Hi KY Mommy:
Our experience has been mostly very good in all WDW restaurants except the World Showcase ones in Epcot. We are dealing with a milk allergy to even trace amounts of whey or sodium caseinate, which is a preservative which shows up in everything, and have to be extremely careful about any grill spread which might have whey. This is in addition to allergies as well as eggs, treenuts and peanut--and even with that our DS has been able to eat safely all over the world in 7 different visits. You do not need to be alarmed.
We decided a long time ago that we hope our son will be able to function in restaurants in normal business settings and so have worked since he was a toddler to teach him the combination of watchfulness, but unobtrusiveness (which he craves.)
Specifically--and remember that this is solely our experience, now 2 years since the last visit;
We were served food with a visible milk or nut product at:
Le Cellier
San Angel
Chefs de France
These are the only restaurants where this has happened to us.
All other "negative" experiences, for us, have to do with the quality of attention and the pre-preparation on the part of the restaurant.
We have always had royal treatment with great care and personal visits from chefs at:
Brown Derby
Mama Melroses
Donald's Breakfastosaurus
Coral Reef
Teppanyaki
The Land
The Castle (sit down noncharacter meal)
LTT
1900 Park Faire
Whispering Canyon
Artist Point
We had wonderful, top of the line, I wish I could kiss them special service in the food court at POR, and MARA at AKL. They made special food without question. The WL food court was indifferent, but that was many years ago.
We had a mixed experience at Crystal Palace, with stellar service several times, 2 indifferent meals (pointing out what he could not have, but not offering anything special to cope with the extremely limited food range). There was once when a potato was incorrectly identified as being milk free. That was by a line server, and was immediately overridden by a chef.
We have had terrific experiences at Boma, with one "off" time. This is our favorite restaurant, can't wait to go again, but will only do it when they open and are less busy.
We did not get unsafe food but had a bad server at 'Ohana; all the reports say that our server must have been off her prozac and our experience was untypical in terms of how unhelpful she was.
We had an unpleasant experience at Marrakesh with being offered only a limited range of generically safe foods, and no interest in tailoring to his particular profile.
Primetime Cafe accomodated him, but our server was unnecessarily loud about it; I spoke to the manager about sensitivity and I bet that that was a 1 time experience.
He has eaten safely a number of times at Rainforest Cafe, but this is far more a figure it out yourself experience. Burger/fries safe.
We have never had ANY problems at a counter service place, again mainly sticking to burgers fries.
I have to say, having done this more times than I can count that the constant between good service and so/so experiences is how busy the restaurant is, if it is a buffet in particular. (No difference in sit-down). I would do everything possible to schedule buffet meals at the beginning or end of the shift (food fresher at the beginning).
The other constant is that if the restaurant does not have a native english speaker for a chef/manager, that you want to be very, very careful. Doesn't mean you can't eat there, but use caution.
It goes without saying that the pre-communication/documentation is necessary to get in the food allergy special treatment door. We've never gone in without pre-communication, but I saw a very exasperated chef trying to deal with walk-ins with a profile like my DS's.
I hope this helps, and I'm sorry if our short-hand and neg reports might have scared you a bit. This subject comes up often enough to be sticky really, and some of us less organized sorts tend to end up typing the same info quite often. (If I really had it together, I'd just have it as a boiler-plate to paste in.)
