t specify a preference.  On a subsequent trip up there, I was easily able to get another slice that was more to my taste.  I do think they should probably ask before serving the meat that rare, but it still wasn’t that big a deal.  I did think the rest of the selection at the buffet was somewhat more limited than it should have been, which was not unexpected based on past visits.  For example, I was really surprised that they only offered one variety of roasted potatoes (which I couldn’t eat because they had onions) and didn’t even have the mashed potatoes and gravy that are usually commonplace at this kind of buffet.

I actually thought that the children’s section of the buffet was a better selection.  They had a couple different kinds of pizza, chicken strips, popcorn shrimp (I actually had quite a bit of this), macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti.  Our son actually completed finished off two pretty full plates of food, which was a larger meal than we are used to him finishing.  He especially liked the spaghetti and ate two pretty big helpings of that.

As I mentioned earlier, we also went to the character breakfast at the PCH Grill in the Paradise Pier Hotel.  This was something of a last minute decision on our part, with us making the reservations on Tuesday afternoon for breakfast on Wednesday morning.  Fortunately, this is a pretty easy character meal to get into, so we had no problems getting the reservation at pretty much our choice of time.  With 4 nights at the resort (and none of us being infrequent visitors to Disney theme parks), we were on a pretty leisurely visit and didn’t have breakfast until 10am.  The person taking our reservation actually asked several times if we really were sure that we wanted to have breakfast that late, so I got the impression that the demand for that time isn’t very high.

I was quite pleased with the food at the breakfast and would probably be inclined to recommend it over Goofy’s, at least if the food is a key consideration.  One of the best features of this buffet (which is actually standard at all the DLR breakfast buffets) is the omelette/eggs-to-order station.  I had a ham, cheese, and bacon omelette that was cooked exactly to my taste (I requested it well-done) and very good.  On a previous visit, we had found that they had pre-prepared scrambled eggs that were pretty bad, to the point where we thought they may have been made from powdered eggs.  We noticed that this time the only eggs they had on the regular buffet were a western-style scramble with all kinds of veggies and such mixed in.  For regular scrambled eggs, they cooked them to order.  My wife had some and, again, they came out exactly the way she likes them.

The rest of the buffet had most of the usual breakfast foods, including bacon, sausage, potatoes, waffles, pancakes, french toast, fruit and melon, and various pastries.  It was a good selection and the quality was generally high.  I particularly liked the bacon which was thick and had a strong smokey flavor.  A nice touch was that both the pancakes and the waffles were Mickey Mouse shaped and the waffles were offered in both larger waffles intended for adults and smaller ones intended for kids (or lighter eaters, I suppose).  Another really cool feature of the buffet was that they had a pitcher of fruit smoothies and plastic cups available.  These were a kind of citrus, banana mix which I found to be very tasty and refreshing.  I ended up going up for a couple refills on this.

I’ve talked about the food at both restaurants, but the character-interaction is obviously every bit as important at these buffets.  At Goofy’s Kitchen, we saw Goofy (of course…), Pluto, Chip & Dale, Baloo, Mulan, and Jasmine.  At PCH, we saw Daisy, Goofy, Pluto, Stitch, and Lilo.  Mickey Mouse doesn’t usually appear at any of the DLR character meals and we didn’t see Minnie at either one this time.  At Goofy’s Kitchen, Pluto did eventually circulate around to the tables, so I presume that some other character took over the arrival photos at some point.  We didn’t see Daisy circulate to the tables at PCH, even after Pluto took over the photo sessions mid-way through the meal (Pluto never circulated either).

As you might guess from those lists, the character greetings at both restaurants were pretty frequent, something that hasn’t always been the case at DLR character meals.  Both restaurants do unfortunately tend to have some stretches where no characters seem to be in the dining room at all, but fortunately they weren’t too long this time.  The overall experience at PCH is much more relaxed than at Goofy’s, where they occasionally stop to do the Macarana (using the “Tiki Room” version) or give kids a chance to pound on a bunch of plastic pots and pans.  The latter was something my son did enjoy quite a bit.  Goofy’s was also much more crowded and had a lot more occasions where all the characters were diverted for a bit for birthday parties.  The result was that the character visits tended to be shorter there.

Goofy’s Kitchen is a bit more expensive and guests are required to pre-pay before being seated, unlike at PCH where a check is brought at the end.  Goofy’s also automatically added a gratuity to the check for our group of 5, while it was left up to us at PCH.  It might seem surprising that the service was actually much more responsive and attentive at Goofy’s, but PCH really has a long-standing reputation for extremely poor service.  This was far from being our worst experience there from this standpoint, but we did tend to have to wave people down to remove used plates or get drink refills.

Table Service Dining

During our visits, we had 3 regular table service meals: lunch at the Blue Bayou, breakfast at Carnation Cafe, and dinner at the Catal Uva Bar at Downtown Disney.  All were very good and enjoyable experiences.  The only one we had a reservation for was the Blue Bayou (it is pretty much a necessity there), but we only had very short waits for our tables at any of the three.

Our breakfast at Carnation Cafe on Main Street was the morning of our first full day (Monday) and was actually the very first thing we did inside Disneyland itself.  I’ve always loved the location of this restaurant, which is an outdoor cafe right on Main Street itself.  It is a great atmosphere and extremely fun place to dine, particularly when the weather is nice.  I’ve not been too happy with their lunch or dinner menus for a while, so it was nice to have the opportunity for breakfast there.  The breakfast menu includes a nice selection of egg & meat platters, waffles, pancakes, etc.  I suspect most guests wouldn’t have much trouble finding something to their liking there.  I had the Mickey Mouse waffles, which were hot and fresh and very good.  Others in our party had the pancakes and the bacon and egg breakfast and everyone seemed happy with their choices.

Our lunch at Blue Bayou was on Tuesday afternoon.  The restaurant was refurbished a couple years ago with a new, upgraded kitchen.  At that time, it was upgraded to a higher-end “fine dining” location with quite a bit higher prices (Cafe Orleans took over as the lower-cost table service location in New Orleans Square), but also a reputation better food quality and a somewhat more upscale menu.  This was our first visit to the restaurant since this upgrade and we weren’t disappointed.  Three of the adults in our party all ordered the prime rib dinner and one ordered the pork chop.  I was happy to see that they actually offered a child’s portion of the prime rib as we have often complained about the tendency of Disney not to offer a kid’s version of adult entrees that our son would have enjoyed.  In this case, he decided he wanted the macaroni and cheese instead, but it is great to know prime rib is available to him.

We were all very happy with our selections.  The adult entrees were all served with the restaurant’s “wedge salad”, which is a wedge of iceberg lettuce topped with a light vinaigrette dressing.  I found it to be very good.  I do know that some people aren’t as fond of iceberg lettuce and I have read some concerns about whether that is really “high-end” enough for this kind of restaurant, but I prefer iceberg over other kinds of lettuce so it was very much to my own taste.

The prime rib was a good quality piece of meat and was cooked pretty much exactly right for the “medium” level that I had ordered.  The meat is served with a fairly strong wine-based sauce that I found complimented the flavor very well, although I do tend to really like beef served with that kind of sauce.  My wife was less enthusiastic about it and indicated that she would probably ask for it to be left off for future visits.  My mother was pretty happy with the pork chop as well.  I did try a small piece of it and can’t say it is something I would likely order there.  It is served with a sweet, apple-based sauce and I’m not generally a fan of most meats when served with a sweet sauce like that.  My mother does tend to like that better than I do and did really enjoy the entree.

On the last evening of our longer trip (Wednesday night), we made a somewhat spontaneous decision to have dinner at the downstairs Uva Bar at Catal in Downtown Disney.  My father had initially suggested Storyteller Cafe in the Grand Californian, but we hadn’t eaten at the Uva Bar for quite a while (and they had never eaten there) and I had heard from other friends that they had recently made a number of positive updates to their menu.  The restaurant was not overly crowded that evening and we were seated in the outdoors section almost immediately upon arrival.

When the restaurant had first opened, the downstairs location had initially specialized in tapas (smaller, appetizer-portions that are generally intended to be combined and/or shared).  They had generally moved away from this for a while, but have recently mostly returned to this format.  I typically find this to be a pretty appealing type of meal, particularly when there are a fair number of selections that are to my taste.

At this particular meal, I ordered three different items: BBQ ribs, garlic shrimp (which my father and I shared), and a “snack” type order of roasted almonds (my son ate quite a few of these as well).  Others at the table also ordered small Caesar salads and a few of us ordered strawberry smoothies to drink.

All of the items we ordered were excellent and we all left quite full.  My favorite item was the shrimp, which had a rich, garlicky flavor without allowing it to become overwhelming.  The ribs are actually served in fairly large portions for a tapas style restaurant and likely would be plenty of food for light eaters or for those not looking for an overly large meal.  The meat on the ribs was very tender (pretty much falling off the bone) and the sauce was very good and not too heavy.

Service at all three of the table service restaurants was generally attentive and friendly.  Blue Bayou has a reputation for somewhat spotty service, but that was not our experience at all on this visit.  We did find the food to come out a little bit slowly at the Uva Bar, especially for that type of restaurant.  While Catal is one of my favorite restaurants, we have often found that our one small complaint has been that the meal pacing has been a little off on many of our visits to both the upstairs and downstairs parts of the restaurant.  It wasn’t a huge flaw, but worth noting, particularly for those that are looking for a somewhat quicker meal, such as before going back into the parks.

Grand Californian Craftsman’s Club (concierge lounge)

We also had two breakfasts and a several snacks in the Craftsman’s Club, which is the special lounge that is only accessible to concierge level guests at the Grand Californian.  The Craftsman’s Club provides a number of different buffet-style food offerings, including continental breakfast in the morning, late morning/early afternoon tea time, late afternoon wine and cheese, and evening desserts.

For breakfast, they offer a variety of pre-packaged breakfast cereals as well as a buffet of fresh fruit and pastries.  The buffet also has bread and bagels and an available toaster.  Various juices, milk, and coffee are available to drink (the club also always has mini-refrigerators stocked with small bottles of water, Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite).  I particularly liked the croissants, which were very fresh and light.  In fact, on the morning we checked out after our first stay, we ended up stopping in and picking up one of these for each of us as a quick, on-the-road breakfast before our drive down to Carlsbad for a day at Legoland.

The buffet at the tea included a few different types of mini-sandwiches, chocolate-dipped strawberries (we ate a lot of these…), more fresh fruit, a couple different kinds of cookies, and freshly-baked scones that were served warm.  For the scones, some fresh berry jam was provided as well.  Obviously, various types of tea was available as well, although neither my wife nor I are tea drinkers so we didn’t try any.  One nice touch is that they also had a big container of Goldfish crackers (and small bowls to put them in) as an extra kid-friendly snack.  These were also available during the wine and cheese time later in the day.  Our 4-year-old really enjoyed those, although I admit my wife and I ate quite a few of those too.

The afternoon wine and cheese buffet includes a good selection of different types of cheese and crackers.  Most of the cheeses offered are of the somewhat more gourmet varieties, including various soft-cheeses, brie, and even blue cheese.  This is very much to my taste, although my wife expressed some disappointment that they didn’t offer more in the way of simpler cheddar or other more mainstream types of cheese.  A number of different choices of wines were available by the glass and I believe I saw that they offered beer as well.  The alcoholic drinks are served by the hosts and hostesses on request, but the drinks were all complementary and they were reasonably generous about offering refills.

The last food selection is a dessert buffet that is offered in evening.  This buffet included a nice selection of cookies, cakes, and other sweets.  We were only at the hotel early enough for this on the last night of the first visit (since we were in the parks the other evenings), but we did enjoy picking out a selection of sweets to take back to our room and enjoy while we watched the fireworks from our balcony.

The Craftsman’s Club is generally a really nice benefit available to the concierge-level guests and I do think it does somewhat help to justify the higher cost of the room.  The one criticism that I do have is that I really think they could use some adjustments to the hours and schedules.  First of all, the club closes at 10pm every night, which is especially early when you consider that one or both parks is typically open later than that a fairly large percentage of the time.  It would be very nice to be able to make some use of the club upon return to the hotel after the nighttime entertainment in the parks.  If nothing else, we would have liked very much to have had access to the complimentary sodas and water.  It doesn’t help that pretty much everything in the hotel (except the bar) closes at 10, making it pretty difficult to find drinks or snacks that late.

We also thought that they were perhaps a bit too strict with the ending times for the various buffets, particularly breakfast.  Officially, the breakfast ends at 10am.  On July 5, we made it over there around 9:55 and found that the hosts and hostesses were strongly pushing a “last call” for everyone to get any food that they wanted.  Promptly at 10, they very quickly started gathering up all of the food.  This is despite the fact that there were still quite a few people still in there eating and the tea doesn’t start until 11.  To their credit, I did see the hosts and hostesses make a few trips to the back room to get additional items for people after the food had been put away, but it did seem like a bit more flexibility would be in order here, possibly even keeping the breakfast foods out until pretty much time for the tea to start.

Other Restaurants

I don’t see much need to go into too many details about our experiences at the more casual food locations in the parks and hotels (particularly with this post approaching epic length), but there were a couple things that I did want to highlight.

One of our happiest discoveries on this trip is that they have now carved out a portion of the underutilized MuppetVision 3D queue area to build a fairly good-sized dining area for Award Wieners in the Hollywood Pictures Backlot section of California Adventure.  This location has always had a pretty good selection of different types of hot dogs and sausages, with my particular favorite being an Italian sausage that they serve covered with a meaty marinara sauce and lots of cheese.  They also have chili cheese dogs that other members of our party enjoyed as well as plain hot-dogs for those looking for something simpler.

While we had liked the food on previous visits, this was a location that we visited extremely rarely due to the seating.  Previously, they only had about a half-dozen or so tables along the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.  These tables were very difficult to get and you usually ended up having to juggle the food on a bench or curbside, which was particularly difficult with the messier sandwiches.  The new dining area is pretty large and is covered and was fairly cool even on the pretty hot day that we ate there.  The Muppet-theming for the attraction also provides a kind of fun atmosphere.  This dining area is a great addition and will likely make this location a much more frequent choice for us.

The other casual dining experience that is worth mentioning was at French Market in New Orleans Square on the 4th of July.  This restaurant has just introduced a pretty heavily revamped menu that eliminated a number of the location’s previous signature items (including the fried chicken) in favor of a number of new entrees.  One of those new items is carved roast beef with a peppercorn au-jus sauce, something that is a particular favorite of my wife and me and, thus, something we really wanted to try.

The beef was quite tasty, although it did have a bit of a pre-prepared look and feel to it.  Nobody is going to mistake the beef for fresh carved, but it still was good for this kind of location.  The sauce is definitely very heavy on the pepper and other spices.  We both liked it very much, although it is perhaps a bit of a heavy item for a theme park.  The beef is served with mashed potatoes and a side of vegetables.  Since the veggies weren’t appealing to me (I generally don’t like cooked veggies), I asked them to leave them off.  Instead they gave me double potatoes.  That turned out to be pointless, though, as one bite quickly told me that they had onions mixed in with them.  Onions tend to badly upset my stomach, which meant that I was unable to eat the potatoes at all.  Note that the potatoes also had cheese mixed in with them, which isn’t a problem for me but might be for some people.  While the new menu at French Market isn’t bad and I did generally like the roast beef, I think they do need to rework the options for side dishes a bit.  At the very least, I do think they need to offer some form of plain potatoes.

Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner

During the 4-night stay at the Disneyland Resort, we did have one meal that was off of Disney property.  Nearly 8 years ago, my wife and I had our wedding rehearsal dinner at Mrs. Knotts’ Chicken Dinner Restaurant at Knott’s Berry Farm.  My mother had remembered really enjoying that dinner and really wanted to eat there again on this trip.  It had actually been a few years since my wife, son, and I had been there either, so we were definitely very open to the idea.  We ended up driving over there for dinner on Monday evening.

Since it was a weeknight and we headed over there fairly early in the evening, we only had a very short wait for a table.  For dinner, we all decided to get the fried chicken dinner, which comes with several large pieces of chicken, a big helping of mashed potatoes, a side of either corn or spinach, a cup of chicken noodle soup, a side-salad, and dessert.    The child’s version of the chicken dinner included a couple drumsticks along with mashed potatoes and corn.  A bowl of Jello was provided at the same time that the adults received our soups and salads.  For dessert, the kid’s meal came with a Snoopy-shaped ice cream bar.  Since our son is a big soup eater, we also ordered an extra cup of soup for him.  The waitress had indicated they would have to charge extra for that, but it didn’t show up on the final bill.

At the start of the meal, they bring out a basket of fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits.  The buttermilk flavor, which most of us in our family don’t like very much,  is quite strong on them.  Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that before trying them.  For most of us, it wasn’t a big deal, but unfortunately my mother said that it left a pretty bad taste in her mouth that kind of reduced her enjoyment of the rest of the meal.  My wife and I didn’t really care much for them either, but didn’t have such a strong reaction to them.  My father and my son both did seem to like them quite a bit, though.

We did find that the pacing of the meal was not the best.  After ordering, it seemed like quite a bit of time went by before they brought out the soups and salads.  After that, they were then much too quick to bring out the main course.   We were all pretty hungry upon arrival and got a bit frustrated waiting for the first course to arrive (my wife actually ended up eating several of the biscuits even though she didn’t like them very much) and then most of us didn’t have enough time to completely finish both the soup and the salad before we had to turn our attention to the main course.  I absolutely love their chicken noodle soup, so it was the salad that I ended up largely skipping over.

The restaurant specializes in various fruit pies for dessert, with the boysenberry pie being their specialty.  On the night we were there, they had a special pie available that was a mix of apple and boysenberry filling.  That is what I ended up ordering and I found it to be absolutely delicious.  The two flavors really blended very well.  My parents both ended up ordering dishes of boysenberry sherbet for their desserts and they both found that to be very refreshing.  My wife had an ice cream sundae, which she also enjoyed.

Although we had a few complaints, we still found the overall food quality to be generally quite high and the prices quite reasonable (the full meal is around $15).  The restaurant is still one of the better bargains in the area and we thought it was a worthwhile side-trip during our stay.

The Taste of California Marketplace offers a selection of fairly small, sampler-style portions of a number of different food items, all designed by California-based chefs and intended to represent the state’s culinary culture.  Small cups of California-made wines and beers are also offered to accompany these.  All of these items are available at the now-defunct Lucky Fortune Cookery counter-service restaurant, which is located in the Pacific Wharf section of the park.  This location provides a good infrastructure for the food service as well a large dining area (shared with two permanent restaurants with a great deal of available tables and chairs.  It makes for a much more convenient location than the multiple locations that were used during the first year of the event and which are still in use at the Epcot event.

The sampler-sized portions served at the Marketplace mean that the typical guest is likely to try a variety of choices, particularly if the items are being ordered as a meal rather than as a quick snack.  I ended up ordering 5 of the different food selections as well as one cup of wine.  Another couple that was dining with us eventually ordered and shared at least one of every item offered.

I initially ordered one each of the chicken and beef California skewers, the Festival Cheese Plate and a cup of Mirassou Chardonnay on a first trip to the counter.  The Marketplace also has the usual selection of soft drinks available and, since it was a hot day and the wine doesn’t really work as a thirst-quencher, I did order a Coke as well.  After finishing those, I was still hungry enough to try a couple more items, so I went back up and ordered the Pepper Crusted Beef Tenderloin Slider sandwich and, for dessert, the Seasonal Berry Trifle.

I particularly liked the skewers, which included the meat and a few various vegetables with a sweet chipotle glaze.  The sauce was fairly strong, but I found it to be extremely tasty and to really complement the flavor of the meat.  I generally don’t like cooked vegetables, and I have a strong sensitivity to onions, so I didn’t really eat too much other than the meat.  That did make the portions especially small for these (a common problem for me with skewers), but I did really enjoy the portions I did eat.

The cheese plate was ok, although I tend to like somewhat softer textured cheeses than most of the ones chosen for this platter.  For one thing, I tend to find softer cheeses to be a bit more flavorful while these were a waxy.  The one big exception was what they described as a huntsman cheddar bleu, which I thought was absolutely delicious.  I love bleu cheese and it mixed with the cheddar to form a flavor that I found tremendously appealing.  The cheese plate also came with some seedless purple grapes which were very fresh and at just the right level of ripeness.  The platter also featured a good sized pita crisp.  I’m not really much of a wine expert, so I asked the clerk to recommend a wine that would go well with my order.  She suggested the Chardonnay as a good compliment for the cheese plate and I found that it did go well with it.

My least favorite of the items that I tried was the Pepper Crusted Beef Tenderloin Slider.  This miniature sandwich was served on a small brioche roll and also included onion crisps and what Disney described as a citrus mojo criollo sauce.  Due to my sensitivity to onions, I had to remove most of them from my sandwich, although I was able to leave a few on as I’ve found that fried onions generally don’t affect me quite as much as ones that are raw or cooked in other ways.  That meant that I was able to get at least a bit of the flavor that they added to the sandwich.  The sauce was very heavy on garlic, though, and I strongly expect that one’s taste for this sandwich will be very much measured by one’s tolerance for garlic.  I generally do like garlic and initially found that I really liked the flavor.  About half-way through the sandwich, though, I found that I had pretty much had my fill of it.  The friends we were with pretty much picked this as their favorite item, though, so certainly your mileage my vary.

For dessert, I had actually asked for the Ghirardelli Chocolate Marquise, but was surprised when they gave me the trifle instead.  When I checked the receipt, I found that it did show the trifle as well, so I guess that the cashier must have hit the wrong button.  Since the trifle was generally to my taste as well, I decided not to bother trying to get it corrected.  The berries were strawberries and were very fresh and nicely sweetened by both the vanilla custard and light whipped cream.  The pound cake was a tad more dry, but still tasted very good.  Overall, it was a good dessert, although I would probably be interested in still trying the other one if I make it back there before the end of the festival.

One thing that should be noted is that the marketplace does not make for an inexpensive meal.  The items are priced fairly high for the portion sizes and getting enough food for a filling lunch can quickly run up in costs.  They do honor the customary discounts for annual passholders and Disney cast members (employees), which can lower the cost a tad if you qualify.  Without discounts or tax, the food items that I ordered came to a total of $24.50.  The glass of wine was another $3 and the Coke was the usual $2.50 or so (I don’t recall the exact amount).  Those prices for just one person are in the same ballpark as lunch at a fairly high-end table-service restaurant, although with service and presentation that are more in line with fast food. 

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I visited with my family, but I haven’t mentioned anything about my wife and son’s food choices.  The reason for that is that neither of them ended up ordering from the Marketplace.  The food choices just didn’t really appeal to my wife’s tastes and we also decided that the combination of the high prices and fairly exotic selections were questionable for a 4-year-old, even though our son does tend to be a fairly adventurous eater.  This was where the Food and Wine Festival’s setting inside of a Disney theme park was very much an advantage.  It was only a very short distance for them to go over to the Farmer’s Market counter service restaurant where both were able to get chicken strips for lunch. 

The close proximity between the somewhat upscale offerings of the festival and the more traditional theme park offerings served us well after lunch as well.  Our son did get restless with the somewhat longer, more formal lunch (and he was in a bit of a cranky mood anyway), but afterward  we were able to easily take him to do things that were more enjoyable to him.  Had we not been visiting with a small child, we might have been more interested in exploring more of the seminars and other events associated with the festival.  Instead, we park-hopped over to Disneyland where he got to visit with Mickey and Pluto, ride the tea cups and the carrousel, and then finally see the "Enchanted Tiki Room" show before we headed home for the day.  It was an extremely hot day, so we were fortunate that lines were pretty short allowing us to do quite a few things in just a couple hours.

California Adventure had been pretty crowded that day, so we were expecting much larger crowds at Disneyland than we actually found when we got there.  I suspect the Food and Wine Festival is turning out to be a pretty good attractor for the park, although I’m also sure that the "2 for 1" deal for that gives 1-day at each park for one price is also bringing a lot of people in.  I would guess that most weekend visitors taking advantage of the deal likely go to Disneyland on Saturday and California Adventure on Sunday, which would account for at least some of what we saw.  I did notice that the lines for the regular restaurants in the Pacific Wharf area of the park were substantially longer than the lines at the Marketplace, which probably isn’t too surprising at the prices they were charging.

I would overall consider our experience with the Food and Wine Festival to be a positive one.  The food choices at the Marketplace made for a very enjoyable and interesting lunch, even if the prices were definitely somewhat inflated for what was being offered.  Still, it was an overall positive once-a-year experience and I could easily see going again next year.

My first experience at a Lawry’s restaurant was actually at their location in downtown Chicago to celebrate my 16th birthday.  It was almost 2 decades later before my next chance to eat at one of their restaurants, but it always stuck in my memory as one of my all-time favorite dining experiences.  Since that first trip to the Beverly Hills location (which is the original one in this format) a few years ago, it has become pretty much my wife’s and my first choice for "date night" special occasion dinners.

As you can probably guess from the name of the restaurant, Lawry’s specializes in prime rib.  In fact, when I made that first visit to the one in Chicago back in the mid-1980s, that was the only entree that they offered.  Back then, the only menu that they gave you (other then a wine list) was a small flyer listing the prices of the different sized cuts of prime rib.  If you wanted something other prime rib for dinner, then you needed to go somewhere else.

They are a bit more flexible now, with a few seafood entrees also available to accommodate anyone who ends up at the restaurant but doesn’t eat red meat.  If you don’t want prime rib, though, it still seems to me that there is little reason to go there unless you are accompanying someone else that is there for the prime rib.  They do now give you a full leather-bound menu that lists the various entree choices as well as giving full descriptions and prices for various side dishes.  We didn’t really spend too much time perusing the menu, though, as we both wanted prime rib dinners and already knew our preferences for side dishes from previous visits.

Part of the fun of a visit to Lawry’s is that the overall dining experience includes a fair amount of showmanship in the presentation.  The first course of the prime rib dinner is their "Famous Original Spinning Bowl Salad", which the server prepares right at the table.  Mixed greens, croutons, shredded beets, and bits of egg are placed into a large metal bowl.  The server then starts the bowl spinning as the salad dressing is mixed in.  The house dressing is a seasoned sherry wine based dressing.  I’m not sure of the exact ingredients, but I’m pretty sure that Lawry’s seasoned salt (invented for the restaurant and also widely available at supermarkets) is one of the key ones.  During our visits to the restaurant, we’ve never been offered (or wanted) any alternative dressings, so I don’t know if others are available.  My only minor complaint about the salad is that I tend to prefer a more straightforward iceberg lettuce salad to the mixed greens, but the dressing is so good and the presentation so much fun that I still really enjoy it.

After the salad course (which also comes with fresh baked sourdough bread), a carver wheels a large warming cart out which carries the prime rib and various side dishes.  The server then asks each diner to select what sized cut they want (my wife and I both went with the traditional "Lawry’s cut") and how well-done they want the meat to be.  The meat is then carved to order right there at the table.  Our experiences at the restaurant has been that the carvers are definite experts at what they do and the meat has always been cooked to precisely the right level.

The side dishes included with the prime rib dinner are mashed potatoes and gravy, a choice of several different types of vegetables, and Yorkshire pudding.  For an additional charge, you can substitute a baked potato, which is huge and available with a variety of different toppings (butter, sour cream, chives, bacon, cheese, etc.)  In the past, my wife and I have typically split one of the baked potatoes.  We actually ordered that again this time, but the server forgot about it when preparing our dinner plates and we decided to just let it go.  The mashed potatoes were actually quite good, served with a very thick and tasty beef gravy.  For our vegetables, we both got the creamed corn, which is very rich with lots of cream sauce.  I commented at one point that it was impressive how they took something relatively healthy like corn and made it highly unhealthy and fattening…

Prime rib has long been pretty high on my list of favorite foods and I honestly can’t think of anywhere else that I have ever found that makes it better, or even as good as, Lawry’s.  The meat is consistently very tender and flavorful and trimmed of most of the fat that is usually typical of prime rib.  It is seasoned prior to roasting with just enough Lawry’s seasoned salt to add a little bit of flavor without overwhelming the meat.  Of course, they obviously use a high quality cut of meat as well.  The Lawry’s cut is fairly large and typically served with the bone.  It is big enough that we almost always do have some leftovers to take home.

A number of different dessert options are available, but we opted to split a hot fudge sundae.  They continue the showmanship with the sundae, which is yet another item that is prepared at the table.  Their sundaes feature CC Brown’s Hot Fudge Sauce, originally created for a famous Hollywood Blvd. ice cream parlor.  The server brings out a cart with a good-sized dish of vanilla ice cream and then adds  hot fudge, whipped cream, and roasted almonds at the table.  A small pitcher with additional fudge is provided as well, allowing more to be added as needed while eating the sundae.  My wife doesn’t care for nuts (not allergic, just doesn’t like them) while almonds are one of my favorites, so the server was very accommodating about placing them on just one side of the sundae.  We probably should have just had her leave them on the side of the dish, though, as my wife said she did end up getting a few.

The total cost for our dinner for 2 came to just over $100 (before tip) for two Lawry’s cut prime rib dinners, 2 non-alcoholic speciality drinks (virgin strawberry daiquiris), and a hot-fudge sundae.  While that is fairly expensive, I don’t think the prices are unreasonable for a high-end steakhouse.   Obviously, the cost of a meal would likely be somewhat higher for those that prefer to have alcoholic beverages with their meal.

The Beverly Hills location is located on N. La Cienega Blvd., about 1/2 block north of Wilshire Blvd.  Parking is strictly valet and there really isn’t any opportunity for street parking in that area.  The service charge for the valet parking is $4.50.  I suspect the valets aren’t generally used to people tipping there (probably because of the service charge) as the one that retrieved our car seemed genuinely surprised when I handed him one.

The Lawry’s chain offers a VIP program that we have found to be a generally pretty good deal.  There is a one-time $25 fee to enroll in the program, but they automatically send you a $25 gift certificate with the membership card.  You then earn 1 point for every $1 spent and they send another $25 certificate every time you accumulate 250 points.  They send out bonus certificates for birthdays and anniversaries that entitle you to extra points.  When you use those bonus certificates, they also will send you a personalized season salt (for birthdays) or seasoned pepper (for anniversaries).  Generally, the accumulation of points is rapid enough that we have pretty much always had a $25 certificate to use when dining at one of their restaurants.

In addition to the Beverly Hills location and the previously mentioned one in Chicago, they also have similar restaurants in Dallas, Las Vegas, Tokyo, Singapore, and Taipei.  They also own two additional full-service restaurants in Southern California: Tam O’Shanter Inn in Glendale and Five Crowns in Corona del Mar, both of which offer the signature prime rib dinners, but also have a wider variety of entrees available as well.  Finally, they also have "Lawry’s Carvery" sandwich shops at the South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa and at the Century City Mall. 

I haven’t yet tried Five Crowns or either of the Carvery locations (we need to try them sometime…), but we have dined at Tam O’Shanter a number of times and it has also become something of a favorite.  It is actually the first and oldest of their restaurants so it has a definite history.  The "irish pub" setting of the restaurant is somewhat quieter and more intimate than the somewhat more raucous setting at Lawry’s.