The Cycle of Orlando Theme Park Restaurants

The Cycle of Orlando Theme Park Restaurants

Disney World is full of restaurants from the interior of Cinderella Castle to the bottom floor of the Animal Kingdom Lodge. These restaurants have a huge range of quality but a few of my favorites has been taking the same cycle. A fairly repeatable cycle that I have seen in my few years of dining at Disney World.

The first restaurant that comes to my mind is the Grand Floridian Café. This was my family’s first try into the world of table service dining. We were pleasantly surprised and the whole family loved it. When my dad liked a meal at Disney World or Universal. That was the restaurant we would go to every time we would visit the theme parks. Sal’s pizza at the Portofino is a glowing example of a meal that we had EVERY TIME we would vacation to Universal. Sometimes more than once on vacation.

The Grand Floridian Café had a similar effect on my father. We went there over five times over a span of three trips to the mouse. It was also my first Disney restaurant I ate at when I moved to Orlando in 2021. Also the restaurant where my aunt and girlfriend met for the first time. The item that I got the most was the pancakes that were delicious. When I was younger, if breakfast was on the menu I would always get pancakes with the assorted toppings. This batch of pancakes were given with sugar cookie crumbles, whipped cream, and berries. The carbs and sugar would probably sideline me the rest of the day if I had them currently.

The Lobster Thermidor Burger was my dad’s staple. He didn’t even have to look at the menu. I would have bites from my parents after I demolished my pancakes. This place was incredible; both of those menu items were excellent.  The service was always excellent, and sitting by the window, looking out into the Grand Floridian, (a place we never thought we would stay at) was just perfect.

Eventually they took the pancakes off the menu. This was after COVID when they compressed a lot of their menus. I had a great option to fall back on. The Lobster Thermidor Burger was just as good and it maintained that level of quality for years. That is until they took it off the menu in 2023. We went out to dinner there on a date, and our server told us the Lobster burger had been replaced with the Grand Floridian Café Signature Burger. I gave it a try, and somehow the burger without lobster wasn’t as good as the burger with lobster on it. Our server also alerted us that you have to ask for straws to get them. If you don’t ask them, they won’t bring it out. Another cost cutting measure that hit Disney hard.

Two other examples I want to bring up is at Universal Orlando Resort and are both at the Portofino hotel. One of the best hotels I have stayed at in Orlando. Sal’s Deli had pizza for sale that was consistently good for many years. We would eat this after park days and were always happy for how good it was. One day, the pizzas went up in price, but the size also decreased. I remember having to buy two pizzas for our family of four to eat there. We still go from time to time, but it is somewhere that we don’t go very often anymore. We used to go every single vacation. Now, our dining habits have more variety.

Staying at the Portofino, the restaurant right next door to Sal’s is Mama Dellas. Our first meal there we ate outside and during sunset, opera singers came out on the balcony and started singing. It was a beautiful setting. The service was tremendous, the food was great, and the bill wasn’t terrible. The bread was fantastic and complementary. The calamari was our calamari standard for quite a while. The noodles and sauce were great but the chicken that went on top of the noodles weren’t great. Even with the bad chicken, this meal was delicious. Once again, this became the place to eat at for the family over and over again. Until the complementary bread was only available for an upcharge. The quality of how good it was dropped nearby and it was a real shame. This was MY restaurant at Universal. A place where I could always get a reservation, great food, great service and a great setting with singers in the restaurant almost every night we have went. I haven’t been back and it has been almost a year since I went there last.

Going inside the Universal parks, good food is hard to find. Almost all of my meals in the theme parks have been bad. One surprising standout is Thunder Falls. The theming is fun, it is an indoor quick service with more variety on its menu. While vacationing with my family, I always got chicken and ribs with potatoes and corn on the cob. Every item was good on the plate. Also, a more substantial meal than just the burger and fries route. When I first moved here, this was the restaurant I would eat at if I was in the park for a long time. One day, in typical theme park fashion, they took the ribs off the menu. I stopped going after that. I was not plugged into the world of theme parks information, but the ribs did make it back onto the menu when I ate there last. The ribs weren’t quite as good but the “Raptor Wings” were amazing for theme park food. The last full theme park days in Islands of Adventure where I needed food were spent at Thunder Falls for lunch or dinner. Both times I got the Raptor Wings and was extremely happy with that decision. It it one of the first theme park restaurants to drop from my good graces and to crawl back into my heart again.

I can’t say the same at Steakhouse 71. The four or five meals I had there were all excellent as soon as it opened. I went there repeatedly. It was the restaurant that I repeatedly went to if anyone was in town. Good steaks at a decent price for Disney. Every item I ordered was good too. I had a steak sandwich, steak frites, New York Strip, and the pork chop. All items were amazing. The side of macaroni and cheese and the chimichurri sauce made this meal even more incredible and a good value in Disney standards. The restaurant was almost never busy, and this was a hidden gem for me. My girlfriend ate at this restaurant while I was running my marathon. This was a staple during my Magic Kingdom nights when I could walk over to the restaurant and walk back to close the park down. It was a perfect location.

The last time I went, the restaurant was packed. It took us almost an hour and a half to get through our entrée only meal which was filled with about ten minutes of eating. The chimichurri sauce had been removed from the menu. The New York Strip was $38 and was a cruise ship steak. Extremely thin and heavily seasoned. They were playing heavy cover up on the poor quality of the steak. It was incredibly disappointing to see how much the quality dropped. The pork chop had become my staple the last three times I went. It was still pretty good. Not quite as good as the other two times but the quality dip compared to the steak was marginal. The mac and cheese had also taken a quality hit as it was nowhere near as good as the last two times. It was far less creamy and frankly it was disappointing.

This entrée only meal was $81 after the tips and taxes. With it being over an hour and a half of dining time just put a small damper on things as well.

Steakhouse 71 is the newest on the trajectory to mediocrity at a theme park restaurant. It is common in Orlando, and it is very predictable.