Dining at Disney

An important part of any trip (for me anyway) is the food! So, I figured I would share our experience dining out at Disney World. Our daughters are three years old so character dining was a huge hit with them! We went to all four parks and got to enjoy a character meal at each one as well as lots of other great food spots! There are literally endless options for dinning at Disney with young kids but I wanted to share some of the restaurants that we enjoyed the most! Also check out the best age appropriate rides at Disney World for preschool/toddlers here.

We enjoyed breakfast every morning at our resort, the Port Orleans Riverside. They have a wide variety of breakfast options to choose from, cereals, waffles, eggs, bagels, etc. and it was also easy to grab some granola bars and hit the road. The Port Orleans also has a separate restaurant for dinner, Boatwright’s Dining Hall that was perfect on a day that we were all too wiped out to stay at the park for dinner.

First of all the snacks are fantastic!!! There are so many options to choose from and if you only have time for a quick sit down meal there are tons of places to choose from for that too, here is a list of fast/casual restaurants on property. Our girls loved the snacks, of course! Mickey ice cream (pictured below) and pretzels were among their favorites. Most Disney dining plan options come with a TON of snack credits, we had about 60 leftover at the end of our trip. You can also use snack credits to purchase bottles of water throughout the day so that was a huge plus!

One of the most exciting parts of the trip for our daughters was the character dining. Each time we did a character dinner multiple characters stop by your table throughout the meal to take pictures with and hug or high-five the kiddos. This really made the trip for our girls!

The Crystal Palace at Magic Kingdom was a definite favorite of the girls! All of the Winnie The Pooh characters were there and they had a really nice buffet with something to offer for everyone.

We also went to the Be Our Guest Castle for breakfast at Magic Kingdom. They don’t do the character dining for breakfast but the ambiance there is really cool, the castle looks exactly like it does in the movie.

In addition toThe Crystal Palace and The Be Our Guest Castle we were told that the following restaurants are wonderful at Magic Kingdom:

• The Diamond Horseshoe
• Cinderella’s Royal Table – Princess character dining – This will be a must do on our next trip!
• Liberty Tree Tavern
• Tony’s Town Square Restaurant
• Gaston’s Tavern
• Tortuga Tavern
• Casey’s Corner
• Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe

Our daughters loved the princess character dinner at Akershus in Epcot. All of the princesses did a great job of coming by every table and giving all of the kids equal attention. They also signed a cute card and gave it to all of the kids at the end of the dinner. This was probably our daughter’s favorite experience from the whole trip, they still talk about it all of the time! We also enjoyed delicious food and a great character dining experience at the Garden Grill Restaurant in Epcot with Chip ‘n Dale characters!

Here are a few other restaurants that are supposed to be wonderful at Epcot:

• Le Cellier Steakhouse
• Coral Reef Restaurant – Indoor aquarium
• Rose & Crown Dining Room
• Biergarten Restaurant – We walked in here and it has an awesome ambiance, they also had a great German band playing and a place for the kids to dance at the front!
• Via Napoli Restaurant
• Nine Dragons Restaurant

Overall our daughters had a great time at Tusker House Restaurant, in Animal Kingdom. We all enjoyed the buffet and they had interactions with Mickey, Minnie, Daffy and Pluto. A note about this restaurant – do NOT be late for your reservation! We were approximately 7 minutes late to check in with the hostess and were told they had already given our table away and we would need to wait at least an additional 20 minutes for another table. After speaking with the manager we were able to be seated a lot sooner than that. Other than that slight inconvenience we liked our experience at Tusker House.

Other restaurant options with great reviews in Animal Kingdom:

• Yak & Yeti Restaurant
• Nomad Lounge
• Tiffins Restaurant
• Harambe Market – Quick service – African inspired with more options than just burgers and hot dogs!
• Satu’li Canteen – Quick Service

Restaurants we were told are amazing but we didn’t have time to check out in Hollywood Studios:

• The Hollywood Brown Derby
• Mama Melrose’s Ristorante Italiano
• Hollywood & Vine – Character Dining
• 50’s Prime Time Cafe

What’s your favorite Disney World restaurant? Comment below or feel free to reach out to http://makingmemorieswithmyminis.com/contact/ to share!