Originally posted by Pakey - I have seen plenty of young children at Brown Derby; I've even had a meal ruined by a high pitched laughing/squealing child at a next table. The place has terrible acoustics and noisy children can be heard easily.
Brown Derby used to be very adult until the Dining Plan and Fanstasmic Packages came into existence. It's old Hollywood, they serve excellent martinis, the waiters in tuxedos, etc. The booths were intimate and it was a great adult meal.
As long as your toddler is quiet, you will be fine here now. It's changed a great deal.
I'm sorry your meal was ruined. I have children, but I still dislike loud children in restaurants!
The poor acoustics worries me a little though. My children are relatively quiet diners, but still...
The main reason I'll be booking this restaurant is for the "old Hollywood" theme! (And for the grapefruit cake...) I'm hoping the five of us can sit in one of the booths.
Originally posted by Bicker - Remarkably bad experiences on different vacations, with my younger brother's family joining us.
I no longer remember all the details, but on one or both occasions, requests to bring the children's food as soon as possible, rather than waiting for the adult meals to be ready, fell on deaf ears. In both cases, initial seating offered was ridiculously inappropriate given that we had a baby in a stroller, and on the first of those occasions the restaurant was so empty that I had to wonder if they were pulling my leg. I also seem to remember "spaghetti with no tomato sauce" resulting in spaghetti with tomato sauce. And so on.
And any one or two of these things, in a vacuum, wouldn't affect our assessment. Rather, it was the fact that:
They did so many things wrong;
They did so many things wrong on two separate vacations;
They were remarkably slow in responding when the problems were brought to their attention; and most importantly ...
That in doing all this they were performing remarkably worse than the other Disney restaurants that we visited during those vacations.
That distinction is really important. You shouldn't be reading this as saying that Brown Derby is universally and categorically bad. Rather, just that in our experience they are consistently worse than the other options.
I hope this helps.
Gotcha, and it does help. Thank you! DH & I are actually strange parents in that we don't want our children's meals to come before our meals. I've never figured out what the kids are supposed to do when they're finished eating & the adults are still eating. I'd rather us all be eating at the same time! If we're all waiting for our meals at the same time, we can (quietly) entertain each other while we wait - especially if the meal is being served in various courses. But, if the kids are finished eating & DH & I are still eating, in my experience, that's when the kids can get unruly.
It is a problem, though, when a meal is served incorrectly, & then you have to wait for it to go back to the kitchen & come back corrected.
And I understand what you're saying about how the sum of a series of mistakes can add up to a less than favorable overall review. And, just from reviews I've read (although I don't have a lot of personal experience w/ signature restaurants), I would agree that the Brown Derby is not the best (or even at the top) of Disney's signature restaurants - which, ironically, is probably one of the reasons I thought I'd make an ADR for us. I'm leery of taking a toddler into a signature restaurant (besides CRT), & I'm hoping that Brown Derby might be a "safer" option for us.
Originally posted by AppleSister1 - Bicker, I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. HBD is one our favs, and we've had many good experiences there. As we all know, we can have wildly diverging experiences at all the Dis restaurants!
That said, I've seen MANY children in there, especially at lunch, so no one should feel uncomfortable bringing in their child.
And THAT said, we appreciate parents who remove their kids for a break when necessary at any of the sigs, as we did/do with the children in our party.
Have fun!
This makes me feel better! And we are planning lunch. And, trust me, we take our children out if they are acting out or causing any kind of scene! I don't like when my meal is ruined by others, so I don't want to ruin anyone else's meal.
Originally Posted by DisneyFamily123 - Brown Derby was very different for dinner and lunch -- as far as service. We had a 4pm fantasmic package dinner for the 6:30 show. Service was good but it the restaurant was much more full and the waiters more hurried. Another day, same trip... lunch was much quieter and relaxed, not crowded.
Still, we enjoyed both meals, food was great. The advantage of the fantasmic package (in addition to the fast line admission), is appetizers are included even if you don't have the deluxe
DDP. In 2008, we didn't care for dinner at Hollywood and Vine (think cheap budget buffet), Mama Melrose in 2009 was fine but not spectacular and longer walk to fantasmic. We chose Brown Derby to do something different.
If paying out of pocket, I think Brown Derby is less expensive than other signature restaurants... but all depends on what you order.
I'm hoping to get an ADR for a Fantasmic Lunch Package. We also didn't prefer Hollywood & Vine & like Mama Melrose's fine but wanted to try something different as well.
Thank you for your review!
My thinking was that a signature inside a park would be less "quiet" than a signature outside park. Like I said earlier, last time, we tried California Grill & our kids were fine. This year, I thought about trying Narcoose's. But I think we'll wait until our younger DS is older before we try places like Citrico's or Artist Point.
I also try to make earlier dinner ADRs - thinking that most families will dine earlier & leave the later ADR times for those w/o children.
Thanks for the help!! (And, again, OP - sorry for hijacking your thread!)
