We just returned from 10 days (Sept22-Oct1) ar WDW on the dining plan. 4 adults (two GF, that would be mom and I) and two toddlers (1 GF). The toddler mostly ate off my plate. In general, Disney did "OK" but it was kind of a mixed bag. Also, Disney Dining kept telling us to talk to managers at counter service locations, and managers just told us to talk to the chef, so we eventually just skipped the middleman.
9/22 - breakfast @ POP - two Vans waffles, grapes, chocolate milk for the toddler. waffles were tepid and dry, but they came with real maple syrup.
lunch @pop - bunless burger and carrot sticks, fruit cup, water. The fries are fried in a dedicated fryer, but subject to cross contamination becuse they're held in bins next to the chicken nuggets. Custom fries take forever.
Dinner @ Chef Mickey's. There was a wide selection of GF items. and the non-GF items were obvious (minestrone, bread, etc). The food was tasty and hot, and they had a flourless chocolate cake that was to die for.
9/23 - Lunch @ LeCellier, there was a good selection here too. We both had the filet with cream cheese mashed potatoes and demi-glace. I had the shrimp cocktail (spicy and very good), mom had the tomato stack, which was "OK", but nothing special. maple creme brulee finished us off. Yummy and very well handled.
9/24 - Lunch @ Sci Fi - Spinach and artichoke dip with veggies (mom had chips wih hers), burger no bun and fries for me, chocolate shakes and no dessert. Service was painfully slow, the chef was hard to understand, but the food was decent.
9/25 - breakfast @ Whispering Canyon- I wanted a fruit plate and the KC hash, only managed to order the KC hash because the waitress disapeared in the middle of ordering. Mom had a fruit plate and a ham and cheese omelette.
dinner @ 'Ohana. Potatoes and salad were excellent, wings and shrimp were good. However, we didn't get any skewers until the very end, and then got one piece each of *very* well done beef and pork. This appeared to be due to confusion about our special skewers, they'd been in the holding area most of the time. The peanut sauce isn't GF, but the other sauces are. The promised chocolate mousse from our advance phone call wasn't to be found, but the banana creme brulee was good.
9/26 - dinner @boma. Outright bad. They made us special prime rib, which was the toughest prime rib I've ever eaten. The buffet was sloppy, lots of cross contamination, and the chef gave us a subset of ingredients instead of a clear up/down. She also tended to mumble. There were two safe enteees (prime rib and dry spicy chicken), one soup (mushroom), two sides (overspiced, partly raw potatoes and fufu) and one dessert (cassava coconut pudding) and some fruit that were safe. So not worth the 3.5 hours on Disney transportation.
9/27 - lunch @ LTT - one possible appetizer (potato soup), two possible entrees (colony salad and roast turkey with no gravy or stuffing), and one dessert (pamela's brownie, over microwaved to verrrrrry rubbery). Not a repeat here either.
dinner @WCC - mom had nachos (really *good* nachos), and the grouper. I had the skillet (no chicken, although they would have made me plain chicken, no gravy, no cornbread, no slaw, although the slaw was apprently fine). Shakes for dessert.
9/28 lunch @Kona - I ordered the Kona salad (which never came) and a steak /rice plate (no sauce, even though the chef said it was fine, drowned in tamari), mom has the ceasar (no croutons) and the mahi mahi, also sauceless with had no flavor at all. Dessert was more banana creme brulee.
9/29 dinner@ arist point - fabulous. This was the *one* time we had the chef and the waitperson at the table at once. We got all our food, and it was wonderful, I could have died right then and been happy. Duck Confit, Frisee Salad, tenderloin and buffalo both with grilled asparagus and spinach. Cobbler, no cobbler and a wilderness coffee for dessert. The entrees could have used a condiment to make them ore complex and rounded, but were *very* well executed.
9/30 lunch @ chefs de france, vichyssoise and cheese plate for apps, sole for entree, sorbet for dessert. We couldn't get the chef to come out, and I think there were options lost in the translation, but it was *very* good.
CS notes in general... no desserts available besides fruit, which fortunately was usually all we wanted. Grapes and applesauce get old fast. At Tusker house the chef said "You would know better than I would what has gluten" which struck me as remarkably bad. Special meals at counter service locations take forever, often 20-30 minutes at Pop, for example. Not all the chefs know about all the options. Some know about mac and cheese in the freezer, some didn't. Sometimes we got GF rolls with meals at Pop, sometimes we didn't. GF treats go *fast*. The chocolate donuts and brownies POP got in were gone in <1 day. If you get a special meal, no one knows how to charge you for it, so we had to fight there too.
TS notes in general - calling in advance or having GF noted on your reservations appears to do diddly. I couldn't get anyone to return my phone calls, when I did get through, either they weren't going to do anything special, or the special things weren't done. Ordering was a mess, nearly every time. Waitstaff wanted to take our orders before the chef came and then fix them later, or the chef would take them and forget things, or they wanted to take orders for the "normal" half of the table first and come back to get the GF orders
Also, there's a really skewed view of what's OK. I was offered wheat-free oatmeal cookies. Mickey bars are considered off limits due to shared equipment, but amy's pizza and mac and cheese are considered fine, even though they're also made on shared equipment. Neither answer is wrong, just contradictory. Both counter service and table service tend to just leave things offif it isn't safe (not replacing pasta with rice or extra veg, for example), or make just what needs to be special. For example, GF pancakes would come out as just pancakes, no bacon, or omelette with no potatoes. The special chicken and vegetable meals had no starch at all. Desserts were in general inferior to "regular" desserts, if not completely absent. Most of the park CS tended to do nothing special for GF meals in terms of handling, so I ate most CS meals at POP.
I'd certainly do it again, but I tended to feel like a second class citizen due to my special needs. I think I would tend to pack meals insead of dealing with CS, or make something from the fridge in the room.
9/22 - breakfast @ POP - two Vans waffles, grapes, chocolate milk for the toddler. waffles were tepid and dry, but they came with real maple syrup.
lunch @pop - bunless burger and carrot sticks, fruit cup, water. The fries are fried in a dedicated fryer, but subject to cross contamination becuse they're held in bins next to the chicken nuggets. Custom fries take forever.
Dinner @ Chef Mickey's. There was a wide selection of GF items. and the non-GF items were obvious (minestrone, bread, etc). The food was tasty and hot, and they had a flourless chocolate cake that was to die for.
9/23 - Lunch @ LeCellier, there was a good selection here too. We both had the filet with cream cheese mashed potatoes and demi-glace. I had the shrimp cocktail (spicy and very good), mom had the tomato stack, which was "OK", but nothing special. maple creme brulee finished us off. Yummy and very well handled.
9/24 - Lunch @ Sci Fi - Spinach and artichoke dip with veggies (mom had chips wih hers), burger no bun and fries for me, chocolate shakes and no dessert. Service was painfully slow, the chef was hard to understand, but the food was decent.
9/25 - breakfast @ Whispering Canyon- I wanted a fruit plate and the KC hash, only managed to order the KC hash because the waitress disapeared in the middle of ordering. Mom had a fruit plate and a ham and cheese omelette.
dinner @ 'Ohana. Potatoes and salad were excellent, wings and shrimp were good. However, we didn't get any skewers until the very end, and then got one piece each of *very* well done beef and pork. This appeared to be due to confusion about our special skewers, they'd been in the holding area most of the time. The peanut sauce isn't GF, but the other sauces are. The promised chocolate mousse from our advance phone call wasn't to be found, but the banana creme brulee was good.
9/26 - dinner @boma. Outright bad. They made us special prime rib, which was the toughest prime rib I've ever eaten. The buffet was sloppy, lots of cross contamination, and the chef gave us a subset of ingredients instead of a clear up/down. She also tended to mumble. There were two safe enteees (prime rib and dry spicy chicken), one soup (mushroom), two sides (overspiced, partly raw potatoes and fufu) and one dessert (cassava coconut pudding) and some fruit that were safe. So not worth the 3.5 hours on Disney transportation.
9/27 - lunch @ LTT - one possible appetizer (potato soup), two possible entrees (colony salad and roast turkey with no gravy or stuffing), and one dessert (pamela's brownie, over microwaved to verrrrrry rubbery). Not a repeat here either.
dinner @WCC - mom had nachos (really *good* nachos), and the grouper. I had the skillet (no chicken, although they would have made me plain chicken, no gravy, no cornbread, no slaw, although the slaw was apprently fine). Shakes for dessert.
9/28 lunch @Kona - I ordered the Kona salad (which never came) and a steak /rice plate (no sauce, even though the chef said it was fine, drowned in tamari), mom has the ceasar (no croutons) and the mahi mahi, also sauceless with had no flavor at all. Dessert was more banana creme brulee.
9/29 dinner@ arist point - fabulous. This was the *one* time we had the chef and the waitperson at the table at once. We got all our food, and it was wonderful, I could have died right then and been happy. Duck Confit, Frisee Salad, tenderloin and buffalo both with grilled asparagus and spinach. Cobbler, no cobbler and a wilderness coffee for dessert. The entrees could have used a condiment to make them ore complex and rounded, but were *very* well executed.
9/30 lunch @ chefs de france, vichyssoise and cheese plate for apps, sole for entree, sorbet for dessert. We couldn't get the chef to come out, and I think there were options lost in the translation, but it was *very* good.
CS notes in general... no desserts available besides fruit, which fortunately was usually all we wanted. Grapes and applesauce get old fast. At Tusker house the chef said "You would know better than I would what has gluten" which struck me as remarkably bad. Special meals at counter service locations take forever, often 20-30 minutes at Pop, for example. Not all the chefs know about all the options. Some know about mac and cheese in the freezer, some didn't. Sometimes we got GF rolls with meals at Pop, sometimes we didn't. GF treats go *fast*. The chocolate donuts and brownies POP got in were gone in <1 day. If you get a special meal, no one knows how to charge you for it, so we had to fight there too.
TS notes in general - calling in advance or having GF noted on your reservations appears to do diddly. I couldn't get anyone to return my phone calls, when I did get through, either they weren't going to do anything special, or the special things weren't done. Ordering was a mess, nearly every time. Waitstaff wanted to take our orders before the chef came and then fix them later, or the chef would take them and forget things, or they wanted to take orders for the "normal" half of the table first and come back to get the GF orders
Also, there's a really skewed view of what's OK. I was offered wheat-free oatmeal cookies. Mickey bars are considered off limits due to shared equipment, but amy's pizza and mac and cheese are considered fine, even though they're also made on shared equipment. Neither answer is wrong, just contradictory. Both counter service and table service tend to just leave things offif it isn't safe (not replacing pasta with rice or extra veg, for example), or make just what needs to be special. For example, GF pancakes would come out as just pancakes, no bacon, or omelette with no potatoes. The special chicken and vegetable meals had no starch at all. Desserts were in general inferior to "regular" desserts, if not completely absent. Most of the park CS tended to do nothing special for GF meals in terms of handling, so I ate most CS meals at POP.
I'd certainly do it again, but I tended to feel like a second class citizen due to my special needs. I think I would tend to pack meals insead of dealing with CS, or make something from the fridge in the room.
