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Old 5 Aug 15, 03:45 PM  
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"What should we eat now?" - May 2015 - Food Report Day 2 - Magic Kingdom

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I’m fairly into photography, so when we discovered that if you booked an early morning breakfast reservation at Magic Kingdom that you would be allowed into the park early we decided we absolutely had to do it - as I really wanted to get some photos in front of the castle with less crowds. We went for the Crystal Palace breakfast buffet, but Be Our Guest has since become an option. Our reservation was at 8.05 and we were let into the park at 7.45, so I took some pictures and then we headed straight to the buffet.

As my main interest in this buffet was just getting access to the park early, I hadn’t really looked into what they actually offered - but I had a good idea of what they might have. I was really surprised with the variety of the food, they had a great selection of standard breakfast favourites and some more unusual options as well.


I started with a fairly meat heavy plate consisting of turkey sausages and plenty of bacon, as well as biscuits and gravy, a bagel and cream cheese and potatoes. I was really interested in trying the biscuits and gravy, as I’d never had biscuits before. I’d only had them described to me by Sarah who had always claimed they were just “rubbish scones” so I’ve usually given them a miss. I actually really enjoyed them, and I kind of regret listening to her now! Turns out they’re similar in texture to a scone but slightly less crumbly and far less sweet, some are made with cheese and they’re really good warm. The traditional sausage meat gravy that accompanies them was slightly less good in my opinion, but as I don’t really know how sausage gravy is “supposed” to taste I’m just basing everything off my personal preference. I felt it was a little too sweet and could have benefitted from a slightly more savoury taste, and a little more pepper - but now I’m just being picky, and as I said - I’m definitely not an expert, and it was still really good.

Turkey sausages are an interesting thing that I’ve not really seen before, I’m sure they’re around in the UK - I’ve just never really associated turkey with sausages or breakfast before. I’ve completely changed my mind since though, they might have been my favorite thing on the buffet after the bacon. Surprisingly juicy, they didn’t really taste at all like turkey to me - which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your tastes - but I really enjoyed them.

The bacon was excellent, cooked in the ultra crispy American style. They bring out fresh lots of bacon continually throughout the buffet service, and it didn’t seem to be sitting out for long. There’s not much to say about bacon, it’s awesome and you know what you’re getting. They didn’t do anything mind blowing with it, but it was hot and tasty and that’s all you need.

The potatoes were slightly disappointing for me, I love American potatoes and I love their breakfast potatoes especially - cooked up with onions and herbs and butter, but I found the potatoes from the buffet (and throughout Disney whenever we had them really) were just ever so slightly too firm for my liking. I prefer a crisp outside and a slightly softer middle, whereas these were fairly firm throughout. They were definitely cooked, and again - I have a feeling this is just my personal preferences clouding my opinion slightly! They were still really good, and definitely a good way to fill up at the beginning of the day.
Eggs were available on their own in two forms, scrambled and hard boiled or as part of an omelette that they would make for you to order. We didn’t see any fried eggs anywhere, they’re a lot harder to “hold” at temperature - but I have a feeling that the omelette station staff would be willing to fry one for you, and I’ve seen other people reporting that this is the case - but no first hand confirmation, sorry! There’s not a lot to say about eggs, they’re fairly similar everywhere - but the scrambled eggs apparently tasted like they had been scrambled with cheese and were “pretty good”.

One of the slightly more unusual offerings came on Sarah’s plate in the form of the “Puffed French Toast”. It’s essential a donut/fritter batter that’s been fried and coated in cinnamon. Sarah felt it was slightly too sickly for that early in the morning, but I was more than happy to finish it off. It was my first experience of “french toast”, so I went in not quite sure what to expect but I really enjoyed it. It was definitely very sweet, and very sugary. If you’re trying to eat healthy/responsibly it’s probably not the best idea, but I was on holiday so I really didn’t care. I really like cinnamon, but not when it’s overpowering. Disney actually managed to hit the perfect amount on this pastry - it wasn’t too strong, but it wasn’t too plain either. It’s a definite “treat”, and I’d make sure I ate something substantial alongside it - but definitely worth a try.

It’s hard to remember all of the things they had on offer, but between the pastry selection, hot breakfast meats, biscuits, gravy, fresh fruit… there was a lot to choose from - and pretty much everyone should be able to find something that they can enjoy. It’s a buffet so you’re free to eat as much or as little as you want, our plan was to eat fairly heavily to carry us through until lunch. As this was the first day of the holiday and we weren’t quite as used to American portions yet I don’t think we’d have eaten as much as we would have done on a later day in the holiday - but we definitely ate our fill! The meal cost us one table service credit each from our dining plan, but if you decide to pay the breakfast buffet costs $30 for adults and $18 for children. It was a great way to start the morning, and the early access to the parks was a definite bonus. By the time we were done and finished it was just passed opening, and I was definitely not hungry at all until lunchtime. I think if we had only been able to get a reservation during normal park hours I’m not sure I’d have enjoyed it as much, and would have felt it was eating into our park hours - but as an early start it meant we could take our time and just enjoy ourselves, knowing we were already there and in the park and ready to start doing things as soon as we wanted to.

The main draw here though for most people will clearly be the characters, they don’t appeal that much to me personally - but they were great in coming round and making sure we weren’t left out, despite being two adults dining with no children. They characters do multiple rounds, so if you are taking children and you do “miss” a character, you should definitely get the chance to catch their attention on another pass around.

On to lunch, and we’ve spent quite a bit of time walking around by this point - so we were pretty hungry. We decided to stop at Cosmic Ray's Starlight Café, as they have a very good variety of food from salads and sandwiches to burgers and hot dogs. As we had dinner reservations later in the evening we wanted to eat fairly light - and ordinarily I’d have ordered maybe just an entree and a drink, but as we were using the dining plan it quickly turned into a bit more of a substantial meal! Sarah ordered the chicken nuggets with fries and a chocolate gelato, and I went with a burger and fries with a carrot cake.

When we visited previously in 2012, Disney were still selling the older version of this entree - labelled as chicken tenders. There were fewer pieces, but they were larger longer strips. Personally they were probably my favourite quick service entree in Disney at the time, so it was a shame for us that they’ve since been replaced with the nugget meal.


The nuggets themselves were fine and perfectly serviceable. They were seasoned, but not overly so and were very much a “plain entree” option. The breading was crispy, but not overly so - but there was perhaps slightly too much of it. At the end of the day, it’s a chicken nugget meal at a quick service stand, to expect more than what they were would be a bit much and they were pretty good. We unfortunately remember the old version of them fondly so the nuggets really only “lost points” for just not being quite as good.

The fries were the clear winner for Sarah here, Disney fries are actually really pretty good. I’m a big fan of skin on fries, so I’m really glad that Disney made the decision to switch to this type. They also, which I feel is quite key, don’t oversalt them. Too many places shower their fries in salt, and I think they struck a nice balance here.


When it came to my food, it’s a pretty standard burger. They advertise that it’s “Angus” beef and the burger itself was great - not too dried out, with melted cheese and bacon. If you wanted further toppings inside the burger you could visit the topping bar and add whatever you wanted yourself - which is great if you’re someone like me that’s slightly particular about what they like in their burgers. They had a pretty good selection of lettuce and tomatoes etc, also available were plenty of sauces such as BBQ, mayonnaise, mustard - so you can just skip what you don’t want and enjoy it however you like it.

The desserts were good - we really only picked them up because we were on the dining plan, the gelato was good and had a nice flavour - but suffered slightly from us eating outside. If you are intending to eat outside, or can’t get a table inside during a busy period, you might be better off going with a less melty dessert choice.

Likewise the carrot cake was fine, but the frosting suffered slightly from the heat. I liked the cake part of the cake, it had a good flavour and a good moist texture but I did have some issues with the frosting. For a start they put a giant orange and green carrot on the top, which while visually appealing was just a huge blob of frosting with way too much food colouring. It stained my tongue slightly, and added absolutely nothing to the cake other than appearance. I don’t really love American frosting at the best of times, and I find that they usually use too much and this cake was no exception. It was definitely nice, and if you’ve had American cakes before it’s probably exactly what you’re expecting, if you haven’t you might want to prepare yourself for something very sweet. They did have a chocolate cake as well, and I think I’d definitely go for that over the carrot cake next time.

Overall it was a great lunch and absolutely met what I was expecting. I’m know I sound pretty over critical when it comes to the quick service food - but that’s partially just because if I absolutely love food and partly because I don’t then I won’t have anything to say. “It was pretty good but nothing mind blowing” isn’t very interesting to read, so I hold everything to a high standard when it comes to my thoughts on it, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I definitely enjoyed eating at Cosmic Ray’s, and it was a nice break in the middle of the day with food that hit the spot. The Cosmic Ray animatronic is entertaining in a cheesy way, but if you do spend more than 45 minutes to an hour or so his dialogue does start to loop and get a bit repetitive. There are plenty of seats inside, and several tables outside as well - if you can’t see any tables then just keep an eye out, people are constantly finishing and leaving as the turnaround time is fairly quick so you shouldn’t be waiting for space for long.

Later in the day was a meal I know Sarah had been looking forward to ever since the day the day it was announced. The day they revealed their plans for the Be Our Guest restaurant in the Fantasyland expansion I knew that we would absolutely one day be eating there. I absolutely loved that they have the check in and waiting area outside, it’s an amazing touch that just makes that feeling when you’re ushered into the castle through the main gates for the first time and get your first glimpse inside just that little bit more special.

The ballroom is in our opinion the best place to eat, and it looked incredible. I’m trying to keep these reports more about the food, but the atmosphere of the ballroom and the theming of this restaurant is really worth mentioning as it just added so much to the experience.

The dinner menu here was really tough to choose, because it did all genuinely look so good. There are plenty of french inspired dishes, but they don’t stray too far from “normal” food that picky eaters will be put off. We ordered different dishes with Sarah going for the grilled strip steak cooked to medium and I went with the herb-crusted lamb cooked to medium rare.


To begin there was a basket of warm bread, small “petit pain” style white rolls which we had warm with butter, and were a lovely start to the meal. They did offer to refill our basket at one point, but we didn’t want to get too full so we declined.


Sarah’s steak came with “pommes frites” (fries) and were slightly different to other fries in the park, but still essentially ordinary fries. The vegetables were cooked well, remaining crunchy and were not at all overcooked. They had been cooked in something we couldn’t identify for certain, but which (knowing restaurants) was probably plenty of garlic and butter, in short they tasted pretty amazing.
The steak was cooked correctly, to a nice firm warm red center. One thing for people to be aware of is that most places in the the USA actually cook their meat correctly, whereas a lot of restaurants in the UK seem to cook one “level” longer than is strictly right. Often a steak ordered medium in the UK will come out to what is technically medium-well, with rare coming out more like a medium etc. If you have a particular preference for meat I would double check here that what you usually get actually matches up with the temperature your usually order.

Also cooked and served with garlic butter the steak itself tasted amazing. It was a “strip” steak, which we do not have a direct equivalent for, but comes from the flank/sirloin area of the cow. It’s from an area that does little work, leaving the meat relatively tender. It’s a fairly fatless steak, and most of the fat will be marbled throughout or at one edge - so it can be easily removed for those that prefer. Considering the amount of times I’ve used the word garlic to describe this dish you’d be forgiven for thinking that this would be a very overpowering plate - fortunately it was well balanced and not too garlicky at all. Additional garlic butter was served in a dish next to the steak, so those wanting more could add it - but those that don’t should be fine with the dish as it comes.

For my meal I went with something a little different, I was heavily considering the steak - but I knew I would have the opportunity to have plenty of steak on this holiday, so I wanted something else. I considered the braised pork, cooked for eight hours it was something I could smell as soon as we walked in, it was incredibly tempting. In the end I settled on the herb-crusted lamb, partly because I wanted to try the buttered celery root mash (often called celeriac in the UK) as I’d seen it on Masterchef many times and always wondered what it would be like.

I’m incredibly glad I made my choice as I did, as this was a fantastic dish. The lamb came exactly how I ordered it (medium rare) - it does look slightly pinker than medium rare in the photos than it did in real life, but that’s due to the post-processing process. Rest assured they actually nailed it.


The herb crusted edges gave it an amazing texture, especially against the soft tender meat. I honestly can’t identify many of the herbs that went into the crust, I want to say there was some rosemary and probably some oregano and thyme - but I can’t be sure. It was really enjoyable, although the rack was slightly difficult to get all of the meat off of using a knife and fork.

The green vegetable with my food was tenderstem broccoli, cooked very similarly to Sarah’s vegetables they tasted great - buttery with a hint of garlic. They were not not quite as crunchy as I prefer, as I like my vegetables on the slightly undercooked side, but they were definitely cooked perfectly.

The celeriac mash was really interesting, it had a very smooth consistency which is exactly how I love my mash to be. It was very creamy and buttery but with a very earthy undertone. It reminded me a lot of a less sweet parsnip, and was perfect with the mustard demi-glace.
I have no idea whether the sauce was a “true” demi-glace, or if they used one of the many variations commonly used in many restaurant kitchens. True demi-glace is difficult to make and very time consuming, but even if this was more of a veal stock reduction or from a demi-glace concentrate it was fantastic. A perfect balance to the food it added savoury elements and brought everything together very well. The “Stone-ground Mustard” from the menu description was not overpowering and lent a hint of flavour, without ruining it for mustard haters. Overall an incredible dish.

Seeing as the rest of the meal would be covered by the dining plan I decided I would definitely be getting some wine. They had a variety of exclusive wines that were unavailable anywhere else - all produced in France. They had a variety of champagne, a white, a red and a rosé.


I decided to go with the red as it would accompany my food well, and I’m a big fan of red wine in general. The wine itself was a “L’ombre de la bête” (Shadow of the Beast) Châteauneuf-du-Pape from the Rhone Valley region of France. Most Châteauneuf-du-Pape are red, but there are white varieties available as well. It’s traditionally a blend of multiple varieties of grape and the menu mentioned Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre grapes for this specific wine. It’s described as a full-bodied wine, and definitely lived up to that. It was packed full of flavour and was incredibly rich and fruity. I really enjoyed it, and I have no doubt the other types of wine were also just as good.


They also had some more familiar champagne and wine brands available on the rest of the wine list if you decide to go with something more well known. Prices ranged widely, each of the signature wines were available by the glass - as well as some of the other sparkling wines. Other more expensive and prestigious bottles were only available by the bottle, but this is fairly standard for restaurants.

Now, onto the most disappointing part of the meal: dessert.

Unfortunately the dessert menu at Be Our Guest does not live up to the quality and variety set by the rest of the meal. It’s very nicely presented to you, on a classic old style dessert trolley - and is a lovely sight, but at the end of the day it was just mostly just cupcakes.


We of course both went for the grey stuff, as we had heard it was delicious and while it was definitely great in terms of taste - it just doesn’t quite live up to the style and presentation of the rest of the food. It was a crisp almost biscuity chocolate brownie type base with a very light creamy very well aerated mousse piped on the top. The grey stuff itself tasted very similar to what I would imagine a cookies and cream angel delight to taste like. It was definitely nice, it just didn’t quite fit (in my opinion) with the style of food being served. I think that even a small change, maybe presenting the grey stuff in a different way or having a couple of different options that aren’t cupcakes would go a long way in making the dessert “fit” the rest of the meal better.

A really enjoyable meal, with some really amazing food. I’m so glad we managed to get the day and time we wanted (early evening) as this was just a lovely experience overall.

Edited at 04:11 PM.
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Old 5 Aug 15, 10:31 PM  
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Fantastic report with amazing detail. x
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