Recent Coral Reef Experience?

How Do You Rate Coral Reef (Last 6 - 8 Months ONLY)

  • Our Experience Was Really Good

  • Our Experience Was Okay, But Better In The Past

  • Our Experience Was Mediocre, Lots of Room For Improvement

  • Our Experience Was Unimpressive, But We Will Try It Again

  • Our Experience Was Horrible, We Will Not Go back


Results are only viewable after voting.

Maleficent Dragon

Member Since 2004; lost previous login.
Joined
Mar 9, 2013
For those of you who have been to Coral Reef in the last 6 (maybe even 8) months, how would you rate your experience?

We have been twice previously. The first time we went it was in 2009. Our service was horrible.....some of the worst service we have had ever in any restaurant. Our entire dinner for 4 people with no special requests took so long because the service was so slow. We sat at the table for 15 minutes before the server came over. Another 15 minutes to get our drink order (tea and soda) and another 10 minutes for him to come back and take our food order. So 40 minutes into the visit before he took our food order. He told us that time that if we wanted dessert he needed to know right then so that he had it all on a single order. We had been there an hour and we asked for refills. 70 minutes into the "meal" and we get our food. About 90 minutes into the meal and still no refills. There was a thick black hair about 4" long on my daughter's pizza, glaring! If we could see it in the darker restaurant, they should have been able to see it in a well-lit kitchen. The rest of the meals were decent, but that caused everybody to lose their appetites. The server was completely unapologetic and he didn't offer to fix it. Anyhow, this is how the entire meal went. We let them know on the way out and they couldn't have cared any less.

The 2nd time we visited was in 2011. The service was less than mediocre. We had a seating right when it opened for dinner, so not busy at all. The service was very slow, impersonal and once again getting a simple drink refill was painstakingly difficult. It was just me and my daughter. Our dining experience was not as long, but we saw our server for our initial order, to ask if we wanted dessert and to bring the check. She was absent from the rest of the experience. The food this time was not great and most of it went to waste, sadly.

I am hoping in 4 years that the service and food has improved. I would be interested to hear from those who have been there in the last 6 months or so. How did it go?
 
My husband and I had great time at Coral Reef about 10 months ago. We waited about 5 minutes to be seated right against the tank, our server was friendly and attentive the entire meal, and the food was far better then I expected with all the bad reviews. My husband loved the steak. He said it was cooked perfectly. I had a seafood pasta that was pretty good (his steak was better). The atmosphere is great also. Our waitress also surprised us with a dessert since we were celebrating our honeymoon. We wouldn't hesitate to eat there again.
 
My husband and I had great time at Coral Reef about 10 months ago. We waited about 5 minutes to be seated right against the tank, our server was friendly and attentive the entire meal, and the food was far better then I expected with all the bad reviews. My husband loved the steak. He said it was cooked perfectly. I had a seafood pasta that was pretty good (his steak was better). The atmosphere is great also. Our waitress also surprised us with a dessert since we were celebrating our honeymoon. We wouldn't hesitate to eat there again.

Thank you! :)
 


We went in January - we got a last minute lunch ADR on our first day, after we had checked into our resort. The food was good and we sat on the second tier so we had a good view of the aquarium. We have never had an issue with service there and again the service was good.
 
I went in Nov last year and my food was very good. I had the mahi-mahi and the turtle cheesecake. I went right at 11:30 am lunch opening and was seated one tier away from the tank and had a great view of the fish and turtles. My server was not great. He was slow and uninterested but I chalked that up to being one person dining and his assumption that the tip would not be as good at a small table. The hostess was rude but that's typical at Coral Reef, Les Chefs & Le Cellier and I simply ignore them. I'm booked for this fall during Free Dining and hoping the food is equally tasty this time around.
 


I know that you asked for recent experience and our last experience was not within your poll range but our last visit to Coral Reef was one of the best meals of our trip which included some 2TS. The service and food both were really good.
 
We haven't been recently, but we have been twice, once when they were not busy and it was excellent, once when they were super busy and it was just ok. My sister in law and her family went recently and she said it was very good, and the service was great.
 
I've been to Coral Reef 5 times, the earliest being 1992, the most recent being this week. Coral Reef was, in the 1990s, one of the best ADRs in Epcot. Even on my previous visit in 2007, it was still good. This past week it was just bad. All of the fish was massively overcooked (even the salmon, which was ordered medium). My son got a kids menu that was already colored on, and it took them 10 minutes to being a replacement. They were out of some of the beers on the menu, and the Buzz light up things. The server was on a script, and when you asked for something that deviated from the script, she stumbled badly.

This restaurant can be great, but it's not right now. I hope they figure out how to fix it, because there are plenty of other good meals to be had in Epcot.
 
You people go there for the food????

I took my dd 7 in oct 2010 for the fish tank. lol

It was fine, normal Disney meh food.
 
We've never had bad service there. It's an experience. Yours will vary from other posters I'm sure.
 
The food was, for many years, quite good. Particularly in the 1990s.
I would even say "excellent", I miss the way it was! The dining plan has removed so many choices and much of the creativity from Disney restaurants, sorry :offtopic: The biggest issue at Coral Reef is service, it's though to just get your bill at the end! Waited 18 minutes from the time my credit card was taken till I got it back!
 
I'm outside the range of your poll, but other than taking awhile to be seated, the food and the service was great for us. We're going back again this year. :thumbsup2
 
Just ate there last week. I think the last time I had been there was in 2001 so it had been a while!! I remember it being better food before and with a lot less kids. I found it pretty noisy. We had a table right against the tank which made the experience awesome. Hubby really liked his mahi mahi, my steak was mediocre (I don't eat seafood, prob shouldn't order steak at a seafood place!) anyway, I'm not dying to go back in future trips but it wasn't bad. It just didn't compare to our other meals during the trip - good thing we ate at Coral Reef first!
 
We ate there for the first time in Feb of 2013. We waited a few minutes to be seated and we had seats on near the tank, but not next to it. The waiter was polite and I thought it was a good experience. My Mahi Mahi was really good, the best entree of the trip, which made a good impression on me.

We went back there this past January. We were seated right away, which was a surprise, since there were a lot of people waiting to be seated. We were in the last row and couldn't really see the tank. But the service was great, and when my husband found his steak tough, they brought another one, bigger than the first one, right away. The manager even came over to ask how the second steak was. They really impressed me with how hard they tried to please DH. ;)

But I think that if you aren't close to the tank it isn't as nice an experience.
 

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