Overrated Disney World table service restaurants - have your say!

[sha9]

Originally Posted by Forkbeard

Anyone who hasn't been and reading about this for the first time would surely conclude that at best the food is hit and miss and at worst it's just terrible all the time.

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It’s not though. We haven’t had many bad meals at WDW, maybe the odd one that was just ok. Mainly they’ve been good. The point of the thread is people’s experiences of the restaurants that everyone raves about but they didn’t see it. Part of the issue is that many people who stay onsite at Disney on this forum have free dining so there are lots of dining reviews based on eating at Disney with free dining. They’re intended to give an idea of what’s available to help people choose where to eat, not necessarily to say those restaurants are better than offsite. So it looks like everyone leans towards recommending Disney restaurants but that’s skewed because of free DDP if that makes sense.

[YLL]

Originally Posted by sha9

It’s not though. We haven’t had many bad meals at WDW, maybe the odd one that was just ok. Mainly they’ve been good. The point of the thread is people’s experiences of the restaurants that everyone raves about but they didn’t see it. Part of the issue is that many people who stay onsite at Disney on this forum have free dining so there are lots of dining reviews based on eating at Disney with free dining. They’re intended to give an idea of what’s available to help people choose where to eat, not necessarily to say those restaurants are better than offsite. So it looks like everyone leans towards recommending Disney restaurants but that’s skewed because of free DDP if that makes sense.

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Yeah, most of my dining experiences have been good to great. Sadly the underrated thread did not get as much traction.

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by sha9

It’s not though. We haven’t had many bad meals at WDW, maybe the odd one that was just ok. Mainly they’ve been good. The point of the thread is people’s experiences of the restaurants that everyone raves about but they didn’t see it. Part of the issue is that many people who stay onsite at Disney on this forum have free dining so there are lots of dining reviews based on eating at Disney with free dining. They’re intended to give an idea of what’s available to help people choose where to eat, not necessarily to say those restaurants are better than offsite. So it looks like everyone leans towards recommending Disney restaurants but that’s skewed because of free DDP if that makes sense.

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I was talking about the specific messages on this thread. A lot of negative press concerning what are meant to be Disney's top restaurants.

Sure we all have different tastes and such like, but most of us can discern subjective opinion from outright bad food or service. I'd like to think this negativity falls into the latter category. An example is when food is served cold and it's meant to be hot.

If a quality restaurant, not situated inside an iconic theme park with millions upon millions of captive guests, were to make these kinds of mistakes they would be forced to close down.

The thing we most desire is consistency above all else. A restaurant that is sometimes good and sometimes outright horrid is not a restaurant I'd like to eat in

[eaglesrest]

I found CRT overrated, but get the draw. It's in the castle and there are a load of princesses, but its 2 TS credits and the food is average. Definitely worth trying at least once though.

The other disappointment was Boma - 9 of us ate there and none of us found it special in anyway. Really disappointing. We much preferred Crystal Palace, which was a surprise.

Oh, and Mama Melrose. Poor atmosphere, naff decor and boring bland food.

I like pretty much all the others, but love Teppan Edo, Raglan Road, Hoop-de-doo, Ohana and Biergarten.

[rubberduckie89]

The Wave
We only booked as it was somewhere for what we thought would be a good dinner and we could pop in and out of MK quickly.
Cold food, raw fish (meant to be cooked) and wrong side dishes brought up. Our server was the only high point of the meal - she was lovely.

[paulfoel]

I've always said if I'm paying a premium for a meal at Disney I expect it not to be worse than I could get outside. We rarely eat inside Disney now because its not the case 80% of the time.

In the past, we've done:-

Garden Grill - Hmm. Very average. All well and good thats its unlimited but all they give you extras is potato.
Be my guest - Awful Awful Awful. Complete waste of money.
Akershus - Not good.
Tusker House - probably only one EVER thats been ok.
Rainforest/TREX - Rushed average food. TGIs is way better.

Not just Disney,

Universal Mythos - crap. Had to send food back twice.

Seaworld - Shark Grill. Same. No idea how to cook a steak. 3rd time it came back stone cold so I moaned and got the entire meal for free.

Don't even get me started on the fast food in Disney. Awful.

[stargazer69]

Sanaa.

Restaurant 9/10
Server 10/10
Food 1/10

We went there last year after reading lots of good reviews. The restaurant itself is how I was expecting it, we had a great view of the animals. Our server was very attentive and friendly.

However when it came to the food, it was a different story.

We tried the bread service, which everyone raves about, but it wasn't very nice. The main meal was worse though, I cannot really explain how it tasted

[Tea]

Via Napoli. All I can say is if you aren't getting the pizza then heaven help you! $20 for a couple of crappy lettuce leaves.
The pizza while tasty and authentic (-ish) is v. overpriced and not all that filling.
Vastly overpriced. Even at CRT I didn't feel as ripped off as I did there.
I know many love it but I had high hopes and was disappointed. Service was meh also. (Ditto Ohana now that I think about it)
Expectation 9/10
Reality 3/10

[Vanillapod]

I think a lot of the food at Disney is poor and overpriced however, most of the signatures we tried were pretty good!
We loved Jiko but found The Flying Fish disappointing. Not so bad that we wouldn’t go again. Cali Grill we were seriously underwhelmed with. I hated the restaurant itself. It seemed dated and like an airport lounge. We had crap service there too.
I’ve eaten far, far better food offsite.
However, we’ve got DXDP this time so we obviously don’t hate Disney food!
It’s just easy and OH loved not taxiing us around when we did our first onsite stay last time.
The reason for DXDP is so we can eat at the signatures mostly.
Our friends who travelled with us last time were unimpressed with almost everywhere they ate onsite but they have young children so it was mainly about the characters for them.

I’m looking forward to planning this time without worrying about somewhere being a waste of credits as I know we have too many really.

We do have time offsite too so we get the best of both worlds 👍🏻