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Old 14 Jun 22, 07:45 PM  
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#21
Grumps
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We are prob going to try chicken guy at Disney springs when we are having a quieter day and just looking for a quick bite. This seems to be either hyped as amazing or knocked for being average.
Guess will give it a try and it’s obviously not something you would set a high expectation of to start with.
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Old 15 Jun 22, 11:18 AM  
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moosha
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Originally Posted by YorkshireT View Post
Big problem with Disney restaurants is they go through phases. Often based on who the management or the head chef is. Sometimes the phases can last a long time, and someone just as good comes in as the others leave or are shuffled about. Sometimes a great place can become very mediocre very quickly. The best ones in Disney Springs don’t tend to do this as much as they are not Disney managed.
An additional problem I have seen is as somewhere become popular, this can then become what seems to be a green light to charge more, charge for add ons that were once part of the meal, or strip out more expensive ingredients.
Latest one that started off extremely well but is now getting many mediocre reviews is Steakhouse 71 as our own Mr Morrow will testify.
An additional problem is often some quite mediocre places are overhyped on social media and FOMO’d to death. Beaches and Cream was one of the best examples of the latter- never has something so mediocre been hyped up to high heaven like that place. It’s … OK.
Yak and Yeti I have found consistently good (run by Landrys) and last trip we thought both Homecomin’ but particularly Boathouse were stand outs and some of the best meals we had in Disney.
Absolutely agree about Beaches and Cream…we hadn’t been for years but fancied it on our December trip, struggled to get an ADR so had to go for something like 4 pm. We had quite a wait to be seated when we checked in too. It was decidedly underwhelming. I had the plant based chilli and cheese tots which are right up my street but they were so salty I couldn’t taste anything else. Everyone else found their food pretty average. And yet the place is always rammed and difficult to get bookings for.

Agree about Disney Springs, the non-Disney operated restaurants there do tend to be more consistent and were among our better meals last trip six months ago.
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Old 15 Jun 22, 11:41 AM  
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Originally Posted by Pep View Post
Finding Planning for ADR s and off site dinning for our upcoming Dec trip is becoming quite difficult as a lot of reviews of restaurants are very diverse some give a certain restaurant a great review some give a terrible review everything seems so far apart at the moment from the quality of food to the service there just doesn't seem to be any reoccurring theme except maybe lack of staff. In the end I'll just choose on my own previous experience but this is something I've noticed in people's reviews of the parks as well. Not having a go at anyone's opinion but normally if a place is pretty good it will get a reasonable amount of consistently good reviews
I definitely think a lot of restaurants are currently not at their best because of lack of staff and global supply chain issues.

We went to Disney and Universal in December and only had one or two meals that overall (food and service) were as good as we hoped. Personally we’ve always found House of Blues to be very good and our overall favourite meal of the trip was Jaleo at Disney Springs.

People have mentioned Skipper Canteen here and that is one we loved in 2018 but was not good on our last trip in December 2021. The food was a bit cold and the quality / flavours were nowhere near as good as we remembered. The service was not great, our server was rushed off her feet and we waited so long to be seated (everyone who had checked in was moaning about the wait to get inside) and for our food that we couldn’t even be bothered to complain about it not being great, we just wanted to get out of there in the end. Other people are still having good experiences there but for us it’s off the table again for a bit.

I do think for anyone who hasn’t been since before the pandemic maybe to not have quite as high expectations of old favourites as previous trips. As much as that’s not great, I definitely think I was disappointed after expecting restaurants to be as good as they had been whereas they were definitely overstretched staff-wise and the choice and quality of ingredients didn’t seem to be as I remembered. Plus I think they’ve had a lot of new chefs because of the pandemic. Hopefully this is improving all the time.

I know what you mean about reviews though; we’re spending a lot of time at Universal hotels on our August trip and were planning to eat at CityWalk a lot as it’s convenient. At the moment the Trip Advisor reviews for most of the restaurants there are . I went through all the places we had on the list the other day and ended up crossing most of them off. I know bad experiences can be one-offs but you’re paying so much money to eat there and a bad meal on holiday is frustrating as you think of the other places you could have gone to. We have consistently been let down by Antojitos for example.

My CityWalk list is now down to The Cowfish (we’ve always had a good experience there, including last December) and Hard Rock Cafe which has generally been just above average for us. I think most of the other days I had planned CityWalk we’ll drive down to Disney Springs as there are more restaurants there that get generally good reviews (Jaleo, City Works, House of Blues, Homecomin’….I’m on the fence about Raglan Road as we had a bad experience there in 2020 after about 6 excellent previous trips but I’m open to trying it again.)

The problem for us is three of us are vegan and I’m really struggling to find any decent offsite restaurants that cater for vegans…all the ones that are favourites here don’t offer anything we can eat. For example we loved Bahama Breeze before we were vegan but there’s pretty much nothing on offer for us. Any recommendations for decent offsite good value restaurants with vegan options appreciated .
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Old 15 Jun 22, 12:59 PM  
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Originally Posted by moosha View Post
I definitely think a lot of restaurants are currently not at their best because of lack of staff and global supply chain issues.

We went to Disney and Universal in December and only had one or two meals that overall (food and service) were as good as we hoped. Personally we’ve always found House of Blues to be very good and our overall favourite meal of the trip was Jaleo at Disney Springs.

People have mentioned Skipper Canteen here and that is one we loved in 2018 but was not good on our last trip in December 2021. The food was a bit cold and the quality / flavours were nowhere near as good as we remembered. The service was not great, our server was rushed off her feet and we waited so long to be seated (everyone who had checked in was moaning about the wait to get inside) and for our food that we couldn’t even be bothered to complain about it not being great, we just wanted to get out of there in the end. Other people are still having good experiences there but for us it’s off the table again for a bit.

I do think for anyone who hasn’t been since before the pandemic maybe to not have quite as high expectations of old favourites as previous trips. As much as that’s not great, I definitely think I was disappointed after expecting restaurants to be as good as they had been whereas they were definitely overstretched staff-wise and the choice and quality of ingredients didn’t seem to be as I remembered. Plus I think they’ve had a lot of new chefs because of the pandemic. Hopefully this is improving all the time.

I know what you mean about reviews though; we’re spending a lot of time at Universal hotels on our August trip and were planning to eat at CityWalk a lot as it’s convenient. At the moment the Trip Advisor reviews for most of the restaurants there are . I went through all the places we had on the list the other day and ended up crossing most of them off. I know bad experiences can be one-offs but you’re paying so much money to eat there and a bad meal on holiday is frustrating as you think of the other places you could have gone to. We have consistently been let down by Antojitos for example.

My CityWalk list is now down to The Cowfish (we’ve always had a good experience there, including last December) and Hard Rock Cafe which has generally been just above average for us. I think most of the other days I had planned CityWalk we’ll drive down to Disney Springs as there are more restaurants there that get generally good reviews (Jaleo, City Works, House of Blues, Homecomin’….I’m on the fence about Raglan Road as we had a bad experience there in 2020 after about 6 excellent previous trips but I’m open to trying it again.)

The problem for us is three of us are vegan and I’m really struggling to find any decent offsite restaurants that cater for vegans…all the ones that are favourites here don’t offer anything we can eat. For example we loved Bahama Breeze before we were vegan but there’s pretty much nothing on offer for us. Any recommendations for decent offsite good value restaurants with vegan options appreciated .
Yes we loved HOB in 2019 not been to Homecomin and see them as similar but think I will do HOB again because of the entertainment laid on.
We did toothsome and hardrock at City walk in 2019 and thought both were good but nothing special when we were in that area we did cheesecake factory and loved it. The reviews recently still seam to be good so gonna do there again.
Think we will be doing more snacking this year and less big sit down meals. We will probably spend the extra money on some character dining with our 5 year old I know it's not the best food but your not really going for the food.
Sadly I can't help you with the vegan stuff but I'm sure someone on here will I do keep hearing that more and more restaurants are changing their menus to suit vegan tastes so next time you visit there should be much more choice.

Edited at 01:02 PM.
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Old 15 Jun 22, 02:49 PM  
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deanobrown
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Originally Posted by Grumps View Post
We are prob going to try chicken guy at Disney springs when we are having a quieter day and just looking for a quick bite. This seems to be either hyped as amazing or knocked for being average.
Guess will give it a try and it’s obviously not something you would set a high expectation of to start with.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Some people will review a place like Chicken Guy and compare it to every place they've ever eaten... In which place it will probably rank quite low.

However, others will rate it for what it is: How good is it as a QS chicken place... And in those cases it will rank quite high.

From my own personal experience. The chicken is really fresh, fries & fried pickles are great, and you have the added bonus of trying out all the great sauces. Much like you mentioned, it's great for a little chicken place, but I would never have had higher expectations than that anyways!
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Old 15 Jun 22, 08:32 PM  
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moosha
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Originally Posted by Pep View Post
Yes we loved HOB in 2019 not been to Homecomin and see them as similar but think I will do HOB again because of the entertainment laid on.
We did toothsome and hardrock at City walk in 2019 and thought both were good but nothing special when we were in that area we did cheesecake factory and loved it. The reviews recently still seam to be good so gonna do there again.
Think we will be doing more snacking this year and less big sit down meals. We will probably spend the extra money on some character dining with our 5 year old I know it's not the best food but your not really going for the food.
Sadly I can't help you with the vegan stuff but I'm sure someone on here will I do keep hearing that more and more restaurants are changing their menus to suit vegan tastes so next time you visit there should be much more choice.
Last few trips we have done more snacks and counter service as it’s obviously cheaper than table service. Also both Disney and Universal have lots of good counter service food. That was fine in February and December but going in August this year we’re generally planning one late afternoon table service meal per day to escape the heat / potential thunderstorms.

We enjoyed Cheesecake Factory before we were vegan but now we’re not able to have the cheesecake it kind of defeats the point 😂. Hope it all works out well with the places you choose .
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