Dining at Disneyland Questions

[sjaz22]

Long time Florida visitors who will be coming to Disneyland for the first time. Do they offer the Disney Dining Plan? What recommendations do frequent visitors have about dining? We will be staying at the Grand Californian for 3 days.

 

[Girimama33]

No dining plan is offered. They do have character meal vouchers available for pre-purchase, but save little or none depending on where you use it.
Blue Bayou would be a place I would recommend. If you want to see Fantasmic, you can opt to do their Fantasmic dining.
Other good TS spots are Napa Rose, Steakhouse 55, BTR BBQ, Café Orleans and Carthay Circle Theater.
For QS, we like French Market, Corn Dog Castle, Plaza Inn, Flo's V8 Café and the turkey legs.

 

[tiffjoy]

Try more CS than you would at WDW. The CS at DLR is significantly better, IMO. We like French Market, Jolly Holiday, and Hungry Bear in DLR, and Paradise Garden Grill and Flo's at DCA. Also, DTD is right there next to the parks, so definitely consider having some meals there.

Reservations aren't nearly as hard as they are at WDW, so you relax a little on needing to get those at the first opening. I go in a week, and I have booked some more and switched a few around this morning with no problem. Our favorite TS are Storytellers at the CGH (we like going for lunch when we are at DCA- the hotel is close enough to basically be considered in the park) and Carnation Cafe.

 

[figment_jii]

As Girimama33 said, Disneyland does not offer a dining plan. Occasionally Dis'ers will talk about Dining Vouchers that come with some vacation packages (most commonly travel agent packages), but those are very different from anything they have at WDW and are rarely considered a good deal.

As tiffjoy mentioned, dining reservations are much easier to come by for DLR. In almost all cases, you don't have to be online right when the system rolls to a new day. Usually, you can get pretty prime dining reservation only a few weeks in advance. It's worth noting that dining reservations come available 60-days in advance, one day at time. DLR doesn't offer anything like WDW's "+10" for onsite guests. Also, if you do try to make reservations right on the 60-day mark, note that it's not uncommon for the system to missing information/options initially. So if you look for something on the 60-day mark and it shows as being unavailable, it most likely means it has not yet been loaded into the system (as opposed to being fully booked). I do recommend making reservations if you know you want to eat a specific TS location at a specific time. Walk ups are possible, but I've also been there when the in-park locations were turning away walk-ups.

In terms of recommendations, it depends on what types of food you and your family like. DLR has fewer locations than WDW (because there are two parks compared to four and only three hotels), but there are some outstanding options to choose from. Some of my family's favorites include Carthay Circle, Cafe Orleans, Carnation Cafe (Lunch or Dinner), Big Thunder BBQ (Dinner), Blue Bayou, Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen (Sunday Brunch), House of Blues (although WDW has this, so I'd be tempted to focus on the places unique to DLR), Storytellers (Lunch), and PCH Grill (Dinner, a new favorite).

As mentioned, DLR also has some really outstanding QS options. Some of my family's favorites include French Market and the Plaza Inn.

To see photos from recent Dis'ers meals around the Disneyland Resort, check out the Disneyland Dining and Reviews Thread.

 

[Aladora]

Long time Florida visitors who will be coming to Disneyland for the first time. Do they offer the Disney Dining Plan? What recommendations do frequent visitors have about dining? We will be staying at the Grand Californian for 3 days.

It depends on what kind of dining you are looking for.

Our favourite lunch is the fried chicken from the Plaza Inn, we usually get one meal to split between the two adults and neither of us ever leaves hungry! We are also fans of the skewers at Bengal BBQ, although some feel they are not a good value. We like them because they are a bit on the smaller side, DH usually gets 2 for himself and DS and I split 3 between the two of us.

For CS, our top pick is the chef's counter at Napa Rose but we can only do that when we stay onsite and can send DS to Pinocchio's Workshop, there is no way we would spend that kind of $$$ on a 10 year old even if he would sit through the entire 2.5 hour meal!

Next after Napa Rose for food would be Carthay Circle, we usually get an early dinner reservation and let our server know we want to go out on the upper balcony to watch the parade.

However, since this is you first DL visit, you can't get more classic than Blue Bayou! I would get an early reservation, get there early and let the CM know you want to wait for a water side table.