New Restaurant Review today (1/12)

[OKW Lover]

It is worth applying that criteria to other Disney restaurants: Would you eat there if it were in your hometown or nearby?

Great suggestion!

 

[SorcererHeidi]

I think the question at the end of the podcast was such a good one (the one from these boards: would you eat at California Grill if it weren't for the view...). It is worth applying that criteria to other Disney restaurants: Would you eat there if it were in your hometown or nearby? Would you eat there (in Disney) if there were no character interactions? And so forth. For me, for example, I would absolutely go to Hollywood Brown Derby if it were in my hometown. And if there were a Dole Whip stand nearby? I'd be there every other day!

I definitely related to the conversation about California Grill - I have really never been impressed by the food there, and have been much less and less so as the years have gone by, and have always found it to be horribly overpriced, as discussed. I have never gone there beyond my first visit years ago except at the suggestion of others I was going with, and would not on my own. And I also believe that for most of them, the "draw" was either the view and/or the hype.

 

[KingLlama]

Ohana is it for me. Not that I don't like other WDW restaurants. I do.

But if you picked them all up and set them in my town, Ohana is the only one I'd go out of my way to visit. The food is just good enough, and different enough, that it would make the rotation.

 

[SarahDisney]

I'm a little unusual in that I can't eat Disney food because of my dietary restrictions - Disney provides special pre-packaged food that fits my needs (they get frozen meals from an offsite vendor and reheat them in the kitchen), and it's pretty much the same food everywhere. So for me, all that matters is the atmosphere. Which is why I really like when they have that discussion in the dining reviews. The discussion about the food is interesting (and often hysterical), but never relevant to me. But when they talk about the restaurant and overall experience, that tells me whether or not this is somewhere I should consider getting an ADR. So for me, I have to pose the question backwards ... is this somewhere I would eat despite the food?
For me, that's Be Our Guest because I absolutely love the castle, and we've always had great service there. We also had a really nice breakfast experience at Cinderella's Royal Table on our last trip (but that's insanely overpriced).
When I'm looking for new restaurants to consider on my next trip, I like to read/hear reviews where people keep going back even if they don't enjoy the food because that's a restaurant that I may want to try out.

But I'm weird and I know that this doesn't apply to most people.