We went to the WOC dessert party last night, and I wanted to weigh in that we LOVED it. This was our first WOC experience (DH, DS7, DD10, and me). We thought the show was fantastic, and the 10yo told us the whole experience was the best part of our entire trip. Being able to sit and enjoy it, with the free glow-with-the-show cups joining in, was just magical.
We saw people lining up by 7:25, even though check-in didn't start until 8:15. We had no intention of waiting that long when we had guaranteed seating, but to each his/her own. We saw Carsland light up, went on RSR with fp, used the restroom, and were there at 8:15. Now THAT was pointless. We might as well have just gotten there at 8:30 like the 2 ladies behind us... live and learn. It took about 20min to get checked in, but I would rather wait that 20min than the near-hour the folks at the head of the line waited before check-in. Maybe if you are worn out and don't want to do anything else, you don't care. We were cool with the check-in process, although I think the delay after the first few parties is really the CMs leading individual groups down. The ipad CM would check a party in and have them just stand there waiting, check one more party in, and that would stun the process until the seating CMs came back up. A little silly.
So, being the second to last party checked in, we ended up on the far side toward the bridge over to the wharf. We were at a second row high top, with an empty table to our left. We had no issue with our view. The 7yo saw just fine. Again, would not have been worth it in the slightest to us to get in line at 7:20 to get our pick of tables, but everyone has different priorities. Only thing we'd do differently next time was not bother to show up at 8:15 even... we'd get there more like 8:30 and avoid waiting in the line. Of course then we'd be "wrong" and it would be like Paint the Night Aladdin's package two nights prior when they let people in way before the 30min prior... but that's another issue.
We had our food at the table within a few minutes and had plenty of time to enjoy it.
As to the food, while I get what others are saying about it - we really liked it. We would have thought it was less special (less fancy?) to get simple things. My 10yo ate her entire plate, even the mocha chocolate cake (which I thought was very subtle, actually) and LOVED it all. Her favorite was the lime yogurt/berries in a chocolate cup thing. My 7yo loved the dulce de leche shortbread and french macaron, and ate his cheese plus my manchego and that was enough for him. We took the other half of his plate back to the room and ate it with breakfast.
We liked having the cheese and bread and treated it as our big evening meal, with just a little food earlier in the evening to tide us over. Plus the 7yo is more of a savory than sweets person.
The smart thing would be to offer TWO plate choices, and I don't know why they can't. They flag allergy orders to reservations, so they could just flag one of two plate preferences the same way. Be upfront with the menus now that it's established, make everyone happy by offering a choice A and choice B, you know? If they flat-out switched to a vanilla cupcake / brownie / chocolate chip cookie sort of plate for everyone, plenty of people (including us) wouldn't feel like it was as special of an event as the fancy desserts, but I understand that not everyone has the same palate - kids and adults alike. It seems ludicrous to charge so much and not have more than one choice of plates - just call one version "classic" and one "avant garde" or something, I don't know.
The allergy plates are handled very well. DH has celiac, so I had ordered gluten-free for him. They called 48h in advance to chat/confirm. His plate had the same cheeses and grapes, and he got his own bread. None of the sweets were ok for him, so he had blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries with a sweet yogurt dip, a chocolate-dipped strawberry, and some kind of tart (looked like a shortbread-ish base, with chocolate and berries). There was a lot of fruit on that plate, so it wasn't empty like it sort of sounds. I neglected to snap a photo. They knew exactly which plate was his, no confusion. This is why I don't see how it's such an issue for them to make up a choice A and choice B for non-allergy attendees.
That's our two cents. Definitely worth the cost for us, but not for everyone, for sure.
