How far in advance to contact restaurants re: diet restrictions

[linnell]

Long story short: My son was diagnosed with PDDNOS last fall. We just had some testing done and found out that he has an overabundance of yeast and an intolerance to gluten, eggs & dairy. This news is less than a week old and we're removing things slowly. Right now he's been dairy free for three days and that's all we've got.

Anyway, we're going to World in late Sept and I hope have him completely off all the offending foods. How long ahead should I call the restaurants to let them know? We're doing a lot of buffets, actually here are the restaurants I have made ADRs at -

Chef Mickeys
Ohanas
Play & Dine (lunch)
Tusker House (breakfast)
Le Cellier
Crystal Palace


So do I call ahead for buffets as well? I'm worried because right now, the only foods he eats are pasta & pancakes, so I don't know what what he'll be eating come Sept, which is why I am taking this transition slow.

Any advice would be welcome!

Oh, one more thing - we're staying at the boardwalk villas so I'll have access to a kitchen. The last thing I want to do is cook a lot on vacation, but we have that option as well.

 

[snorris49]

I tend to email my ressies to Special Diets as soon as I have them with the allergies. If for some reason you needed to change the types of allergies they need to accommodate for, you can always re-email the form and also the chefs are good at doing stuff on the fly. It's really so they have supplies and such on hand and are aware that allergy needs are coming in.

I'm GF and Dairy (though eggs are fine for me). Ohana is great! I love chef TJ! Disney can easily prepare GF/Dairy Free/Egg Free pancakes (oh man, I can taste the Mickey Waffles right now...they are really good!) although I've not tried them. I've only had the Mickey Waffles and the Van's (which I buy at home).

As a recommendation for pasta, you might want to give Tinkyada brand GF pasta a try. It's really good and tastes very close to regular pasta (I've fooled folks with it!). You can buy it at most stores. I know that you can get GF pasta at some Disney restaurants too!

Good luck on the transition.

 

[hildarumpole]

You don't need to call each restaurant. Disney has a department to deal with dietary requests for all the restaurants. Email specialdiets@disneyworld.com about 2 weeks before our trip. They'll email you a form to fill out with personal info, resort, allergies, what can and cannot be eaten and your ADR confirmations #s with dates and times. They take care of forwarding all your info to the chefs at each restaurant. Special Diets will also send you some lists of common snack and CS foods available throughout WDW with info about allergens.

The Disney chefs are really terrific at handling dietary restrictions. At buffets, they'll even prepare special foods in the kitchen if there's nothing safe on the buffet line. We had a great experience at Chef Mickey's. My kids were treated like royalty by the chef. He even brought out their special platters personally.

 

[clanmcculloch]

Something I've learned is that I like to wait until I've got all my ADRs finalized before I contact Special Diets. I've had it happen in the past where I've added a few ADRs after sending it and none of the added restaurants had a note in my reservation about our allergies (they still took great care of us, but they had no notice so they couldn't order anything special ahead of time not that it's usually needed). I had sent an updated version of the special diets form and specified what changes were made.

I also don't like to contact them too far ahead of time because they send you a list of allergy foods and locations where they can be found right away. We'll, things change over time. We were just at WDW in June and had received our lists in April. I just a couple days ago received new lists for our August trip and I see differences in locations where certain foods are found. You want fairly up to date lists. Personally, when I'm in a park I like to know where I can get a favourite food of DD12's (my Aspie) ahead of time. It can stave off a pending meltdown.

Yes you do include buffets in the list. There's an area on the Special Diets form to list all of your ADRs. Chefs at buffets do still come out to your table to talk to you just like in any other restaurant.