thanks disboard restaurant review

[Jan]

wow. the info i learned on disboards made my trip nearly flawless. we went from 6/4 - 6/11. stayed at cbr. had the dining plan for 2 adult/2 kids. thanks to pouring over all of the info, i went prepared with 7 p.s. and a pretty good idea of acceptable counter food too. it was so nice not to have to argue in the heat about "where do you want to go." "i don't know, where do you want to go."

the dining plan worked out great for us. my hubby and i slightly disagree on whether it is the best option all of the time. but, it was a no brainer b/c my travel agent made a mistake and we got it for free - so no issue for us this time.

our table services were:

princess breakfast at norway
le cellier
chefs de france
chef mickeys - breakfast
boma
o'hana
wolfgang puck's

we had no complaints. thought they were all just great. perfect, friendly service. no one was put off by the dining plan. really, found the experience to be quite the opposite.

the breakfasts were definitely the least satisfying in terms of food quality - but not much eating going on anyway. the look on my girls' faces when the princesses came out was priceless.

puck's : not enough said on the board about this restaurant. we really enjoyed it. nice eclectic menu - crab cakes to pizza. had great calamari with the best curry sauce.

we were late on every p.s we had except le cellier - and that was the only restaurant we had to really wait. so, don't freak out if you are running late. we were 45 minutes late to puck's and they took us on our p.s. event though the walk up wait was 45 minutes. 45 minute wait was the exception. many restaurants had 2 hour waits. all ps at lots of epcot restaurants booked - i know this b/c i was going to change one of my ps - which i did. i changed from narcoosees to chefs de france. and i LOVED chefs. chefs was the only open restaurant i could find for that night. my husband and i wondered if there are people out there who are still so pissed at france that they won't eat in the restaurant at epcot. if so, thanks for the opening b/c we loved it.

i am happy to answer any questions. a full review would only be repetitive. i agree with the many positive reviews written before me.

i do want to mention the counter service too:

cbr : ok, but lines too long/needed a fastpass
flame tree : the BEST
pizza planet: not very good - the worst meal at disneyworld
abc commissary: not as bad as others have said - i liked it
sunshine foodcourt in epcot: wow! fantastic
cosmic rays: good, basic hamburgers with LOTS of air conditioning
columbia harbour house: also thought this was better than other reviewers thought. had fish dinners. also had hummus sandwich. all good. air conditioned on a very hot night.

 

[Aimeedyan]

I'm so glad things worked out! I really do think it pays to do a bit of homework before leaving home when you have access to all the menus and information and make decisions then - we do the same thing, stand in the heat and argue about what we want to eat "what do you what? I don't know, what do you want?" until we're so hungry that we're eating something of a cart knowing fullwell there are so many better air conditioned options! =)

You ate at many of my faves, and many I'd love to try! We'll have to try Wolfgang Pucks & Chef's the next trip.

=)

 

[lajones81]

I'm glad you had a great trip! Thanks for the reviews!

 

[Kaycee]

I'm so happy to hear the info you got here on the Boards helped you have a great trip.

I'm also a big fan of Chefs de France - glad you enjoyed it!

 

[natalielongstaff]

glad you enjoyed the trip,thanks for the reviews

 

[rifamtrav]

Thanks for the reviews. A couple of questions - why did you switch from Narcoossees to Chefs de France? Which did you like better Chefs or Le Cellier? How old are your kids, did you end up sharing any meals and if so how'd that work out with the dining plan? Someone else commented that they had a hard time using snacks because the computers kept going down at snack places through out the parks, did you have any problems? Any nice surprises on snacks? (Oops, I guess that's ALOT of ??s not a couple!) Thanks.

 

[inky dinky doo]

Which Puck's did you go to and where was it located? I'm intrigued by your review, but I have the hardest time keeping them straight.

 

[Leota]

Thanx for your comments - We have yet to try Chef's - I keep saying "next trip" but it still hasn't happened yet - I have to do something about that!

 

[Jan]

we switched from narc. to chefs b/c we got so tired of traveling so far for dinner. that was the one thing i underestimated. it is easy to get to any park for dinner, but it takes a lot of effort to get to other resorts (from CBR). while i was thrilled with the parks and the dining plan, i was not thrilled with the bus system. in fact, next time i will stay a shorter period of time and stay in the contemporary. on the morning we did the princess breakfast, we actually waited an HOUR for the bus. i was so stressed by the time we got there (30 min's late) that it nearly ruined it all. of course, as soon as i figured out the p.s. thing was still ok, it improved.

my hubby and i are kind of chickens so we didnt do any meal sharing at table service. we did a lot of meal of meal sharing with counter service and really stretched those out. most of the time we ordered 2 or 3 adult meals for our family of 4 (kids are 4 and 6).

snacks: we didn't do anything interesting. the computers were down one day at epcot, and i had to go to a different cart. she wrote the credits on a napkin and they were taken out of our account later that day. no mistakes. my kids were thrilled with the ice cream choices and chips, so we never pushed it for more. we had extra counter services, so on some days we would split one counter service as a snack for all four of us. my hubby and i would share a sandwich and the kids would eat the side and dessert. we used most of our snack credits for drinks.

Puck's : we went to the cafe which is located in west downtown disney very close to the cuban rest. (bongos?). it is the downstairs restaurant - the fine dining rest is upstairs. the downstairs rest was nice - not fancy - not white linens. we were very comfortable there with the kids. the surcharge that is mentioned only applies to one item - a filet that is around $33. everything else is on the plan. we had crab cakes and calamari as an appetizer. my husband had a pizza for an entree. i had salmon. for dessert we shared a creme brulle sampler and i had a latte. it was not the BEST food we had on the trip, but it i liked the variety of the menu and it was very good.