Grand Floridian Cafe anyone?

[maxiesmom]

I just made an ADR for the Grand Floridian Cafe, and I'm looking for some honest opinions on it. I did try searching, but it was less than helpful. Has anyone had dinner there recently? Will a 9yr old feel out of place there? How is the food?

TIA!

 

[Golf4food]

Click the link in my signature to our September Dining Review and you can find a review for both lunch and breakfast. We love the GFC. One of our favorite places, especially for breakfast. Look forward to dinner next trip.

 

[NC State]

We tired it for the first time in September and it was one of our favoite places. We will be going back in the future.

 

[Wicket's Mom]

We went there for the first time this past September. We liked it very much. The atmosphere is very nice, like eating in a Victorian summer house. Fine for a child, not too formal, just nice.

The food was very good also.

 

[Jeanieblue114]

I just tried it last week.
I really wanted to like it. It is nostalgic for me because we used to go there for lunch salads when I was a kid. My dad would joke that it looked like they mowed the lawn to get all the different greens. We always loved it.

So, we went last week. It was dinner time. There were a lot of kids, so that wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately some of them were screaming like crazy and throwing food. I have pictures of the piece of melon and ice cubes that sat on the floor next to my chair for two hours. Nobody ever picked them up.

Our meal took 2 hours ....just entrees and desserts. We weren't in a rush, but it was slow. All of the staff were running around like crazy. Difficult to digest with all the rush around us. They must have been understaffed. The restaurant was very noisy too. We had to scream to each other to talk.

The food was mediocre for dinner. I swear that the jus on the chicken was jarred gravy. The orange flavor in the chocolate fondue was good. However, the marshmallow on the plate had a hair smooshed into it. I gave it to the server and he just took it away.
2 of our bread plates were also dirty when we sat down.
Our server was friendly though and offered us champaign at the end of our meal for our anniversary. We don't drink so he asked if we wanted anything else. I asked for some fruit and he brought us a container of strawberries to go with us. That was nice.
We also enjoyed the dinner rolls. We asked to have the extras wrapped up (a nice hard roll is all I want for breakfast...I'm italian). He brought them back loose in a used disney gift shop bag. I fed them to the birds.

Maybe it would be better for lunch. I wouldn't do it for dinner again.
A nice server can make up for so so food, but I just have difficulty getting past the cleanliness issues.

We found that most restaurants were a better experience at lunch time in general.

 

[MeLaNie9]

We loved GFC when we ate there in Dec 08 - by far the best meal of that trip that included LeCellier and Kona Cafe.

 

[minniebeth]

We've eaten there in the past and it has been a nice solid choice.
We did not eat there this time, but to answer your question about kids, like others have said, yes, it is very kid friendly. We passed by it a thousand times on our last trip just walking by and it was always very busy with a wait. I'm sure it was due to free dining. Lots and lots of kids. Like Jeanieblue114 said, it was noisy, we could hear it just by walking by. We could see kids melting down through the windows . (It was late) We walked by the same windows with the same people in them several times (to get to Gasparillas) so it appeared slow. We even commented on the fact that the same people are still there!
So if you are going during free dining, just anticipate a lot of slowness and put your patience happy face on, but GFC is usually pretty good.

 

[bytheblood]

We used to like it, but not anymore. They have changed the items on the menu so much that we just don't care to visit there anymore.

 

[Grumpy92]

Breakfast and lunch are very good. But I would not recommend it for dinner. The menu is very limited and what is available is mediocre.

 

[Samandmom]

We went for dinner back in August for the first time and loved it. I have a review in my dinning report. (link in my signature)

 

[Sleeping Becca]

We ate lunch there twice in June, and it was wonderful. I had the Grand Sandwich and the Grand Floridian Burger and both were amazing! The appetizers we ordered were OK, nothing terrific, but the soups were fantastic. I don't remember if we ordered dessert. It is a pretty casual place we didn't have reservations. I wouldn't go out of my way to eat there, but if we stay at the GF again we will def eat there, it is also a nice place to eat lunch on an MK park day.

 

[Cupcake2008]

My parents and I celebrated their 35th anniversary at the Cafe last Monday. We've been to Disney hundreds of times, and I am now local, but we'd never been to this restaurant. I made the reservation there primarily because I wanted to order a custom cake from the GF bakery. We ended up really enjoying the dinner. The cafe is very elegant and pretty. If the nine year old is a girl, she might really like it the way kids enjoy the GF tea room. It's pretty casual and there were lots of kids there that night anyway.

The restaurant was much busier there than we had expected it to be. The sour dough dinner rolls were good, but very hard. Mom mom ate some sort of bread with raisins in it. Both my dad and I enjoyed the chicken dish, and my mom had the pork chop. The servers were excellent. Our waitress was training another waiter that evening so we got twice as much attention. The host took a picture of my parents for their anniversary and presented them with a photo card later in the evening. The cake I ordered, although not exactly what I wanted, was gorgeous and made the evening extremely special. We would go back!

 

[LAS321]

We ate dinner there in August and really enjoyed it. The food was excellent, the service was great and we loved the atmosphere.