10 days of Disney Dining 5/17-5/26
- Thread starter LizinSTL
- Start date
undertheseas
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 16, 2004
- Messages
- 1,302
Great reviews! Thanks so much for taking the time to post them! 
Day 10, Memorial Day
This was our departure day and we still had 5 CS credits, 5 snacks and 4 TS meals remaining.
Our plan was to have breakfast at 'Ohana to celebrate my older dd's 11th birthday (May 27th), followed by a day at Downtown Disney and hanging out by the pool. We planned to have dinner at Olivia's before heading to the airport (a request by kooky 7 yo named Olivia!)
We woke up early, finished packing the bags and moved the luggage to the trunk of the rental car. We decided that since we were avoiding any of the theme parks on this day, we'd take the rental car to the Polynesian for breakfast.
I waited about 10 minutes just to check in at the restaurant but it seemed that we only waited a few minutes after that to be seated despite the huge crowds in the lobby area.
This was the only restaurant that refused to serve us anything until the chef came out to discuss the allergy that a "helpful" CM had noted on all of our reservations. (I'd asked to note the shellfish allergy on the Teppan Edo reservation due to cross contamination and the shrimp they use for "tricks" at most Japanese steakhouses.) My dh was more than a little annoyed all week with having to explain that he can read the menu and knows to not eat the offered shrimp at some restaurants. We pointed out to her that there's no shrimp at breakfast but she just sort of scurried off. The chef came out about 5 minutes later, looking a bit annoyed himself. We told him that we'd explained to the waitress that we were good and he just sort of laughed and told us to enjoy our breakfast. At this point our waitress appeared to start our service.
Onto the food- Everything was pretty good. The yeasty rolls were nice. The fruit was delicious- we should have asked for more! We did end up asking for more bacon and sausage. My kids could each eat a pound of bacon if I let them. I enjoyed the Mickey waffles but no one else seemed to. My dh liked the eggs but they looked too runny and wet for any of the rest of us to eat them.
We did like the juice too. It was very refreshing and "tropical" tasting.
Character interaction: This was a fun meal with the parade around the restaurant. The kids loved seeing Lilo and Stitch (Stitch being the birthday girl's favorite!) Mickey was particularly interactive this morning. Pluto was here as well.
Service: The service was ok. Our waitress sort of raced to the table and raced away without lingering. Every now and then she'd appear with more water or juice or coffee.
This was our first meal with the holiday surcharge . I think it's odd that the surcharge didn't start until Sunday before Memorial Day but will continue until July 4th. I don't think I'd pay OOP for this meal with the surcharge- it's just a fairly limited menu to see just a few characters. If I were to do another breakfast all you care to eat meal during a holiday surcharge period, I'd go with a buffet (Cape May, Boma, CM, CP, etc.) Since we were on the DDP, it didn't really matter to us about the surcharge other than it raised the tip about $3.50.
After breakfast, we headed to the DTD marketplace. We did a little shopping , spent a few snack credits and then took the water taxi over to the West side to visit Disney Quest. We played around there for a couple hours and grabbed another meal at FoodQuest. This time we had 2 pizza slices, a Chicken and Mushroom panini sandwich, bottled water and powerade, apple cobbler bar and a cheesecake brownie from one side and a philly cheesesteak with fries, brownie and diet coke from the other side. When we paid OOP, we didnt' get fries with our sandwiches but when I looked at my DDP receipt, the price for my sandwich was higher than posted on the board so apparently you can order anything with fries for about $1.50 more than posted.
The food was pretty good, we cut each slice of pizza in 4 thinner slices for the kids- these were BIG pieces of pizza. The desserts were just too rich, we ended up eating only a bit of them.
After playing a few more games with next to no crowds, we headed back on the water taxi to the Marketplace to get our car. We went back to OKW and enjoyed the pool party they had for a couple hours. The kids danced the macarena, and did a little singing too.
Time was running out and we got dressed and headed to Olivia's for our dinner reservation. We just weren't hungry but promised the little one this as our last meal at Disney... this was OOP.
My dh ordered the tomato and mozzerella salad. He said it was really good, lots of fresh juicy tomato, a nice little green salad on the side. It was just enough food for a light dinner. My little one got a cheeseburger and fries. She liked it but was tired and didn't finish it (daddy ended up finishing it for her.)
My older dd wanted onion rings so I made her choose an entree that the 2 of us could share. She asked for the key west sirloin steak salad. The onion rings w/ a trio of dipping sauces were very good- crisp, tender and delicious. We most preferred the avocado ranch sauce but the others were ok too. The salad was good. There was a sliced 4-6oz sirloin on top of the bed of greens. The chopped veggies were fresh and the saltiness of the bacon was a nice contrast to the sweet dressing.
They brought a birthday cake out after Olivia explained why we were visiting Olivia's last (because we won't be anywhere near WDW in a few weeks and she had to eat at Olivia's for her birthday.) I thought it was very nice. He had the restaurant sing to her and presented her with the cake. It was a slice of the chocolate cake with a white chocolate disc with HAPPY BIRTHDAY and Mickey's picture on it.
Olivia's is a great little restaurant that seemed to take walk-ins nearly every day. I'd recommend it without reservation.
We stopped by Conch Flats to spend the last 2 snack credits on vanilla wafers and a candy bar for the flight.
With great sadness we headed to MCO and back to our regular lives again.
Up next, final thoughts on the DDP and Disney dining in general.
This was our departure day and we still had 5 CS credits, 5 snacks and 4 TS meals remaining.
Our plan was to have breakfast at 'Ohana to celebrate my older dd's 11th birthday (May 27th), followed by a day at Downtown Disney and hanging out by the pool. We planned to have dinner at Olivia's before heading to the airport (a request by kooky 7 yo named Olivia!)
We woke up early, finished packing the bags and moved the luggage to the trunk of the rental car. We decided that since we were avoiding any of the theme parks on this day, we'd take the rental car to the Polynesian for breakfast.
I waited about 10 minutes just to check in at the restaurant but it seemed that we only waited a few minutes after that to be seated despite the huge crowds in the lobby area.
This was the only restaurant that refused to serve us anything until the chef came out to discuss the allergy that a "helpful" CM had noted on all of our reservations. (I'd asked to note the shellfish allergy on the Teppan Edo reservation due to cross contamination and the shrimp they use for "tricks" at most Japanese steakhouses.) My dh was more than a little annoyed all week with having to explain that he can read the menu and knows to not eat the offered shrimp at some restaurants. We pointed out to her that there's no shrimp at breakfast but she just sort of scurried off. The chef came out about 5 minutes later, looking a bit annoyed himself. We told him that we'd explained to the waitress that we were good and he just sort of laughed and told us to enjoy our breakfast. At this point our waitress appeared to start our service.
Onto the food- Everything was pretty good. The yeasty rolls were nice. The fruit was delicious- we should have asked for more! We did end up asking for more bacon and sausage. My kids could each eat a pound of bacon if I let them. I enjoyed the Mickey waffles but no one else seemed to. My dh liked the eggs but they looked too runny and wet for any of the rest of us to eat them.
We did like the juice too. It was very refreshing and "tropical" tasting.
Character interaction: This was a fun meal with the parade around the restaurant. The kids loved seeing Lilo and Stitch (Stitch being the birthday girl's favorite!) Mickey was particularly interactive this morning. Pluto was here as well.
Service: The service was ok. Our waitress sort of raced to the table and raced away without lingering. Every now and then she'd appear with more water or juice or coffee.
This was our first meal with the holiday surcharge . I think it's odd that the surcharge didn't start until Sunday before Memorial Day but will continue until July 4th. I don't think I'd pay OOP for this meal with the surcharge- it's just a fairly limited menu to see just a few characters. If I were to do another breakfast all you care to eat meal during a holiday surcharge period, I'd go with a buffet (Cape May, Boma, CM, CP, etc.) Since we were on the DDP, it didn't really matter to us about the surcharge other than it raised the tip about $3.50.
After breakfast, we headed to the DTD marketplace. We did a little shopping , spent a few snack credits and then took the water taxi over to the West side to visit Disney Quest. We played around there for a couple hours and grabbed another meal at FoodQuest. This time we had 2 pizza slices, a Chicken and Mushroom panini sandwich, bottled water and powerade, apple cobbler bar and a cheesecake brownie from one side and a philly cheesesteak with fries, brownie and diet coke from the other side. When we paid OOP, we didnt' get fries with our sandwiches but when I looked at my DDP receipt, the price for my sandwich was higher than posted on the board so apparently you can order anything with fries for about $1.50 more than posted.
The food was pretty good, we cut each slice of pizza in 4 thinner slices for the kids- these were BIG pieces of pizza. The desserts were just too rich, we ended up eating only a bit of them.
After playing a few more games with next to no crowds, we headed back on the water taxi to the Marketplace to get our car. We went back to OKW and enjoyed the pool party they had for a couple hours. The kids danced the macarena, and did a little singing too.
Time was running out and we got dressed and headed to Olivia's for our dinner reservation. We just weren't hungry but promised the little one this as our last meal at Disney... this was OOP.
My dh ordered the tomato and mozzerella salad. He said it was really good, lots of fresh juicy tomato, a nice little green salad on the side. It was just enough food for a light dinner. My little one got a cheeseburger and fries. She liked it but was tired and didn't finish it (daddy ended up finishing it for her.)
My older dd wanted onion rings so I made her choose an entree that the 2 of us could share. She asked for the key west sirloin steak salad. The onion rings w/ a trio of dipping sauces were very good- crisp, tender and delicious. We most preferred the avocado ranch sauce but the others were ok too. The salad was good. There was a sliced 4-6oz sirloin on top of the bed of greens. The chopped veggies were fresh and the saltiness of the bacon was a nice contrast to the sweet dressing.
They brought a birthday cake out after Olivia explained why we were visiting Olivia's last (because we won't be anywhere near WDW in a few weeks and she had to eat at Olivia's for her birthday.) I thought it was very nice. He had the restaurant sing to her and presented her with the cake. It was a slice of the chocolate cake with a white chocolate disc with HAPPY BIRTHDAY and Mickey's picture on it.
Olivia's is a great little restaurant that seemed to take walk-ins nearly every day. I'd recommend it without reservation.
We stopped by Conch Flats to spend the last 2 snack credits on vanilla wafers and a candy bar for the flight.
With great sadness we headed to MCO and back to our regular lives again.
Up next, final thoughts on the DDP and Disney dining in general.
BONITATIME
<font color=blue>I like to drink all year out of o
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2005
- Messages
- 1,754
Thanks for sharing you trip food with us. I really enjoyed reading it.
We had a terrific time on our trip.
There are a lot of questions and concerns about the DDP this year and I'll say that I have to agree with a lot of them.
The DDP does fit the way we eat on vacation. It's not a problem for us to share, it makes for several smaller meals throughout the day so if your family isn't squeamish about sharing food and drinks, then you can graze at lots of different CS restaurants and not feel like you are eating a ton of food at each sitting. It works for us to grab a meal, sit down for a little while, have a little snack and move on to the next attraction.
We didn't maximize the plan, especially in terms of snacks or meals we ordered at a la carte restaurants but we still did better than even on the savings. Our TS meals alone came close to the breakeven point. Had we maximized them, the meals would have exceeded the cost of the plan.
We used our snacks for everything from a $1 candy bar to a $4 pastry. We didn't use them exclusively for yummy treats, many of the 28 snack credits went to bottled water or a mickey bar. My conclusion is that it's way more work this year to get an exceptional value out of the DDP. (figuring out which CS places to eat at instead of grabbing a bite at the closest place when you are hungry...buying a case of water and lugging bottles around rather than using up "valuable" snack credits on water.... making sure the value of your TS adrs are high enough...etc.
All the posts I read the last 2 years about bad service because of the included tip are really funny to me. You'd think service this year would have been above and beyond exceptional because the tip is now truly dependant on the level of service. At home, we tip very well (the total bills are a lot smaller, I know) in the range of 20-30% usually for great service. Less than stellar service rarely gets much less than 20%. It's got to be horrible or totally non-existant to get 15% or less from me.
We only had exceptional service at 1 restaurants (Spoodles). In fairness, we had good, decent, fairly attentive service at Olivia's at both meals and Ohana for dinner. I think the service problems at WCC were more kitchen related but we still didn't see our server very much after placing our orders and her initial check in with us after we received them. The places with service that would have had a tip of less than 20% from me normally would have been 1900 Park Fare (server was great at first, then she got slammed with a couple huge parties and we lost her) and Ohana breakfast- our waitress seemed annoyed with all of her tables. Had we had similar service at home that we had at Boma, I might have seen a manager to express the problems and, around here, the meal might have even been comped for bad service. Since we were tired, hungry, got our own food, dealt with the lack of drinks, etc we didn't bother to see a manager. We just wanted to get out of there. I didn't really care about hearing the excuses.
In hindsight, we should have found a manager when we didn't have our drinks within 10 minutes.
My point is that service was considerably worse overall on this visit than it was when the tip was included. What a shame. The consumer lost a significant value of the plan and service doesn't improve. .....
The big question...would I do the DDP again? Maybe. It would depend on the meals we wanted to book and the length of our trip. Now, more than ever, the DDP is really just a budgeting tool to avoid sticker shock at mealtime at Disney.
The plan saved us just under $300 or about 30%. Had we ordered all our entitled drinks and desserts at TS and CS, it would have saved us up to $100 more.
Dining highlights...
SPOODLES without a doubt.
Dining lowlights (food only).....
Goods to Go at OKW- slow slow slow, spotty service and extremely limited menu.
Thanks for reading!
There are a lot of questions and concerns about the DDP this year and I'll say that I have to agree with a lot of them.
The DDP does fit the way we eat on vacation. It's not a problem for us to share, it makes for several smaller meals throughout the day so if your family isn't squeamish about sharing food and drinks, then you can graze at lots of different CS restaurants and not feel like you are eating a ton of food at each sitting. It works for us to grab a meal, sit down for a little while, have a little snack and move on to the next attraction.
We didn't maximize the plan, especially in terms of snacks or meals we ordered at a la carte restaurants but we still did better than even on the savings. Our TS meals alone came close to the breakeven point. Had we maximized them, the meals would have exceeded the cost of the plan.
We used our snacks for everything from a $1 candy bar to a $4 pastry. We didn't use them exclusively for yummy treats, many of the 28 snack credits went to bottled water or a mickey bar. My conclusion is that it's way more work this year to get an exceptional value out of the DDP. (figuring out which CS places to eat at instead of grabbing a bite at the closest place when you are hungry...buying a case of water and lugging bottles around rather than using up "valuable" snack credits on water.... making sure the value of your TS adrs are high enough...etc.
All the posts I read the last 2 years about bad service because of the included tip are really funny to me. You'd think service this year would have been above and beyond exceptional because the tip is now truly dependant on the level of service. At home, we tip very well (the total bills are a lot smaller, I know) in the range of 20-30% usually for great service. Less than stellar service rarely gets much less than 20%. It's got to be horrible or totally non-existant to get 15% or less from me.
We only had exceptional service at 1 restaurants (Spoodles). In fairness, we had good, decent, fairly attentive service at Olivia's at both meals and Ohana for dinner. I think the service problems at WCC were more kitchen related but we still didn't see our server very much after placing our orders and her initial check in with us after we received them. The places with service that would have had a tip of less than 20% from me normally would have been 1900 Park Fare (server was great at first, then she got slammed with a couple huge parties and we lost her) and Ohana breakfast- our waitress seemed annoyed with all of her tables. Had we had similar service at home that we had at Boma, I might have seen a manager to express the problems and, around here, the meal might have even been comped for bad service. Since we were tired, hungry, got our own food, dealt with the lack of drinks, etc we didn't bother to see a manager. We just wanted to get out of there. I didn't really care about hearing the excuses.
In hindsight, we should have found a manager when we didn't have our drinks within 10 minutes. My point is that service was considerably worse overall on this visit than it was when the tip was included. What a shame. The consumer lost a significant value of the plan and service doesn't improve. .....
The big question...would I do the DDP again? Maybe. It would depend on the meals we wanted to book and the length of our trip. Now, more than ever, the DDP is really just a budgeting tool to avoid sticker shock at mealtime at Disney.
The plan saved us just under $300 or about 30%. Had we ordered all our entitled drinks and desserts at TS and CS, it would have saved us up to $100 more. Dining highlights...
SPOODLES without a doubt.
Dining lowlights (food only).....
Goods to Go at OKW- slow slow slow, spotty service and extremely limited menu.
Thanks for reading!
Liz- thanks for your wonderful reviews and objective comments about the DDP. I have similar feelings about the changes in the plan. For us, on vacation, it's all about convenience and not so much about maximizing our "value". I'd have much preferred a cost increase and keeping the tips incljuded and I too, didn't think the service we received after the changes has been any better than it was before. As to your reviews we haven't dined at Spoodles in years. Sounds like time to go back!---Kathy
stephensmum
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- Joined
- Jan 10, 2007
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Thanks for your reviews
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