Very disappointed in Askershus this time

IluvKingLouis

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Joined
Oct 18, 2004
Messages
1,658
I have been a big fan of this restaurant in the past, but our last visit (about a week ago) was just awful!

I LOVED this place when they had both the hot and cold buffets. It was still pretty good when they moved to the hot entrees and eliminated the hot buffet. I was able to tolerate the addition of the Princesses since we have a dd4.5 and she is totally into the princess thing.

This last trip I was disappointed to find a lot of the truly Scandinavian items were no longer on the cold board. No more potato bread, crisp bread, or the lovely hearty wheat they used to serve. Cheese is now served in cubes instead of slices and the selection no longer includes Scandinavian types of cheese (I think it was just cheddar and swiss). As for bread, you now get these very average rolls (noticed these at several other places) and cinnamon (!?!) butter.

The hot menu has also shrunk. No more trout and a few other items missing from the menu. I was three bites into my cold plate when the entrees arrived. The deserts (with the exception of rice pudding) have also changed….and not for the better. No more chocolate mousse or lingonberry cheesecake.

Service was not too great, though that could have been a fluke. I’m really sad to see this happen to my favorite restaurant. We all decided we would not be returning. :sad1:
 
That is disappointing. I had a wonderful dinner there in March 06 but it looks like I will not be in any hurry to return. Any time WDW wishes to reinstate a Scandinavian menu, I'll be back.

I hope they still have rice cream at Kringla!
 
That's disappointing, but it's consistent with other reports I've been reading. I want to cancel our reservation, but the little one wants to see the princesses. :sad2:
 
It seems as though they have used this restaurant as another opportunity to dumb down disney dining. When we ate there I was less than impressed, nothing really special to the country of origin and the food was bland - like they were afraid for people to try smething different.
 

That's disappointing, but it's consistent with other reports I've been reading. I want to cancel our reservation, but the little one wants to see the princesses. :sad2:

I used to joke that there was absolutely no way I'd pay $18.00 for waffles and scrambled eggs (although we do this at the Lilo and Stitch breakfast) when for $7.00 more I could get a fine Scandinavian style meal for lunch.

However, I'm now thinking I'd rather do the breakfast if my dd4.5 made a big deal about seeing Princesses. Or even better, I'll pay for a Magic Kingdom after hours event where the Princesses actually spend some time with the children.

On the plus side (we drove out) we swung by IKEA in Atlanta and did some Swedish grocery shopping (yum!).
 
That's so sad. We stumbled in there a few years ago and ate there just to cool off and rest. It turned out to be one of our favorites. We haven't been happy with it since they added the characters.
 
I feel exactly the same. It was always our favorite restaurant in WDW and I would have defended it to the hilt in the past. However in August last year we decided to go back even though there were princesses at the evening meal. It was a total disaster. There was no organisation to the lines of people waiting. We waited for 45 mins in the rain as there was no where to stand. When we were seated we noticed that the seats were even more close together than on previous visits. The place was packed, the noise was deafening and the wonderful oasis of calm that the restaurant used to be was gone. We didnt really want to have the princesses come to the table and were quite happy to watch all the little kids enjoying that, but there was no way out. I suppose we were there for the food, but it wasnt to be. We noticed a family at the next table who didnt want to eat any of the cold food or anything off the menu, so they were brought pizzas and potatoes! Therein lies the problem - some go for the princesses and some for the food and many are disappointed.
The cold food was still good but the hot choices were not. Gone were the great choices of hot buffet food - we had venison and hot salmon the last time. As for the desserts, there were no more Viking chocolate mousse longboats, the rice cream with the ligonberry sauce or the paint your own troll. Instead the rice cream came with the ubiquitous strawberry gloop and two other non descript desserts. They were just slop on a plate!
We all came away disappointed and upset. How could Disney do this to what was a wonderful restaurant serving wonderful food? If only they would serve one princess free meal I would go back. Much as I love character meals, this was just one big mess. For those that have experienced the old Akershus and the menu that used to be, they may well be disappointed - we all were! :sad1:

Maggs
 
I have been a big fan of this restaurant in the past, but our last visit (about a week ago) was just awful!

I LOVED this place when they had both the hot and cold buffets. It was still pretty good when they moved to the hot entrees and eliminated the hot buffet. I was able to tolerate the addition of the Princesses since we have a dd4.5 and she is totally into the princess thing.

This last trip I was disappointed to find a lot of the truly Scandinavian items were no longer on the cold board. No more potato bread, crisp bread, or the lovely hearty wheat they used to serve. Cheese is now served in cubes instead of slices and the selection no longer includes Scandinavian types of cheese (I think it was just cheddar and swiss). As for bread, you now get these very average rolls (noticed these at several other places) and cinnamon (!?!) butter.

The hot menu has also shrunk. No more trout and a few other items missing from the menu. I was three bites into my cold plate when the entrees arrived. The deserts (with the exception of rice pudding) have also changed….and not for the better. No more chocolate mousse or lingonberry cheesecake.

Service was not too great, though that could have been a fluke. I’m really sad to see this happen to my favorite restaurant. We all decided we would not be returning. :sad1:

So other than the rice pudding, what was on the dessert tray then?

Thanks!
 
So other than the rice pudding, what was on the dessert tray then?

Thanks!



Two very ordinary grocery type deserts (stuff I can get at Safeway). Basically layers of plain cake stuck together with some cool-whip type of goopey-concoction. One looked like Tiramisu and I started to get excited....but it was just boring stuff with absolutely no flavor. Very sad. I would never serve this at my home and I've been known to take short cuts. :rotfl2:
 
My family has ADRs for this place for breakfast April 08. We have never eaten there before so this is making me nervous. We mostly are going there for our 2 daughters. BUT now we may reconsider. Where should we go instead? We are also doing the Donald breakfast at AK. I hope this has better reviews!
 
Bummer...My husband has wanted to eat here since our trip in '01. We have dinner ressies for this Dec. I hope he still enjoys it. I know our preschool daughter and our teen son will (he has a crush on Jasmine).
 
My family has ADRs for this place for breakfast April 08. We have never eaten there before so this is making me nervous. We mostly are going there for our 2 daughters. BUT now we may reconsider. Where should we go instead? We are also doing the Donald breakfast at AK. I hope this has better reviews!


You just have to look at WHY people have 'bad' reviews of the restaurant. There are always two arguments about Akershus that stand out each time:
I hate the princesses and LOVED the food before but now the food is not ETHNIC enough.
Or
I hate the fact that the food is TOO ETHNIC when I just want to have a meal with princesses.

As for if you will enjoy your breakfast or not, just think why you really want to go. Do you want princesses or authentic Norwegian food? If you answered princesses, then breakfast should be the right choice for you.
 
My family has ADRs for this place for breakfast April 08. We have never eaten there before so this is making me nervous. We mostly are going there for our 2 daughters. BUT now we may reconsider. Where should we go instead? We are also doing the Donald breakfast at AK. I hope this has better reviews!

The breakfast has always been pretty typical American style. I think you should be fine with that meal.
 
Sereneone,
Don't get your son too excited. Jasmine was not there on our last visit in May. Ariel, Cindy, Alice, Arora and Snow White only. We did catch her in Morocco and in Adventure land outside of the Aladdin ride with the Genie
 
We had dinner there two weeks ago, and had Jasmine, Aurora, Snow White, Mary Poppins, and of course Belle. There were all so pretty! Mary Poppins almost fell down and never broke character.

The food certainly wasn't my favorite. I ordered the pork shank and the smell turned my stomach (but it should be noted that I am not THAT adventurous of an eater.) My Mom switched entrees with me, she loved that smelly pork shank, and I thought her salmon was good. My daughter got the pizza and liked it "okay" but she was really too excited by the princesses to pay much attention to the food. We both ate a lot of the smoked salmon from the cold buffet.

My daughter LOVES Aurora and Jasmine, but was so impressed with Mary Poppins that she said she wants a dress like hers. :)
 
We just had breakfast there last Sun & I was not impressed. We saw Belle, Mulan, Jasmine, Aurora. The characters come by once, very rushed. Didn't spend much time talking to the kids. I also wasn't crazy about the food - the bacon was so dry it was hard to eat. I felt very rushed the whole time. I liked our CRT one last year much better than this one.
 
Uggh. Now I am really thinking about letting go of this ADR. I'm not expecting the food to be great, but if the character interaction is not even good? Maybe we'll just hit the princess line hard at MK.....

Assuming we get the princess interaction elsewhere, would Garden Grill be a good sub for this ADR? Is the food better?
 
We just visited this on a whim in 2001, and loved it back then! DH is still very disappointed that they became a Princess Palace, because we think that was one of the best hidden jewel restaurants in the World.
It was also the very first place I tried venison!
 
We did almost all of the character meals on our last trip ( No Chef Mickey or LTT) I felt the interaction was minimal at all of them except Hollywood and Dine with Playhouse Disney. The characters all came, asked DD's name, asked if she was having fun, signed her book and took a picture. And that was the routine everywhere. The a CM came by to make sure we saw all of the characters
 
Uggh. Now I am really thinking about letting go of this ADR. I'm not expecting the food to be great, but if the character interaction is not even good? Maybe we'll just hit the princess line hard at MK.....

Assuming we get the princess interaction elsewhere, would Garden Grill be a good sub for this ADR? Is the food better?

If you are there during the Pirate and Princess Party, I would highly recommend that for the high quality character interaction. At the character dining, I'd say each character spends about 30 seconds with each child.

We've done the Pirate & Princess as well as the MNSSHP, and both times the Princesses (and they have their Prince's with them) spent 3-4 minutes and really engaged my dd4.5 in conversation.
 








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