Inconsistent restaurant reviews

[Pep]

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

[kk20]

there is also a gamut of people visiting the restaurants, all with vastly different opinions, Disney is somewhat a captive audience. I tend to see what the 2, 3, 4 star reviews say and ignore the 1 and 5.

[sha9]

People have different experiences based on time of year, time of day, weather, party make up… The list is endless.

[Lola]

If I check reviews for anywhere I generally look at the average positives or negatives an decide from a range of reports good and bad.

[Shooby doo]

I usually use tripadvisor, look at the % of 5*, I think it's good indication, once the % drops to around the 60%-70% mark them I'm going to dig a bit further to see what the problem is. Even sampling the lower *, I'm not going to be put off by a review that the restaurant has no control over the issue, even reading some of them you do have to wonder what colour the sky is in some of these worlds!
SD

[Donaldfan]

I never read reviews, I prefer to make my own mind up rather than have pre-conceived thoughts.

[Pep]

How do you find out about the restaurant in the first place ?

[YorkshireT]

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.

[Pep]

Originally Posted by YorkshireT

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.

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Thanks for the recommendations Yorkshire T not really seen any bad reviews of Yak and Yeti,Homecoming and Boathouse as of yet Wine bar george seams to be popular also but some of the other signature restaurants reviews are all over the place.
Yes I've heard what your saying about the change of chefs ect from reviews I've seen on YouTube but that seems to happen over perhaps a year or so. stakehouse 71 I've noticed has gone down very rapidly with reviewers it's one of the reasons I posted in the first place

[SamH88]

It’s the same with all restaurants and some people will leave a bad review for silly things. Someone on Tripadvisor gave a place near us 1 star because they had to wait 15 mins for their food after ordering 🙄