Dining Tips: what will you do differently next time?

[Snow_White]

We tend to get in dining ruts....by this, I mean that we tend to eat at the same places year after year. This year, however, we're eating at 5 totally new (to us) restaurants like (Marrakesh, Coral Reef, Concourse Steakhouse, and 'Ohana), so that should be lots of fun

 

[millerjudi]

Our family liked having a TS meal each night (we sit down to dinner as a family every night at home) particularly since all the disney restaurants are more about the atmosphere and the fun than about the food. When we were there last November I did not make an ADR for one night and we ended up eating somewhere (Biergarten) where we thought the food was just awful. So, I will/have made an ADR for a TS meal for every night of our trips coming up in June and November, and I made them early in the evening so we have the option of activites after dinner.

 

[daisyduck123]

We did Boma's last week. We can now say we've done it once, but we won't go back. Most of the food was not to my liking...the kids & I were able to find some things that suited us. DH liked it. There's just other TS restaurants that we haven't tried yet.

 

[lrauers]

1. Consider making ADRs at more than one restaurant and at different times on any given night. That way you have some flexibilty on which one to choose.
2. People tend to make dinner ADRs on the early side, but I agree with earlier posts that you are often so full from lunch that you aren't really hungry yet, so make them for a later time.
3. Do not even think about Fulton's at DD, the worst meal I've had in a long time.
4. Give it some thought, but don't stress out over menus, all of the restaurants, even those in the World Showcase, have some kid-friendly offerings, and the portions are usually huge.
5. MAKE ADRs!!! It's really nice at the end of a hectic day to sit down and be waited on.

 

[TruBlu]

1. Consider making ADRs at more than one restaurant and at different times on any given night. That way you have some flexibilty on which one to choose.

Is this really allowed? I thought I read on another thread that they will cancell your reservations if you have several on the same night.

 

[Barbers2005]

I totally agree with those who would make their ADRs later in the evening. I found that my earlier dinners (5:30-ish) interfered too much with park time. I would much rather have a snack in the afternoon and eat dinner at 8:00-8:30 so I didn't lose so much park time to travel and eating. Also, I wouldn't eat at the Cantina de San Angel again, the food was barely edible. Maybe it was because they were so busy, but everything was dried out. I couldn't even finish my churro, and I love churros. The only reason we ate here was to snag a waterfront table for illuminations. The view was great, but the food- terrible.

 

[01Sweetpea]

Spread out my buffet meals. For our 2004 trip I made PSs for CP one night and H&V the next night. It was basically THE SAME FOOD. DH was not to happy, especially since he wasn't crazy about the food at CP, and liked H&V even less.

 

[richard_andmel]

We have early dinner ADRs but we don't really eat lunch. If people get peckish they just have a snack. It's too hot to eat anything substantial in the middle of the day.

 

[disneymom3]

Awesome idea for a thread and I appreciate the pointing out of later ADRs. DH and I are not even taking the kids this trip and I realize all of our our ADRs are for early in the evening. Don't know what I was thinking. Going to see if I can change them.

What I would do differently is to budget higher now that our kids are bigger. We always used to take that midday break when they were young preschool/toddles age but this last trip we found that we really didn't need it. At least not going back to the resort etc. We usually stay offsite so when we would leave, we would eat lunch at our villa. This last trip we found the kids were still running strong by lunch time and a break in the shade eating a popsicle later in the afternoon was all they needed. We ended up eating on property a lot more than in the past.

 

[grinningghost]

Don't take the picky kid to any restaurant without "normal" food. Not worth the pain of looking at a still-full plate and an extremely high bill.

CRT - been there, done that. Seriously overrated. I won't get trapped into it again unless they completely rehab the place, menu included. It's too rushed in there besides.

 

[remfam5]

Last year I made the mistake of making our dinner ressies for an early time, like 4:30 or 5pm. We were still sooo stuffed from our counter service lunch that we skipped a couple of our ADR's. This year I made our dinner ressies later in the evening around 6:30pm. We are trying the Luau Show this year, saving our table service credit the first night that we are there for this 2 credit show.

Sorry, I completly DISagree! I highly reccommend early dinners!

We thought that one of the best things we did was to eat a quick banana or muffin in the morning, get to the parks at opening, have a small (portion) brunch at 10:30 and then have a sit-down dinner at 4:30/5:00pm.
It worked out so good for us -- and for the kids to have a little break in the day (Without going back to the resort). And it kept them going for many more hours!

If we were to have dinner that late in the day (7pm) I think we would have all dropped out of the evening activities! JMO!

 

[akalittleeva]

Sorry, I completly DISagree! I highly reccommend early dinners!

We thought that one of the best things we did was to eat a quick banana or muffin in the morning, get to the parks at opening, have a small (portion) brunch at 10:30 and then have a sit-down dinner at 4:30/5:00pm.
It worked out so good for us -- and for the kids to have a little break in the day (Without going back to the resort). And it kept them going for many more hours!

If we were to have dinner that late in the day (7pm) I think we would have all dropped out of the evening activities! JMO!

So glad to hear that - that is our plan! We live in the Atlantic time zone (1 hour ahead) - meaning 11:00 (Disney time)is actually 12:00(our time) and 4:30 is actually 5:30, so it won't be a stretch for us to eat at those times - it would be tough to wait until 7:00, which would actually be 8:00 - I don't think I would make it, let alone the kids. I'm also hoping that eating a little early will help us miss out a bit on the lunch/supper rush.

 

[tx2tn]

The problem we had with early dinners is that most of our ADR's were at some of the nicer restaurants, Jiko, California Grill etc. We didn't like going straight from the parks to some of these restaurants. We were all hot and sweaty (It gets warm in Central Florida) and wanted to go back to the resort and clean up. But doing this took alot of time out of our day and we felt that it would have been easier if we had made the ADR's for later in the day. We would have still had to go back to our resort to clean up but it wouldn't have busted up our day as much.

 

[tinaluis]

Great thread -- thanks for all the tips. We're thinking of scheduling our ADRs earlier in the day. We'll have a small snack in the a.m., CS meal at 10:30 or so, and then sit down dinner by 5:30 pm. We're not planning on doing the main parks everyday so this should work for us. It will give us enough time to have a leisurely dinner and go back to POR to swim and have a snack (using a snack credit, of course ) before bed.

 

[Hopetobee]

Our family realy liked the dinning plan and thought one sit-down meal a day was a nice option but we had WAY too many snacks/Counter Service credits. I haven't deceided if we would do the DDP again but if we do then I will sign up for more signature dinning for 2 credits and then use counter service on our "off" days so we can have flexiability in the schedule. We might have to eat Mickey Bars for breakfast to use up all those snacks credits.. wow can't wait for the next vacation! Plus we will make sure to "save" our dessert credits and make ADRS just to eat dessert! We never had room for dessert after a sit down meal so we just didn't use them. I think we can leave those credited to our account.??? I hope this is allowed.. ordering just dessert. We did this at the Coral Reef last time and it was the perfect cool place to chill out with some goodies.

I don't think you can "save " dessert credits, I think it's a TS credit (table service) which equals 1 appetizer, 1 entree, and 1 desert. Unless something has changed recently, that would mean if you only ate 1 entree , one TS would be deducted from your DDP.

 

[NMW]

Our family realy liked the dinning plan and thought one sit-down meal a day was a nice option but we had WAY too many snacks/Counter Service credits. I haven't deceided if we would do the DDP again but if we do then I will sign up for more signature dinning for 2 credits and then use counter service on our "off" days so we can have flexiability in the schedule. We might have to eat Mickey Bars for breakfast to use up all those snacks credits.. wow can't wait for the next vacation! Plus we will make sure to "save" our dessert credits and make ADRS just to eat dessert! We never had room for dessert after a sit down meal so we just didn't use them. I think we can leave those credited to our account.??? I hope this is allowed.. ordering just dessert. We did this at the Coral Reef last time and it was the perfect cool place to chill out with some goodies.

You can not save the dessert part of your TS credit. It is not a seperate credit. A table Service credit includes 1 app, 1 entree and 1 dessert. Whether or not you eat it all is up to you. One suggestion...take the dessert to go. We did this at Brown Derby and ate the desserts while waiting for Fantasmic to start. Or, if you are close to your resort, put it in the fridge and have it for breakfast the next morning.

 

[NMW]

One thing we changed was making our ADR's for dinner much later. First trip they were all at 5 PM. We usually don't eat that early at home and did not enjoy it on vacation. Our DD was a baby then and I thought it would be better. It wasn't. We found 7 PM is the perfect time for us.

I also didn't count on my kids eating a big TS breakfast and TS dinner and being hungry for lunch, but they were. I had thought they'd just want a snack. Granted we usually go in early Dec when it's cool. I guess with all the walking, they wanted (and ate) a CS lunch almost every day last trip. They are not huge eaters either.

I'm a planner so we always made the ADR's. We found some places we didn't enjoy, like Tony's. Overall, we really love the food at Disney. We enjoy making our ADR's. Our problem is that we now have too many "must-dos" to try all the other places we want to eat at in a 9 day trip! It's going to be hard but, we are going to have to let some go.

 

[firkat]

Hey NMW, how old was your baby during the trip? We have ds1 who will be 18 months on our next trip. We scheduled HDDR for 5 pm, thinking that a 2 hour dinner show would be too much for the littlest one starting at 7:15 pm. How did your little one do with 7 pm ADRs? Did he get fussy or fall asleep at dinner? Or did he adjust. Our little guy goes to bed at 8 pm at home. Any tips would be appreciated.

 

[Marseeya]

Sorry, I completly DISagree! I highly reccommend early dinners!

We thought that one of the best things we did was to eat a quick banana or muffin in the morning, get to the parks at opening, have a small (portion) brunch at 10:30 and then have a sit-down dinner at 4:30/5:00pm.
It worked out so good for us -- and for the kids to have a little break in the day (Without going back to the resort). And it kept them going for many more hours!

If we were to have dinner that late in the day (7pm) I think we would have all dropped out of the evening activities! JMO!

I totally agree with you! When we had earlier ADR's, we'd make sure to eat our lunch between 11-11:30. Every time we had an early ADR, we walked right into the restaurant, but when we ate later, like at 7, we'd have to wait about a half hour.

The earlier, the better for us.

 

[richard_andmel]

The problem we had with early dinners is that most of our ADR's were at some of the nicer restaurants, Jiko, California Grill etc. We didn't like going straight from the parks to some of these restaurants. We were all hot and sweaty (It gets warm in Central Florida) and wanted to go back to the resort and clean up. But doing this took alot of time out of our day and we felt that it would have been easier if we had made the ADR's for later in the day. We would have still had to go back to our resort to clean up but it wouldn't have busted up our day as much.

We always head back to the resort for a swim and rest midday, so this isn't a problem for us. Basically we are up early and sitting down to a 7:30 TS breakfast. We hit a non EMH park for opening, and leave no later than 1PM. Swim, rest, shower and off to an early dinner. Then we do something fun in the evening.