Your favourite dining options at WDW?

[shushh]

We are having great difficulties choosing/planning dining for our WDW trip in Dec 2010. We'll be there for about 8 days with young children. Just wondering what your personal favourites are and why? great food? great entertainment? character meetings? It'd be nice to hear the Aussie perspective.

 

[DizOz]

We are having great difficulties choosing/planning dining for our WDW trip in Dec 2010. We'll be there for about 8 days with young children. Just wondering what your personal favourites are and why? great food? great entertainment? character meetings? It'd be nice to hear the Aussie perspective.

Shushh,

We were last at WDW in Dec 2007 and had some great meals. We are currently doing the same as you for our next trip in Oct 2010.

Last time DW love Jiko at AKL whilst I loved Yachtsmen Steakhouse at the Yacht Club. I also loved the portobello soup at Artist Point at WL. Our 2 DD wanted a Princess character meal but the one at MK was booked out so we did the one at Akershus at Epcot. The food was terrrible but our DD loved meeting all the princesses. We also had a character meal at Tusker hosue where the food was much better and we got to meet Mickey, Goofy and Donald.

Other places we dined were:

Whispering Canyon - Food OK but a fun Atmosphere (Dinner and a breakfast. Dinner much better atmosphere)

Flame Tree BBQ - Great casual place with great ribs. Watch out for the wild life, a little bit too friendly for our 2 DD's.

Flying Fish - Great Seafood and had great service even though I mucked up the booking and turned up an hour late on Thanksgiving night.

Fultons Crab House - Great Venue, food was so/so. I had the lobster and crab claws nice but not great for the price. Paying for the venue.

Ohana - Went for breakfast and Lilo and Stich and Mickey there for a character breakfast. Food was OK.

Raglan Road - Irish Pub in DTD. We were split on this one 1DD and me loved it whilst other DD and DW hated it.

San Angel Inn - Great location away from hussle and bussle of Epcot. Cool and dark. Food was your typical mexican fare.

Teppan Edo - Food was typical Tepanyaki style and plenty of it. Need a little luck with the chef and the family sharing your table. Sits 8 people so we shared with another family that turned their back on us and did not talk to us. Were as on the table next to us the 2 families were having a great time.

Brown Derby - Again we split on this one. I loved it whilst DW hated it.

Spirit of Aloha Show - The food and show were fine. We could only get into the later show which was too late for our 2 DD aged 5 and 8 at the time. It is kind of show you do once.

This time I know better and will book early to get to do the following:

Cinderella's Royal Table
Le Cellier
Chefs De France
California Grill

Also going to try the Hoop De Doo show this time round.

 

[Willow25]

We have been to WDW a few times and here are a list of our favorites. I am an american but my husband is Australian so I will give you his list of favorites.

Both of us absolutely loved Le Cellier, best steak ever!!!
California Grill is really great
It gets mixed reviews but we really like Coral Reef and with young children the atmosphere of the aquariam was brilliant
The playhouse disney breakfast buffet was good
Narcossee's was really great
We also did not like the food at Akershus breakfast buffet but our daughter and neice loved the princesses

Those are our must do's. We have eaten at most of the restaurants so if you have any questions about specific restaurants please just ask.

 

[gogo65]

My kids loved prime time cafe- the food was OK
i loved coral reef, we had pre-arranged a personalised menu which was great, however I am not sure if they do that anymore.
Le Cellier was nice although a little over rated.
My DD was a pooh fan so loved crystal palace. There is not much to choose from in MK so crystal palace is a good choice.
Lunch at Tusker house was great.
We also dined at Chef Mickeys, the food was OK but the atmosphere is worth it.
I suppose it depends on your kids and the ages of them.
We did the dining plan and thought it was great.

 

[queenie82]

We've never done much on site dining but are eating at most of the restaurants this december. Dining plan YAY!
Boma gets RAVE reviews by everyone so we have that on the list for both breakfast and dinner. Same with 1900 park fare. So hopefully they are good. (I'm a big kid who LOVES character meals...hehe)

Of what we have done
My FAVOURITE though is Cape May Cafe Breakfast. Great food, great atmosphere, great character interaction. It is SOO relaxed and you get quality time with the Characters. And they are ADORABLE!!!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/queenamidala82/CapeMayDale1-1-1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/queenamidala82/CapeMayGoofy2.jpg
[I apologise I was very jetlagged...]

Crystal Palace is chaos but the food is great and SOOO worth it for the characters.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/queenamidala82/CrystalPalaceTigger.jpg

Chef Mickey the food is average but the characters are in their classic clothes and fun.

 

[shushh]

Thanks guys. That helps somewhat. There are so many choices and to narrow it down to only a select few is difficult! Do you think its possible to have too many character experiences? There will be 9 children in our group ranging from 2 to 8.

 

[queenie82]

Thanks guys. That helps somewhat. There are so many choices and to narrow it down to only a select few is difficult! Do you think its possible to have too many character experiences? There will be 9 children in our group ranging from 2 to 8.

err....no
I think if you make it a variety it is good.
BUT...I have heard some kids are scared of big characters???? I also know of an adorable 2yo who ran up to Beast and gave him a massive hug and she loves kissing the characters. So it depends on the kid a bit.
Ohana offers Lilo and Stitch and co.
Chef Mickey is Mickey and Friends.
Crystal Palace is the only place with Winnie, Tigger etc.
Park Fare is good for face characters. It varies but it has alice, mary poppins type characters. It will usually also have 1 or 2 non face characters.

This is a friend of mine's little girl with Donald. She loved all this type of stuff
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/queenamidala82/jmatt.jpg

 

[shushh]

This is a friend of mine's little girl with Donald. She loved all this type of stuff
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/queenamidala82/jmatt.jpg

That is too cute!

Alright. Will knuckle down and make the plan.

 

[DizOz]

That is too cute!

Alright. Will knuckle down and make the plan.

Too many choices can really do your head in and you come away more confused than ever.

This time the whole family sat down over Sunday breakfast and everyone got a one must do restaurant choice. Our 2 DD were given 2 choices for character meals. Then we all rated our top ten restaurants we wanted to try and the top rated ones were added to the list. Any remaining choices were filled to be filled at management discretion.

 

[Andona]

We are having great difficulties choosing/planning dining for our WDW trip in Dec 2010. We'll be there for about 8 days with young children. Just wondering what your personal favourites are and why? great food? great entertainment? character meetings? It'd be nice to hear the Aussie perspective.

Our son loved the Sci Fi Dine in at Hollywood studios. The food is not the important thing here ( it's mainly burgers etc) but the fun of dining in a pseudo -convertible car and watching corny 1950's horror flicks and advertisements on a Drive IN movie screen is fantastic

WE also enjoyed the San Angel Inn on a hot day - it was lovely to retreat to a waterside table and watch the volcano while we ate our salsa and corn chips.

Mama Melrose at Hollywood Studios is fairly average Italian, nothing particularly exciting.

We had a pleasant meal at the Rose and Crown Inn at Epcot - more English than England which was great for us as we were craving some bangers and mash but otherwise nothing spectacular. We were inside, it might have been more special if we had an outside table.

We also enjoyed our lunch at the Flame Tree BBQ at Animal Kingdom - nice and cool down on the water with a great view of Exhibition Everest.

Are you also considering dining options at Downtown Disney? We ate at the House of Blues because DH was craving Gumbo but for an experience meal I wish we'd booked the Dinosaur restaurant ( not sure of its name?) It was recently opened and looked hugely popular. We peeked in the door and it looked like a Rainforest Cafe on steroids!

Andona

 

[Jade+3]

We did 3 character meals. We found the character interaction to be fantastic, but the food very average. We ate at Chef Mickey (breakfast), Askerhus (breakfast) and Crystal Palace (lunch).

My advice, especially for breakfast is to book a late seating. At Chef Mickey we were told to quickly grab some food before the characters arrived. We were handed the check after seeing the second character. It was so rushed that we did not get time to eat. Askerhus was much more relaxing as we were the last breakfast sitting.

T-Rex is the dinosaur restaurant at Downtown Disney.

 

[shushh]

I've got so much to plan at the moment my head is spinning. Lucky I have over a year to go! Still trying to finalise the details of our Mediterranean cruise and trying to formulate a rough itinerary for our WDW/NYC/DC/cruise trip in Dec 2010.

DH only wants to do 1 character dining but I wanted to do more because I think the kids would love it (not to mention their mum as wel...).

Andona, definitely would consider Downtown Disney. We are open.

DizOz, don't know you you get the details all worked out so early on. Only just found out recently on tripadvisor that it is illegal to rent apartments in NYC, so there goes that idea!