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

Akershus Royal Banquet Hall

Once again working on the book, but instead of a ride we are going to bring you a review of one of the dining attractions.

Akershus Royal Banquet Hall 

Location: EPCOT, Norway. Right on the main path, in fact you can see into the windows as it is a ground level restaurant.

Service: buffet/family style. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Dining Plan: one “table service” meal per person.

Special Experience: Princess character experience. The main meal is buffet style, and dessert is family style.

Cost: $30-$60

Dress: Casual, but the setting is a royal banquet hall, so fancy dinner clothes would not be out of place.

Age group: Families and kids of all ages are drawn here for the princesses. However, the tables are well spread out, so it isn’t as much of a nuisance as it could be.

Menu Variety: The buffet was awesome, the winning item of the night was Gjetost cheese. Gjetost is a brown-yellow, soft goat cheese that tastes sweet and is very popular in Norway, Germany and other Scandinavian countries. The entrees of the dinner/lunch buffet are well-rounded, with a good mix of American and Norwegian foods for everyone at the table. Jeremy’s quote of the night: “I would call it well-rounded but uninspired.” Due to the family nature of the character dining, the menu leaves a little to be desired for the adult palate. Almost everything is stuff you’ve eaten before and will eat again afterwards, but it’s done very well.

Menu Quality: still focuses more on the buffet than the menu. Nothing particularly special on the entree menu. The dessert is served in a “family style” sampler so everyone can try a little of everything. The dinner, however, was forgettable. Jer loved it, Jen forgot it even existed.  Doesn’t change from lunch to dinner.

Drinks: Moderate selection of wines and beer.

Uniqueness: A character dinner is always unique, but this is a pretty typical experience for character dining.  The atmosphere set up to feel like a castle dining hall.

Reservation: required

Notes: Rotating princess schedule, so ask who's coming to dinner. Sometimes no one is willing to say anything though, so flexibility is important.

Have you eaten at Akershus? How was your experience there?

Toy Story Mania

Working on the book tonight again, and for me that means a new post. So here is arguably the most popular attraction in Hollywood Studios(or as I like to call it MGM). Enjoy!-Jer

What is it - a 4-D arcade tournament. Unlike Buzz lightyear, you cannot control the direction of your car.

Thrill Rating - low, there is some rapid spinning though.

Crowd Rating - maximum. If you want any shot at riding this, you need to get in line and/or fast pass it first thing in the morning. The fast passes will run out before 11am on busy days--sometimes even sooner.

History - This ride is still relatively new and is the reason that “Pixar Place” is currently only representative of Toy Story.

Duration -

Queue:  You’re going to wait for this one, unless you’re the first one there at rope drop in the morning. We have not waited less than 60 minutes, except on the fast pass lane where you will wait 15-30 minutes. The queue area is full of interesting things to look at. It shrinks you down to the size of a toy. In the regular waiting line, there is an sometimes interactive “Potato Head”. He will either run through a pre-recorded show, or else there is someone speaking for him and interacting with guests.

Ride:  5-6 minutes, but it goes quickly as you’re interacting with the game.

Hidden Mickeys:  painted on the wall closest to the stairs that lead to the loading area (he’s in blue). Hidden nemo is also on this wall in paint. http://land.allears.net/blogs/stevebarrett/2008/07/ready_toy_story_midway_mania_h.html

The exclamation point in “Circus Fun”, the poster of potato head, slinky dog, and bullseye right before the entrance to the ride, and a tiny mickey in the eye of the chicken on the “Little Golden Book” in the loading area (genuinely tiny and nearly impossible to find).

romance level: this can be a friendly game or a serious competition. Not the time for holding hands.

Notes: This is the most popular ride in Hollywood Studios. Period. It came out in 2008 and the lines haven’t slowed down even a touch since opening day. We aren’t kidding when we say this should be the first thing you do in this park if you want to do it at all. Not even late at night, during fantasmic, when the park’s getting ready to close, will the lines slow down. Extra magic hours helps slightly, but that will be your entire extra two hours.

Big Thunder Mountain

We've been working hard on the book for a while now, particularly focusing on our MGM Hollywood Studios info. However, every time we ask people to pick their favorite park or favorite ride, they almost always name something from Magic Kingdom. And so, to honor everyone we know, we bring you a breakdown of one of the classics: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Enjoy!

I took this from the ride itself. Not recommended if you aren't good at multi-tasking.

Know Before You Go: Prepare the Smart Way!

Good News! Things are moving here at In-Betweeners...and by things I mean me, Jen.

I just made a move from my home in CT down the east coast to Jeremy's home in NJ which is awesome as it means we'll have lots more time to work on the book.

Before the move, however, I got to sit down with a couple other in-betweeners and talk to them about their last trip to Disney. My friends, Sara and Alex, will be joining us in Disney on our next trip. They'll be serving as Guinea pigs, of a sort, for our travel tips and expertise, so I decided to ask them what their biggest problems were when traveling to Disney. Their answers didn't surprise me, and their problems (and likely yours, as well,) are all easily solved with smart preparation.

Knowing your CAN'T MISS List

Disney Itinerary

This one is probably the most important part of planning the trip, aside from booking it. If you don’t know what you want to see, you could very well end up missing it.