After 38 days and many hours of writing we have finally come to the end of the reviews
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So I suppose I should write some stuff about our favourite restaurants.
We all agreed that the best counter service meal we had was Wolfgang Puck Express. There is nothing that comes close to beating Wolfgang Puck for a CS credit, both in terms of food quality and value out of a credit. We all got nice big meals, a bit of table service and it was by far the most expensive CS meal on the dining plan! I think everyone should find a way to include this in their dining plans. The way we did it by having dinner here on the first night was a pretty good idea, since we weren't going to be visiting the parks on this day anyway.
The TS meals were also good, but we all agree that the best TS meal was Le Cellier. It will be sad to see this great gem become a 2TS place, but I suppose I should wait and see the menu before making any conclusions. We would return to any of the TS restaurants we visited, although the one we would be least likely to return to based on our experience alone would be the Liberty Tree Tavern. However, with so many other restaurants left to visit we might have to try a few new places next time! They were all truly excellent meals and I think 2nd and 3rd place after 1st placed Le Cellier would have to go to Maya Grill and Raglan Road, but only by a whisker!
We found the buffets to be good value. The food was of a high quality and it gave us a good chance to try many different things. Perhaps the better buffets of the three we visited were Cape May and Boma. I think that at 1900PF the food is good, but the characters are perhaps the main reason for the buffet. It's not that I wouldn't recommend it, it's just that Cape May and Boma have far more 'interesting' selections in terms of the food.
While on the topic of 1900PF, I reckon that after seeing all these poor reviews of CRT and the fact that it is a 2TS place I think that 1900PF is an absolutely perfect alternative. It is cheaper, both on and off the dining plan compared to CRT and you get a buffet! I reckon as more and more people find out about 1900PF it will definitely start to become harder to pick up a ressie here. It was hard enough for us!
We were also able to visit restaurants both owned by Disney and owned by private companies. We found that the experience at both was of a very similar standard and there is no reason to stay away from the private operators. I suppose Disney must put great effort into making sure that private operators have certain quality standards before allowing them to operate in their parks and across the resort, because they were all very good.
Also, we got to eat at restaurants both inside the park and in the resorts and Downtown Disney. We found that the resort and Downtown dining experiences were either better or interesting enough to make the time it takes to get there worthwhile. However, I think it is important that if you are going to go to a resort for dinner, try to go to a park nearby, eg. don't book dinner at the GF when you're going to the AK for the day!
. This just helps to cut down on travel time and in some cases you can even walk to dinner, for example Epcot to BC for Cape May!
The counter service meals inside the theme parks were all pretty good. The one's that would stand out in my mind personally are Sunshine Seasons, Columbia Harbor House, Starring Rolls and Restaurantosaurus. However, I would return to any of them if there was a need to. The CS meals outside of the parks were also good, although outside of DtD I don't think the CS places really warrant the effort to leave your resort, go to a park and head over to another resort just to try their CS offering. I think the resort hopping is best left for the TS restaurants
The snacks were quite a fun way of getting to explore different foods. Some of the more memorable snacks were the bakery items in France, the caramel cookie in Germany, the Beignets at POFQ and the Dole Pineapple items at Aloha Isle. While all the snacks were good, these ones were just a bit different to what we would usually have.
Being able to experience Disney dining without the Dining Plan was also a bit of an experience. We were able to find some cheap eats (by Disney standards of course) and food was still good.
Now for some of the questions that I have seen pop up often on Disney forums
Was it too much food?
There was definitely plenty of food! I don't think there would have been any way that we could have fit in three meals during our time in Disney, because we would have been too full! Prior to going we were a little worried if two meals and a snack would be enough but it proved to be plenty. But as I have found in the DDP analysis, really if you can't finish your whole meal or you only eat a bit of the dessert, it really isn't so bad because you can still get your money's worth out of the DDP! So don't feel bad if you refuse dessert once in a while!
Personally I would get the Dining Plan again, mostly because it was convenient, it allowed us to choose whatever we wanted, it made our trip more fun and enjoyable and there truly were some savings.
Did having dining plans prepared months in advance cause the vacation to become too structured?
I don't think that it did. We had dining reservations all over the place from just before 7:00pm to around 9:00pm and it never seemed to effect the structure or put stress on our plans. I think that by this time of the day we really wanted to just wind down and take a breather from the rides, and being able to just go into a TS restaurant, relax and enjoy a nice meal was a good way of doing this. We were also lucky to be able to get in early for our reservations when we arrived earlier than planned, which was good especially during peak period!
With the CS meals there is plenty of flexibility, although we found that eating early in the day perhaps after our first or second ride (or straight away if we were a little late into the parks) seemed to work well.
And with so many different uses for the snacks it really doesn't matter if you skip a day along the way, you will definitely find uses for it later on.
I think one of the best ways to avoid it becoming too structured is to check out where the extra magic hours are before making your reservations (this information is usually available like six months in advance at least!) since if you weren't making reservations, you would probably be going to the park with EMH anyway!
Our Final Conclusion
Overall our Dining Experience at Walt Disney World was a highly positive one and there are very few places that I wouldn't recommend to others or visit again myself. I have read many reports of people who believe that Disney dining has gone downhill or just isn't very good, but all of us agree that Disney should be very proud of themselves for being able to produce such a great selection of both TS and CS restaurants that blend well into their surroundings and I hope that they can stay this way or even improve as they move into the future.
There is plenty of variety in terms of the food offered and surely there is something to please even the pickiest eater. However, I think it is very important that you do plenty of research prior to going and make sure you can get some good reservations at restaurants you think you will enjoy, because if you only decide to start making reservations when you arrive it can severely limit your number of choices! I remember well on the 24th when we went to Guest Services at Epcot that the only restaurant taking ressies for that evening was the one in China, so it really is important to choose where you want to go well in advance. The good thing is you can always cancel your reservation and book somewhere else if other opportunities pop up. We did this a couple of times prior to going and we even made changes while we were there, but we always made sure to cancel our existing reservation as soon as we had changed so someone else could take it.
Last but not least, I would like to thank everyone for reading! I hope everyone found the reviews to be both helpful and enjoyable and I hope that sometime in the future I can write another one, it was a lot of fun!
If you have any questions please ask them here, I will be around to answer any questions you might have about any of the restaurants or the dining experience as a whole. Let me know if there's anything I have missed and I will add it!
And I'll leave you with this final picture, the only other picture of all four of us at WDW
. This was taken on our second visit to the Maya Grill
And as Mickey might say...
"See you again real soon!"
. I think we got pretty good value out of our meal even paying OOP so 
And yucky about the early MME depart time! 
and that it will help you in your planning!
