Dining at Disney Without Over Planning

By:  Jen Schiller, a Marvelous Mouse Travels agent

With over 100 table service restaurants in Disney World, deciding which ones, if any, that you want to try out can be quite overwhelming.  Some families love to experience them all and can’t imagine visiting Disney without having their dining reservations set well before the trip.  Other families don’t feel the need and do not want to take the time or spend the money on the big experiences like that.

My family falls into the latter.  We like to snack throughout the parks and really utilize mobile ordering.  Some table service restaurants can take a few hours and my family just doesn’t have the patience for that.  For a long time I felt like we might be missing out so we did make sure to have at least one table service per trip but we quickly learned that it wasn’t necessary for us.  As a travel agent, I do try to check out all of the dining options but I still like the doing it without over planning.  I feel like a lot of families new to Disney feel like they have to reserve dining for every meal/and nothing could be farther from the truth.

All of the parks have multiple places where you can mobile order your meals or carts where you can get snacks.  There is enough variety with all of these options to be able to eat complete meals without having reservations.  Since they are located in many locations, you don’t have to worry about getting to a certain place at a certain time-which in my opinion makes for a lot less stressful day!  I personally love to go to the parks and not have a set schedule that I feel obligated to.

Here are some examples of recent days in the park for me:

Magic Kingdom 

• Breakfast-mobile ordered the fruit and waffle sandwich from Sleepy Hollow
• Mid-day snack-stopped by the cheeseburger egg roll stand
• Lunch-mobile ordered a margherita flatbread from Pinocchio Village Haus
• Dinner-mobile ordered a Chopped Vegetable and crispy noodle salad from Cosmic Rays Starlight Cafe.
• I also had a Dole Whip thrown in there at some point!

Animal Kingdom

• Breakfast-grabbed a Starbucks and pastry at Creature Comforts Coffee Shop
• Snack-Pongu Lumpia and Night Blossom at Pongu Pongu
• Snack-grilled corn on the cob at Harambe Street Market (my favorite Disney snack!)
• Dinner-mobile ordered Baked Macaroni & Cheese with pulled pork at Flame Tree Barbecue
• Snack-Simba Sunset (Dole whip) at Tamu Tamu Refreshments

You can do this easily at all 4 parks because of the amount of places available.  You can go into your Disney app and check out all of the menus plus look at the map for the locations.

The great part about dining at Disney without over planning it is that you can just stop and eat when it’s convenient and when you are actually hungry.

I’m not saying that table service isn’t worth it because for many families it is.  There are definitely some great meals and one of a kind experiences available but if you just want to wing it for the day, Disney makes it very easy to do!  Reach out to your Marvelous Mouse Travels travel planner and they will be able to help guide and find the perfect places for you.