Be Our Guest: Dining Experience

Location: "NEW" Fantasyland

Service: Table service for dinner, quick serve for breakfast and lunch. Our experience was that service was very attentive and very accommodating. To be fair our results may have been skewed considering we were having a very special meal.

Dining Plan: quick serve for breakfast and lunch.  1 credit for dinner.

Special Experience: This restaurant is tres magical. The story here is that you are invited to the Beast’s enchanted castle, and his magical kitchen is ready to serve you. Beast walks around during the dinner, and you can meet him and thank him for the dinner when you are done eating. There are three very different dining areas: the ballroom, the west wing, and the dining hall.

Cost: Disney claims $15-30 per adult.  We would say it probably ranges closer to $45 pretty easily.

Dress: There is no dress code but it has a fancy feel to it, especially at dinner time. We would recommend upscaling your dress from typical park clothes,but for lunch or breakfast you don’t even need to hit business casual.

Age Group: All ages.  Tables are mostly 4 tops so smaller families and couples.  There is a lot of space between tables though.

Menu Variety: The food is based on French cuisine, to expand the experience of being in the Beast’s castle. The menu is one of the more diverse and interesting menus we found in WDW, which makes choosing difficult but there are still things for the more picky diners. Each of the meals at Be Our Guest (Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner) has a separate menu.

Menu Quality: The food was excellent at dinner. We tried a good variety of the menu and everything was amazing. You should definitely try the grey stuff.

Drinks: The only place for alcohol in MK. Everything from beer to champagne.

Uniqueness:  We haven’t eaten in Cinderella’s castle, but we assume it’s somewhat like that experience. There is nothing else like this experience with this diverse menu in the parks. The “story” being told here is very thorough--complete with magical snowfall out the windows in the ballroom and an enchanted rose in the west wing. Take some time to explore the whole castle during your meal.

Reservation: REQUIRED 180 DAYS IN ADVANCE.  NOT A JOKE OR SARCASM OR

SUGGESTION.

Atmosphere: The ballroom feels like you would imagine from the movie, the west wing has an awesome atmosphere as well.  The “dining room” is kind of lacking comparatively and looks like it was meant to host larger parties or quick serve meals.

Notes: NEED A RESERVATION. Definitely recommended, the atmosphere here is unparalleled.

Here's the official Be Our Guest page on the Disney site: BE OUR GUEST

Special Tips: Dole Whips

Dole Whips are one of those things that "Disney Insiders" insist upon every time they are in the parks. Somehow, Jer and I had missed them every trip until the most recent one.
As it turns out, I HAD actually been eating Dole Whips for the last few years--but only in secret. It was a secret, it turns out, to everyone, including myself.

Dole Whips (tm) can be found at the Aloha Isle stand in Adventureland. It's right near the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse--right across the walkway in fact. Here's why I've never stopped there before:
The lines are always hella long, and they serve Dole Whips almost exclusively. That checks off two boxes in my "reasons never to go there" list regarding Disney attractions.  It is also well camouflaged for a food service location, those who aren't looking for it will walk right on by despite it being on the main path.

Two Weeks Left, but Who's Counting?

We are officially two weeks away from our research trip. We've been working like crazy to get spreadsheets organized, packing lists completed, and an intern hired for the trip!

Jeremy, intern Caitlin and I will be in Disney World from February 5th to the 12th, and all three of us are very excited for the trip.

As we've probably stated before, this trip is going to be mostly about testing out as many new foods as possible, so some of the most important preparation steps have been booking restaurants, choosing snacks to test out, and budgeting the trip to figure out how much food we should pack.

Caitlin made a neat spreadsheet for us to track the same elements at every meal, and they're going to come very in handy. If you're looking to find your favorite snacks and meals, you might like to try this method, too, otherwise you can breeze in and out of any and all food-haunts worry free!

We are also going to try Disney-Bounding on this trip, because we're all very theatrical and love to dress up. I've taken a trip to Good Will with Jeremy to try and find some of our missing pieces. I've had a lot more luck than he has, strangely enough.

Intern Caitlin and I will be going on another Good Will trip this weekend to seek out some more pieces for herself, me and for Jeremy. I'm very hopeful that with our creative minds we can make it all work.

I will post more later regarding our food selection process, and how we'll bring the best of the best your way throughout the trip!

--Jen