Dining Review using Dining Plan! CM, CP, AP, Jiko...

HLAuburn

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Apr 26, 2005
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Back from a wonderful trip at Wilderness Lodge with a MYW Plus Dining Package. Here's a quick review of some of the restaurants we ate at. I know I loved reading all the reviews before we went, so I'm hoping this will be helpful to some of you, too. :)

ARTIST POINT:
This was our dinner without baby. We had ADRs for 7pm and had about a 10 minute wait. The restaurant was much larger than I imagined, and very pretty...high ceilings with painted murals, walls of windows. We asked the waitress if we could use the dining plan for one meal and pay for an entree out of pocket..no problem! She suggested the Chef's Selection, which included a salad, soup, entree, and dessert. DH had the Frisee Salad and I had the Smoky Portobello Soup, both were very good. DH ordered the Buffalo Sirloin Steak cooked medium, which was divine! Very similar to beef, but a little sweeter. I got the Cedar Plank Salmon, which was very good, too. We ha the Berry Cobbler for dessert, and to me, it was a little to berry-y. :) The berries were very good, but with the berry sorbet, it was a little much, IMO.
When the meal was over we were stuffed! Splitting one meal plan and buying one entree was a great idea. By the way, even though we didn't bring DD to AP, she would have fit in fine there! Although I'd consider it an upscale restaurant, there were tons of kids. And I also saw people dressed in all sorts of clothes, from workout type clothes :rolleyes: to more dressed up. Anything goes, it seems.
OVERLL: A

JIKO:
We went to AK on a EMH evening, and we decided we wanted to eat somewhere close so we could come back and stay at the park longer. We called about 2:30 that day to make ADRs for that evening. They had a 7:15 available. We checked in about 7 and waited about 10 minutes. The restaurant is very pretty and relaxing. We did the same thing we did at AP by ordering one meal plan (2TS points) and paid for another entree OOP. The waitress again had no problems, and knew exactly how to split the check. DH ordered the Cucumber, Tomato and Red Onion Salad, which was really good....great, light dressing. I snacked on the bread and butter. They were both "different" tasting - the bread was very "grainy" and the butter had some curry (?) in it I think. Both were OK. DH ordered the Wood-Grilled Pork Tenderloin which he really liked and I got the Pan-Roasted and Maize-crusted Halibut and it was VERY good...lightly breaded, but not heavy at all, yummy sauce and mixed vegetables. There were at least 2 big filets of the halibut, and it was way too much to finish. We split the Pistachio Creme Brulee for dessert and it was also very good, but we were too stuffed to finish it!
OVERALL: A

LE CELLIER:
Le Cellier is a great deal for only 1TS per person. We had 7:15 ADRs and checked in early and still had to wait about 20-30 minutes. The waiting area and restaurant itself are pretty small. DH started w/ the Steakhouse Caesar which was a typical Caesar salad. I had the Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup, but I was a little disappointed, as I expected it to be cheesier than it was. It was more brown-creamy than cheesey, if that makes sense. It was still good, just not what I expected. The breads are to dies for, especially the pretzel. We both had the Le Cellier Mushroom Filet Mignon (mine cooked medium and DH's MW) - OMG, it was so good! An excellent steak, much much better than an Outback steak like I've seen it compared to here...actually no comparison at all. I got the Creme Brulee for dessert (yum) and DH had the Canadian Cheese Selection :rolleyes: trying to fancy I guess. It was gross, but then again, what do you expect when you order cheese for dessert!?
OVERALL: A

CHEF MICKEY (DINNER):
This was the one place we were SUPER disappointed in. We were a little late for our ADR, but we were seated w/in a few minutes. The atmosphere is fun, although they didn't do the napkin thing and sang only one song while we were there, but the food was awful! Many items were picked over (for example, no lettuce at the salad bar) and the items that were there were cold and/or tasteless. As you can tell by the above reviews, I'm generally easy to please as far as food goes, but this was just plain bad. They had Mickey ravioli, mac and cheese, salmon, potatoes...good selection, just nothing was good. :guilty: The dessert bar had a good selection and the little treats were good, but overall I could not see paying $27+ to eat that. Sorry, Mickey, you need cooking lessons. :teeth:
OVERALL: C-

CRYSTAL PALACE (LUNCH):
We checked in for our 1pm lunch ADRs and we were given a beeper and told 10-20 minutes or so. I went to change DD diaper, and when I got back, the beeper had gone off, but since the whole party wasn't there, they wouldn't seat us. So we got bumped down the list and had to wait even longer, maybe 15 more minutes. I understand why they do this, but as soon as the whole party is there, you think they'd seat you. :confused3 Then when we were seated at the table, apprently they had us down as 5 adults and a baby and not 4 adults and a baby, so there was an extra chair. Well, OMG, you'd think we asked for a free buffet! Some manager looking guy with a walkie-talkie hovered over us, talking to the front, asking how something like this happened! It was quite rude in my opinion...if you need us to move, fine, but if not, go away! I felt like WE had done something wrong, and he continued to be bothered by the fact there was an extra chair for what seemed like 15 minutes. It was annoying.
Anyway, to the food...it was all very good! Great selection of "different" type buffet items...salmon, chicken curry, pizza, bread, salads, sauteed vegetables, chicken dishes, and a carving station. The characters took a long time to make it around to us, and we had to wait fir about 10 minutes after we were done eating to meet Pooh. I guess it depends on where you sit, but at CMs they definitely came around more than at CP. We got to see Piglet, Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger once each during the hour or so we were there.
OVERALL: B+ Good food, OK character interaction, mean manager guy :furious:

OHANA (DINNER):

Had 7:50 ADRs, checked in early, huge crowd waiting. We ordered a drink and we were called about 15 minute later. SO much food! We really liked everything...salad, shrimp and sticky wings were great, wonton chips were good, potatoes and veggies were really good...we were stuffed by the time the meat skewers came, so we only tried beef and pork. They were pretty good, not the best meat I've ever eaten, but by that point we had eaten so many good things, it didn't matter! But we were able to make room for dessert and we're glad we did - really yummy! We were able to see Wishes from the table with the piped in music (very cool!) and the kids did some limbo contest and maraca dance...good entertainment. Overall, a fun experience!
OVERALL: A-

As for counter service, we ate at:
Pinocchio Village Haus - good chicken fingers, decent "fastfood" pizza
Cantina de San Angel - OK Mexican food, something a little different than hamburger and fries. Sat outside, nice atmosphere. Churros were the best part!
ABC Commissary - We all got Cuban sandwiches that were decent.
Flame Tree BBQ - Decent BBQ, nothing to write home about.
Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe - typical burger and fries, although they did have a large selection of other things like chicken, BBQ etc

Overall, we LOVED the dining plan. Ate like pigs! It's a lot of food, but you don't have to worry about how much you're paying and you can order whatever you want. We loved trying all the restaurants we wouldn't normally "pay" for. Credits were easy to keep up with, and all CMs knew how to do the dining plan. One guy did snap at me for not letting him know we were on the plan before I ordered, but other than that, it was a breeze!

Thanks for reading! Hope this is helpful! ::yes::
 
Sounds like you had a great food trip. We have ADR's for Ohana's and are thinking of changing to Cape May...Eh..don't know yet.
But with your report we'll keep thinking about it...
Thanks again, enjoyed reading it. :thumbsup2
 
Loved your reviews. Especially glad to hear the signature restaurants were fine about you paying OOP for one adult meal. That's good to know! :thumbsup2
 

HLAuburn said:
Back from a wonderful trip at Wilderness Lodge with a MYW Plus Dining Package. Here's a quick review of some of the restaurants we ate at. I know I loved reading all the reviews before we went, so I'm hoping this will be helpful to some of you, too. :)


CHEF MICKEY (DINNER):
This was the one place we were SUPER disappointed in. We were a little late for our ADR, but we were seated w/in a few minutes. The atmosphere is fun, although they didn't do the napkin thing and sang only one song while we were there, but the food was awful! Many items were picked over (for example, no lettuce at the salad bar) and the items that were there were cold and/or tasteless. As you can tell by the above reviews, I'm generally easy to please as far as food goes, but this was just plain bad. They had Mickey ravioli, mac and cheese, salmon, potatoes...good selection, just nothing was good. :guilty: The dessert bar had a good selection and the little treats were good, but overall I could not see paying $27+ to eat that. Sorry, Mickey, you need cooking lessons. :teeth:
OVERALL: C-

I'm not surprised to see that dinner at Chef Mickey's is still awful. Hope the character interaction was good. :)
 
Mmmm, thanks for the reviews. That Halibut at Jikos (does it still have the little sweet potato crispies on it?) is my favorite meal at WDW. I have a question about the Berry Cobbler at AP. We got it several years ago, and it was definitely large enough to share. Yet, I was really surprised at Thanksgiving when I ordered it that it was about half the size. I was wondering if that was just a special one for the Thanksgiving dinner, or if it has indeed gotten significantly smaller. I didn't have any trouble finishing off my cobbler by myself at Thanksgiving!
 
Thanks for the great reviews. I'm glad you enjoyed two of our favorite places to eat at WDW, Jiko & Le Cellier. They are both on our list on every visit.
 
Simba's Mom said:
Mmmm, thanks for the reviews. That Halibut at Jikos (does it still have the little sweet potato crispies on it?) is my favorite meal at WDW. I have a question about the Berry Cobbler at AP. We got it several years ago, and it was definitely large enough to share. Yet, I was really surprised at Thanksgiving when I ordered it that it was about half the size. I was wondering if that was just a special one for the Thanksgiving dinner, or if it has indeed gotten significantly smaller. I didn't have any trouble finishing off my cobbler by myself at Thanksgiving!

Yes, the halibut still has those little sweet potato crisps! Yum! Makes me hungry...the whole dish was exceptional. I thought I might be a little freaked out by "African" cuisine, but everything about Jiko was great!

As for the cobbler, I thought I was going to explode after we ate there, so my judgement of dessert size may be a little off. I stole this pic from another thread, but its about the size I remember it being.

berry.jpg


After bread, soup/salad, entrees etc, it was plenty for the 2 of us to split. But, if I had just had an entree, I probably could have finished one off on my own. :)
 
Thanks for the info. It sounds like over all you enjoyed yourselves and that is the main thing. :sunny:
 
Enjoyed reading your reviews ~ Thanx for posting.
 


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