I don't believe I ever said that any WDW CM or restaurant intentionally lied about a dish being vegetarian or not. What I meant is that sometimes items seem to be vegetarian as they are "described" on the menu, but it turns out there is an unlisted ingredient on the menu description that isn't vegetarian, or that it's cooked in a fryer that also cooks non-vegetarian items.
For example, we have eaten twice at Tiffin's recently. One of the menu items is :
Gobi Manchurian
Crispy-fried Cauliflower, Manchurian Sauce, Green Onion
This is an item that I thought, based on the description, could potentially be vegetarian. Since there are no items on the Tiffin menu that are actually labeled as vegetarian, I asked our server about particular items, such as the Gobi Manchurian. He told me that this item was fried in the same fryer as their whole-fish dish, but that if I was ok with the shared fryer aspect, there were no non-vegetarian ingredients in the dish.
Another example would be desserts...many desserts baked in restaurants and bakeries use gelatin, even though if you were to make them at home you more than likely wouldn't use gelatin (as in the case of whipped cream, which restaurants often include as a stabilizer).
Although some WDW restaurants specifically label their vegetarian items as vegetarian or vegan, others do not, and unless you've done research ahead of time -- which isn't always reliable because suppliers and recipes can change at any time -- you need to ask the server or the chef which items are vegetarian. Examples of this would be certain items at the Tangerine Cafe and one or both of the soups at Be Our Guest...there was a brief period where Be Our Guest CMs were telling customers that one or both of the soups (I forget which one, but both had been previously labeled on the menu as vegetarian) were no longer vegetarian. Both of these instances made the rounds on various WDW vegan and vegetarian blogs. And for many years after I first started visiting WDW (first trip was in 1994), virtually nothing at all was labeled, and you always had to ask. I didn't mind asking, but I love it when restaurants state on the menu that an item is vegan or vegetarian because it makes it easier for the server and for the guest.
Quite to the contrary, I have always found WDW servers and chefs to be extremely knowledgeable and forthcoming about what's in their food, which is honestly one of the many reasons we have been making at least a trip a year since 1994. They are absolutely awesome with special diets, and I always recommend Disney trips to my friends who are vegan/vegetarian or who have family members with food allergies.
By contrast, just last month I actually did have a local cafe server lie to me about a menu item. It was a cafe kind of like Panera Bread, where you order at the counter and they bring your food to you at the table. I tried to look up their website online to check to see if their items were labeled or if they had an ingredients list, but their website was down. So I asked if their roasted tomato soup was vegetarian, and the young server said, "Umm, it's made from tomatoes," which I actually understand because she was very young, and many people aren't aware that tomato soup is sometimes made with chicken stock or gelatin. So I asked her if it had chicken stock or gelatin in it and she kindly said, "Let me go ask." I saw her walk over to the window/pass through and ask a young man who was cooking and he said, "I don't know, just tell her it's vegetarian."
Neither of them realized that I could hear every word they both said, so when she came back over and said, "Yes, it's vegetarian." So I said, "I appreciate you asking, but I've decided to order something else instead." I understand that from their perspective I was a pain-in-the-rear middle aged lady asking questions they didn't know the answer to and I'm sure that they felt they were too busy to find out the answer, and I totally get that. When I got home I checked the website again, and this time it was working...and chicken stock and gelatin were both listed as ingredients, so I was glad I opted to order something else.
As an aside, I know that many people dislike large chain restaurants, but as a vegetarian and a mother of a child with food allergies, they are a godsend. They are required by law to keep ingredient lists, which in particular brings a lot of peace of mind when we take our daughter out to eat. And we do cook most of our meals at home, and fortunately my daughter doesn't have an anaphylactic reaction as part of her food allergies...I can only imagine how frightening that must be as a parent to have to worry about that. But it is absolutely wonderful to go on vacations to WDW because they are so fantastic about dealing with special diets, and I feel like it's one of the places that I can really rely on to to provide accurate information.
There are many dishes that seem vegetarian as described on the menu, but the servers either know or can find out which ones have the "hidden ingredients", or whether they are cooked in a shared fryer or on a shared grill, which makes a difference to some people.
