Kids with food allergies

[Princess Sleepy]

Hi. I am a new poster on this particular board. I will be traveling next year with my nieces who have severe food allergies. They are allergic to eggs, dairy, and all tree nuts. I will be in charge of planning ADRs and I want to make sure I am being realistic.

First we will be on a cruise on the Dream. What steps do I need to take to make sure their meals are safe there?

Then we will be at WDW. My tentative plans so far are the following:

Biergarten
Akershus (lunch)
Earl of Sandwich
Liberty Tree Tavern
Cosmic Ray's (or some other CS at MK)

We will be staying at POR, so we may eat some breakfasts there.

I have heard that I need to call, or fill out forms, or just talk to the chefs there. I want to be prepared and would appreciate any help from those with more experience. Thanks.

 

[grandall]

I am in the process of doing this now. First, I mentioned my sons' allergy on all of our ADRs. Then, I sent an email to "special diets" and they sent me back an email with three different documents. There are two reference sheets that list standard menu offerings and what allergens they contain. Then there is a form I am going to fill out and fax to them that details their allergy. After that, I'm not sure what happens -- I think I just speak to a chef or manager at any restaurant I go to.

 

[Princess Sleepy]

Is there a "special diets" e-mail address on the WDW web site?

 

[Cheshire Figment]

If you click on where it says "disABILTIES" at the top of this page it will take you to the Index. One of the top items is the "disABILTIES FAQ" which will gives lots of useful information. Look in Post #3 and scroll down to the "Dietary restrictions" area. The links and all the information you need is there.

Or, if you want an easier route to the FAQs, click on the link in my signature.

 

[shinysparklybubbles]

Make sure you lol over the menus first and do not pick anywhere that has a set meal such as garden grill. They have little flexibility since they are pretty much only stocked with the food they need to make the set meal. My toddler is allergic to eggs, peanuts and tree nuts and we just got back today. Some places were great some where not.

 

[lovethattink]

My oldest son has a whole host of food allergies (he was allergic to 80 of the 120 things they tested him for) and Disney is one of the safest places for him to eat.

Table service works great for him, but counter service gets a bit tricky. Every restaurant has a 3-ring notebook of the foods and what they are made of. There are a couple times we ran into problems with breads, as some are now contracted and not made by Disney, and they said they couldn't garantee there wasn't cross contamination with the breads.

My son cannot eat anything at Earl of Sandwich except soup (he doesn't have a dairy allergy). He has been allergic to every sandwich he ever tried there.

At Biergarten, a chef walked him around the buffet bar and told him what he could or should not eat.

Our best dining with allergy experiences have been at Whispering Canyon, The Plaza Restaurant at MK (Chef Ken rocks!), Ohana, and Coral Reef (another Chef Ken who totally rocks too!),

 

[happymommy]

Our experience on the Disney Magic was not quite as good as WDW, but still they did make some items for my DS (who was allergic to dairy and egg, now just egg and slightly allergic to dairy). They made a dairy and egg free birthday cake for my DD, so my DS could eat it. But, it was like a carrot cake, and no one really liked it.

The hot dog and hamburger buns are all the same as in WDW - the whole wheat from Interstate Bakery (makes Wonder bread) so they all had dairy. At the time, my son could tolerate the small amount enough, so he did okay with them, but I don't know if they have the dairy free buns readily available at the hot dog stand on the ship.

In general, it was okay, but at WDW we do very well. All the counter service places will have a book with ingredients to everything. The only sit down places we've yet to try are Italy, England, and China in Epcot, as sometimes it's harder to deal with them with allergies.

Buffets have been nice; a chef comes out and walks us through to go over what he can and can't have. At Boma, they even made my son plain salmon and rice, which he loved.

A lot of places had soy or rice ice cream for dessert too!!

 

[clanmcculloch]

I can only speak to WDW, not the Dream.

Definitely fill out the form that Special Diets sends to you. Make any notes about concerns, preferences, etc on that form because it gets forwarded to each restaurant. Not all will actually read it, but some do (I've gotten calls from chefs asking about specific items I've put on the form so I do know that some read it). This is in addition to having a note attached to the ADR so they will know about the allergy when you check in.

I do agree that it's important to look over the menus to be sure that the restaurant has some basic ingredients to make something your kids will like even if it's modified but I disagree that a fixed menu restaurant won't work. We've had good experiences at Garden Grill and other such places like 'Ohana and Hoop Dee Doo Review but my kids like plain versions of things that they normally serve so it was easy for the chefs to modify those dishes for us. Go over the menus and choose restaurants that serve types of foods that every member of your family will enjoy and you'll be fine.

Take the time to go through the attachments sent to you by Special Diets. It's nice knowing ahead of time which snacks and CS foods are safe so you don't have to waste precious time and test everybody in your family's patience and hunger trying to figure it out at the time that everybody's already hungry. I create myself a cheat sheet that I carry around. It lists foods that are safe with lists of CS locations (or that they're at snack carts) where they can be found. That allows us to just walk into CS locations and know that there'll be something safe. Also, I've been given wrong information about what's carried at locations but because I've already been told by Special Diets that the particular location carries a certain product, I know to get them to check anyway and each time they've found the food in question. If I didn't know ahead of time that the product could be found at that location, I wouldn't have gotten it. Pre-planning makes for such a relaxed trip.

The allergy hot dog and hamburger buns are unfortunately Ener-G. These contain eggs.

We haven't been to Earl of Sandwich because I don't believe they carry egg free bread products. You might want to reconsider this one. The rest of the places you listed are great.

At MK, if you're on the other side of the park from Cosmic Rays, go to Columbia Harbour House and get allergy chicken tenders. YUMMY!!! Another option is the turkey legs if you want something quick.

 

[Juney]

Our experience on the Magic was amazing. It helps that you have the same server every night. Once our server and the head server knew my daughter's allergies it became very easy. Each night as we were finishing dinner our server would bring the menu for the following night. If I liked something on the menu I'd tell him. If not, I would tell them what I wanted for her and they would prepare it. In either case, her meal would be prepared each night from scratch by the same chef who ran a separate 'allergy galley'. The experience was perfect. There wasn't anything on the late night room service menu she could have. After talking it thru on the first evening, every night they delivered 'made from scratch' brownies to our room right before bed time.