Disney Dining for Fun

I often find myself in the middle of the same conversation about Disney restaurants. Both clients & friends will often ask my opinion on certain Disney restaurants and it can be tricky to give an honest opinion without stepping on anybodies toes. Because like everything in life-one man's truffle is another man's fungi. By that I mean, what I might find marvelous-another person might have little more than a crinkled nose & funny face for. So it is important to explain the why you like or dislike something. I try to always, in all my reviews, go beyond the vague territory of "it's so good" or "it was terrible!". I try to give as many descriptions as possible, such as "had a robust cilantro flavor", so you can then take that information and apply it to your own personal taste palette & dining style.

This brings me to the meat of my post-style. I've come to the conclusion that in giving descriptions & reviews of various Disney World restaurants, I have to start acknowledging a very unique style of restaurants at Disney. Experience dining locations. By that I mean restaurants where it becomes less about the actual food & more about the dining experience. Not to say that these locations can't offer some really great dining options, but they can often simply be a place you go to experience characters, atmosphere or talented staff, rather than amazing food. Some Disney restaurants are designed to delight & entertain your taste buds-and some can only accomplish providing adequate (and sometimes not even that) food to fill the time in between the scheduled entertainment.

Does this make them bad? Not necessarily. Should you skip them when making your Advance Dinner Reservations? Not at all. But it does do you good to not set your expectations for the food too high. You go because it's one of those places you don't want to miss the experience, but once you get past that initiation, you might never find your taste buds leading you back.

So for these restaurants I will be approaching the reviews slightly different than the style I use for Signatures. I will still talk about the decor, menu, and value. Also I will still give the best mode of transportation & travel path and do mini food reviews of individual dishes. But instead of reviewing the service, I will replace that with entertainment factor and describe what kind of entertainment you can expect when you dine there. Hopefully this will help give a better idea of what to expect from experience based restaurants.