how is the food and service at tusker house

[lgjjp]

We have the nemo pgk booked at tusker house and a friend just told us that the service and food was horrible and that she wouldnt ever go there again. We have never been so I was wondering what others thought.

Thanks

 

[figment_jii]

We went to the Tusker House last October and it was fine. We liked the food; it was mostly "American" with a few items that had African overtones. It's a buffet, so the servers only refill drinks.

The only drawbacks were that it took a while to be seated (even with an ADR), and that it's quite a hike from the restaurant to the Nemo show.

I would go again.

 

[heatherwillmom]

We go to Tusker House for lunch on every visit to AK. We have always had great service. The food is always great, lots of choices. It is very busy at lunch. Even with ADR, we still have to wait a while sometimes.

 

[lgjjp]

Thank you !!! I feel better about eating there now. Thanks again

 

[Big Kid]

We've eaten at Tusker House twice, once for breakfast and once for lunch. We enjoyed the food and service. I like the theme, but as a previous poster mentioned there is little in the way of exotic cuisine.

The layout is a bit different than other WDW buffet restaurants in that the serving room is separate from the dining rooms. Most tables do not have a view of the buffet so you could not keep an eye on children, if that's a concern, without accompanying them to the buffet.

 

[disneypolybride2008]

breakfast was awesome and the service was outstanding on our wedding visit. they did the candle ceremony for us w/ a cupcake and 3 candles. that was so nice. we got married at the poly and couldnt do the candles b/c it was an outdoor wedding. i told the server this and how she did such a special thing for us.

lunch we did not like. nothing really appealed to us. too exotic, lots of couscous. we filled up with corn dog nuggets and desserts i'd rather eat at Yak n Yeti they have great food.

 

[baileybelle]

We always do lunch at Tusker House. Lots of food to pick from. Here's a link to their menu http://allears.net/menu/menu_tus.htm

 

[Clemson Bama Fan]

We have only eaten there for breakfast, but it was one of our favorites. We have another ADR for this December.

 

[squirrel]

I have eaten at TH three times over 2 trips. I have had both breakfast and lunch. Food was good and so was the service.

I will be going again this year.

 

[heatherwillmom]

The layout is a bit different than other WDW buffet restaurants in that the serving room is separate from the dining rooms. Most tables do not have a view of the buffet so you could not keep an eye on children, if that's a concern, without accompanying them to the buffet.[/QUOTE]

Children should Always be accompanied at at buffet as is posted at most buffets that children need an adult.

 

[koolaidmoms]

We enjoy TH. We generally go on each trip for lunch or dinner but we skipped AK on our trip last December so the kids asked me to make an ADR there for this trip.

I like the bobotie (ground meat, spices, raisins with a corn bread like top), the garlic mashed potatoes, watermelon rind salad and pork roast. There are sandwich fixings for those who are hard to please during lunch so everyone in our crowd is happy.

We only had one issue with service and I believe the issue arose because we were the first seating after breakfast and our drinks were not refilled as often as I would have liked but once I caught a waiter that went by that was fixed.

Hope this helps.

 

[keltic]

We had breakfast with Donald at Tusker House and LOVED it. The food was excellent and so was our server, Neil! We would go back every trip!

 

[DaniB]

Is the Nemo package only available for a certain meal? Ie, lunch or dinner?

 

[lgjjp]

I believe its only for lunch, and you must be seated between 1 and 140p. You get reserved seating at the 330 nemo show.

 

[mylittlebuttercup]

I've only ever had breakfast there, but we really enjoyed it and are going back in six days!

 

[cheap traveler]

We L-L-Loved it (yes, so much love it made me stutter lol)

I am NOT an adventurous eater, so I was worrried, but the food was great. My DD - 5 at the time - loved it just for the fact that she could make her own PB&J sandwich. I found everything to be fresh, hot, and delicious last year. I have been searching, and there are lunch reservations available every day of my trip (next week), so we are going to try for a walk up one of our AK days.

 

[Disney845]

We have eaten there twice for lunch, and will do so again the next time we are at AK. I would describe it as Boma-Lite.

I have copied/pasted my most recent review for you (September 09). Sorry if this was more than you were looking for!

Tusker House 1:30pm:

This will be our second lunch visit to Tusker House since it became the Table Service buffet restaurant. We really enjoyed our first visit in 2008, and GardenGuy was happy to eat there again, as it is a buffet and he would have a wide selection.

When I was making our reservations (using the new online system, which I really like btw), the time I chose for lunch just happened to coincide with the time to get priority seating for the Nemo show. Now we saw the Nemo show when it first opened, and it didn’t do anything for us (I really preferred the Tarzan Rocks show). So I wasn’t really sure if we planned to use the passes and go see the show again. I had mentioned it to GardenGuy this morning, but he wasn’t interested in watching the people with the “stick puppets” as he called them.

We check in at the podium about 5-10 min before our ressie. There is a swarm of female CMs around the check in podium arguing with each other on who is going to take the 2pm podium shift, because so-and-so was going home, but the woman scheduled didn’t want the podium and so-on. I was really put off by this “argument” all of these women were having while another woman was checking us in right next to them? We were asked if we wanted the FP to Nemo, but we declined. We were handed a pager and told to sit down at the outside tables right next to the podium for them to call us.

Note: they have moved the check-in area from last year. There is a podium out front of the restaurant that is located near the bar and the covered bar seating pavillion. This is near where the African dancers perform. This is now for walk-ups, we were directed around to the back side of the building where another podium and smaller un-covered seating is located for those with dining reservations.

A few pictures of the outside waiting area for the restaurant.

In the 15 min or so that we waited a family (multiple adults and multiple children) arrived to check in. Two little girls (maybe 6-7) take seats on either side of one of the small outside waiting tables and begin to start pushing the table back and forth at each other, and each one is upset with the other and screaming at mommy or daddy (“Susie (not sure what the names were, just using for point of reference)?) did this”, “no I didn’t”, “Molly (?) did that”, “no I didn’t”, “liar”, “no you’re a liar”, next thing you know one girl stands up to shove the other and the other kicks her in the chest, one of the men in the group yells at them to stop and one of the women turns to see what is going on. The girl who was kicked is crying and telling the adults she was kicked and the adult woman turns to the other girl and yells at the top of her lungs, “You did what? You kicked her?” To which the little girl who clearly did kick her says “No, she is lying.” To which the adult woman (their mother?) Yells loudly “No You’re A Liar!” to this 7 year old. Then announces to everyone that she needs a cigarette and stomps off?!? Wow! The “liar” child is still denying everything and one of the adult men keeps yelling at her, “shut up, Shut Up, JUST SHUT UP”! Now we have no children of our own yet, but I can’t imagine how yelling at a 7 year old at the top of your lungs to “SHUT UP” and calling them a “Liar” is great parenting skills, and is showing what mature adults act like (even if it is true and they are lying, there are better ways to explain why being dishonest is not a good thing without resorting to name calling of your own children!?). No wonder the kids were acting up.

Finally our beeper goes off and we are shown into the restaurant where we are very surprised to see that it is almost empty. There is a long area directly off the buffet which is maybe a quarter full, with a smaller chamber to the left (where we were seated) that was still sizable, but only had about 5 filled tables in it???

We didn’t mind in the least, as our touring plan was a lazy one today, but wondered why the 15 min wait when they were clearly not anywhere close to busy. I suggested to GardenGuy that maybe they were short on servers and were doing it for crowd control, and suggested that maybe some of the 5-6 women who were out at the podium “arguing” with each other could have been better put to work inside.

Our waiter was very pleasant and after taking our drink order (unsweet ice tea for both of us) we went up to the buffet. The food was plentiful, and due to the shortage of filled tables, there wasn’t really a line at any of the food stations. By the time we had prepared our first plates and were sitting back down, the waiter arrived with our teas and a small bowl of lemon. I do not take lemon in my tea, but GardenGuy does (as well as sugar, yuck!), but I thought it was a nice touch. The waiter was also nice enough to bring up second glasses before we were through with our first, preventing us from sitting without a drink.

First off, I apologize for the fuzzy quality of some of the food pics, not sure what happened.

This first plate was 3 types of bread to share (corn muffin, underneath was like a dry soda bread with pieces of corn in it maybe? and a dinner type roll with seeds on top) and a small portion of both Caesar salad and mixed greens with ranch, shredded cheese, and croutons, with a pickle spear. For reference this is on one of the smaller “salad-sized” plates. I cut the corn muffin in half and GardenGuy ate his half, but I only had a bite or two. Neither of us liked the slice of bread with the yellow (corn?) pieces in it. I enjoyed the dinner roll (I LOVE bread but don’t eat much of it these days), but it needed butter, so I put it to the side for the time being. The salads were fresh and tasty and the pickle spear cold and crisp.

My first full plate (turquoise). I decided to try a small sample of the many different things up on the buffet. Clockwise from 12 are pearl couscous (good), some sort of spiced rice (was cold [supposed to be I think] and hard-yuck), a spiced potato wedge (good), some very tiny grained couscous (also cold but very good), a pastry triangle with spicy meat filling-good, salmon (I know I said before I don’t like seafood, but I think salmon is ok, and will often try a smidge on a buffet, this one was pretty good), saffron(?) vegetables (zucchini is my favorite veggie, and this was pretty good), another type of not so good hard rice, zucchini and tofu dish (sadly yuck, the zucchini was ruined by the flavor), and in the middle- a thin grained white rice like substance (very good), green beans (I like long green beans, but these were cold, and not so good), curry chicken (pretty good).

GardenGuy’s first full plate (light blue). Sorry for the picture, he started eating before I made it back to the table!. Clockwise from 12, the cold hard rice I didn’t like (he also didn’t like), the cold small grained couscous I enjoyed (he also liked), curry chicken, pearl couscous, and mini corn dogs (on the kids table, but still pretty yummy!).

My second plate (another turquoise, but it is a different plate, I promise I am not one of the people who bring the same plate back to the buffet). Also, even though it looks kinda messy, I hadn’t started eating from it before I took the pick. I promise! Clockwise from 12. Carved piece of pork loin (dry but tasty), above it is this spicy mustard sauce the carving station attendant told me I should take for the pork as it was really good (I didn’t care for it, but I only like yellow mustard, none of the spicy types). Slice of beef (this just wasn’t cooked enough for me, I could only do a bite or so), rotisserie chicken (moist and tender, very good), potato wedges (I enjoyed my first, so I tried some more), little more salmon, corn dog bite, mashed potatoes and gravy (I love almost any sort of potato ).

GardenGuy’s second plate (blue, again, we didn’t plan it, just ended up being the next plate from the stack we chose). Clockwise from about 1, mashed potatoes, corn dog bites, butter (for my roll from before), pearl couscous with curry chicken on top, and macaroni and cheese (now way back when, Disney use to serve a Stouffers mac and cheese which I really liked, then they went to this nasty tasting water cheesy sauce mac and cheese that I can’t stand. GardenGuy still thinks it is ok, but he also thinks Kraft mac and cheese in a box tastes good! Ugh).

My dessert plate (yellow-also small like the salad plate size), clockwise from 12. Chocolate cake (hard as a rock!, yuck), cinnamon bread pudding drizzled with vanilla sauce (this had some sort of nut in it, which I tried not to scoop up when serving myself, I really like bread pudding with no fruit in it [remember I don’t do warm fruit, so any bread pudding where they put apples, or raisons, or some other fruit I won’t eat], well this had no fruit, but the flavor of the cinnamon was over powering and I didn’t enjoy it at all), carrot cake (very good), passion fruit tart (GardenGuy had already filled his dessert plate while I was still eating my last food plate, and said this was great I had to try it…didn’t like it that much?), lemon bar (cold and lemony, but by this point I was so full I ate only a bite).

GardenGuy’s dessert plate (blue again!) Clockwise from 12, coconut something (I can’t stand coconut, so I don’t know how this was, but he ate them both after scraping the red gooey stuff from the top), carrot cake, chocolate chip cookie (he said this was good, and better than some of the large cookies you get sometimes that are too crispy and not soft enough), lemon bar (which he had already taken a bite of before I could snap the picture), and a passion fruit tart in the center.

A very filling meal. We enjoyed ourselves quite a bit, and will return.

 

[jaccceee]

disney845
Wow, your post was impressive and appreciated. I did a search for Tusker House and you gave me all the info I needed and pix too.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

We were just there for lunch, service was excellent and I was VERY impressed with the food selection, since I thought Chef Mickey's and Crystal Palace were just awful. They had salmon, an apple and bleu cheese salad that I thought was very good and American options for kids. I loved it, and it is the only buffet I would go back to.

 

[Disney845]

disney845
Wow, your post was impressive and appreciated. I did a search for Tusker House and you gave me all the info I needed and pix too.

Happy to help!

BTW we just returned from a short Labor Day break at WDW and ate lunch at Tusker House on Monday 9/6 at 1:35pm.

Very short wait at the check-in podium, they handed us a pager, I went to use the rest room and by the time I was back they were already waiting for me to direct us to our table. Very polite server. The restaurant was not crowded (certainly they would have been taking walk-ups). The food was as good as we remembered/expected. A bonus was that the sliced beef at the carving station was more medium-well than medium-rare as it had been last time, so I found it very tasty. Another "unexpected" addition to the buffet were donuts on the dessert table. I didn't try any, so can't comment, but they looked like the standard krispy kreme glazed and a chocolate iced variety.