First trip to Walt Disney World

[mom2nickntink]

My husband and I are going from 11/29-12/4 with my MIL, son (6 1/2) and daughter (15 months). Our tentative schedule is:

Sat - Epcot
Sun - Magic Kingdom
Mon - Breakfast @ Animal Kingdom then MGM for dinner & show
Tue - Magic Kingdom

Can anyone give me an idea of where and what to eat for lunch and dinner at each park? We are on a limited budget so would like an inexpensive as possible. Not looking for charachter meals or fancy dining. Want decent food at a decent price.

Is there anywhere to get sample menus from different restaurants in parks?

Thanks sooooo much in advance.

 

[Kate-n-sam]

Here is a link to Deb Will's WDW site, this link is for the menus section...

http://www.wdwig.com/menu/menus.htm

I suggest the Columbia Harbor house at the MK
Tusker House at AK (Africa)
And the Food Court downstairs in the Land Pavillion. Lots of variety there.

Some tips
1. Look at all the lines before queing up. Very often people just fall into place and there will be lines for fast food with 3 people on the far left, and in the center 20 people deep. Works for us.
2. The CMs who work the registers at the fast food restaurants usually sit at a podium like register. They take orders from BOTH sides of the podium, alternating from side to side. Again, often everyone will be on one side of the podium and the other side will be empty, walk right up and order.

Hope this helps. Oh, and have a blast!

One more thing regarding your itinerary....EE has been reinstated and the MK is now on Sun. I would expect it to be a mad house that day, just so you know....of course we are to lazy to take advantage of early entry. Are you staying on-site?

 

[juliesue]

Let me just start with the fact that I am a huge Disney fan. We generally go twice a year. However, I make the following comment so that you don't get surprised. No food at Disney is what anyone would call cheap. Some counter service restaurants are better than others, and here are some of the ones we consider better.

MK - The counter service in Tommorrowland (across from Tomorrowland Speedway) that features Sonny the lounge singer. The counter service in Frontierland that goes clear through to Adventureland (the Frontierland side offers hambureger, hot dogs, etc and the Adventureland side offers more Mexican type dishes).

EPCOT - the counter service inside the land pavilion is one of the best in the place. I have heard that the Morrocan counter service is good, but my picky eaters won't touch anything that they haven't had before. We pretty much don't eat in the Showcase as my DD and DS won't eat anything there. (DO NOT eat at the American pavilion unless you are dying for boring institutional hamburgers and chicken fingers!)

MGM - The counter service in the back of the park between Bug's life playgound and catastrophe canyon. (A lot less crowded than the ones up by ToT and Rockin Rollercoaster!)

AK - Tusker House in Africa and the FlamePit BBQ in Asia.

One other suggestion that has helped us save more than a couple bucks. If you will have a frig in your room and can stop at a grocery or convenience store on the way, get some Uncrustables PB & J sandwiches. You can find them in the frozen food section of most grocery stores. They are small frozen PB&J sandwiches that easily fit in a belt pack. We usually take one or two per person. They can thaw while you walk around and make a great snack for mid-morning. It has saved us a bundle in snacks (which are also not cheap) and has given the kids more than sugar to go on.

 

[Barb D]

We like Cosmic Rays at MK for counter service.

That said, the character meals really are cool...and since they are all-you-can-eat (including awesome desserts!) they're not as bad a deal as you might imagine. We like to do lunch because it gives us an extended break in the AC. We have a light breakfast in the room, really fill up at lunch time, and maybe have hotdogs for dinner.

 

[mom2nickntink]

My MIL said a friend said you can't bring food into the park. Is this true? What is and isn't allowed? There is no where I go without having snacks and drinks (my 15 mo old is still on bottles). Don't know if this is just her way so we don't bring food or if she misunderstood. I figues between PB & J, deli and buy a turkey leg or two and then make turkey sandwiches we have lunch covered for the 4 park days.

Our hotel offers free breakfast and if we bring our lunchs (bottles of water, sandwich and fruit) then we can spend freely on a snack and dinners at parks and not kill ourselves financially.

The Mousesavers website had an idea to carry a cooler as one of your checked luggage (instead of a suitcase), does anyone know if this is still allowed? Don't know if this hinders any security issues. We have both styrfoam and plastic ones. I guess we could also pack some stuff with our clothes or in a suitcase as long as we don't overpack on clothes.

Thank you all for ideas.

Mara

 

[whozit]

Mom2nickntink

Officially, outside food is not supposed to be brought into the park, but apparently Disney doesn’t enforce this. When you go through park security, they will look in your bags, but they are looking for dangerous items, and they ignore the food. I was concerned about carrying food into the park but it was not a problem.

From reading these boards, a lot of people report that they bring in snacks and also sandwiches, etc for lunch. Some carry them around all day, others store them in a locker inside the park.

When we went, we didn’t bring in sandwiches, but brought in water bottles and various different snack foods that were easy to carry in the fanny pack and backpacks. Some of the things we carried in were juice boxes, apples, oranges, granola-type bars, dried fruit (raisins and apricots), candy (peanut M&Ms were a good choice….at least the nuts have protein so it wasn’t all junk), chips, crackers, peanut butter/cheese crackers packets, individual cheese & crackers packets, single serving applesauce, fruit cups and pudding cups, crackers and a can of aerosol cheese, chips. Instead of lugging all this stuff on the plane or buying it after we got to Orlando, we shipped a box full of this stuff to the resort ahead of time. Saved us time (and also money, since we bought things weeks ahead of time as we saw them on sale). We normally ate breakfast before we left for the park, then ate one meal a day at the park and snacked on things we brought the rest of the time. We also had more time to see the park doing this…..didn’t spend as much time sitting in a restaurant. After paying the price of day’s admission to the parks, I really don’t like to chew up lots of time in a restaurant.