Free dining is GREAT

[cshaffer21]

We got back last night from a 5 night trip with FREE DINING . We were DH, DD21, DD13, and myself. We would have spent over $900.00 if we had purchased what we ate for the 5 days. That's not bad. We didn't miss the appetizers at all. We all ate most of our meals and had room for dessert. Service was good overall and it seemed that the restaurants were a little more organized at checkin than last year when we went during free dining. We checked in a little early for all of our table serves and were seated within 5 mins. The only place that was bad at checkin was Tusker House for breakfast. There were 3 families in front of us who didn't have ressies. They did not want to take NO for an answer. The CMs were firm but polite.

So we ate at:

-Chef Mickey's: service was great, food was very good, characters were ok.
-Coral Reef: service was so-so (our waiter seemed to have too many tables but was nice), food was ok. We did get to sit next to the tank. Won't be going back
-Grand Floridian Cafe: Service was great, food was very good, almost empty when we arrived at 5:30. Just a short ride on the monorail from MK.
-Tusker House: breakfast, food was very good, service was so-so. We had to wait a little while to get seated. Got seated at 11 am and were told the breakfast food would be gone in 20 mins. We managed to eat plenty in that time. Then they were putting out lunch so we ate some more!!!!
-50's Prime Time Cafe: Service was great, not too over the top, girls weren't too embarrassed! food was good and video on tv seemed better than last year.

All in all we had great table serve experiences with only a few minor problems. We paid cash for our tips. We did give20%-nice of them to put it on the bill!!!! No confusion, just wrote cash on the first bill tip line and gave them a card.

Still have laundry to do so will post counter serve and snacks later.

 

[cshaffer21]

Now for the counter serve:

-POP food court: only 1 section was open for lunch, rest still had breakfast, but we all foun d something we liked.

-Sunshine season food court: always great, butterfinger cheesecake is superb!!!

-Pinocchio village haus: sandwich was off the menu, it had a blank spot on it, probably won't go back, salad is alittle weird

-Wolfgang Puck's Express: great meal for counter serve. It was 80.00 dollars for the 4 of us. WOW. The beef and gorganzola pocket was delicious!!!!!!!

-Backlot Express: good as usual, nothing to write home about

We also ate at Beaches and Cream on our last day. We paid oop for this but used up the rest of disney rewards card for half of the bill. Only waited about 10 minutes and wasn't crowded or hurried. Burgers, hot dogs and fries great as always.

Snacks: We used our scacks for popcorn, drinks, fries, dole whips, pastries for breakfast one day, and the best: dipped pretzels and giant oreo in Goofy's Candy Co.

Again we loved the DDP and called for bounceback in Oct next year. Maybe it won't be so hot a little later in the year!!!