Ranking the Main Dining Restaurants on the Disney Wish

Disney Wish Main Dining Restaurants Ranked

I have now been on the Disney Wish twice with two small weekend cruises. I have eaten at all of their restaurants more than once and I feel like a ranking is possible. With Disney Cruise Line, they deploy a unique dining experience called rotational dining where your table and your servers rotate between a set of three main dining rooms. On the Wish there are Arendelle, 1923, and Worlds of Marvel. They offer three different experiences to keep your dining fresh. Just a quick disclaimer, I have no kids and I get to experience these as an adult.

At the bottom of the list, there is not much thought necessary, but it is the Worlds of Marvel. This restaurant is stimulation overload as giant screens and effects fight for your attention throughout your entire dinner. For the IPAD kid stereotypes out there, this restaurant might be perfect for them. Disney really slams you in the face with their large investment. They show you commercials from all of the different films and stills from several of the characters. Periodically through dinner there will be some story elements with the hosts, Ant-Man and the Wasp. After the final battle scene against Ultron, Spiderman does come out and walk from table to table as a finale before it is time to leave the restaurant. I personally like the Animator’s Palate to be better than this restaurant. It has small effects that happen periodically throughout dinner for a finale of Sorcerer Mickey to walk through the restaurant. This is an hour and a half long trailer for Marvel properties. The food also doesn’t elevate the space as this meal is nothing special. The only standout on this menu is the Bao Bun for how bad it is. The potato soup and the chicken schnitzel weren’t bad.

The next two restaurants is where this small list gets complicated. I love elements in both, and to choose one is difficult. They each have one food item that is very good, with solid options everywhere else.

In second place, I want to put the Arendelle dining experience. As I stated prior, these top two restaurants are very close but when I think about my full meal, I enjoyed 1923 better. Arendelle has a great item, it is a scallop soup inside of a puff pastry. It is perhaps the best food item on Disney cruise line. I loved it. For my entrée I had the ribeye first which was not good at all. My second sailing, I got the crusted fish which was basically a large fish stick on top of a pea puree. It was tasty, can’t really go wrong with fried food. As our shared entrée, we got the meatball pasta which had three huge meatballs which were okay next to a flavorless pasta clump.  The show is cute with a few of the characters coming from table to table. My favorite character was Olaf which is a very fun animatronic that moves around on a cart pushed by a cast member. I am not much of a character meal guy but seeing Olaf was fun.

The last restaurant on rotational dining is 1923. This was the most consistent in the two times I ate there with each item being tasty. The other two meals on my first Wish sailing was two unseasoned slabs of beef. I ordered better this time. 1923 I got the caesar salad, pasta, filet, churros, and a sundae. Every item was good. The small pasta appetizer was the closest to being mediocre, but the Caesar salad was tasty. The filet mignon surprises me every time for how good and properly cooked it is for an included restaurant. The churros have been my favorite dessert on both cruises now. It is also the closest thing to a normal dining experience. Nothing comes up to your table; nothing is making you turn your head to watch a screen or a performance. Instead, you are surrounded by small showcases of animation history of the Walt Disney Company. It engages my Disney nerd more than Ant-Man shrinking towel animals on a big screen or Elsa coming up to my table to thank me to come to the engagement party. The first time I went on the Disney Wish, this was our last meal and it was the perfect note to end on after the two high energy meals the two nights prior. (Also with better food.)

I will get to the extra charge restaurants one day but until then, the dining on the Wish was much improved than the first time.