The decision to eat in Disney World is the decision to pay too much for mediocre quality or small amounts. We saw this rule in effect this week and we also uncovered a few exceptions.
Big Italian dinner/late lunch
Our big family dinner in a Hollywood Studios Italian restaurant was steep, and generally pretty good, but the pasta was overcooked to the point of mushyness. That’s sometihng you’d think an Italian resturant could get right.
Kiosk dining at Epcot
Our foray into the Food and Wine Festival at EPCOT was big on variety. We got a burger, Latin American food, Chinese dumplings, Carribean, Australian, African. We realized later that we could visit so many of these kiosks in the World Showcase becase it was lightly raining and the lines were subdued. When we went back the next day just to walk around the crowds and lines were repressively long.
Given that the payoff for these lines was a small plate that amounted to a few bites if you were sharing with someone, we ouldn’t figure out why so many people were doing it. It would be a perpetual lunch, eating while standing in line for your next mouthful. At least we had time in between kiosks to explore a little and walk freely instead of stumbling through lines. We were lucky.
A slight mist kept the lines short, saving us from starvation.
Of course, we had to visit so many stalls because that’s what you have to do if you’re planning to have a meal at the Food and Wine Festival. Two plates does not a dinner make, even at $4.50-$8 a plate.
So it would seem that we here in this corner of Central FLorida are captive to the cuisine and pricing scheme of Disney, which is largely the case. EXCEPT, Jen learned that Amazon will deliver food to your hotal here – -for free delieverry if your order was big enough She took an order from the troops before we left for breakfast and lunch.
This worked reasonably well, except that we we ate through our loaf of bread rather quickly and found ourselves with an assorment of nut butters with nothing to spread them on. It would seem that a loaf of bread would not be too difficult to source in such a densely populated area, but we do not have a car to drive off Disney property; the only resources open ot us were resort options. Where to look?
No bread? No problem. Tough to make a sandwich with this, though
Multiple counter-service places had bagels and croissnats — for $3.50 apiece, and they looked like they had been sitting around since Walt himself put them there. Not a great option.
There are bakeries dotting the landscape here — one in the France pavilion, for instance — which offered bagels and croissants (but not baguettes, unfortuntately) for about half of what the counter service places were charging, but that still didn’t do it.
Eventually,we unearthed a “General Store” at the Boardwalk section of the EPCOT resorts that looked through the window to have some staples, like milk and frozen pizzas. It’s possible they had sliced loaves in there, but it’s more likely that this area is a sandwich bread desert.
Gallery of nut butters
Our solution was to place another order with Amazon and suck up the $5 delivery fee for orders under $50. Let the sun nut butter flow freely again.
All of this obscures the fact the we have managed to find a refreshing inconsistency in the Disney dining universe. It’s all about popcorn.
Park guests can purchase — for $8 to $27 depending on which one you choose — a souvenir bucket filled with popcorn. They can then refill that bucket with popcorn for $2 any time they want for the length of their stay. With so many mathmaticians in the family it was a quick leap to realize that the price per unit of the popcorn would go down the more refills we got.
What’s more, we’ve heard there are different flavors of popcorn scattered in different parts of the park that you quilify for the refill deal. We’ve only managed to find one such location, in a little traveled part of EPCOT that had three flavors (sour cream and chive, cheddar, and buffalo/blue cheese). This, I think, might be a concession for the sad, and hopefully temporary, closure of Club Cool, which offer free soda samples from all over the world.
One container, many refills
We did get our money’s worth out of the popcorn, even if most of it was butter flavored. Imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon bins with green popcorn and red and white popcorn at the new Galaxy’s Edge section of Hollywood Studios. It was just about the only way this Star Wars-themed area could get any better.
Another exception to the rule is when people send a gift basket to your room. Thanks, Kelly and Dom!
Except that this area is so unbelievable popular that not only did we wait an hour to go on the big Smugglers’ Run ride, we also had to suffer the indignity of being turned down for popcorn refills. They only sell their own bags (and no refils of those either).
Disney is clearly in league with the Empire, and the Empire’s dining plan stinks, too.