mom4graceandlogan
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2004
- Messages
- 585
Having read recent good and bad reviews I felt the need to post our experience last thursday night at Artist Point. After 12 years of visiting the Wilderness Lodge we finally made a reservation at Artist Point. The menu looked good and we had always wanted to try it, but since it was a signature dining experience we wanted to try it without the kids to relax and enjoy it. This was there first year they were both old enough for the Cub's Den at WL(which they loved). We are not "foodies", but do have decent fine dining experience. The restaurant is very pretty, but lacked ambience. My husband and I talked about it and we think that one, the lighting was too bright and 2. felt like they needed music of some sort. Just our thoughts. Our waiter seemed very knowledgable as to the menu and went into great detail on a few of the dishes. I started with a virgin frozen drink(pregnant), husband had the Lodge Fizz and Apple Martini. He liked both. The Apple Martini was very strong. We ordered apps. I got the cheese selection, he got the venison spring rolls. Cheese selection was pretty tasty. The venison spring rolls were excellent. Unfortunately, they brought my husband's salad at the same time as his app., so we felt a little rushed. He thought the mixed salad was o.k., he actually liked the salad he got at the Captain's Grille the night before better. Meal was pretty good so far, but then went down hill. Halfway through the app. a server was hovering over us with my Filet and my husband' salmon, which she went ahead and plated. She apologized and said it was our waiter's fault when she saw we were only half done with apps and salad. They offered to stick the food under a warmer. Well my husband ordered sushi grade salmon and I did not want my steak over cooked so we said no we would go ahead and take it and let them take our apps. We could not get our servers attention again until after we had finished our meal. We never got a water refill, no manager was in sight. No one checked on our food. My filet was supposed to be Medium well(yes I know not the best way to eat steak-but I am pregnant high risk and did not want it swimming in blood). They were supposed to butterfly it to speed the cooking. They didn't. It came out very rare. My husband's Salmon was Medium Well instead of really rare(sushi grade on the inside is how the waiter said it would come, unless otherwise requested). I don't know if this was chef's error or waiter as we never got anyone's attention. WHen we were all done and the waiter saw my bleeding steak that I had just eaten the edges off of (it was quite tasty, but I only ate a fourth of it), the only offer re: the problem was to take it back and "fire it up some more". Now I could have complained and demanded a manager to see how Artist Point would have resolved the problem, but I was tired, pregnant, and had already dealt with a check in problem two hours before that took an hour for the front desk to fix and I quite frankly wanted to leave. Nothing(comping etc). was really going to fix my disappointment in a meal I had waited years to try.You could tell by the creativity and quality of the venizon spring rolls and even the rare filet, that the kitchen had a creative and probably good chef, however the service and dining room made the experience far from signature dining and a regrettable dining choice. Speaking of dining room, when I made the reservation the reservationist stressed the dress code to us three times on the phone. Upon arrival my husband laughed. He was the only person man dining in the restaurant with a button down shirt. Everyone else had on Sneaker's, t-shirts, jean shorts, even camo shorts. The place was half empty. I wondered if they were offering it up as a reservation to people doing free dining that could not get in anywhere else, because it was not close to full at 7:00(yet the service was still bad). There was also I nice selection of people letting their 2 year olds repeatedly toss butter plates on the floor etc. I felt sorry for some of the people with kids because it seemed to take a really long time to order get through meal etc. and clearly some kids had had it( which is why we did not bring our kids-we expected signature dining to be at a more leisurely pace). We were not on dining plan, so in our opinion the $140.00 for dinner and $66.00 we paid to Cub's den was not worth it. I know some will say give it another try, but our nights at Disney are too precious. They really need to get some management and disney imaganeers in there to fine tune the restaraunts purpose and atmosphere and follow up on quality. There was nothing signature about the experience. That being said, had they enforced the dress code, we would have probably been the only one's there and there is no way the place could make it.
