Dining Plans- Help Me Out!
So let me just start by saying that we LOVE Disney dining. We had the deluxe dining plan on our honeymoon trip, and boy… did we eat. A lot. Like I gained 7 pounds from our wedding day to the end of our trip…
We obviously wouldn’t have time for all those great meals on this trip, so our general dining plan is to do quick service for lunch and table service for dinner. I know that we could get by cheaper doing just quick service, but we really enjoy table service restaurants and I knew that on the hot August days we were going to definitely want a long break in the AC to cool down and regroup at dinner before going back out for EMH.
So, for our Animal Kingdom day...
After booking our trip, I decided to start looking at some ADR options, knowing I would have limited choices being so far out. Well, actually I started looking at dining options before I ever booked our trip… and may have booked a reservation for Jiko before booking the trip… Don’t act like you guys haven’t done it either!
Anyways, the Jiko reservation didn’t last. My original thought was that on our AK day we could run over to AKL and get dinner at Jiko, since
disaster struck our last time we tried to eat at Jiko.
This is what I imagine must have happened at Jiko in order for the whole restaurant to have been shut down on a Saturday night.
I ended up talking to some people on the Restaurant board and reconsidered my Jiko reservation though. Someone pointed out that Jiko was a little fancier, and we would be coming from all day in the parks and probably be a little sweaty and not dressed our best, which is a very valid point. I wasn’t going to go all the way back to Pop to change before dinner and then come all the way back to AKL. Plus, the idea of having to leave the park and come back, no matter how close, wasn’t really appealing to me.
After talking with DH, we decided to ditch that reservation and look for other options in the park. I considered Tiffins, but it was pretty pricy and also looked a little fancy. I talked to DH and he suggested we go to Yak and Yeti again, which we had gone to last trip and really enjoyed. The food portions there are HUGE! You definitely get a lot of bang for your buck there. We also had an amazing server last time we went, and we really enjoyed the general theming of the restaurant.
For our lunch at AK, I think we are going to try Flame Tree BBQ. I’ve read really good reviews and we both like BBQ. We’ve eaten at Restaurantosaurus before, but weren’t super impressed by it. I considered Satu’li Canteen, but I honestly didn’t see anything on the menu that looked super appetizing. Plus, it looks like Flame Tree mainly has samplers, so I’m wondering if we could split one of the larger samplers. Thoughts? Has anyone else done this?
For our Magic Kingdom day, I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to try to get for dinner there. I knew about the new Jungle Cruise restaurant, but the menu wasn’t really knocking my socks off. I looked at some of the restaurants at the MK resorts, including Kona and Ohana. I would love to try Ohana, but the only times they had left were for around 9:00, which would have interfered with Happily Ever After which was my number one priority for the day. I considered Whispering Canyon Café, which I’ve enjoyed before on a family trip, but I knew DH would super not be into that atmosphere.
So I continued to play around looking for dinner availability in Magic Kingdom.
And then… I found it… the Holy Grail.
YES, Y’ALL. I got a
Be Our Guest dinner reservation!!! I literally don’t even know how this happened. I just saw a time pop up and immediately booked it in a blazing fast glory before anyone else could steal it from me. And now it’s all mine!!!
So anyways, I ended up getting a 4:05 dinner reservation for Be Our Guest. 4:05 isn’t exactly my ideal time to eat dinner, but I figured I had the reservation now and that’s all that mattered. Since then I’ve continued checking the website to see if any later times would pop up, but I haven’t seen a thing so far (which makes me extra happy that I DID book the 4:05 time).
DH and I ate at BOG the first night of our honeymoon and lovedddd it. It was one of our favorite meals of the entire trip, plus we both like Beauty and the Beast. I wasn’t sure how DH would feel about the timing of this meal being so early, but he has assured me multiple times that he would rather eat there early than not be able to eat there at all.
So, to whoever canceled their 4:05 dinner reservation at BOG on August 2—Thank you!!
In light of our early dinner, we are planning to do an early quick service lunch, possibly splitting something. I would love some input here on everyone’s favorite QS, particularly in terms of the biggest meal options for two people to split. I’m thinking Pinocchio Village Haus or Columbia Harbor House. We’ve never eaten at Pinocchio, and we’ve only done Columbia for our KTTK tour which was just sort of the preordered chicken tenders or fried shrimp meals. Or if you have other good quick service suggestions on splitting things, let me know!
For our third and final day, we wanted to do breakfast in the morning to take up the time before Disney Springs opens at 10. This selection was a no brainer for us, even though it’s a bit (ok, a lot) out of the way- Boma! We loved Boma’s breakfast buffet when we ate there the second day of our honeymoon, so we knew we had to go back.
We’ll plan to head to Disney Springs straight after breakfast and shop for a while. I would love to hear some suggestions from you guys on quick service meals from here too! I really don’t know the first thing about what Disney Springs has or what’s good now, so I definitely want to hear your recommendations for lunch options before we have to leave!
So, in short form:
Day One: Breakfast at airport Starbucks, lunch at Flame Tree BBQ, dinner at Yak and Yeti. Give me some great recommendations for snacks at AK! Dole Whip, duh, but would love to hear other suggestions of your favorite snacks!
Day Two: Some sort of bakery treat for breakfast, lunch at a QS restaurant (TBD by you all!), and dinner at Be Our Guest!
Day Three: Breakfast at Boma, Lunch at Disney Springs!
Next up- Our
Disney Dining Plan purchase experiment!