food allergies

ohiodad

Mouseketeer
Joined
Aug 21, 2000
Messages
130
my daughter will be 18 months old when we go to disney and has alot of food allergies (milk, wheat,peanuts etc) what are the best options for getting foods for her to eat at the parks and resorts, also have a 4 year old who does not do well with sugary snacks, are there things we can get for her ?
 
When you call to make your Priority Seating , specify that your DD has those allergies. They will note it on the PS, and give you a phonenumber to call a week before your trip. You will talk with a chef, and they will help with options. When you check in, mention the allergies and request to speak with the chef. They will takke you through the buffets and tell you what is safe. If nothing is available, they will prepare something for you. Disney is one of the few places I feel comfortable with my DD3. By the way, avoid 9 Dragons in Epcot, they use peanut oil. Hope this helps. Also checkout:
http://www.wdwig.com/guestfood.htm
http://www.wdwig.com/menu/menus.htm
 
Just what Strings said. I also just wanted to say how wonderful WDW is about dealing with food allergies. They have always made sure I have had a safe and wonderful meal.

Because of my food allergies I tend to plan out every single meal way ahead of time and make PS for all of the restaurants we want to dine at that offer them. So far I have not had any problems being accommodated.
 
My DD has severe dairy allergy. She was 26 months on our last visit. Let me say it is wonderful to eat at the World. When we made our PSs we were given numbers to call a week ahead and I did so, but most chefs said it was no big deal. One said they deal with at least 10 people a shift with some sort of allergy that no one told him about. When you get to restuarant, remind the host if they don't mention it to you. A chef will come out and take you on a tour of the buffets to point out the food you can eat and will do special items for you. This was the best. Oh, yeah, some had soy ice cream for my DD. I think CP, Boma and CM are some that had that. Wonderful that she could have dessert since her older sister did.
 
My co-worker's family recently visited. Their son has food allergies worse than I've ever heard of. He can barely eat anything. Disney was wonderful. All of his meals had to be prepared in the room and Disney not only provided a frig for free, but also a microwave for free. The boy's meals were prepared and when they ate at restraurants, the food was given to the chef who put it on a plate and served it to him along with his family's meals so that he felt like the rest of the family eating out. THey also received many phone calls from the chefs. He may have been able to eat a few things at certain places, but don't know which. It was pretty heartwarming to hear that Disney went the extra mile for this little guys' first visit to WDW--I believe he is 6 years old.
 
my DS has anaphylactic allergies to treenuts, peanuts, milk products and eggs. He now can tolerate small amounts of whey and sodium caseinate at age 15, but when he was little I ended up in most of the disney kitchens, including the grand floridian to check ingredients.

We have taken him to DW 5 times, and our experience has been mostly positive. We were there during the very busy second half of August this year, and had more frustrations than usual.

3 of the "direct to the restaurant" numbers the central reservations office gave us turned out to be incorrect--I don't know if they've been changing extensions, or if she needed her reading glasses adjusted. I discovere when we checked in that she'd put "lactose intolerent" rather than "immediate death milk allergy" on the PS's, and had noted the peanuts but not the tree nuts.

Normally the chefs are very accomodating in terms of asking what they could fix--this time they all walked us through the buffet--but on 3 separate ps's they had not fixed the alternate potatoes or rice we'd requested, so our DS would have been waiting a long time after we'd been served.

All in all my DS felt on this last trip that folks were accomodating in terms of making sure he didn't get food that would harm him, but didn't seem to be leaping to provide tasty and creative alternatives.

At Boma, the chef did clean the grill and make him a special dairy-free salmon--but the last time we'd been there, the chef had made him a sorbet and fried papaya pastry, so we were disappointed when they produced the Rice Dream (unfortunately my DS thinks it's vile.)

My bottom-line experience is that the sitdown restaurants are your best bet. Even then--if it's anaphylactic reactions to hidden traces of any common product, you need to do the same careful reading of labels that you do in the grocery store. I was shocked to discover the turkey breast contained nonfat milk at one location.

If you are going to eat at a buffet try to eat at a less busy time--when they can be more attentive--and if it's the Crystal Palace, i would highly recommend sauntering by about an hour before you PS to remind them to put that plain potato in the oven, or whatever you've requested. It's not so hard for our DS now, but when he was 6 or 7 it was very painful to eat at a place with 20 mouthwatering desserts laid out and to discover he couldn't eat a single one.

Our best buffet experiences have been at the GF ParkFare, and Donald's Breakfast-osaurus in AK. At Donald's they made him dairy free pancakes--the first he'd ever had. Boma is normally very good, except for this last time when they were over-busy. On a previous experience at Crystal Palace they made him a dairy free brownie.

We have had terrible experiences at Chefs de France--which served a product with cheese in dim lighting (which would have killed him if he'd taken a bite), and at Morrocco, which helpfully produced a list of "safe" foods for someone who would be allergic to everything, and had 4 items on the list--and did not even try to differentiate between what he could eat with his specific allergies. The Coral Reef this time had a server who didn't speak english well and screwed up the order. Be aware that at both Coral Reef and Canada that if you order the sorbet it comes garnished with products containing nuts and chocolate. This time even the Brown Derby seemed a little put-upon in subbing fries for the milk-laden potatoes. The server then left off a sauce which he could have eaten because "he didn't want to take chances" and sort of flipped his hair around when we sent it back to be sauced.

We did not even try it this time, but Ohana's was one of the worst experiences we've ever had, on our last visit. It was completely due to our server, who didn't want to interrupt her spiel long enough to even get the chef, and who insisted there was no milk in the caramel dipping sauce--we knew better, but it got his hopes up. She then CHARGED for whatever dessert alternative (a frozen icee drink) she finally came up with.

Our best sit-down experiences this time were at Cinderella's castle (lunch) and Mama Melrose's, which went out of their way to be tasty and accomodating.

If I may be of any help, feel free to PM or email me. I believe we've eaten in most of the WDW restaurants over the years and all of it has been with the food allergy filter assessing the experience.
 
Grown up with more allergies than most little kids chiming in here.

I do not dine out at all. I am just not comfortable. I'm barely comfortable in my own kitchen. :rolleyes:

Disney is the ONLY place I can think of where they actually understand and care. For the most part, my experiences have been very positive (of course I've never had a dessert :( But I have had some excellent meals).

Of course you still have to be VERY vigilant. If the server doesn't get the chef for you, go to the front podium and ask there. (Many years ago I had a bad experience with a waitress in Akershus in Norway and I vowed NEVER again).

I have to say that Chef Bubba at the Kona Cafe has been wonderful to me (and with a name like Bubba, how could I ever forget him) as well as Chef Stephan at Whispering Canyon Cafe. I know it's now closed for breakfast, but I had my very first pancakes ever at the Hollywood & Vine Restaurant (where they even brought out the mix before so I could read the ingredients myself). Sure the pancakes weren't light and fluffy, but I was eating them! And even for a 30+ year old woman that was a thrill.

WDW -- it's the only place I truly enjoy a meal.
 
At the California Grill, they made our table a sushi sampler plate without avocado. It was nice to eat sushi without having to examine it closely and pick out tiny pieces.
 





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