DW and I tried Bongo's once and thought it was terrible. But we wanted to give it another chance, in case they just had a bad day. Nope still terrible. If you want Cuban food, head over to Celebration and go to the Columbia.
As you can see, it gets mixed review's. But I still want to try it next month. We have enjoyed many restaurants at WDW that get so so reviews. We'll probably eat outside at lunch to avoid the noise everybody seems to talk about. I just love Cuban sandwiches and we won't have a car to get offsite.
Here's another thread that is almost six months old but has more reviews.
We really like Bongo's. We stopped going there once we found out they do not honor the DDE or AP discount. (Although they do honor a DVC discount, for any DVC-ers out there.) That is unless their policy has changed again.
Yes, good food and service at Bongo's. But lots of other places offer that too, with a discount. So we pass on Bongo's now.
We fed the kids at McD's in DTD then parents and I ate at Bongo's. We really really enjoyed the meal. Service and food were both very good when we were there. It was my first experience with Cuban food and I chose the Carne Empanizada (breaded steak) with "moros y cristianos" (black beans and rice) and fried plantains. I'd give it a try.
We ate at Bongo's last week and my husband and I both thought it was good. Downtown Disney was packed the night we ate at Bongo's. We didn't have a reservation and had to wait about 45 minutes to be seated. (We were given a pager and went shopping while we waited). It was noisy, but not so loud that we couldn't carry on a conversation. We enjoyed the food and our server was very good. He brought us a free appetizer and apologized that it was taking so long to get our entrees. My husband and I didn't even think that we had been waiting long, given how busy the restaurant was. We would eat at Bongo's again if we were already at Downtown Disney, but probably wouldn't make a special trip to eat at Bongo's.
We ate there with the kids in Feb and loved it! I asked DH and he doesn't remember if we got our discount or not. We also had fabulous service, one of the top two servers of our trip. I didn't find it noisy, but then again we ate outside next to the heaters.
Just ate at Bongo's last week and we thought it was the best meal of our trip. We both had the Vaca Frita (a marinated flank steak dish with dirty rice and fried plaintains) and thought it was wondeful. Everyone says it is loud and we didn't even notice because we sat on the balcony and it was beautiful out there and very quiet and when we went back inside to leave we realised how loud it was inside with the music. We were glad to have sat outside. The service was excellent. The waiter explained to me what was on the menu and helped me with my pronunciation so I did not feel foolish. We really enjoyed our meal at Bongo's and felt that the price of the food was a very good deal too. It was the best sit-down meal for the least amount of $ our whole trip.
Had a couple of lunches there--food was good, noise level fairly loud, service "hip, nonchalant". The servers had a much better time entertaining themselves than they had waiting on us--.
But as I said, the food was good.