9 days of Gluten & Dairy free dining -updated-Biergarten

[wendow]

My ds would go nuts for those df cupcakes!! Did you order those when you were there at the GF or did you call in advance? We are doing a split-stay at ASMo and the Poly so I could easily get over to the GF to pick them up.

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

My ds would go nuts for those df cupcakes!! Did you order those when you were there at the GF or did you call in advance? We are doing a split-stay at ASMo and the Poly so I could easily get over to the GF to pick them up.

I called a few weeks in advance of our trip. I believe the minimum they require is 72 hours. I'm not sure if you can pick them up at a CS location if you aren't staying at the hotel, but you can always call and check. In December we are staying at AKV but we have a reservation at The Grand Floridian Cafe just for dessert since that was the only way I could order a cake without staying at the resort.

 

[wendow]

I called a few weeks in advance of our trip. I believe the minimum they require is 72 hours. I'm not sure if you can pick them up at a CS location if you aren't staying at the hotel, but you can always call and check. In December we are staying at AKV but we have a reservation at The Grand Floridian Cafe just for dessert since that was the only way I could order a cake without staying at the resort.

Hmm, we have a breakfast ressie at the GF Cafe one day. Also, half my kids are staying with my aunt & uncle at the GF. My aunt won a trip and chose the GF. We are staying at the Poly. I should go ahead and call though. Thanks!

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

Hmm, we have a breakfast ressie at the GF Cafe one day. Also, half my kids are staying with my aunt & uncle at the GF. My aunt won a trip and chose the GF. We are staying at the Poly. I should go ahead and call though. Thanks!

If some of your group is staying at GF you should be in luck. And how awesome to win a trip to WDW!

 

[kangaand2roos]

My DD was just today diagnosed with wheat, gluten and peanut allergies. We will be at WDW over Christmas, so I am anxious to hear!

 

[sleepingbean]

I did ask in advance, but no luck. No cupcakes, no cake, no brownies, sigh. BUT we did have some goodies. Those cakes look lovely! Great find

 

[wendow]

Nevermind. I misunderstood a post.

 

[5olearys]

A few days after I ordered the cake, I wondered if Grand Floridian bakery could make cupcakes for DD. I called Pat back and was able to order 2 cupcakes (vanilla with vanilla frosting) to be picked up at the Gasparilla Grill on various days during our stay. When I picked each of them up, they were kept at the register with my name on them and I was charged $4 for each. According to DD, they were very yummy!

Been struggling with what to do about a birthday coming up. We don't want to get a full cake (it'll go to waste). This is PERFECT...can't tell you how how much this helps us! Thank you for posting!!

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

Ah, Garden Grill. We always avoided it due to the mixed reviews both from those in the allergy community and those who can eat straight off the menu. We've visited every other character meal on property multiple times but we have always avoided this restaurant. So this trip we made our first (and probably last) visit to Garden Grill.

Since the menu at Garden Grill is so limited, I was worried they wouldn't have anything safe for DD. I heard horror stories about people showing up for their ADR only to be told they could not prepare foods for various allergies. I contacted Special Diets and specifically asked if they could accommodate DD's various intolerances. I received a form letter back letting me know that the chef could tell me when I arrived if we could eat there. Not cool Disney! So we had to keep this meal under wraps and not let the kids know we planned on eating here. I didn't want a melt down from either of the girls if we told them we were eating with Chip, Dale, Mickey and Pluto only to be turned away because DD couldn't eat there.

When I checked in for our ADR (the girls stayed with DH down at Sunshine Seasons) I spoke with the chef and he told me there would be plenty for DD to eat. We were seated in a booth in the section on the bottom that is closest to the railing that look aver The Land.

We started with a salad and they brought a separate on for DD. It had lettuce, other greens, tomatoes, cucumber, bacon and hard boiled eggs. DD does not eat dressing so I can't say if they gad any safe dressings.

Shortly after the salad was served, I saw something fall from the ceiling. Then again. The 'something' was water from the ceiling vents and the drops fell right into DH's beer and DD's salad. Ewwww! A manager came over, prepared the salad and drinks for the entire table again and apologized. Apparently, the humidity from certain parts of The Land does not react well with the Garden Grill's air conditioner. Plus, it was pouring outside which can exacerbate the situation. The manager and a few other employees were seen wiping the air vents on the ceiling for the rest of the evening. OK, they were fixing the problem, we were getting new food, everything would be fine.

After our salad re-do it was time for the entrees. I'm not sure why the kids have a different menu here. The adults eat family style and have their choice of beef, turkey and fish which all tasted great. Kids have their own plates and it doesn't look nearly as good. DD would have loved to eat what we were eating, but they would only make the kid's meal safe. She had chicken drumsticks, fries and broccoli.

However, DD did not get to try her food because a few more drops fell from the ceiling right onto her plate! Yuck AGAIN! So now we all have food and DD has nothing because she has to wait for her food to be made all over again. Try setting french fries in front of a 3 year old then yanking them away. You can imagine the scene that ensued. So once again the manager came over. At this point I was tempted to just leave and find food somewhere else. However with the pouring rain we decided to stay. We had never been to Sunshine Seasons before so I wasn't sure if they could accommodate DD either. The manager offered to move our seat to a table that was not under a vent so the mystery drops would no longer continue to plop in our food- but we had to wait for a table to open up. The manager took all of our food and drinks away again and we waited for about 10 minutes for a table upstairs to open. We finally moved and had all of our food remade and were given a different waitress. When we finished our entrees, we told the waitress we were going to skip dessert (we had already been there over 2 hours). The kids were tired and frankly, so were we!

Our waitress asked us to please reconsider and she brought out a huge plate of fruit for DD. She was a little jealous of our cobbler but I promised her some of the leftover birthday cake when we got back to the room. I completely spaced on taking a picture of the fruit, sorry about that.

The manager came over and told us he was going to take off the automatic tip from our Tables in Wonderland card for us to compensate us for our troubles. Personally, I feel if they were going to do something they could have taken off one person's meal. But I thought it wasn't right to penalize the waitress for something that wasn't her fault, so we declined the manager's offer.

 

[sleepingbean]

Wow, that is bizarre! I am so sorry you had that experience. We had a wonderful meal at Garden Grill with allergies, but we ordered off the adult menu and we didn't have ceiling contributions to our food. I hope you have MUCH better luck if you decide to try again. I feel so bad for your daughter! That is too long!

 

[Denine]

We ate there once. Worst meal we have ever had at WDW. The only things that were edible were the bread and salad and this was before dietary restrictions. Friends of ours went some time after we did and had the same experience. I can say this is one place we won't be going back to.

Sorry you had a bad experience!

 

[sdmjmom]

Would you (or anyone else) recommend the gluten free Disney dining app?

 

[SDSorority]

Thanks for sharing, OP!!

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

Wow, that is bizarre! I am so sorry you had that experience. We had a wonderful meal at Garden Grill with allergies, but we ordered off the adult menu and we didn't have ceiling contributions to our food.

"ceiling contributions"... lol!

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

Would you (or anyone else) recommend the gluten free Disney dining app?

Since we have way more than gluten that we avoid, the app wouldn't help us too much.

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

During MNSSHP we stopped at Cosmic Ray's for dinner. We had never dined here before but I heard they were pretty good with allergies. Considering how swamped they were, the manager came out to speak with me fairly quickly. We went through the ingredients binder together and chose the chicken sandwich (no bun), green beans and french fries for DD. I waited about twice as long for our food compared to people who did not have allergy limitations. On previous trips, we were given the flashing pagers that let you know when your meal is ready so you can sit and wait for your meal that can take upwards of 20 minutes to prepare. The only place we saw them on this trip was at All-Star Movies. I'm not a fan of standing at the counter for that long and I'm disappointed the pagers aren't used that often.

Back to the food. The chicken was cooked well as were the green beans. I expected the beans to be overcooked and mushy but they weren't. DD was glad to see a vegetable other than broccoli which Disney seems to use as the standard veggie option. The fries were yummy too.

I'm not too sure why we took a separate picture of each food item, but we did so here you go. They're also blurry, sorry about that!

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

I wanted to try a few new places on this trip and since we stayed at the Grand Floridian during the second half of our trip I wanted to explore a few places along the monorail. After a long morning at MK, we headed over to the Contemporary for our lunch at the Wave. It was completely dead, I think there may have been 4 other tables that were filled.

The hostess and the server noted there were allergies listed on our ADR. Not one but two chefs came out to speak to us. It turns out the second chef was in training to take over as one of the allergy chefs for The Wave. It is nice to know they don't just dump them into the job!

The Wave is known for fresh an non-processed foods so there was a variety of foods for DD to choose from. The kids menu has a variety of options that you may not see on other TS locations. She settled on the petit filet and asked for fries and carrots. She requested plain raw carrots (one of her favorite snacks). The steak was tender and flavorful even though it just had salt pepper and oil on it. The fries were steak fries, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. The raw carrots were... raw carrots. Not much exciting to say about them!

Dessert came with the kids meal and the chef brought out the ingredients binder to discuss the options. He told me they had a safe version of a spice cake that the pastry chef makes each day. We went through the page to make sure all of the ingredients were safe (I believe it was based on a Bob's Red Mill cake mix). The chef told me he would serve it with Tofutti When the cake came out I knew something was wrong. There hadn't been any mention of frosting, yet it had a 2 inch layer of some sort of frosting on it. DH tasted it and said it tasted like cream cheese frosting. We alerted our waitress who spoke with the chef. When he came to our table he brought the binder and a marker. He apologized that the cake contained ingredients that were not listed in the binder (it was cream cheese frosting). He asked repeatedly if DD had any of it, which she hadn't. He took the marker and wrote on the page in huge letters that it had dairy in it. He apologized about 3 more times and came back with a bowl of plain Tofutti for DD. He was clearly unhappy with the pastry chef.

What I don't understand is why there is 1/4 inch of cake and about 2 inches of frosting. What happened to the rest of the cake? I like frosting, but that ratio of frosting to cake would not appeal to me. Anyway, it was disappointing that DD couldn't have the cake but we realized later she didn't put up much of a fuss when it was replaced with just the scoop of ice cream. I honestly don't even think she knew there was cake on her plate. She probably thought it was 3 scoops of icecream!


We had a second lunch at The Wave and DD ordered the pork tenderloin. The menu said it came with tiny green beans and a jade rice blend. The rice wasn't safe for DD so she had the "tiny" green beans and steak fries. Notice the beans in the picture- not so tiny! Everything was cooked well.

Even though we had the snafu with the cake and cream cheese frosting I would still come back to The Wave. Lots of good choices, easy to get an ADR or even a walk-up for lunch and conveniently one stop away from the Magic Kingdom on the monorail.

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

I've read a lot of bad reviews about ABC Commissary but we've eaten here on our last 3 trips and enjoyed our meal each time!

Now that they have the allergy menu, I did not have to wait for the manager to discuss options. I ordered the allergy chicken tenders and the fries since I knew they were both safe. I waited almost 20 minutes at the counter for the food but the line to get in to ABC Commissary stretched out the door so I knew there would be a long wait. When I finally got our food, a woman who had been standing next to me waiting for her non-allergy order commented on the fact that I had chicken tenders which were not on the menu. She wasn't happy that she didn't know it was an option. For once DD had a food item other kids wanted, normally it is the other way around!

DD always gets the allergy chicken tenders with the fries. This trip we ordered the adult portion so both of the girls could split it. The adult portion was plenty big for both of them. The allergy chicken tenders here are really good, they could easily pass for "regular" chicken tenders!

 

[luvpoohandcompany]

Just found your report and I am so grateful to you for writing it
My youngest son has just be advised to eat a GF/DF diet and while we dont have a trip booked I'm always planning the next one
Can I ask if there is somewhere I can find the list of places offering the allergy menu? We usually stay in the Epcot area so just trying to figure out my options especially for QS places. Many thanks in advance

 

[GinnyBear's_mom]

Just found your report and I am so grateful to you for writing it
My youngest son has just be advised to eat a GF/DF diet and while we dont have a trip booked I'm always planning the next one
Can I ask if there is somewhere I can find the list of places offering the allergy menu? We usually stay in the Epcot area so just trying to figure out my options especially for QS places. Many thanks in advance

I'm not sure if this is the entire list, but this is who I know that has the new allergy menus. They are in the "testing phase" right now and I'm really hoping they become permanent!

Resorts:
World Premier Food Court
Flying Fish
Kona Cafe
Captain Cook's
Jiko
Sanaa

Parks:
Brown Derby
Sci-Fi
ABC Commissary
Columbia Harbor House
Tutto Italia
California Grill

DTD:
Splitsville

While all other locations can accommodate gf/df in some way, the allergy menus help speed things up a bit since you don't always have to wait for a chef or manager, although at ASMo I had to speak with a manager and chef whenever I requested to see the allergy menu. When I ordered from the allergy menu at Captain Cook's I was able to skip speaking with the manager (they screwed up the order so we wound up having to speak to him anyway!)