Signature restaurants for toddlers?

[maxiesmom]

Great thread. I was wondering the same thing because I really wanted to eat at Le Cellier and I was worried my, usually well behaved, son would have a freak out moment and ruin someone's $50 steak.

Even though they charge for it, Le Cellier isn't really "fancy". When I have been there it is typically fairly loud. What you may want to think about is how close the tables are to each other. You can honestly reach out and touch the people at the table next to you. Without stretching your arm fully out. Even so, as long as you are prepared for the worst, and have no problem walking your son outside for a bit until he is back to his well behaved self, I wouldn't stress about it.

 

[mandis77]

We went to Brown Derby with a sleeping 2yo. The host noticed this and sat us in a room separate from the main dining room (much quieter). It was wonderful! When she finally work up and was a little crabby, our server quickly got her a special drink with a light up ice cube that kept her happy the rest of our meal. DH and I always say that was one of our favorite meals.

 

[branv]

Well I can say my experience is that if you're going during free dining, you'll see more kids in the signature restaurants. If that is your situation, you will be happy to know you are likely to be far from the only ones there with small children. I certainly haven't been to all the Signatures, but they definitely haven't been the sedate, quiet experience you'd get outside the world. Most people seem to expect little ones at a signature these days, and I've seen most people giving a little more leeway to kid behavior. But generally, if it's considered bad behavior outside WDW, it's considered bad behavior even inside the Disney bubble (you know, the parents that ignore extended tantrums, yelling, standing on chairs/banquettes and running around tables, yadda yadda). I mean, even for CS and TS that's not cool. As long as you're prepared that you may waste a dining credit bc of kids melting down, or being miserable trying to keep them happy (PPs description of feeling like they've run a marathon made me LOL. So true!). My suggestion is to talk to the adults up front and come up with a plan and expectations. It's pretty stressful if you're the only adult at the table willing to help out the kids and enforce good behavior. A good tag team makes all the difference

 

[glk2009]

We have always taken our girls out since they were babies. But like everyone else has said, we take them out if they act up.

This might not work for everyone, but we do order apps/salads with our dinner and we ask the server to put the order in all at once so that there is less of a gap before the entrees arrive. Sometimes everything arrives all at once but I don't mind, especially since I'm not a fan of long drawn out dinners to begin with.

Bon appetit!

 

[PxyShan]

We take our 3 year old DS out to nice and regular restaurants regularly at home and we did the same when we took him to WDW when he was 19 months and 2.5 years. As everyone is saying, it's all about managing expectations. We have the same rules for eating at our table at home as we do eating out, and our son knows that if he's not going to follow the rules there will be consequences.

At Disney we were never the only one to have a young kid in the restaurant - so your group won't be alone. Cast members were always very nice to us, our son included. We had small quiet toys on hand to entertain him while we were waiting on our server or food, and we kept an iphone on hand for emergency situations (we only needed to use it once thankfully).

We ate around our normal dinner time when we could, and we would just order his meal with our beverages so it would come out sooner. One of the chefs even took the time to pre-cut all of his chicken tenders for us (without us asking) before it came to the table - that was a wonderful surprise! Sure he was done eating way before we were sometimes, but that's when the toys came out if we needed them. We also have a rule at home that we don't leave the table until everyone's done eating, so again, our son knew what was expected of him while we were eating at all times.

I know this last part may fall under bad parenting, but never underestimate what a dessert can do for motivating or rewarding good behavior. For a few meals we knew we wanted to order dessert, so we let him know that for those times, he could share with us as long as he listened to us and followed the rules. Hey, it's vacation, right? A little ice cream for good behavior never hurt anyone. We were always going to share the dessert, because really our son does very well eating out, but it's nice to have some added insurance when everyone is on overload, am I right?

Anyway, I hope that helps. Really, if things do go wrong, you always have the 24 window to cancel other reservations and hey - it's not like you'll be the first person to have a screaming kid at Disney World.

 

[DeniseR]

All great information and advice and I feel much better about my scheduled ADRs now! The good thing for us will be there will be four adults (Mom, Dad, Granna, and Grandpa) to the two kids, so there will be a good "tag team" if needed!

 

[Boopuff]

I am not opposed to handing a toddler a phone or i pad with NO volume to allow the adults dessert and a glass of wine.

God bless you for this! I can tolerate some energetic children, I can even take some giggles but I just can not take - at all - the beep-boop-beep of a computer game on full volume at a nice restaurant. Drives me crazy! Buy cheap headphones! or silence the darn thing. But overall we are late diners (9ish) so most of the time there aren't too many kids around or if they are they're so tired they can't eat anyway!