desserts & dining cheap

[CdnMom2]

I would love to soak in the ambience of some of the cool restaurants at Disney, SeaWorld, Universal and have some of their fancy desserts or appetizers. Can we do this? Can we take a break from park touring & go to Coral Reef/Garden Grill/an AKL restaurant, Mythos at Universal etc. just for an expensive fancy dessert or appetizers. We will be tent camping at Fort Wilderness and would be just fine budgeting for boring can of beans, bagged salad & toast, etc. on-site for dinner if we can try some of these nice restaurants during the day this way.

Yes, I am also considering getting some Connections vouchers. And I will study Deb Willis' Menu site before we go.

Thanks for any advice. There are 2A & 4 kids (5 to 13yrs).

 

[Lewisc]

Most of the restaurants will let you do that, in fairness to other diners try not to do during peak dining hours. You might want to share an entree, some appetizers and deserts for the table. You can't do this with buffets and you might have a problem with restaurants that serve plated meals. You should be more generous with your tip since you're tying up a table.

 

[CdnMom2]

Lewisc again to the rescue! Thanks for the advice.

Yes, we do want to be inexpensively dining, but not be "cheap". Some of these desserts sound wonderful. And we never order desserts when we do dine out at home. Also our kids are not that much fun sitting through whole meals & then dessert. They're pretty well-behaved in general, but who knows with days of touring DisneyWorld -- it just takes 1 cranky over-hyped child to ruin it for all of us & wasting a very expensive meal as we would have to leave. I'm focusing on having them all behave at once in the Parks so we can do the Rides we're paying for!

I can have pasta, steak, etc. at home. But I wouldn't be making up some of these desserts or yummy appetizers I've been reading about here. I do not cook as well as WDW chefs, of course, but we have to make some trade-offs for this trip!

Your advice about avoiding peak times & tipping well is much appreciated. Sounds like we can schedule some of these icool restaurants in then. Do we need to mention that we would only want dessert or appetizers when we make a PS?