Huge allergy issues with food...

[goofy4tink]

My dd is heading to WDW in June with her two friends.....graduation from high school trip after they graduate. One of the girls is extremely allergic to the vast majority of edibles. For instance, the only soda she can drink is Coke Zero. She can eat bacon, steamed white rice, sweet potatoes and some other stuff, but nothing truly commonplace. Her mother has the same issue.
I know there is a thread out there about food allergies, but I didn't see anything about such an extensive allergy. So, my question is this....
Can she call the particular restaurant and talk to the chef to see if they can get her stuff she can eat, without dying?? She had a near death experience last spring when a counter server in NYC misunderstood her and gave her dairy rather than absolutely no dairy....at a place where she has safely ordered before. I would love to book, and pay for, breakfast for the girls at Akershus...they all love the princesses. But, I don't want to put this young lady in jeopardy.

The girls are staying at BWVs in a studio. This way they can order groceries, and have them delivered. Then, they can eat in the room more often than not. But it would be nice to have one princess meal together.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

 

[deegack]

Contact special diets and they will help you through it. Basically the chef at table service restaurants will go through the menu with you to determine what is safe. Also check out the menus ahead of time so you can see if there is something that might work with a little modification. At cs you should ask to speak with a manager about allergy issues. They will go over the ingrediants with you to determine what is safe.

 

[SueM in MN]

The other poster gave very good advice. They would have a lot more options at table service restaurants and I think it is a good plan for them to have food and eat most meals at their villa.

Post 3 of the disABILITIES FAQs thread has contact information for Special Diets. There are also links to menus.

Some people make kind of business cards that they can hand to servers, chefs, etc. that clearly list the foods that are safe and unsafe. That makes it very clear and helps avoid situations where the server may hear, but maybe not be clear whether what they heard was what was meant.

The things you listed that she can eat are not common ingredients in ome restaurants. For example, I'm not sure that any of those would be at Akershus normally, so she would need to work with Special Diets to get the food there.

Even though WDW has Coke products, I've never seen Coke Zero.

 

[goofy4tink]

Thanks guys. WDW does have Coke Zero in a few areas. Seems they have trouble getting the right 'mix', so many places don't carry it.
I'll all the special diets number as well as have the young lady call them herself. She has been to WDW many times, so this isn't going to be a completely new experience. She pretty much knows where she can get what she needs. I would just love for them to eat at Akershus.
thanks again.

 

[clanmcculloch]

I don't think we've found Coke Zero in any fountains other than a few resort food courts. We have found it bottled in many CS locations. I don't think we got it even once at a TS location.

We haven't done breakfast at Akershus because the menu is so limitted and I don't think my 14yo can eat a single thing there other than the same brand of frozen allergy waffles that we use at home and bacon so I just don't see spending that kind of money for breakfast. I really don't know if there's much if anything this girl would be able to eat besides bacon and they don't have a lot of alternate ingredients on had at breakfast either so that's pretty expensive bacon. Lunch and dinner will have more variety of foods available to the kitchen to be able to customize something for her. Maybe lunch would be better? They should be able to cook up some plain rice for her (they've done it a couple different times for DD14 when we've eaten her for dinner) as well as maybe some sweet potatoes (are they somewhere on either the lunch or dinner menu?) and maybe a few other things. Basically, if they have an ingredient available somewhere on the menu for that meal then they should be able to come up with a very plain version with nothing mixed in, but they do have to have the ingredient (exception is that some meats are pre-marinated). Even items on the buffet can be served plain; DD11 can't eat an ingredient in the asparagus drizzle or the apple beet salad but the chef cut up an apple for her and served her some plain beets and plain asparagus because she likes those foods. Chefs have brought out large plates of plain foods that are normally on the buffet as salads or mixtures as well as preparing plain versions of sides or dishes on the regular menu. Again, this was at dinner and I would assume lunch would work similarly. Breakfast foods though are generally more premade making it much more difficult to get more than just bacon and fruit (if there are any fruits she can eat that is). At least that's my 2 cents (which is about what it's worth LOL).

ETA: She can't really contact the restaurant herself directly. If she asked Special Diets to speak with a chef then a chef will contact her though. Be aware though that if a chef makes her any promises that there's unfortunately a good chance that the chef working that day won't know a thing about it. Basically, the purpose of talking with the chef is to find out what ingredients they always have on hand to work with. Unfortunately, lots of chefs do seem to talk about ordering something special in or preparing something special ahead of time which requires a lot of time but when you arrive nobody knows a thing about it. That's why it's very important to just ask about what ingredients they actually have on hand and what you can expect when you actually arrive if nothing is done ahead of time. Yes I've had chefs actually follow through on some offers they've made (I don't ask; they offer) but it's really been a long time since that's happened at a restaurant.

 

[livndisney]

This has been our experience as well. Lots of promises made beforehand only to arrive and have the Chef on duty not have a clue what you are talking about.

Personally we do not go to the breakfast in Norway because of the limited menu and poor service(Chef's not really undertsanding how to handle allergies).

As far as the coke zero-why not just have some delivered as you mentioned they are having food delivered.

 

[goofy4tink]

Yep, we'll be having Coke Zero delivered. No problem with that. I wanted to get them into Akershus for the princesses. This is their last big time together before college, so thought it would be special. It would be a bit too special if this girl had to be taken to the hospital though. May just have to rethink it and they can do a princess meet somewhere else, without food.

 

[ZPT1022]

We ate at Akershus in 2010 and had dinner. At the time we had 10 allergens we were avoiding and they were great about it. I did find with so many allergies that I was eating a lot of the same things over and over again but hey, I didn't have to cook and neither the baby nor I got sick

 

[clanmcculloch]

I honestly wouldn't be worried about safety at Akershus; we've had great experiences with the chefs there. I really do think that lunch or dinner would be better than breakfast from the perspective of having options. Breakfast isn't much cheaper than lunch of dinner if I'm remembering correctly so if you want to treat them to a princess meal then dinner at Akershus would be a great one to choose.

Another one you can consider is 1900 Park Fare. As you know it's only Cinderella but the step sisters are so much fun. It seems that more people are seeing Chef TJ there for dinner. I'm really hoping to see him there myself next month.

 

[livndisney]

Yep, we'll be having Coke Zero delivered. No problem with that. I wanted to get them into Akershus for the princesses. This is their last big time together before college, so thought it would be special. It would be a bit too special if this girl had to be taken to the hospital though. May just have to rethink it and they can do a princess meet somewhere else, without food.

Quite a few princesses are available around world showcase-she can meet them all and not risk her health.

Have you considered maybe booking a tour for the group-that way they are together but the "special event" is not food based. You may even want to consider the Wishes dessert thing. Special, but a little less food based.