Rainforest Cafe food versus Cruise

[Ladyhawke10]

I tried to post this under another heading but for some reason it didn't take....if this shows up twice I apologize!!!

In light of the recent criticism on the cruise food, I was recalling my family's visit to the RFC at both locations in WDW and Disneyland. We love the atmosphere but we have consistently found the food sub-par, and find we end up going for the atmosphere and "put up"with the food. I have wondered why they created such a cool restaurant environment yet don't offer better quality food.

I was wondering how RFC's food compared to the cruise food. I am hoping this is not the kind of food I can expect on the cruise... (bland, overly greasy, watered down flavors caused by low quality ingredients). Can anyone offer a comparison? Thanks for info .

 

[thiscloud]

i've only been on one disney cruise, on the wonder, 2 years ago, so i can't speak to any issues if the food quality has gone down since then, but the food on our cruise was so much better than anything at the rain forest cafe (we've been to the one at downtown disney in orlando and the one in the seattle area, and i can't remember if we went to the one in anaheim or not).

my family loves seafood, so many of us ordered fish or shellfish or whatever was available in that theme. i think one of us ordered pork or steak one night and found it to be a bit dry (but i can't imagine trying to customize rareness of beef for over a thousand people).

i remember one night we were in... animator's palette i think, and they were offering salmon or something, but we really wanted the sea bass that triton was offering, and although we told our servers not to make a fuss, they went and got a plate of sea bass from tritons for us.

it's hard to compare the cruise food to a chain. not all chains are nationwide, and quality may vary from region to region. i'd say the non-seafood is probably above chili's type of restaurants (applebee's, tgi friday's, etc). and the seafood is definitely above red lobster style restaurants.

i won't even go into the desserts on the dcl. i think every negative food post have still said the desserts were amazing. i certainly second that!

 

[hydster]

Ladyhawke...your first post went here

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=568625&perpage=15&pagenumber=3

the last post on the page and I replied on page 4 to you if you want to read it..just wanted to let you know where you posted in case others answer you on that thread as well.

Heidi

 

[Ladyhawke10]

Thank you! I don't know why I couldn't find it...

But anyway, thanks for the assurances so far that I don't have to worry about the food being comparable to the disappointing stuff at RFC... I love trying out various desserts so I should probably be satisfied .

 

[thiscloud]

if you have romano's macaroni grill near you, i say the food is like that, at least the one i've been to in rhode island. or in southern california there's a chain of pizza places called bj's pizza. also, i think in downtown disney (orlando) there's a cuban restaurant that's owned by gloria estefan. it's all comparable.

so, i guess what i'm trying to say is that the dcl food, when i had it, was much better than any national chain, about the same as slightly fancier smaller chains or restaurants you might find in places like universal citywalk (ca or fl) or the two downtown disneys (ASIDE from RFC ).

 

[Ladyhawke10]

That's great, too. I liked our meal at the Jazz Kitchen in Disneyland's Downtown Disney, and the pizza place (don't remember the name...) I also am fine with the Blue Bayou's food in the park, and the Cinderella's Castle food in the Magic Kingdom. I think the restaurants in the parks themselves aren't memorable outside of their atmosphere, by any means, but not bad and much better than Rainforest Cafe--at least I had a meal at the Castle that I really enjoyed. Also, we like the restaurants in the Grand Floridian (our favorite place to stay at WDW) and as long as something was comparable to that, that'd be great (I saw on the cruise menu's one of the appetizers was actually from a GF restaurant). We had the buffet at 1900 park fare and I liked the food for a buffet. I was hoping the cruise buffet would be similar. RFC is the only place where I've consistently been disappointed, so that's what came to mind when I heard the criticisms. Anyone know what RFC's connection to Disney is?

 

[Ladyhawke10]

Glad to hear that the cruise food was on par with someplace like The Flying Fish. We really liked that restaurant!

 

[eritouma]

We also were disappointed with RFC but enjoyed the Cruise food much more....

 

[WDWLVR]

I'm, not a big fan of RFC at all. I have found the food on DCL to be far superior to that.

 

[OJulie67]

I HATE RFC...so I say the cruise food was MUCH better. The buffet food is like ANY OTHER buffet I have ever eaten at. Nothing spectacular...Except, the seafood Buffet day was extremely good! The dining room food was good...but I had REALLY HIGH expectations, so I think that is why I was a bit disappointed. I would compare the dining room steaks and desserts to that of a Black Angus or similiar steakhouse.