3 Awesome Disney Dining Tips

With over 600 dining options at Disney World resort, trying to decide where to eat and when can be challenging. Below are a few ideas for getting the most of the culinary offerings at Disney World Resort.

1. Call in advance of your trip to reserve your dining experiences… and don’t just rely on the restaurants in the resort where you’re staying.  Disney provides monorail, boat, bus and other means of access between resorts allowing you to experience the dizzying variety of resort themes and dining experiences available. Reservations can be made as much as 180 days in advance and tables book up quickly especially for character dining experiences. Reservations can be made via phone, online at Disney.com through “My Disney Experience” or on the My Disney Experience” app.

2. Book a breakfast and dinner at a resort or in the park and skip lunch.  Keep your mid-day open and free of reservations and snack on a variety of treats available at carts positioned throughout the park.  A few of our favorites are fresh popped popcorn, frozen treats including Mickey Premium Ice Cream Sandwiches, chocolate covered frozen bananas and Dole Whip’s.  Depending on which park you visit, Disney offers  a variety of snack foods to tempt you.  At Epcot, you can graze your way around the world noshing on croissants and other pastries from France, baklava in Morocco, BBQ in the American Experience, margaritas and nachos in Mexico  – Aye carumba!  Get the idea?  When the parks are full of folks, you’ll spend so much of your time walking from attraction to attraction that it’s great not to have too much of a schedule – except for your fast passes which will cut wait times in at least half – so that you can enjoy the general splendor of the parks without the clock ticking in the back of your head reminding you of your mid-day reservations.

3. If you’re not staying in property at Disney, book a regular or character breakfast at a resort with easy access to the park you plan to visit that day.  Our first day in Disney, we had breakfast at the Grand Floridian.  When you have a dining reservation at a Disney resort, you are allowed to park in the resort parking lot which is great because you can then afford yourself of the transportation options that resort has to the parks.  For instance, from the Floridian we were one monorail stop or a short boat ride from Magic Kingdom.  This saved us from the stresses of parking in one of the HUGE lots at the Magic Kingdom amidst a sea of neutral colored rental cars that looked just like my own.  Instead you have a more relaxed entrance to the park that day when coming from a resort.  I’d even go so far as to suggest booking breakfast at a resort each morning and coordinating your park visits accordingly to keep from having to brave the parking lots.

In short, it does pay to plan ahead when visiting Disney.  So spend some time on the phone and schedule your dining reservations as far ahead of your visit as  possible to ensure access to your favorite restaurants. And don’t forget the food carts in the park.  They help round out a deliciously satisfying Disney experience! Here are a few more articles that may interest you: