June 27, 2022

Eating Well at Disney World and Quick Service Dining Review

My family just returned from a two week trip to Florida to celebrate my 20th wedding anniversary. My husband proposed to me at Disney World all those many years ago and when we were deciding how to celebrate 20 years of wedded bliss, we just kept coming back to Disney – mainly because the kids have been begging to go – now that they’re both big enough to ride all the rides! We’ve taken our two kids to Disney World in Florida a few times, the last being when they were 9 and 11. Even though that doesn’t seem that terribly long ago, there is a huge difference between 9 and 11 year olds and 15 and 17 year olds. For one, they’re a lot more opinionated! Ha! But that is a post for another day. (A short aside: I really love planning family vacations and even though I am not a travel agent by any means, I do have a lot of experience planning different types of trips and I’m happy to help you if you have questions.) So after a lot of thought and discussion, we decided we would celebrate our 20 years as a family in the “happiest place on earth.”

Here are said teenagers, happily eating giant pickles!

This post is all about the food we enjoyed on our vacation. I did research beforehand (of course I did) and told my husband that we were going to need to devote a lot of time to eating because there were a lot of gluten free foods recommended that we can’t normally get at home. I thought that with two whole weeks (3 days at Universal and 10 days at Disney) there would be plenty of time to do things besides ride rides, such as enjoy the ambiance and eat!

In the end, I would say that we ate really, really well, managed to try most of the “must do” foods on our lists, but didn’t get to everything, because we just didn’t have the stomach space or the time for it. But most importantly for me – none of us ever got truly sick from our foods. There were a few things that didn’t agree with us, but I don’t believe we got “glutened.”

The fact is, we’re not huge eaters, heck, I usually fast almost all day so stretching to eat two meals a day was about all I could handle. Additionally, we love to really pack in as much fun as possible when we travel and taking hours and hours each day to eat is just not our jam. The difference with this trip as compared to our other Disney trips is that we were there during the hot season. I don’t like the heat and so we’ve always done Disney in the late fall/early winter, which is much more my speed weather-wise, but we had to go during this time and it gave us the opportunity to visit one of the water parks, which had been on our bucket list. All that to say, because it was so stinking hot most days, we relished our meal times. Over the course of 10 days, we had four sit down, table service meals and all the others were counter service or fast food type places. We had two sit down dinners and two sit down lunches. In the future, if I ever dared to go to Florida in the summer time again, I would do the same thing, maybe scheduling more of those sit down lunches. It was just delightful to rest in the air conditioning after a long and busy morning of having fun.

If this post seems a little scattered, I apologize. For one, there is so much to discuss here besides just the specific foods we ate and two, I did get covid toward the end of our trip and even as I write this three weeks later, I am not fully recovered. I’m definitely suffering from a little of that “covid brain” that people talk about so I apologize in advance. I hope even with the rambling that this post will be helpful to you. 🙂

When at home, we stick to pretty much paleo eating – grain free, dairy free, legume free, etc. When we eat out, we indulge in dairy and gluten free grains. We did the same on this trip. Because we are all in a healthy place right now, we have some wiggle room in our diet. I understand that you may not be there with your own health so just know that this type of food freedom will hopefully be in your future too. Trust me, I put in the long, hard years of very, very strict paleo eating and now I am reaping the rewards of that.

So the meals I’m about to talk about are all gluten free. I didn’t aim for dairy free or low sugar, but it just worked out that we did eat mostly dairy free as well. And as for sugar, we bought the kids plenty of treats, but I wasn’t usually hungry enough for them or really interested in wasting the stomach space. As you can see, I did enjoy one Mickey Ice Cream bar (shared very generously with my husband) and one Dole Whip Float (which I could not taste due to covid), but aside from that, my sweet treats were just really a bite here or there from my family’s snacks.

This post is going to feature all of our quick service meals and I’ll save the table service meals for a separate post. For quick reference, here is a list of each quick service restaurant we visited listed by park (this is not a complete list of restaurants, just where we ate):

Magic Kingdom

Columbia Harbour House
Pinnochio Village Haus
Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe
Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe

Epcot

Sunshine Seasons
Flower and Garden Festival Booths

Animal Kingdom

Pizzafari
Nomad Lounge
Flame Tree Barbecue

Hollywood Studios

ABC Commissary
Backlot Express
Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo
Woody’s Lunchbox

Disney Springs

Cookes of Dublin
Vivoli il Gelato

Mickey Bar for me, frozen lemonade and frozen coke for the kiddos

The Dole Whip float is a must-try for any Disney trip. I’ve had it before so I know it’s delicious and I did share and the family all enjoyed it. I had just lost my taste and smell by this point, but the coolness of it was definitely refreshing and felt nice on my sore throat.

While I don’t have pictures of every single burger and chicken nugget we consumed, know that we did eat plenty of those and they were all really good for that type of food. I don’t know what magic Disney has conjured up with their gluten free breads, but both the dinner rolls at the sit down restaurants and the burger buns were all the best we’ve ever had. The flavor, the texture, the non-falling-apart-ness of the buns was all amazing.

This is the chicken club sandwich at ABC Commissary at Hollywood Studios. Those steak fries were really, really good. My husband and I shared many meals, this being one of them. Most meals were plenty big enough to share, especially if you want to have room to enjoy snacks.

This was the pimento cheese burger at our hotel food court, Art of Animation’s Landscape of Flavors. The food at the hotel was excellent quality and cheaper than food in the parks. I really couldn’t believe the value. I actually chose baby carrots for my side instead of fries, but it came with the fries and the carrots!

These are the chicken nuggets from Columbia Harbor House in Magic Kingdom. We ate there twice and received different chicken on each visit. Both were very good, just different. Just wanted to mention that in case you go and your chicken looks different. And yes, you can get French fries as your side with every single meal, but there are almost always other options as well. For this meal, everyone chose green beans and rice instead of fries. It’s a vacation and so the food police are a little more flexible, but we were all craving more veggies by the end of the trip!

Mexican Feast from Pecos Bill’s Tall Tale Inn at Magic Kingdom – top left you have the chicken and rice bowl with onions and peppers, then going around clockwise are the beef nachos and two orders of the chicken nachos. Pecos Bill used to have an awesome topping bar where you would get your own lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, etc. but with Covid policies, they now give you those toppings separately so that’s what all those little trays of lettuce and tomato are. Not pictured here are a side of queso and a side of guacamole which I ordered to go with my chicken and rice bowl. Both were really good! This was a huge amount of food and we could have shared, but we were all hungry and managed to eat all of this. It was good and something different from pizza, chicken nuggets and burgers.

Back to that Columbia Harbor House meal with the chicken nuggets, my husband chose grilled shrimp with rice and green beans. This was a day that I was very sick with covid and was not eating, but this meal looked really good. Chris said the shrimp had some good seasoning on it and was cooked perfectly. This does not look like amusement park food, does it?

And now we come to the pizza portion of the post. 🙂 We are your typical Americans who love pizza! We usually have pizza night at least twice a month at home, so the chance to have good, gluten free pizza while on vacation was not to be missed!

Pizza #1: Pizzafarri in Animal Kingdom. This is yet another meal I missed due to being sick, but I believe my family liked this one the best of all the pizzas on the trip.

Pizza #2 was from Landscape of Flavors at the hotel. This pizza was $8.99! It was bigger and better and a solid $5 cheaper than the gluten free pizzas from Dominos! I ordered the kids each their own pizza, but they each only ate half and had leftovers for other days.

Pizza #3: Pinocchio Village Haus in Magic Kingdom. Here we have the meat pizza which included pepperoni, ham, bacon and sausage, the margarita with fresh tomato, fresh mozzarella and a balsamic drizzle (my favorite) and plain pepperoni. These were all good, but the crust was kind of soft and I prefer a crispy crust. Still really good and a decent value. Three was plenty to share for the four of us.

This was our actual anniversary and our travel day. We were staying for a few days at Universal first, but had to stop by Disney Springs and Cooke’s of Dublin for GLUTEN FREE FRIED FISH AND ONION RINGS! Yes, I had to put that in all caps for emphasis. Onion rings are my favorite junk food and getting them gluten free is just about impossible. This was a greasy meal for sure, but I took plenty of digestive enzymes and then enjoyed every greasy bite!

Animal Kingdom has probably one of the best quick service restaurants: Flame Tree Barbecue. We ate there twice, but I only have this one picture of the pork bbq sandwich. My son and I split this the first day and we raved about it so much that my husband and I split it another time. The other great options here are bbq chicken and ribs. The sides are slaw and baked beans, maybe fries too, but we didn’t have fries here. Honestly, this was so good and because the sides are pretty small, I could have eaten an entire meal here myself. The ribs and chicken combo is bigger, but still not quite as large as some meals so if you’re hungry, don’t share!

At Epcot, there are several quick service options that are really great. Sunshine Seasons in the Land Pavilion is a food court that has sandwiches and home cooked style meals. According to the menu, there are multiple gluten free options, but our experience was that the section with the best and safest options was first section you come to when you enter the line (I can’t remember what it’s called) where they offer rotisserie chicken and grilled salmon. For as many years as I’ve been going to Disney, these same options have been available. We’ve had both the chicken and salmon with green beans or mixed vegetables, mashed potatoes and rice and it’s all been delicious. This is a great option for when you want something a little heartier and healthier. The meals are huge and two dinners were plenty for four of us to share. We also got fresh fruit cups here. The cut-up fruit is pretty expensive, but it’s so nice to have fresh fruit occasionally and the quality was outstanding. Sorry I don’t have a picture of this meal and sorry to keep blaming covid, but I took most of our food pictures and I was really sick by this point.

One place at Epcot we wanted to try, but just ran out of meal opportunities to squeeze it in was the Regal Eagle Smokehouse in the USA pavilion. We heard that all their bbq, sides and even gluten free garlic bread were excellent. This one is on our list for next time!

We did enjoy a few of the special foods at the Flower and Garden booths. This was the day that had my husband and I both experiencing some digestive distress if you catch my drift. We blame the foods from these booths though we don’t really know for sure. I chose only “gluten sensitive” options of course, but these booths are not big and the chance for cross contamination is high, though honestly, that is generally not an issue for us so I am thinking it was the actual foods that our bodies didn’t quite like. Everything tasted really good and there were lots more gluten sensitive options we didn’t have room for, but here’s what we did enjoy:

Vegan sausage poutine (this one isn’t listed in the festival booklet so I don’t have the specific details). I didn’t realize this was vegan sausage until after I had ordered it. I didn’t tell my men thinking they would not like it just because of that. In fact, they did enjoy this dish a lot, but my husband blames this one for his stomach upset.

Crispy Mojo Marinated Pork Belly with avocado cream, corn salsa, salsa verde and plantain chips (from the Citrus Blossom booth). This was really tasty! Lots of different textures and flavors.

Tupelo Honey and Sweet Corn Spoon Bread with jalapeños, bacon and house-made whipped honey butter (from the Honey Bee-stro). This was my favorite – the flavors, the textures, all of it! I really don’t do well with corn and this was definitely corn heavy so may have been what made me sick, but it tasted so darn yummy. I am going to try to recreate this recipe using my corn free “cornbread” recipe as a base.

At Hollywood Studios, we decided to take a walk on the wild side and had one lunch at Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo, a quick service location in the new Star Wars land. There were several gluten free options that sounds good and a little different and so we tried three different things:

Fried Endorian Chicken Tip Yip:
Crispy Chicken served with White Rice and Roasted Vegetables
Our assessment – very boring. For a picky kid, this would be a good choice. I was happy with it just for the broccoli. That chicken is bigger than it looks and this is a kids’ portion. The adult portion simply had two pieces of chicken. It desperately needed some salt and sauce of some sort. It was good, just very plain.

Batuuan Beef and Crispy Topato Stir Fry:
Smoky Braised Beef glazed in Tamarind Sauce. Served with Stir Fried Mushrooms and Vegetables, Crispy Herb Yucca, Pickled Onions, and Cilantro
Our assessment: This was my husband’s meal and it was really good. Lots of veggies and different flavors and textures. It was expensive – in the $18 range, but definitely the best of the bunch.

Pirjanad Hot Chicken Tip Yip:
Crispy Chicken glazed in a Spicy Chipotle Sauce and served with White Rice and a Relish of Sweet Corn, Shishito Peppers, Jicama, Plantains, and Cilantro
Our assessment: this is the same as the chicken above, just coated in a spicy sweet sauce and served with mixed vegetables instead of broccoli. My son loved this. It was definitely better than the plain chicken version, but that sauce did have some heat to it.

Another highly recommended quick service spot at Hollywood Studios is Woody’s Lunchbox (with a few caveats). This dining location is entirely outdoors. There are a lot of umbrellas, but if there’s a downpour or it’s excessively hot, those umbrellas aren’t brining much relief. We ate dinner here and so it was tolerable to be outside. Another caution is that the location isn’t super big, but it’s in the heart of little kid land at Hollywood Studios and so gets really packed at lunch time. Do as we did and eat dinner here, earlier is better, or plan on an early or late lunch. Basically, eat outside of the peak meal times. Also, you must mobile order ahead of time. More on that below.

This is the turkey sandwich, which was huge. Could easily be shared. Comes with one side and my daughter chose the tots.

My husband, son and I all had the grilled cheese with bbq brisket. It was yummy! Also large enough to share unless everyone is hungry, which we were. I ordered mine with the tomato soup on the side and added a side of tots with queso. Umm yes, I guess I was hungry. And I ate it all! We also got an order of cuties clementines for the healthy portion of the meal. This was really good food and I think we would have eaten here a second time if not for the crowds and heat.

As with just about everything else in this modern world, things are subject to change, but as of now, June 2022, many of these quick dining locations in Disney World Florida offer mobile ordering through their My Disney Experience app. You really need this app if you’re going to visit because this is where you find information about park hours, wait times for rides, make dining reservations and so much more. There are many locations that offer mobile ordering and some that insist upon it! That’s right, you can’t go in and sit in the air conditioning or even walk up and order in person, you must order ahead and sometimes even show that your order is ready before they will allow you inside the restaurant. This is irritating if you’re not in the know, but now you know so you will be prepared and equipped to enjoy your tasty gluten free meals.

The great thing about mobile ordering is that you choose your arrival time and can arrange your day to fit around when you want to eat. Everyone can peruse the menu, choose what they want, you order it and then simply tell the app when you’re there (or close by) and they start preparing your food. If you need to talk to the chef, you can do that when you arrive at the restaurant. If it’s one of those that won’t allow you inside until your order is ready, just tell them you have allergy questions and they’ll let you right in.

One more note about our meals at Disney: we would sometimes order a soft drink or iced tea, but we ALWAYS also ordered a cup of ice water for everyone and we never ordered alcohol. This is not a judgement, but just sharing our personal experience. Alcohol is pretty popular in the parks, but it’s super expensive and frankly, I thought it was too hot for alcohol. I knew that my body would not like the combo of heat, humidity and alcohol so we just skipped it altogether. It’s super important that you stay hydrated, especially in the warm months, so actually drinking water at meals is key. All of these quick service locations will also just give you a cup of ice water if you walk up to the counter and ask, no food purchases necessary. Disney would much rather give you water than spend their resources on medical care for people with heat exhaustion and dehydration.

In addition to the meals pictured here, we had more burgers at Cosmic Rays, burgers again at Backlot Express, and I think chicken nuggets too. I don’t have pictures, but know that they were all equally good.

That about does it for the counter service meals. I can’t think of any meal that was not good. Some were better or more special than others, but every meal tasted good, was fresh and we felt prepared in a safe way. My only regret is that we didn’t eat more. I honestly don’t know how we could have squeezed in more meals, but there are still probably 8-10 foods on my “must try” list that we did not get to.

Eeks, I almost forgot the most important thing! At Animal Kingdom there is a restaurant called Nomad Lounge. Now this is a place where you can get a table and just enjoy drinks or drinks plus some snacks or an actual meal. The setting is beautiful with a lovely wrap-around porch right on the edge of Pandora. I would have loved to luxuriate here on a pleasant day. But alas, they do not take reservations, but do have an online wait list, but every time I checked, the wait list was full so I don’t know what kind of magic powers you need to get a table here, but obviously other people possess said powers. What you can do (and we did twice) is talk nicely to the bouncer at the door (not really a bouncer, but a hostess/guard situation), tell them you are there for the life-changing gluten free churros and they will allow you in to order from the bar. The lovely bartender will take your order (I suggest one order of churros per person – trust me) and they will allow you to sit in a nice air-conditioned waiting area and will bring you your churros when ready, 10 – 12 minutes later. We took ours outside and camped out on the stone wall just outside the restaurant where we inhaled our churros. They come with a slightly spicy strawberry sauce and a vanilla sauce. If not for my extremely proper manners, I would have drunk the leftover sauce. These churros are amazing and worth every bit of hype you’ve heard about them. If you make no time/stomach space/budget allowance for any other treat during your Disney trip, make room for these.

Many people in the paleo/gluten free space have said, and I completely agree, that a trip to Disney is worth the cost just for the food freedom. Disney really does an outstanding job with their allergy foods. It’s so common and handled so well that we are never made to feel like we’re being a bother or that this is anything out of the ordinary. And get this, gluten free foods cost just the same as others. No $4 upcharge for a gluten free bun! I don’t know anywhere else that this is the case.

I realize that Disney is not cheap and I also realize that some people are not happy about their politics (my family included), but for us, the clean, safe, wholesome family fun that we receive there is worth it to us and then when you add the amazing food options, it just takes it to another level altogether.

As I said earlier, I am more than happy to answer your questions about our trip and share more details if you’re interested. Just ask in the comments.

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll share the table service meals with you and you don’t want to miss those!

Just for fun, below is a picture from my husband’s first trip to Disney World in 1976. Notice the eagle in the 1776-1876 plantings?