Several years ago, it was easy to have the Special Diets department have chefs call anybody who had specific questions about allergy or other special diet needs at restaurants. These days, I think they tend to only have chefs call people who have complicated or unusual dietary needs. Chefs at WDW are all highly trained in handling gluten, milk, peanut and tree nut allergies. Other top 8 allergens are also focussed on in the training though I'm not sure if it's as much. They are also trained to understand about other allergens but there's only so much training they can provide since really people can be allergic to just about anything and availability of foods can become difficult. I think they really only call these days when people have more complicated situations.
I guess my point is that with gluten and milk being the only allergens, every chef at WDW (at least at the restaurants owned by Disney) is highly trained to take care of these allergens and has safe options to give to guests who have to avoid these foods without calling the guests ahead of time. The retsaurants all have standard items that are GFCF in the restaurants at all times unless they run out for the day.
I'm shocked that Chef Mickey couldn't prepare Mickey waffles. I wonder if they just ran out of mix that day? Weird. I don't see how a phone call ahead of time would have made a difference though. They won't know ahead of time if they'll run out. My understanding is that they still serve them there. I wonder if the chef was just being lazy that day (as much as I love WDW chefs, we've encountered a few who really don't belong there as they don't seem to want to deal with allergies despite the allergy community being a rapidly growing market for WDW).
As somebody who has been getting phone calls lately because of laundry lists of allergies among multiple family members, I feel that I should explain just what these phone calls entail. The chefs are basically going over what IS available. They're for the most part not bringing in special food for us. One restaurant asked us to choose what flavour of sorbet they should make the day we've got an ADR since they make a safe sorbet every day and they might as well make one that our daughter will like but we only got to choose from 3 flavours. One other restaurant, at the resort where we'll be staying and eating numerous meals, has offered to arrange for some Babycakes items to be delivered but again, it's at the resort where we'll be staying and we'll be eating plenty of meals. The calls really are just to give me the comfort that there ARE options available to each of us. They aren't bringing in anything special for us. It's allowing me to make informed decisions about whether to keep the ADRs or not (I have in the past cancelled based on this kind of feedback because there just weren't options available with our laundry list of allergens). In the past when chefs DID call anybody who asked, I had a lot of promises made and they almost never happened leading to disappointment. They generally really don't prepare anything at all ahead for us and the chefs we work with in the restaurants usually don't even know that I've spoken with anybody from the restaurant ahead of time.
