Garden grill or captain's grill?

[3sweetpeas]

[/B]Which one do you prefer? We are not overly adventurous eaters and we have 3 kids 11-14. I love steak. You could really throw Coral Reef into the mix too. Thanks for your help![/B]

 

[shannonstar]

Garden Grill is on always on my DS8's list of not to miss. He loves Chip & Dale and eating the food off the family style platter. The freshness of the food is a nice touch and the character interaction is awesome there.

 

[prisjoyce]

Those are 2 different experiences: resort restaurant vs character meal in Epcot. We're booked for both next week, been there before and going back! If I had to choose one, I'd say Garden Grill. Spinning restaurant, characters, decent food.

Enjoy!

 

[3sweetpeas]

Thanks for your responses! I just don't know much about these 2 restaurants and I'm trying to finish my ADR's. Thanks again! Any other opinions?

 

[clanmcculloch]

I'm with PP. They're very different experiences. We really enjoyed both. That being said, if I'm at a park then I don't like leaving the park to get to a restaurant. If I'm at Epcot, I don't want to walk over to YC for CG so I'd be choosing GG.

I found GG food to be very simple, hearty and fresh. The flank steak was perfectly cooked and quite tasty as was the rest of the food. The options are fairly limitted though so look over the menu to see if the options are suitable to your family or not. If they are then I'd go with that. If they're not then you can always book CG. CG has lots of simple yet tasty options that are suitable for less adventurous diners.

CR is so hit and miss. We love the atmosphere but the food and service can be either amazing or terrible. We've been lucky to get mostly good food (though the medium well steak for a rare steak eater was not good) but the service has been terrible both time we've eaten there.

 

[KelseyLaPerle]

I've only been to Garden Grille but I can tell you that it's my favorite restaurant at WDW. Granted, I haven't been to ALL of the dining options, but we've done several character meals as well as other meals. GG is my favorite for the food, and one of the kids' favorite because the restaurant moves.

During our last trip, we waited for over an hour for a table since our trip was booked last minute and we couldn't get an ADR. It was worth the wait, even with 2 cranky-ish kids!

 

[krb2g]

Garden Grill; it's simple food (and all you care to eat at that...) but the character interactions are fantastic. Coral Reef is really cool too--and we've always enjoyed the food there.

 

[Big Daddy Incredible]

We dined at both GG and CG during our last visit. Both are solid dining option and we would not hesitate to dine at either restaurant in the future.

I believe GG is the best character restaurants on property due to the setup of the restaurant. The characters go from table to table - there isn't the free-for-all environment that can exist at the other character restaurants. Your kids can sit at the end of the booths to get up and down easily when the characters present themselves at your table. The food is also very good.

Captain Grille was the surprise dinner for us on our last trip. All five of us devoured our meals. I had a mahi mahi entree because I wanted something lighter for that meal. It was served on couscous with a perfect lemon wine sauce with cherry tomatoes. I was blown away by that dish - it was perfect! DW really liked her steak. I can't remember what the kids had but I know they all liked it. CG had a lot of empty tables that night so it was really relaxing.

We also like Coral Reef but mostly due to the atmosphere of the restaurant - it is truly unique. But if we had to pick a restaurant based on quality of food, Coral Reef would easily be the last of these three options for us.

Good luck with your choice.

 

[3sweetpeas]

Thank you so much everyone for your responses. It helped a lot!

 

[3Minnies1Mickey]

We dined at both in September. Captains Grille was a far better meal, but Garden Grill is still very good plus characters were fantastic. At CG we all had the ribeye and it was wonderful....and I'm not a big steak person. We did dine at CG on a non-park day and we were staying at the BC so it was convenient. We actually did a walk up on our last night because my FIL decided we needed a "send off" meal.