Disney Wonder Dining Experience - MR 3/6-3/13

mac4daddy

Earning My Ears
Joined
Feb 20, 2011
Messages
57
Here's the link to my Facebook page with pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&note_id=10150115240142659

Some friends asked me to talk about the food since I’m a major foodie. I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves. At the end of this series of Disney Cruise Blogs, I'll put a slideshow which will include food....food... and more pictures of food. Now that I am able to look back, each and every meal was special, but what I want to share most was the experience while dining on the Disney Wonder.

Rock Star Treatment at Palo – One of my best friends, Ryan who had gone on 3 other Disney cruises mentioned not to miss dining at Palo. I must have forgotten all about Palo, and didn't get an opportunity to book ahead of time. I tried to book online, but reservations were already booked/closed. So my only chance was to go on standby. The moment we boarded the ship, we put ourselves on standby for the next available slot. Fortunately, the next day, we were still given seats to dine at Palo. Whew!!!! Thanks, Ry!!!

Dining at Palo required semi-formal attire. The moment I got off the 10th floor elevator, I could already sense that this deck was different. I saw the signs leading to Palo, and to get in the restaurant, I had to follow the curve to the right. I couldn’t find our party until I got to the very tail end of the restaurant. It turned out we were given the VIP Room. The Black-Eyed Peas song “I got a feeling” started playing in my head...."that tonight's gonna be a good night". Our waiter/server, Alex from Russia, attended to our needs. Unlike many of the restaurants on board, the focus on Palo was all about taking things slow, savoring each dining moment. From the appetizers down to the desserts, Alex was with us every step of the way. He explained in fine detail with his amazing Russian accent the journey that we were about to go through that evening. Thank you, Alex!!!

Tritons was one of the dining restaurants on the 3rd deck. Tritons was designed with The Little Mermaid theme in mind. A huge mosaic tiled wall of King Triton and Ariel was the back drop of this restaurant. This was home to many of our dining days and nights. Tritons was the 1st dinner restaurant we went to and this was the place that introduced me to the "Mickey Ice Cream Bar". It was an ice cream bar mainly for kids, but Ryan advised me not to miss out on it. And I'm glad I didn't. What was the big deal? It was basically vanilla ice cream covered with a very rich,dark chocolate. I gotta tell you, since having the 1st one, I kept asking Ethan and Madison to order it on my behalf with their future lunches and dinners. It was Daddy's order :-)

Parrot Cay – also on Deck 3 was another restaurant boasting its array of colorful parrot-like décor. It reminded me of anything and everything Carribean. I have 2 memorable experiences here at Parrot Cay. First, was the Character Breakfast or what I’d like to call “Dining with the Stars”. We dressed up the kids in their favorite Disney attire for this breakfast. As we entered the restaurant, we could already see Mickey, Minnie, Chip, Goofy, and Pluto. We sat down for our breakfast and waited for our favorite Disney Characters to make their way to our table. The kids and adults were able to take pics with them and got their autographs at the same time. After breakfast, we also spent time with Mickey and Minnie Mouse at Studio Sea for another picture-taking opportunity.

The other memorable event at Parrot Cay took place on Saturday. It was the day before our last day on vacation. I was already “steak’d” out and didn’t have much of an appetite anymore. We were having lunch at Tritons, while Nancy went to Parrot Cay to grab some dessert. When she came back, she mentioned that there was a seafood fest at Parrot Cay (which was about to close in 10 minutes). The rest of our party had already finished their lunch, but I ran to Parrot Cay to check out the scene. It was a Seafood Fest indeed – shrimp, mussels, crabs, but my eyes were focused on one thing – CRAWFISH. It was not prepared like “Boiling Crab”, basically it was just steamed crawfish. But that didn’t stop this Filipino. I asked for drawn butter, lemon wedges and squeezed the lemon juice onto the butter. I even had the audacity to ask for vinegar, fresh garlic – and voila….I was in crawfish heaven. I was alone, the rest of the party went on to other events. It was a fine solitary moment of just me, myself, and crawfish! I capped off my unexpected lunch with some of the mini-creme brulee's aboard the Disney Wonder!

Animator’s Palate – This was a feast for the eyes. It was a restaurant decorated in black and white style. The room was also decorated with huge picture-frames with animated pics of different characters from many Disney movies. As we went through our different stages of our dinner pictures came to life, from plain black and white animation sketch to its finished stage when the animation was shown in the movie - an effect that only Disney could do. For this Disney Cruise, we dined at Animator’s Palate 3 times, 3 excellent dinners I’ll never forget...that meant 3 more times I also had the Mickey Bar.

There were many other restaurants on the ship like Pinocchio’s Pizzeria, Goofy’s Galley, Beach Blanket Buffet, Cove Café, and the Promenade….they all had easy access to food during most of the day and evening. It just all depended on our mood, we were definitely not food-deprived. Not to mention, Room Service. Trust me, I took advantage of the free room service! :-)

Ok....next blog, the one and only Disney World-Class Entertainment.
 
what a great write up! Thanks for sharing. I will have to remember that seafood buffet :-) We are heading out in the morning for DLR and the Wonder on Sunday :cool1:

The best part will be telling the girls in the morning, we managed to keep it hush, hush.:mickeyjum
 
Have a great time! That is so exciting for you and the girls!!! Keep us posted!!!:dance3:
 
I think me and my family are the few who were "conscious" of the calories intake and not really big on eating.. We got 1 Mickey bar for my 6 yr old daughter...she did not like it at all and I took a bite of it and hated it too.... Moreover it was over $380 calories each :(

also we must have had Goofys and Pizzeria place probably twice in the entire trip.. these were basically fast food and we kept away from these fast food places rest of the trip..

The only thing we ate a lot were the fresh fruit plate near the soft serve place..
 

There were folks in my party who were very health conscious, and as the cruise progressed, they let it all go....they ate to their hearts content...now that were back home, I'm sure they're back to being conscious again. :)
 
I didn't pay thousands of dollars to eat salads and fruit. Not that I gorge on pizza and fries, and not that I didn't enjoy the salads and fruit I did have, I figure that on my last cruise I put on about 1lb a day. That extra weight was off again in about two weeks back at home.
 
Who were your servers and would you recommend them? We did not love our servers on our Feb. cruise.
 
I didn't pay thousands of dollars to eat salads and fruit. Not that I gorge on pizza and fries, and not that I didn't enjoy the salads and fruit I did have, I figure that on my last cruise I put on about 1lb a day. That extra weight was off again in about two weeks back at home.

Hear...hear!!! :rotfl2: There was no question that dining almost became an obligation since there were set times for dining. So it was a must-not-miss event. We let it all go......indulgence was what it was all about and we're sooooo glad we did! :yay:
 
Who were your servers and would you recommend them? We did not love our servers on our Feb. cruise.

Our servers were Vitchuron (from Thailand) and Lito (from the Philippines). Highly recommended. One of my next blogs is all about excellent service we got from them.:banana:
 
I didn't pay thousands of dollars to eat salads and fruit. Not that I gorge on pizza and fries, and not that I didn't enjoy the salads and fruit I did have, I figure that on my last cruise I put on about 1lb a day. That extra weight was off again in about two weeks back at home.

I'm with you. I will be enjoying Mickey Bar after Mickey bar, all 380 calories every time! :rotfl:
 
I'm with you. I will be enjoying Mickey Bar after Mickey bar, all 380 calories every time! :rotfl:

They also served creme brulee's quite a few times over many dinners, but to be honest, the best one I had was the one during the seafood fest at Parrot Cay. It was miniature-sized. Yumm. Enjoy!!!!:yay:
 
Hi again mac4daddy. You've been very helpful in answering all my questions on different topics. As you have young kids, I hope you'll be able to answer this question for me. In reading your description about Parrot Cay being a festive dining venue, I was going to dress my son in his bright Caribbean short/top outfit. I remember reading somewhere that no shorts are allowed in the dining room. I'm wondering if that rule applies only to adults. Did any of your kids or did you notice any other kids under 6 years old at dinner time wearing shorts/tops combination. Any comments you have on kids' attire at dinner would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to break any rules! Thanks again for your help.
 
Did any of your kids or did you notice any other kids under 6 years old at dinner time wearing shorts/tops combination. Any comments you have on kids' attire at dinner would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Cidymom - the only time we were concerned about the kids' attire was during the formal, semi-formal nights. For the cruise casual, they were dressed as casually as possible. I tried to be "conservative" on our 1st dinner at Tritons (it was cruise casual night), and to my surprise, there were people dressed in shorts and sweatshirt. So the other cruise casual nights, we didn't stress that much, we kept it casual. I wouldn't worry so much about the cruise casual nights (again, I'm going by what I experienced). I'm sure others have a different take on this. But we made sure we were dressed appropriately and in style on the other 'themed nights'.

Hope that helps....
 


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