Le Cellier has been a favorite whipping boy on DIS since it went to 2 TS credits on the
DDP. Everytime someone makes one of these threads it gets bashed.
For our family Le Cellier is the biggest must do dining experience of every trip. Everyone wants to know when our LC ADR is. It's the one meal everyone looks forward to and enjoy's the most every trip.
This past December we were at WDW for 16 nights, so we had a chance to eat at alot of different places. I intentionaly order similar meals at LC, Yachtsman, and Artist Point for the purpose of comparing the meals. This was brought about because of you fine DISers.
The end result was that LC was still my favorite and my DS and DW felt the same way.
I had a great steak at LC. Our server was outstanding, one of the best we've had at WDW. Overall fantastic experience.
The Yachtsman steak was good, but not great. I honestly had no problem deciding that the LC meal was better. The server was good, but I felt he was a little "fake". It was like everything he was doing was to directly influence a higher tip. That's fine I guess, it just felt like he had to "try" to give good service where the server at LC seemed to genuinely enjoy serving us.
Artist Point was our Christmas dinner. We had never eaten there before and were really looking forward to it. I had the Bison. It was very good. I still prefered the steak I had at LC, but it was very good. Nothing bad to say about the service. It wasn't as personable as the server at LC, but it was good.
Atmosphere is different at all 3 places. As some said, it is louder at LC. There are alot of family's with young kids dressed in theme park attire there. We've always been fortunate enough to be seated in a quieter corner, but I wouldn't dispute the fact that it's loud.
Atrtist Point was very dark and very quiet. Definatley a good spot for a more romantic meal. Not everyone was wearing ties and sport jackets, but there was definatley no shorts and flip flops there. Not for Christmas Dinner anyway.
Yachtsman felt like the were trying very hard to give an upscale feel to the place, but couldn't quite pull it off. You'd have a suit and tie at one table with shorts and flip flops at the next. We were dressed in between park clothes and formal. Meaning we did have a chance to change before heading to dinner and put on clothes that were an upgrade from park attire, but I refuse to wear formal wear on vacation.
To summarise Le Cellier is still our must do, I highly recommend Artist Point for something a little more adult in nature, and I was undewhelmed by Yachtsman. Nothing was bad or put it on the never again list, but it won't be a priority to eat there again.
We didn't try Shula's, we were on the DDP. I'm sure Shula's is great, but you are looking at $100 a plate there I think.