ADHD and wdw dining?

[mkymouse4ever]

Going to wdw for 2+ weeks and taking nephew with ADHD. Wondering if anyone has good ideas for ADR's? What might be a good place for an 8 yr. boy with his problems. Thought of chef mickey's, and the new character meal at mgm., sci fi, ohana's, (personally don't care for whispering canyon might make him too wild). Considering japan's teppanki? and he loves chinese food so china? OR are we destined for burgers & chicken stips for the whole time?

Thanks, Mky

 

[ChasPowl]

We had similar issues at WDW and didn't have problems with any of the places we went to because with the ADR's you get right in and generally service is fast. We did the buffets at Boma, Chef Mickey's, 1900 Park Fare. Children get to their food without delay, it's a little hard to linger over coffee, although the characters keep coming around.

 

[Letsbgoofy]

As someone who works with ADHD kids (but has never taken one to WDW), I would suggest trying to plan as many buffets and character meals as possible. You might get seated right away with an ADR, but table service can take quite a while, much longer than he will want to sit for. Being able to get up and get his own food rather than sitting at a table for an hour will help. I don't think Whispering Canyon would be too much for him.

I would also try to give him time to release energy before your meals. For example, if you went to Whispering Canyon, you could let him go for a walk/run along the trail to Fort Wilderness.

 

[SqueakyMouse]

My advice would be to stick to buffets or CS. We've found that our younger children just don't have the patience to sit through an entire TS meal at WDW. Oftentimes, the wait for appetizers and entrees is quite long. At all WDW restaurants, our servers have offered to bring out the kids' meals first. The negative to this is that the kids are finished eating before we even receive our entrees. Thus, I generally end-up taking the kids for a walk while everyone else eats in peace. Great for the rest of the family but not too cool for me! Other alternatives include places like WCC and O'Hana, which have on-going kids' activities. Other entertainment, such as at the bellydancing/music at Marrakesh or impromptu singing at Boma, help; but aren't quite as distracting.

 

[BitsnBearsMom]

My ds has ADD and was just fine everywhere we went because there was so much to see/talk about. Mind you he doesn't have the H but still has trouble sitting for long periods of time.

What we did was to make sure we had game boys, activity books or small travel games /card games in our bag. Gave us something to do in the restaurant and we had no issues at all. and my ds was off his meds the whole trip too! We also used the sit down meals to go over what each person liked the best/least and what they would like to do again. He was our 'note keeper'!!

 

[jen0610]

DS10 has ADHD and is on meds, don't know how your nephew controls his, so I don't know what does or doesn't work with him. We let DS take a small hand held game, not the game boy didn't want to chance losing it, to play while waiting for our seating at the TS dinners. Most of the time, he didn't play with it, had to much fun looking around. We did TS at O'hanas, PSB breakfast, CRT dinner, Captin Jacks, Sci-Fi (he loved this one), Boatwrights, and Donalds Breakfastosaurus (loved his one as well).

We also let him earn spending money while at disney. He knew that if he ate his meal, let us eat ours and didn't get out of his chair, except for character meals, he would earn 5 bucks. So, by the end of the week, he was able to earn an additional $65.00 dollars.