DVC Restaurants Are a Cut Above; Disney Dining Plan

There are great places to eat at all of the DVC resorts.  And, lets talk about maximizing the dining plan.

Transcript

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All right, here we go again. DVC for adults. Going to be a good one today. You are looking at my Boma breakfast the last time I was there. I want you to look at all this stuff. You get free pog juice. Okay. This is the Boma breakfast buffet. This is probably about one-tenth of the items we have on there. You can see the sausages, the home fry, homemade home fries, eggs, chocolate muffin. Well, look, I even got a little fruit on my plate. Then look, this is the coolest drink on the property, man. We got the zebra dome, it's like a cookie with mousse on top, icing on top of that, chip stuck to the side, and it's got a little Bailey Bailey's Irish cream in it. That is a zebra dome cold brew. It's got coffee in it, and it's got liquor in it. So that is, we're going to talk about the Disney dining plan here in a moment, but the main part of the episode today is how I think that the restaurants associated with DVC resorts are a cut above all the other restaurants. Now we've eaten at so many Disney World restaurants. I would say in the amusement parks, we might have eaten at 50% of them. And it's funny, some of the things that people like. I'm going to show you a dish here that is very popular in here in just a moment that I don't really like. So we're going to talk about that. But I really think the DBC resorts are cut above. I love the Caribbean beach food court. I love the Cajun choices. It's what used to be called Dixie Landing, it's called Port Orleans now. But once I went to DBC and started eating at those resorts, I don't eat anywhere else now. I've got the dining plan for my upcrumpt coming trip to in August. I will tell you this, as a matter of fact, I it's a split stay. It's three different resorts I've got two nights at Cadani, which is always going to be my favorite. And I'm going to show you the food that you're going to find at Kidani. And then I'm going to two days at Riviera Resort. That'll be my first time there. And then I'm going to do one day at the Bay Lake Tower, which is right next to the Contemporary Resort. In fact, it uses the Contemporary Resort's facilities. It doesn't have a restaurant of its own, but you walk over to the Contemporary Resort and you've got Chef Mickey's, you've got Steakhouse 71, which a lot of people say has the best burger on Disney property. I will disagree with that and tell you which one I think is the best. I'll say Steakhouse 71 in a second. But anyway, all these resorts, you've got so many choices now. When we go to Kidani, we go to Boma and Sanaa. Let me reshare my screen and I'll make this as descriptive as I can. This is the breakfast I was showing you. All that good stuff there. We also have let's go to Sanaa. Now, Sanaa, there's an interesting story with that restaurant. In 2018, first time we'd ever been to Animal Kingdom Lodge at Kidani. We get there at 11:30, go immediately to Sana'a. In fact, we had gotten there earlier, about an hour earlier than we expected. Who knew flights would actually go that perfectly that day? And I moved my reservation while I was sitting on the bus riding to the resort. And we moved it to 11:30. And we had meal for all 12 of us that day. And the Disney dining plan includes drinks. I'll talk about the dining plan here in just a moment. So we all ordered drinks, and bless his heart, the waiter that brought them, he got he tipped the tray, and every drink on his tray went into my lap. So, and you know, I don't get mad about stuff like that. There's nothing you can do really. We knew, in fact, while we were sitting there, our rooms became ready. So we could go to the rooms and I could clean up. They didn't have to comp my meal because we were already on the Disney dining plan. The credits took care of everything. Back then, by the way, the dining plan included appetizers, so that great bread service was included. It's not now, but we'll talk about that here in just a moment. The dessert that you are looking at is at Sanaa, is at that restaurant. This one is giraffe theme, as you can tell. That's a pool of caramel and nuts at the bottom, and you've got uh a mous inside, and you've got that chocolate. It's like chocolate tapestry, isn't it? Laying on top. Everything you see is edible except for this glass, of course. But look at how pretty that is. So I love going to Sanaa. I would actually say Sanaa is my favorite restaurant, resort restaurant. And then we'll go back to this breakfast. That's my Boma is my favorite. I'll say it like this. We go to Boma more often than any other restaurant anywhere. Boma, their dinner price is $69 for buffet. Their breakfast price is $39. Both of those is one credit on the dining plan. So I really think that's maximum use of the dining plan. There are other buffets, probably the best resort. I'm sorry, the best theme park buffet that I think there is, is at Tusker House in Animal Kingdom. And that's also characters that walk around. It's not a character dinner, but it's a character, characters are walking around all the time at Tusker House. It's cool in that if you get there in the last half hour of their breakfast service, you're probably still going to be there when they start putting lunch out. So conceivably you could start with a few breakfast foods, finish with a few lunch options. So that's two things to do at Boma. This is not at a resort, but it sort of is. If you take the Skyliner over to Epcot, it's going to let you back out at the International Gateway. And if you go right and instead of left to Epcot, if you go right to the boardwalk, you can walk around that circle and go to the cake bake shop. Now, this is a huge piece of cake. In fact, the picture doesn't do it justice. That is a $22 piece of cake. And it's funny how many people were ripping on this place when it first opened, and those same people, I heard one of them say about six months later, as much as I wanted to criticize cake bake, I can't because this is great. Now, this is a come on, this is a two-day piece of cake. So if you break it down that way, well, you know, it's $11 per a normal slice. So it was really good. Lemonade, I'm not sure you think lemonade goes with cake, but that had gone with the rest of my meal, which was a Cajun type meal. This, I'll get some criticism for this one. One of the most popular things to order for breakfast at the at the Polynesian is Tonga Toast. As you look at this, there's bacon, of course, on the side. I got this one at their quick serve. I didn't go to Kona Cafe. Captain Cook's is their quick serve. I didn't go to Kona Cafe, didn't want to get it there, but I just had to try it. Tell you what, to me, this is just a couple of pieces of cinnamon toast with a squished up banana in between it. And I didn't like it. Maybe it's actually better at Kona Cafe, but I'll take a good old cinnamon roll from Gaston's Tavern in the Magic Kingdom any day. So that's four different food options I'd show you. I've shown you the best burgers on property. I think number two goes to the Steakhouse 71 in the Contemporary Resort. Number one, I'm going to give to the Walulu Bar and Grill. That is at the new Contemporary, oops, at the new Polynesian Tower. It is a steak place. It's you have to you you don't have to have reservations. Their wait time scheme is actually works pretty well. Now I think they're changing that, so double check that before you go. But here's my point. There is so many restaurants to choose from now. I get the Disney dining plan. What I was going to do is get it for my first two nights at Kidani. That means it starts the moment you check in and last until the moment you check out. So even a two-night stay with two nights of credits, you can use those over three days. Your check-in day, which is your first night, through your checkout day, which is actually the third day of your reservation. So what I was going to do, and may and probably will still do this, I'll save a credit or two for the day I check into Riviera and use that for the Riviera. And the mug you get, your refillable soda mug, and at Kidani, you can refill it with coffee too. You can use that for 14 days after they scan it. So the mug will be good throughout the entire duration. But Disney dining plan, so that's what I was going to do, and I did do that. Then I got to thinking, you know, there's some things at Riviera I want to try. There's some places I might take the Skyliner to. My last day at the at the Baylick Tower, I'm actually going to schedule a Keys to the Kingdom tour. So I might like to use some dining plank credits that day while inside the Magic Kingdom. Now, by the way, if you've ever done Keys to Kingdom tour, it's the one where they take you into the Utilidors below actual Magic Kingdom. It's a five-hour tour. There's a decent amount of walking. They will feed you. I think it's Columbia Harbor House, which is good food. You get to go into the back way of Haunted Mansion and Jungle Cruise. Two attractions, unless they change it. That's over there where the new Big Thunder Mountain is now. So I hope to have time to do that. I haven't done Tiana's yet. Did Splash Mountain plenty of times, but I haven't done Tiana's. Then I might do the Country Bears. That's new to me, too. I always love the Country Bears. My first souvenir. In fact, I'm going to reach up here and grab it while you're looking. First souvenir I ever bought in my life. Look at that. Look at that. It's funny. It's that's a big owl mug from the Country Bear show. So that thing was bought in 1972. I actually found it at my mother's house when we were going through her things. So I love the res the dining at the resort. So I have also now, as of this morning, purchased the Disney dining plan for Riviera, which means I can use those credits as late as the day I check in at Baylak Tower. So I'm going to drive to Baylak Tower that morning, go into the Magic Kingdom, do the tour. That will last till about 2 o'clock. Hope to get back to the resort late afternoon. And really the only reason I stay at Baylak Towers, you've got such a good view of the fireworks. But food. Animal Kingdom Lodge Jumbo House is where Boma is. Very popular. You will definitely need to make reservations, and I would make them 60 days out, which is the maximum time you can make them ahead of time. Also, there is Jico. I've never eaten there. For some reason, when I'm on the dining plan and I read about a restaurant that requires two table service credits, I'm not, I mean, how good could the steak be that it's worth twice as much as a steak I could get at another restaurant? I don't know. That's just not who I am. Plus, I probably eat more chicken than steak anyway. So that's some of the things we could talk about. But the Disney the DVC resorts, they all have great restaurants. It's funny when you're walking around. Now let's face it, DVC people get a lot of attention. When you're at a DVC resort, people know that your DVC just like they are. You feel like you're in a ritzy, bougie, not bougie, but I'm going to go ahead and use that word. Uh place and the dining that goes along with it is top not. So Animal Kingdom Lodge has got Boma, Sanaa, and Jico. It also has a good quick service called the Morrow. It's at the Jumbo House as well. When you get over to the Contemporary Resort, you've got Chef Mickey's, which started out at downtown Disney, which is now Disney Springs, and it moved into the contemporary years ago, but it moved in the contemporary. You've also got that Steakhouse 71 that's in the bottom floor. I guess that would really be the basement, but it's in the bottom floor of the contemporary. I've been there three times. When you go to boardwalk, you've got it's you know, you got the flying fish cafe. You don't have as many. They're trying to rebuild the boardwalk, but it's not as exciting, in my opinion, as it used to be. In fact, if you walk over there doing daytime, cake bake is about the only place you've got to go. Now, cake bake, I showed you that slice of cake. Cake bake is an extremely popular restaurant. You got to get on there 60 days ahead of time, and then it's just to walk over there to eat the cake and eat the food. There, red beans and rice is what I had, man. If you're if you like Cajun food, that's excellent. But my point is this there's plenty of places to eat at Disney World. My family's weird. Our favorite amusement theme park places to eat is Sci-Fi Dine In Theater. We love that atmosphere. A lot of people hate that. We love, believe it or not, because we don't have anything like this in Kentucky, we love Rainforest Cafe. And sometimes when I've posted that before, I get an emoji of people sticking their finger down their throat. But we like it. And talk about Southern helpings, my goodness. So that's it today. I would make sure. Yeah, this is what I do. We like the resort so much, and we don't often even go to the theme parks. We usually book our dining reservations first thing, and then everything else we want to do, we schedule around the dining. Most people are the opposite. You schedule your theme park activities and hope that you've got time to eat a meal. Some of the meals, like, you know, some of the there are some restaurants that take you a couple hours to get through the whole process. I don't want to do that because that's too much scheduling. But an hour meal at Boma, an hour meal at Sinai, all the restaurants in the resorts are great. I love going to the back side of EBCOT just to look at it. I love, with that Skyliner now, you can take the Skyliner over to the back of EBCOT, or even if let's do it this way. If you're at the Polynesian, you can actually walk out to the Transportation and Ticket Center, get on a monorail to EBCOT, and it's kind of cool just to ride it into EBCO. Come right back. It goes all the way back to where imagination is before it loops back around and takes you back. So that's kind of a fun way. We used to start when we still had kids at home, we'd start our vacation that way. If we didn't have that much time, we'd get on a monorail, we'd ride it over to EBCOT. Just it kind of made you feel like you were in it already, even though you weren't, and we'd come back. So DBC restaurants to me are a notch above the others. My opinion. Feel free to comment below and let me know if I'm wrong. And we'll catch you on the next timeout.