Overwhelmed by Dining Options....where do I start?!?

[3Minnies1Mickey]

Okay, I'm in the process of pre-planning for our first trip to WDW next year. I'm debating over to DDP or not, I guess the deciding factor is where we want to eat and if it will save us $$. But I have NO CLUE where we'd like to eat. There are so many choices. Where do I start?

We will be 2 adults, 4 kids (ages DD9, DD6, DD4 and DS2), staying for hopefully 10 days (11 nights) in October 2011. We want to do MNSSHP and F&W (well I want to do F&W ) We have found with our recent trips to DLR that its nice to sit and enjoy a meal, and if we don't schedule something or make an effort to sit and eat, we often eat pretzels on the go...which makes for crabby kids and a crabby mommy! This will be a once in a lifetime (or at least 5+ yrs) trip so we'd like to enjoy all that we can with the WDW experience, which includes yummy foods. My kids aren't picky eaters and enjoy much more than hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken nuggets. Also we will be there during our ODD's 10th bday so we'd like to do something special for her bday too!

Can you steer me in the right direction on where to start my research and/or give me some restaurant recommendations? I am familiar with allears.net so I'm more than happy to look through menus if anyone can help narrow down the choices.

 

[tlenzendorf]

Are you wanting character meals or regular meals?
Our DDs really enjoyed CRT in the castle. DH and I didn't enjoy it so much, the food and interaction was meh at best. But we all enjoyed Chef Mickeys for dinner(Mickey and the Gang), 50s PT cafe at HS, T-Rex at DTD and Ohana for breakfast(Lilo and Stitch). We ate at Whispering Canyon Cafe, thought it was ok, not great, not horrible. The ketchup thing there was really funny, though! Tusker House breakfast was also very good(Mickey and Friends there, too).

If you are really about the food and not so much characters, check out the food picture threads. They may really help you decide where to eat.

 

[3Minnies1Mickey]

Are you wanting character meals or regular meals?

Both.

 

[tlenzendorf]

Well, with the 3 DDs I would say eating at CRT in the castle would be a high priority. I forgot to add in my previous post we also ate at Crystal Palace for dinner and thought the food was quite good. I've highlighted the ones in red we thought were good.

My recollection of character dining:

Magic Kingdom:
Crystal Palace-Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
CRT-Princess Breakfast, Fairy Godmother and mice at dinner. Possibly changing soon

Epcot:
Princess Breakfast at Akershus
Garden Grill-Chip and Dale

Animal Kingdom:
Tusker House-Breakfast-Mickey and Gang

Hollywood Studios:
Hollywood and Vine-Playhouse Disney maybe?

Resorts:
Grand Floridian-1900 Park Fair-Prince Charming, Cinderella and the Tremaines
Poly-Ohana-Breakfast-Stitch and Friends
Contemporary-Chef Mickeys-Breakfast, occasional Lunch, Dinner
Beach Club-Cape May Cafe

I'm probably missing some?

We are trying 1900 Park Fair this coming trip, so I can report back after March 13th.

Check out this thread for food pics. The first page has links for the previous threads.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2284684

I hope this helped!

 

[bdiddy]

I've been right where you are two years ago!

The first question I want to ask is do you know about the free dining promotion they have? If not, look around on this board and you'll probably see several threads about it. The reason I mention it is that you said you are going in October and this year free dining ended on Oct 1st and then they extended it into December. But even if it ends at the end of Sept or beginning of Oct - you may want to consider changing your dates to take advantage of the free food for your whole party.

Anyway - I was also very overwhelmed and what I did was get the Passporter book which was like my Bible in planning and we even used it daily at the parks. They have a wonderful breakdown of each restaurant and even the quick service locations as well as what snacks you can get and where.

The first thing I did is once the hours/parades/times, etc... were posted I sat down and figured out what park we were doing on what day. Once I had that DH and I each spent about a week looking through all the different restaurants and put down our top picks. Our kids were still very young so we did 3 character meal but there is a nice section in that book of the character meals, when they are offered/who is there, etc...

So, once we all had our lists we just made a decision and hopefully we got the reservation ok!! The only time we had any problems was we couldn't get Le Cellier on either of our trips and our last trip we couldn't get O'hana but opted for Boma instead which was also wonderful.

The other thing you can do is once you have your list narrowed down you can go online and read reviews but I've honestly never read anything that has made me change my mind.

The other thing that is great about that book is that if you are at a park and you know you have a sit down meal for dinner and it is getting closer to lunch you just pull the book out and read the different quick service places and what they offer and you are set!

The other thing is that someone told me that helped was that we had snacks in our room which we'd eat in the morning and then either schedule a late breakfast and earlier dinner which will totally get you through the day once you eat your snack credits too. So each day - you can do 1 quick service, 1 table service & 2 snacks per person.

 

[tlenzendorf]

I also agree with previous poster.

Figure out what days you want to be at which park. What parades, shows, etc you want to see. Figure if you want to eat breakfast or dinner for your TS. In my opinion you get a better value with the dining plan if you make your TS meal dinner. Your money will go further if paying out of pocket to do TS breakfasts. With the regular dining plan you get 1 CS, 1 TS and 1 snack only, not 2 snacks.

It worked well for us on the dining plan to have a CS breakfast, use our snack credit for "lunch", then use our TS credit for dinner. We did do breakfast at Ohana for our departure day. That was great to do a TS breakfast, it filled us up for traveling.

 

[topmonkeygirl]

This site is the best disney info I can find and most will agree. http://allears.net/index.html You will find menus and prices here along with reviews of the different restraurants. There is a ton of info on this site.

Here are some of my favs.
MK Cosmic Rays, Crystal Palace for character breakfast
HS Sci Fi for lunch go with burgers onion rings and milkshakes (they are to die for.)
Epcot I really like San Angels Inn but it's authentic Mexican food not Texmex.
AK Tuskar House for breakfast

Whispering Canyon Cafe' has a great breakfast also, we ate there twice on our last trip.

Now take a deep breath, relax, head over to allears.net, explore, and most of all have fun planning your trip.

 

[3Minnies1Mickey]

The first question I want to ask is do you know about the free dining promotion they have? If not, look around on this board and you'll probably see several threads about it. The reason I mention it is that you said you are going in October and this year free dining ended on Oct 1st and then they extended it into December. But even if it ends at the end of Sept or beginning of Oct - you may want to consider changing your dates to take advantage of the free food for your whole party.

Anyway - I was also very overwhelmed and what I did was get the Passporter book which was like my Bible in planning and we even used it daily at the parks. They have a wonderful breakdown of each restaurant and even the quick service locations as well as what snacks you can get and where.

The first thing I did is once the hours/parades/times, etc... were posted I sat down and figured out what park we were doing on what day. Once I had that DH and I each spent about a week looking through all the different restaurants and put down our top picks. Our kids were still very young so we did 3 character meal but there is a nice section in that book of the character meals, when they are offered/who is there, etc...

So, once we all had our lists we just made a decision and hopefully we got the reservation ok!! The only time we had any problems was we couldn't get Le Cellier on either of our trips and our last trip we couldn't get O'hana but opted for Boma instead which was also wonderful.

The other thing you can do is once you have your list narrowed down you can go online and read reviews but I've honestly never read anything that has made me change my mind.

The other thing that is great about that book is that if you are at a park and you know you have a sit down meal for dinner and it is getting closer to lunch you just pull the book out and read the different quick service places and what they offer and you are set!

The other thing is that someone told me that helped was that we had snacks in our room which we'd eat in the morning and then either schedule a late breakfast and earlier dinner which will totally get you through the day once you eat your snack credits too. So each day - you can do 1 quick service, 1 table service & 2 snacks per person.

Thanks for the recommendation on the Passporter book, I've heard it mentioned before and will have to look into it. We won't go until late October for a few reasons. One being school (end of trimester is early/mid October), but most importantly because of DD's, mine and DH's asthma. Super high humidity really aggravates it and we were recommended to avoid Florida from March through early October because of it.

 

[TDC Nala]

With three children in the age 3-9 category you should take a good look at the dining plan FAQ, on the dining plan sub-board. The dining plans are said to be an exemplary deal where children under age 10 are involved.

 

[3Minnies1Mickey]

With three children in the age 3-9 category you should take a good look at the dining plan FAQ, on the dining plan sub-board. The dining plans are said to be an exemplary deal where children under age 10 are involved.

I agree! Now just gotta see if it is a deal for us adults!

 

[dizziedupbaby0127]

Just suggesting a few of mine and Dh's favs.

MK- Crystal Palace (only had breakfast tho), Tony's is hit or miss from what I can tell
Epcot- Electric Umbrella (CS) is good but basic food, sunshine seasons (CS) has alot of options from the different places, might be good for so many people, but DH and I were not thrilled with the quality of the food. TS for Epcot, we LOVE Teppan Edo, but this is pricey, good choice if you go with the dining plan tho. Also will keep the kids entertained!
DHS-50's Prime Time was good and the themeing is cute, but we prefer Sci-Fi with the burgers and shakes.

Resort Dining- Kona at the Poly has great breakfast and some of the best coffee! Splurge and go with the Presspot! worth every penny, Boma at AKL is a good buffet also. Big River Grille and Brewery at the Boardwalk was AMAZING! Lots of choices and a nice change from the typical Disney food, and it is on the Dining Plan!

With the counter service places (mainly parks) most of the food is the same. Every Pizza Place is the same pizza, just different sides/desserts. Most of the grilled chicken sandwiches and chicken fingers are also the same at the different counter service places.

Goodluck with your choices, and be sure to check out the photo threads too! they helped me a ton in my planning!

 

[bangzoom6877]

I have a 5-year-old and my younger son is 2 but will turn 3 a couple of months before we go in July. We did the DDP last time (in 2008) and even though my little one was too young to get the DDP, he had plenty of food from all of us. We did all-you-can-eat meals for TS (every night we had a TS dinner, plus a couple of breakfasts OOP). Children under 3 are free for those.

We find the DDP to be of exceptional value to us, mainly because we like to do some character meals for the kids, and we prefer to go to TS dinners, which are more expensive when paying OOP. A child under 10 on the DDP costs less per night than the cost of one character dinner for a child. And with the DDP they get an additional CS meal plus a snack per night.

Here's what I do...I look at the latest menus of where we want to eat. I calculate the cost of the absolute cheapest meals in those places that would be covered by the DDP (entree, dessert and soft drink). On our 10-night trip in July, we will be saving at least $300 and that was without even calculating snacks into it! I like to base my calculations on the lowest-priced menu items, since I don't know exactly what I will feel like eating at that moment, and the idea is to order what I want, not the most expensive thing. I know that realistically, I'm not ordering NY Strip steak every single night for dinner!

This coming Thursday I make our ADRs. Here are our TS plans:

Day 1 (arrival and no theme park):
Dinner at Chef Mickey's (character buffet, Contemporary Resort)

Day 2 (DHS):
Dinner at Whispering Canyon Cafe (non-character, Wilderness Lodge)

Day 3 (MK):
Dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table (the castle!)

Day 4 (Epcot):
Lunch at Akershus

Day 5 (no theme park):
Breakfast at 1900 Park Fare (character buffet, Grand Floridian)
Dinner at Cape May Cafe (clambake buffet, non-character, Beach Club)

Day 6 (Epcot):
Dinner at either San Angel Inn (no characters, Mexico pavilion in the World Showcase) or Le Cellier (no characters, Canada pavilion in World Showcase)

Day 7 (DHS):
Lunch at 50s Prime Time (no characters, in DHS)
Dinner at Captain's Grille (non-character, at Yacht Club)

Day 8 (no theme park):
Dinner at The Wave (non-character, Contemporary Resort)

Day 9 (MK):
Dinner at Crystal Palace (character buffet, at Magic Kingdom)

Day 10 (Epcot for purposes of eating around the world and shopping):
Dinner at Les Chefs de France (non-character, France pavilion at Epcot)

Day 11 (check-out, no theme park):
Breakfast at Cape May Cafe (character buffet, Beach Club)

Lunches (except for 50s Prime Time one day) will be CS. We will grab a couple of CS breakfasts too with the additional credits. We'll be staying at Boardwalk Villas so these will probably come from Boardwalk Bakery, although it would be nice to maybe go over to the Polynesian on the way to MK and have some Tonga Toast at Captain Cook's!

I still can't decide between San Angel Inn at Epcot and Le Cellier. I asked DH so I would let him decide but he said either one is fine! I will probably book Le Cellier and as the trip gets closer, change it if I have to, as San Angel Inn is much easier to get into closer to the actual date, while Le Cellier is very difficult even far in advance!