Walt Disney World Dining with Diana | Smart Family Travel

Jason: Grab your mouse ears and ready your wands. You're tuning into Castles to Cauldrons, your ultimate guide to the magic, the thrills, and everything in between. From strolling right down the middle of Main Street USA, to dodging fire breathing dragons in Diagon Alley, we've got your theme park adventures covered. And now, sharing their hottest takes and best tips, here are your hosts, Jason, Micah, Rachel, and Terry. Welcome to episode 58 of you're good. Castles to cauldrons. My name is Jason Davis. I'm here with Micah Terry. I think her name is Rachelle. Raquel. Raquel. Raquel. She hasn't been on in a while. So I kind of forgot how to pronounce her name. I'm the person that that cat that rates your checks. I appreciate my check this week. You're welcome. Me too. I was actually really excited. She's like, wait, hold on. Me too. It's good to have you back. It's been very weird without you. I know. I'm glad to be, I'm glad to be on tonight. Thank you. She's been a busy working woman. She has. also glad. checks. Other things, but we're glad to have her on here where, you know, we don't have somebody who doesn't believe in the moon mining. We also have Diana from Magical Travel here. Diana, how are you? I'm good, how are you? Good to have you here. you give us a little bit about yourself? Yeah. So I live in southern New Jersey. have been with Magical Travel for just about eight years, eight years next Monday, actually, so hooray. ⁓ I have loved every minute of it. ⁓ I am married, I have a two-year-old daughter, and I'm a proud also cat mom. have two kitties that I love. ⁓ And ⁓ aside from being at Disney all the time, I love to read. And, I'm really into pen trading. I'm not that interested, but that's a little bit of help. one time because Alison's gotten back into it. Yep. ⁓ I am big into it. I will talk to you about pen trading for hours. So, I'll care for it. You're one those people that go and stand outside on Tuesdays for in releases if you're in the parks. So I've never done that. ⁓ I was close to it. what I was this past, when I was just there last week, I was really hoping that they would release the bags of the 2026 Hidden Mickey's. I'm a big Hidden Mickey chaser and they didn't release them. So I was very upset about that. They just released them this week right after I was there. So I've never done a pin drop like that. I have scoured the website for things before. ⁓ But what I did do this year was my friend was in the parks for the first day of the Flower and Garden Festival. And I said to him, I said, can you buy me the mystery pins, like the boxes? And he was like, okay. was like, what do you want? I was like, can you buy me like four or five boxes of them? And I was like, I will Venmo you. My husband was like, how many did you tell him? And I was like, four or five. And so he went to the park and he sent me a picture of the line and he was like, this is the line. And I was like, as much as it pains me to say this, do not wait in that line for me. It's okay. ⁓ but luckily at the end of the night, there were still some left and he was able to get me four boxes and I got all but two of the set. And then I, so I trade online as well, I'll through the website, pin picks, if anybody's ever heard of that. And so I was able to, through pin picks, I was able to get the rest of the set. So that's probably the craziest I've done. But when I'm there, I am so hyper-focused on where are the pin boards? Who's got pins? What can I trade to the detriment of the people who are with me sometimes, but it's fun. love it. I don't think I've ever completed a set, but I have the, I wanted to complete the Spectrum Magic set and I have a lot of them because Spectrum is my favorite parade that Disney's ever done. So that's. as far into pin, I never trade it. just bought them and keep them on the board. Yeah. Yeah. it's like, good to have you. Yes. It's good to have you. We have a lot of news, but, and after we get through some of this news, we're going to talk to Diana about Disney dining and how we can get around without using the Disney dining package. So first things first, the biggest news we have, well, I guess it's the second to me because there's something bigger for me. But Walt Disney World packages for 2027 are officially on sale. ⁓ As of recording today, which is Thursday, they went on sale this morning. So if you're looking to go 2027, you can get with any of us at Magical Travel to help you plan that vacation. It is through Halloween of 2027. So you still can't do Thanksgiving or Christmas. That will open up later. Don't worry. We can still get you something. And then move it out if we need to the way you want to. ⁓ The biggest change for this year was they reintroduced the deluxe dining package, which is now two table services and one WIC service. Rachel, what was it was the snacks? So you still get one snack and one refillable mug. It was one snack or one non-alcoholic beverage. I like the Deluxe. We did Deluxe a few times previously. So it was the original three table service. Best thing about it is being able to do ⁓ the double points. Signature dining experiences as they're called. So that's like a two pointer. Yeah, that's California grill. Topolino's for dinner. Bender's royal table. Be our guest. Narkoosies, Citricos, Flying C... Fish. No one here likes flying fish. Isn't Gico one too? I love it. Yeah, I believe so. ⁓ and Tiffins is a double. So that's good where you can, if you still want to do just one table service and one dinner, you can do that with a, with the signature stuff, or you can do a character breakfast and then a character dinner, however you want to with a table service in between. I think it's good to bring it back. It gets a little bit more diverse. I do wish they'd bring back their snack one they had that they did for like two years or something. Yeah, you're talking like you're bringing it back back. It's not too far back, but. I don't remember that. You don't? was maybe a year or two they had it and it was just a snack. You could buy like three snacks or something like that. I'm still a little salty that they got rid of two snacks to one snack a day per person. that, like, what is it, like $6 extra, $7? I don't know. They would offer, even if it's like prefix, like an appetizer instead of like the dessert with the dining, you know what saying? Or like if you don't want your alcoholic beverage, then, you know, something like that. don't know, but I don't have a big sweet tooth. So maybe that's why. And this is something we can talk about later on, but with a Disney dining, at least, I'd with a package. don't like restaurants like California Grill where it's a prefixed menu. you don't have, it's not whatever you want to do is you go in and this is what you have to choose. I wish they would go back to everybody having their unique menus for their choice. There's that. That's a really cool thing. like always, whatever you book right now, if there's discounts that become available for your stay, we will automatically go on there and apply the best one to help you save as much money as possible. Or if you want whatever, like if there was a free dining promotion, you're adamant about having it, we will apply that to it. don't worry. We will be there to save the money that you want to save. And well, the kids dining for 2027 is 20 % off. Yes. So just wanted to throw that one out there. So it's not free dining like this year with the kids, but it's still a little bit cheaper. Outside the Disney bubble, but how to get to your Disney bubble if you fly. MCO announced with his Orlando airport, if you don't know, ⁓ announcing they are remodeling concourses A and B because they just built C not too long ago. Open that. It's going to be a lot cleaner looking. We were talking about how Disney did this minimalist look on all the hotels last week and how we didn't really like it. MCO heard us and said, well, we'll one up and we'll do the whole airport. whole airport. I mean, they have merch. They have merch for the trucks and stuff like that for the, for the carpet. It's so iconic. Yeah. Maybe they'll do like a tile design. I don't know. If there's mockups, I haven't seen any, but I don't know. It's sleek. There's no pattern. There's some carpet. in like the terminals, but not in the main. Yes. Are they gonna replace the furniture in that big? It didn't look like it. Oh, I'm not thinking about before you go to TSA. I'm talking like when you get on the tram to like terminal B. Where the restaurants and stuff are. Yeah. Where it's like skylighting. The wicker chairs in the middle. I wonder if they're gonna change the chairs. I a lot of time sitting in those chairs in September waiting on my... Look, I took that different flight waiting on stuff to come. So I spent a lot of time in those chairs. I don't fly in. I've only been into MCO once for flying. I've been in there a few times, pick friends up when they fly in, fly out, so my extent of seeing it is the baggage claim. So I'll get to see that again, maybe. I don't know. No, like that's the whole purpose of going to MCO is you take a picture of your shoes on the carpet. I wonder if they'll keep a square somewhere so like you can just go take a picture. Like it's a photo op. I thought they were keeping it in like the terminals. They are. Not just the main section. I think they're brightening the colors and even the terminals. Or at the gates, whatever. Cause the picture I saw, looked like it was the same pattern, just like the light blues and not that green forest that it has. And it probably does need to be taken up and maybe the same thing could. can't even imagine what's underneath. I mean, can't they just get it again? That's I'm saying. It's iconic. It's staple, I don't know. They also just better keep this guy. The sleeping guy. Yeah, the sleeping guy. I'm going to show a picture. This is not good. Is this like what is that what they're thinking about doing with the trees or is that something that somebody else posted? I don't see that one. I posted it in the anti-group agent group. So it's like they're doing that. That's really cool. But that looked really ambitious. haven't seen the dates or anything. So it says. They're doing a 6 billion 10 year modernization through 2030 to 2035 upgrading terminals ABC, including new restrooms, flooring and ceilings. do we think that major projects include a $650 million baggage system overhaul tram replacement and over 40 new digital retail options or dining retail options. we think MCO gets this built and finished before Villains Line opens? Yep. 100%. Yep. They'll beat Disney and this will be open before Villains Land is open. Let's move over to Universal for a while. ⁓ They've announced a lot of stuff. First thing, did y'all ever eat at Burger King at Universal? I don't eat at Burger King in just a normal day. definitely not knew there was a Burger King at Universal. Yeah, there's a... Yeah, it's at City Rock. Yeah. Whopper bar. That's it. Yep. It's the last Whopper bar in existence ⁓ until they close it here soon because they're going to replace it with the Five Guys. Much better burger than Burger King. It is, but it's more still not going to go. Right. I'm not going go either. I was going to get to that point of like Burger King is Panda Express up there. There's a bowel place and something else, maybe a tropical smoothie. Like I don't go to Universal to eat at places I can eat at home. Right. I'm going to go to Vivo or Calfish, which you can eat a Calfish in some of y'all's areas. Not me. I don't have one either. But even if you're in Orlando local and you have passes to the park, I just don't feel like you'd still want to go to Burger King. There, you know? It's not like it's in and out. We're like, it's California. That's what I'm saying. Like a Wada Burger from Texas or something like, I don't know if they have Raising Cakes and... You know, chicken place down there. just had a raisin canes and two Whataburger's open close to us. A wah-wah would be fantastic. I a wah-wah would be great. What if there was a wah-wah on City Walk? Wah-wah would have sheets right across from Oh, that'd be fantastic. Yeah, Diana gets it. I do. I've never been to a Sheetz. There's a Sheetz less than a mile from my house and I keep it in business. She did a podcast from the parking lot one time. lost internet at my house, so we just used parking lot. Wow. So to go along with the closing of ⁓ Burger King, RIP to Burger King, we should have eaten there during HHN. Yeah, no thanks. The Legacy Store is officially closed, or not Legacy Store, the Epic Universe Preview Store. and center is officially closed as of the Monday before we record this. ⁓ It's going to be returned back to the legacy store, which was like Jaws, ET, Jurassic Park, that type of stuff before it, the Epic Universe really took over. Nothing huge there, just some place for some merchandise. I like the idea of having the legacy store because I do like those franchises and I don't think they're all the way in front of everybody, you know, in the park. So having that place to go get them. ⁓ along with Universal, they've, they've now started doing the Universal Express Pass now, which is a single attraction Express Pass kind of like, like lane single passes. ⁓ however, the difference is that they do a rotation of rides. So it's not always going to be the same ride and you have to be inside the park to buy the ticket. I haven't looked at, ⁓ prices, but I think that's a pretty cool little thing. Especially for their price point of Express Pass. ⁓ yeah. If you just want to use it for Velocicoaster. Do we have pricing on that yet? Or no? I haven't looked, because you have to be in the park to look at it. Look at pricing. I haven't... have an AP, like get down there. We need the research. Yes ma'am. me drop right now. It's a tax write off. Your boss will then rate the other boss. I need him here. Exactly. We'll be there. We just need him to go into the park, take screenshots of pricing and then come home. That's it. ⁓ You're wasting gas. No Duff Beer, no Flaming Mo, no fun, no ET. You just have to go get us pricing and come home. No, I will. If ET is on the express pass, I'm buying my ET. riding that and then I'm sitting right. that ride. love it. See, I'm not the only one. It's the best. I do. I love it. think it's great. I wouldn't miss it. We took a friend to Universal for the first time in December and we only had a day to do the original two parks. And we were trying to like just give him the greatest hits. And we were like, you can't miss this. You have to go on it. And he agreed with us. He was like, I'm glad that you didn't make me miss this. It's so good. was like, yep. Wouldn't lead you astray, So Michael Jackson. was called Mika, aren't you? Yeah. was. ET calls me Mika when they put my name It's your Mika. I knew it sounded familiar for some reason when you said that. Michael Jackson is one of the cops on the top floor. It's weird that there's a Michael Jackson in there. It's like, what? Okay. ⁓ so yeah, that, that express pass though, that's, that's going to pretty cool. I probably won't use it too much because I have express pass after four with my annual pass that Rachel so mentioned. really like that you have to be in the park. think it like, it makes everyone on the same playing field. don't have an advantage of staying on property or. you know, wherever, I think that's a great, a great way they did that. like Disneyland and Disney World with Lightning Lane, that is what I think. Like they're the same product. They're exactly the same. It's just Disneyland does it better because you have to be in the park to utilize it. It's not any planning. It's you have to scan in and you use it and there you go. I don't like this whole pre-planning thing that Walt Disney World has. have, you know, 30 days to go in, well, it's a seven days now, sorry. Seven days. say everything in 60 days, 30 days, seven days, you've got to keep the running list in your head of everything to do. I don't know what I want to eat on my big dining reservations in two months. I'm definitely not going to know what I want to ride in a week and what time I want to ride it. The only thing at Disney World I know I want to ride at night is Tron. So I always try to do a single pass for Tron at night. Other than that, I just want to... go. So at least it's like not six months out for dining like it was. yeah was horrible. Because it was like, don't, once again, I don't know what I'm going to eat tomorrow night and you want me to plan my whole week vacation six months in advance? I bet people would cancel like after the fact because it's six months out. Like that was too much of a leeway. Well and then you had a lot of those people why they input that whole credit card guarantee thing is people make multiple reservations. They double book a lot of stuff. Yeah, they would do La Selye, Yachtman or Vianapoli and then they'd show up to one to eat because that's what they felt like they were in the mood for. They just knew they wanted to eat one of those restaurants. So I'm glad they brought everything down, but I just wish for Lightning Lane is more spontaneous where you could walk in and start planning. Universal jumping over to Epic Universe for a few minutes. They have started doing ⁓ what was rumored when they first built the park. They have started putting the facial recognition systems into the portals for each of the lands. So this would allow for guests to be able to go into Celestial Park and roam, eat, shop, watch the nighttime show. I even think ride the carousel, but not stardust. And that would be part of your freebie. but you had to have a ticket to go into any of the lands. What's the way that- don't like that. Why not? Me either. One, because I feel like people have already had to pay to just see that part that you're referring to that would be free. Two, I was there for facial recognition doing express pass. And more than not, I had to show them my express pass because my face was not being recognized. So I can't even imagine. You have multiple people walking through the portal at one time. Who's going to be looking at the screen to make sure they have a ticket, they don't have a ticket? That just seems like a nightmare to me. It takes away the aesthetic of the portals too, like the fun of going through, because then if there's going to be a bottleneck of people trying to go through with the facial recognition and then being like, nope, you don't have a ticket. You can't go through if they do have team members like position there. So are they taking away then the ticket like stalls at the front where security is? Like would that be gone? So, well, Diana, what were you going to say? I'll move on to answer Mike after that. The thing that I... So I saw like somebody had said like, ⁓ like the city walk is so far away from the three hotels that are right near Epic. And like, so I get that part of it. But first, the first, my first thought is the carousel. If they're gonna let people ride the carousel, at least when I was there in December, and it was early December, so it wasn't like peak Christmas time quite yet, that thing still had quite a bit of a line. And... ⁓ It didn't have express pass. like, are we, are they going to put it on express pass for the people who actually have a ticket? I thought it has express just going to make that ride. I don't think it did. I use it first. I'm pretty sure it express pass. Because I think you have to go, it goes left for express pass, right for standby. Cause I bought express pass and that was our last ride and I'm pretty sure we had it. Okay. Maybe I'm misremembering them. then. Forget that I said that, but I still think it's gonna make, cause even with it having ExpressPass, it's still gonna make it a longer wait, cause you're gonna have so many more people. ⁓ And I don't think that that's fair to people who paid for a ticket, whether they have ExpressPass or not. ⁓ And then my other thing is that little nighttime show that's on the water outside of Helios. I loved that and I loved being able to just kind of roll up and get a seat on those little riser thingies and watch it. And I feel like if now it's open to all these other people, it's just gonna get so crowded and clogged and it's gonna be hard to enjoy. ⁓ I just don't know that CityWalk right now feels like, if you don't have a park ticket, it's like Disney Springs, it's okay if you're there, if you don't have a park ticket. But I feel like it feels different because Celestial Park is literally in the park. Like I could see if Celestial Park was like outside of the park and then you went into where the portals are, but it just feels a little bit like, you know, for the people who bought a ticket, feels a little bit like, I don't know. I don't know what the word I'm looking for is. I don't want to say like a slap in the face because it doesn't feel like that, but it like, doesn't feel right for the people who paid for a ticket. Especially for the people who People that pay for a ticket should have some exclusivity to things. that people that, you know, that's their incentive, you know, to buy a ticket, like you said, and to not have to like, wait two hours on the risers to watch a water show because there's so many people there. If you don't, you're far in the back and you don't get to see it. So I agree with what you're saying. So I think to go to Micah's question was, way I understand it is that it's not going to be a right at the park open thing. Like Park Open will be exclusive to ticket holders, ticket holders only. So you'll go through the facial recognition there and then you'll have free roam with the whole park. No worries. It's at 6 PM is when they would kind of turn the front gates off and then turn the portals on so that people can come and go. The biggest thing, like, and I said in our Facebook group, Those three hotels are pretty far away when you think about the traffic, the Orlando traffic around six o'clock trying to get from one side to the other side to go to City Walk. But the problem is you only have a handful of restaurants in Celestial Park for people to eat at. So to accommodate for the theme park guests themselves and the people that are going to influx for the nighttime to eat. That's a lot. Like you've got to open some restaurants and some more things for those people to do some bars or something like that. Because it's going to be people just sitting around. Maybe walking some or whatnot. But they do, they're supposed to have a new nighttime show come online. The permit's been released for, I can't remember the name of it, but it's trademarked all that. So the positive is that that show, that nighttime show goes through the whole Celestial Park. best view naturally in front of Helios, but supposedly fireworks and all that stuff with it. So you won't necessarily have to have a seat right there at that lagoon. You could watch it further back and get the experience of the fireworks and everything and it not be so crowded. But yeah, I do agree with the celestial carousel. It's like, you've got to give at least the ticket payers express pass for that one ride. It's just like after six, if you want to ride it, you get express pass once for it. So you can skip. everybody else, but I like the idea overall. mean, if Rachel and Denise decided that they wanted to rent out Super Mario for the agency one weekend, like one, the whole weekend, just for one night, right? thing. Can you do that? Yeah, you can rent out. ⁓ I've been in private events for Hogsmeade, for Diagon Alley, for all the like, so you can rent out a portion of the park. They can close that off. can close Super Mario off to the day guest at 4pm. You think I made a money. That's so cute. So like a company like us, if y'all wanted to close off a land for the company for a training event or something like that as a reward, you could do that and the close off that and the rest of the park remain open. And people can come and go through Dark Universe, out of Train Your Dragon and Harry Potter. while that one land is completely closed off, you don't have to close the entire park anymore. so it makes sense. Yeah. I think that's cool. Because the part, the events I've been to, I went to ⁓ Hogsmeade for an event and I went to Diagon Alley for an event, ⁓ for a big conference. And it was after the park was closed and we had three hours after the park. So you're talking 10 o'clock when we got in there. Let's move away from Universal as much as I hate to, but the only reason I will move away from Universal for my beloved Muppets. We've got the track list for Rockin' Roller Coaster. All of the songs are being sung by the Electric Mayhem, which we had talked about in the past, but I would think that would be Who Does It. The four songs are song two, Born to be Wild, which is featuring Camilla the chicken, which is Gonzo's little girlfriend. Who doesn't talk? sang with Sabrina Carpenter on the show. Then Love Rollercoaster by Questlove and Jennifer Hudson will be featured on that one. Questlove is a drummer. I feel like that would be good one. That one should be. Rock Rock Till You Drop which is going to feature Led Zeppelin and Walking on Sunshine. featuring Kelly Clarkson. am glad to say Micah's prediction, wrong. 100 % wrong. What's Micah's prediction? Rainbow connection. mean, I'm not mad that I'm wrong. I was just like, wouldn't it be funny if like when you take off, it's just like rainbow connection. Tank the momentum real fast. the, the Richard Mayhem will be performing at the end of the ride. And the song completely slipped my mind, but they'll be there. So that's one extra song. What do y'all think about the music for it? Do you think it's going to be like Guardians where like each ride is a different song? I think so. I think that's what that's think they'll add more in there too, like Guardians. And it's smart because like you said, people will rewrite it trying to get every song. Oh, I'll rewrite it just because it's the Muppet. Yeah. I feel like they turned things over really quick though. Like it closed down when Terry was there. Yeah, but they were working off an existing track. All they did was re-like. Right. Yeah, the biggest thing that they had to do is close. I don't know. Like, you know what I mean? Like it's not. No, they closed the pre-show. The pre-show was closed real early and that felt like the biggest part. Yeah, they had to basically. that was very smart to do. I'm just assuming they didn't change a lot on the inside. Like once you're on the roller coaster and those like neon signs, I'm assuming that really didn't change. Even if it did, they could have printed that all right and have it brought back in and just fix it the way they need to. I think it was down on a... Am I still going to go through a donut? The last day was Sunday and by Thursday when we went back to Hollywood Studios, they'd already repainted the car. and like taking some of the signage down off the, I mean, was, it was real fast. This is Disney we're talking about. They're usually slow with these things. This was a pretty fast, like for them even turn around on. Maybe they heard Jason complaining. Yeah, maybe. Masses complaining. Maybe they saw Epic and we were like, Oh. I'm so, I'm excited for, for this to reopen. It's, it's going be fun. I really want the show to come back. ⁓ a vision 3d, I think it should, should be there no matter what they're doing here. It looks like it's going to be fun and bringing some, classics just like guardians did to the new generations is going to be fun. I really would like to see the interaction with quest love and animal more often. Like when they announced that song video out, I don't know if y'all have seen it, but it's hilarious between the two of them because you know, no one understands animal and quest. He's one the best drummers out there right now, besides like Travis Barker. Do we want to talk about the cameos they've released? I was just about to say that. I don't have all of them. Where are they going to be? I guess it's just going to be like in pre-show, post-show. I'm not sure. I didn't really look into the article. I saw the pictures come through and saw people like Weird Al Yankovic. Like no one in this generation knows that is. Okay. My husband has been listening to Weird Al with my kids. So now we keep going. An aluminum? Like all day. I love the poke of music. Then we also had like Questlove, he showed up on it. Rachel's favorite person in the world, which will get her on this ride back to back to back. John's Neil Patrick Harris, Aquafina. The last thing we'll touch on is going to be over in Disneyland, which is something that Rachel, Mike and myself, Rachel, we're going to have to hold back because the The we go in to Disneyland for the first time, she's going to be running to Galaxy's Edge to get a picture with Han Solo and Leia because they start appearing in Disneyland April 29th. And we know how much Rachel loves the Star Wars universe. She could quote the entire opening verbatim. She can quote the And then Galaxy, far, far away. Hey, you know who the most vulgar character in any movie is? Me. R2D2. I have to be pegged into the hilt that he says. I love it. is best. It's so good. Good one. So yeah, we're gonna get Rachel out there and get a picture with Han Sobo. I would say Han I feel like is a good character to meet. I think so too. I really like him. I like Luke Skywalker. He's kind of boring. What? Yes. He's kind of nerdy. Luke is like the best Jedi out there. not going to into this debate. I'm just going by Luke's strictly. I really like that they've changed the dynamics for Galaxy's Edge out there. They've slowly closed stuff off. the store, Dukkondar's is closed right now because they're re-theming it to kind of fit into the timeline of the Han-Luke-Leia timeline. This is cool to see that they're going to bring these legacy characters back in and the characters that we grew up on more so than the characters. Someone cares about like Kylo Ren. Bethany got kicked out of line meeting Kylo Ren because she tried to put bunny ears behind him and they like, Hey, out now. Wow. Yeah. Bunny ears? Bunny ears. So I have a picture with Kylo, but she does not. Yeah. They're like, absolutely not. Yeah. Get out of here. We don't do that. That's going to do it for news. We'll be back in a minute with some Disney dining conversations because fat guy likes food. Are you dreaming of your next adventure, but overwhelmed by planning? Magical Travel has you covered. With over 24 years in the business, we specialize in Disney destinations, Universal Studios, cruise vacations, and all-inclusive resort getaways. Our services are 100 % complimentary when you book a vacation package with one of our knowledgeable agents. Request a free quote to start the planning process at www.magicaltravel.com. Mention our podcast to be connected with one of our agents you were listening to. And welcome back. Let's go. got the... I love some good food. ⁓ Only if it's like chicken tenders. No, I eat steak. Okay. Back and cheese. Yeah. I eat some of that junk that Terry made me eat at... We didn't even get crazy with food. was... Waggy beef. God forbid. What was the thing that was so bad? It was something pickled, right? Wasn't it something you got in Japan? was so bad. Oh! That was... It was... Was it like a dumpling or something? I don't remember, but everyone was saying how bad it was. Yeah, it was definitely not good. So Diana just got back from Walt Disney World and she didn't use the dining plan. So I figured this would be a good opportunity to talk about like how maybe we need to budget with Disney dining. Cause the biggest thing we always talk about, like you always hear from people is how expensive it is to eat at Disney. And the Disney dining plan is great because it's prepaid quote unquote. All you to do is pay for the tips and you don't have to worry about it. But what if you do? When you were planning your trip, what were y'all looking at when it came to food? Were y'all trying to stay more quick service? Were y'all trying to just kind of mix both? And how did you get that budget working in a way to get that stuff going? when we go, ⁓ my family, we have a couple of restaurants that are like non-negotiables every time we have to go. We love, we definitely do a mix of quick service and table service. We like to try to hit a table service every time we go. or every day, sorry, ⁓ usually a dinner. ⁓ Because we usually find that ⁓ a lot of people like to do a breakfast because they think that what I've come to find is that they think that character meals are only breakfasts. So they're very big on like, I have to do a character breakfast. I have to do a character breakfast. And ⁓ people don't always realize that characters, some restaurants, yes, there are only characters at breakfast, but other ones, are there ⁓ every meal or both breakfast and dinner or whatever. So for us, it's more important for us to have that early morning time in the park that it is to be sitting down at a breakfast. So usually we try to do a table service for dinner, and then we try to snack and quick service the rest of the day. So we definitely do a mix. There are couple non-negotiables for us. For us, we always, always, always do Ohana dinner. ⁓ It's my favorite on property. Those noodles are chef's kiss. And we also have friends who live in the not too far from Disney and they also love Ohana. So we usually use that as an opportunity to invite them to come have dinner with us when we're there. ⁓ So like Ohana is a really important one for us. ⁓ Specifically for this past trip, ⁓ my daughter is two and she is very, very into characters right now. So she was very excited about specifically like the Mickey Mouse characters. ⁓ And so as a time saver, we knew we wanted to do some character meals with those characters so that we weren't waiting in line so much for those characters because it was a busier week. It was spring break. It was Easter week. So So that was kind of what we were looking at for this trip. So we did Ohana for sure. We did Crystal Palace and Magic Kingdom. We did Chef Mickey's. We did for breakfast. We actually did a breakfast that day, but it was a break day, which I can talk about more. But we did Chef Mickey's. did Primetime Cafe, a phantasmag dining package, which is also very beneficial. And we did tapenado. And we did beaches and cream. So those were the big ones that we did. What do you call the, what do you call the abachi? that wrong? Teppanito? Is it teppanito? Teppanito? I always call it teppanito. Let me ask you about Ohana right here. Because we, Ohana used to be like my favorite. I feel like it went down ill. Like they bring the skewers out and they'd like, want, you can just like, here's some steak, here's some shrimp, here's some chicken, whatever. But now it's just like your little bowl of shrimp, here's your little bowl of this. And on top of it is coming out. Like it just doesn't feel the same. you still, you feel like that? So, I definitely remember the skewers. So the, the friends that I mentioned that live close by have been going to Disney for like years and years and years and years and years. And they remember when there were like even more meats on the skewers, like there was like Turkey at one point, there was like all this crazy stuff. so, So like when we would go there pre COVID. They would be like, ⁓ this is still great, but like we miss the extra meats or whatever. And then after COVID, like they talk about like, ⁓ like, yeah, definitely the quality has gone downhill. Here's the thing for me. I go there for the little appetizer skillet. I'm there for the nudes. I'm there for the pot stickers. I'm there for the sticky wings. I'm there for, I'm sorry, I call them nudes. shouldn't have said, that's not okay. The noodles, I'm there for the noodles. I'm there for them. Yeah, I'm there for, that's my main like thing. I also really liked the bread. I also really liked the salad they give you. I like to dip my veggies like that they give you in the salad dressing. Cause I think it makes it even better. It's like, I'm there for that. I really liked the steak. Like when we were just there, it was really good. Like the steak was really good. They changed the chicken. ⁓ It used to be like a chimichurri and now it's, I didn't actually try the chicken. Now it's like a guava or something. And my father-in-law was with us and he is not a Disney person. He literally only came because of my daughter and he'd never been there before. And he like raved about the chicken. So like he was a first timer, he loved it. ⁓ So for me, like I'll eat the meat a little bit, mostly the steak, but for me it's about the appetizers. Like I could sit there and eat like a whole, that whole skillet of appetizers by myself. And I probably have at some point in my life. They're that good. Like I'll go to the Tambu Lounge every now and then and just order the appetizers. Cause you can do that if you didn't know. ⁓ They're not unlimited, but you can do that. ⁓ So. Both are unlimited. Correct. Yes. ⁓ But yeah. So from, for me, I don't feel like the things that I like, I don't feel like they have gone down in quality. ⁓ feedback from people I have been there with do definitely feel like the quality has changed for the meat specifically. ⁓ But I'm going keep going as long as they have those noodles because I just love them so much. On that note, kind of think that with us Disney people, when it comes to our restaurants that we go to, we've made a family tradition out of. At the end of the day, doesn't matter how the food is, it's become a staple to our vacation. we've got to go, we still, we go to Ohana now for breakfast. Like we, so we still make the trip and Travis is very much in that kid, the character's a thing. So he loves seeing Stitch and Lilo and Pluto and Mickey. So that was a really good, just do breakfast there. We've just kind of gotten disappointed with dinners lately. Besides the review for the fireworks. I mean, you get lucky, castle view there is clutch. did the breakfast. I haven't done the breakfast there in years. We did it on our honeymoon 10 years ago. Um, and I remember enjoying it, but I'm not a big breakfast person in general. Like I do not like savory breakfast foods. Like I don't really eat eggs. I don't really love bacon or anything like that. So for me, if I'm eating breakfast, it's all the stuff that's probably actually dessert, like pancakes and all that kind of stuff. So. I'm not a big breakfast person. So for me, when I'm picking my dining, I'm not focusing on where am I going to get a good breakfast? So I definitely, it's a popular one that I booked for my clients a lot that breakfast, but it's not a top of my list. But to your point about the family traditions, Ohana is a hundred percent a tradition for us. So like, I don't think that anything's going to stop us from going there. That's harsh too. I like Chef Mickey or something like that, that you just grown up doing. Chef Mickey has horrible food for breakfast and dinner, but it's the fact that they do it all the time and they get itch with their I just went there for breakfast and I was like, this is not great. I don't know why I'm here right now. I know why I'm here because of the characters, but it wasn't great. really wasn't. That's the one place we changed. Because like you said, we do Ohana and I agree with everything Diana said. the best part, all that stuff. mean, and I still think there's a lot of food waste because I noticed like with my family and we have two smaller children, so we don't have teenagers, you know, and things like that. So it's less waste than normal, but it's still a lot of waste. So, you know, maybe the portion size is I think they've gotten that little more under control. ⁓ But yeah, Chef Mickey's is the only place that we told our kids this time, like, look, we will do character breakfast anywhere else, please. Because they eventually did literally just get fruit and Mickey waffles and we can get those anywhere. And my husband and I were like, I'm not a big breakfast person either. And we were like, please don't make us eat Chef Mickey breakfast anymore. We will do anything. So we went to Topolino's and that was delicious. So I do recommend that if anyone wants to get away from Chef Mickey's. I won't say it's a hidden gem, but my favorite breakfast buffet is the ⁓ cake made breakfast. And it's not messy, not because of the characters. They have whipped cream and chocolate chips for your Mickey waffles. And this fat kid loves whipped cream and chocolate chips on his Mickey waffles. That's, I'll go get a plate full of that junk and just. To the tier. It's good. So we try to book better. To your point. Okay. Cause I'm also a little bit of a fat kid. I. went to Crystal Palace for breakfast a couple years ago on my daughter's very first trip and she was four months old so she wasn't worried about it but we were there and ⁓ they have the churro Mickey waffles on their breakfast buffet or at least they did in 2024 and they have ice cream on their breakfast buffet so here I was at 8 o'clock in the morning eating a churro Mickey waffle with ice cream on top of it and did I have regrets? mean I would too. Absolutely not. ⁓ That's up. the adults, you're going to get the alcohol for breakfast, but you're also going get your Mickey waffle with ice cream. So. Bloody Mary Mickey waffles. Can't beat it. ⁓ Money saving thing. Let's, let's kind of go that way. When you're planning that and you're trying to save money, is there anything that you recommend to do for saving money with these restaurants or anything like that? So specifically for quick services, ⁓ my husband and I will share a lot because you get pretty big portions. And ⁓ especially if we're there at a hotter time of year, know, with the Florida heat, you don't want to eat a lot, like all the time. Like you need something to keep you going, but like when you eat too much, you feel like awful. So we share a lot. ⁓ Like, for example, ABC Commissary and Hollywood Studios, if you've never had their buffalo chicken grilled cheese, try it because it's delicious. ⁓ And it comes with this like pretty large like salad like a fat it's like Farrow. It's got like Farrow and apples and I forget what kind of dressing it is, but it's delicious. And so you get this like big sandwich with two slight two halves of it and then you get this big salad. And so like we would get that and we would share it like each eat a half of the sandwich eat eat a half of the salad each eat a half of the salad. And then if we didn't feel like it was enough, like maybe we get like a side of fries and then we share that too. ⁓ So like, you know, sharing the I always tell people Disney food is not your typical theme park food. Like sure, you can get your typical theme park food. You can get your chicken can get. like, so two adults can eat really well on one meal. The other thing that sometimes we'll do is if we're like hungry, but not like super hungry is we'll mobile order a kid's ⁓ which is also a really big portion. for a kids meal, it's enough for an adult. side and like a drink. Right. Like you get so much. get a kids meal. And you get like the cuties, like the little like mandarin orange things. Like you get all this food and it's enough for an adult, even though it's kids meal pricing. ⁓ Which when you're on the dining plan, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're on the dining plan, if you're an adult, you can't order a kids meal with your quick service credit. If you're doing mobile ordering at certain places, so like in Magic Kingdom, if you do Sleepy Hollow for like the corn dog, they'll take that as a kid's credit. And if you just do it as a mobile order, you can pick if you use an adult or a kid's. And then like the fish and chips, think is the second UK, they don't, it's places that don't have kids menus. You can get the adult size portion for a kid's meal credit. credit. Sorry, it's been a while since I've gone on or told us. And I used it when we were there. So it was nice. Okay, but ⁓ but yeah, so kids meals sharing also snacks in place of full meals because you get some pretty big snacks and I know like the nutritional value isn't the same but like, you know, for like for breakfast, specifically like you go over to Gaston's Tavern and you get that cinnamon roll. And that's going to fill you up for like the whole morning. And my father-in-law did that the day we did Ohana. We had gone to Gaston's Tavern in the morning. He got the cinnamon roll and it was like probably like nine o'clock. He was eating it and he was good until our reservation at five. And now I know that's not everybody like you might get hungrier in the middle of the day, but this stuff can fill you up in ways you don't expect it to. And so it saves you a lot of money if you're just paying for snacks. And then the other thing that I always say, like if you're sharing, if you're buying kids meals instead, like it gives you both more room and more money to try some of those really unique, delicious snacks that you can only find at Disney. ⁓ And so like I know I have a sweet tooth. I want the snacks. I want to try the new delicious thing. ⁓ And so I want that room. So picking where I'm eating my calories, know, putting my calories is important. you know, when I'm there as well. that's kind of how we save money on it. The other thing we do is we'll use, even if we don't have the dining plan, we'll use it kind of as a guide. So we'll look at the like budget wise, we'll look at how much they think it should be like per person per day. And we'll kind of use that as a way to like budget ourselves. So like, you know, for example, the table service credits, you can get a alcoholic beverage, right? And so like, even if you don't, I do kind of feel like they factor that in when they're pricing it. ⁓ So my husband and I are not huge like drinkers, particularly at meals. So like when we're trying to factor in like what would we spend on a table service meal, we're not factoring in that price of an alcoholic beverage because we know we're not going to do it. We're not always going to get a dessert at dinner because we're going to get something somewhere else. So we're not factoring that in either. So we use it as a guide, but we don't follow it 100%. And that way we're budgeting ourselves and we know like, okay, this is how much we're we should have. You know, here's our vacation allotment. Here's how much of it should be food. And then we go from there. And then specifically having a two year old right now, she did a lot of sharing with us, a lot of eating off of our plates. So we weren't paying as much paying. We did. She was being very picky. So we did waste a lot of money on her this trip, which I don't think about, but ⁓ where we could she ate off of our plates ⁓ to save some money in that area, too. So that those are the kind of big things that my family does to ⁓ to eat well, but eat affordably while we're there. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be like gourmet all the time to still have a nice meal and feel like you're getting something unique and nutritious, you know, at Disney. really can eat, if you try, you really can kind eat healthy there, because you can find those options on your menu. Do you, I was going to ask her if she ordered, if you like do like a grocery order to your hotel. before like for your arrival day for snacks and waters and stuff like that? Yeah, we definitely have. especially if we fly and especially with the kind of snacks my daughter eats, like so mostly stuff for her. like last time we flew with her, we had like an order with like the little like, like yogurt pouches that she likes or like she has these little like bars that she likes to eat. So like we'll pack that stuff to bring into the parks. which is another money saver, especially for little kids, is bringing in the stuff that you know they're gonna eat. Just having it in your bag for when you're in line and they're like, I'm hungry. And you're like, here's your favorite, go, squeeze. Like go ahead and eat that while we're in line. Yup, 100%. So we ordered that stuff, water. My husband carries around, we didn't need it this past trip because it wasn't hot, but my husband carries around like one of those camelbacks with the water on it. So we'll order like a couple gallons of water so that he can fill that up because the Florida water can be pretty nasty. ⁓ Yeah, so we'll have that stuff. Even if I'm not on the dining plan, my husband and I are big soda drinkers. I'd like my Coke Zero. ⁓ So even if we're not on the dining plan, we will purchase the mugs to refill while we're there ⁓ because we know we're going to want that. We don't drink coffee. So that's our like caffeine. So we get that the mugs. always have those. ⁓ It's a good deal for us because we are soda drinkers. ⁓ And ⁓ this past trip, we drove actually from Jersey. we didn't do it. Yeah. We didn't do a grocery order, but we had all that stuff packed specifically for my daughter. And we were staying in a family suite at All-Star Music. So it was really nice to have that fridge. I love the family suite at All-Star Music. I think they're better than the ones at Art of Animation. Well, the bed situation is better. Well, and you have an actual apartment size refrigerator. and an actual room to put things versus that little tiny thing, art of animation. Theming's better of art of animation, but the suite itself is better at poster music. Yeah, this was the first time we'd ever stayed in one and it was perfect. We really enjoyed it. And the location, the room, the building location was really nice for both the parking lot because we had our car and then to the pool and everything. We didn't get to use the pool unfortunately because the weather was really crappy. ⁓ Yeah, we really, really liked it. I definitely recommend a family suite at All-Star Music for a more affordable option for bigger families ⁓ because they're definitely cheaper than Art of Animation for sure. ⁓ would 100 % hands down tell people to take advantage of those. ⁓ But you're right, having that big fridge, especially too, with having that, we were able to bring things back from the park. We get the popcorn bucket at the ⁓ One at the on Main Street where you can like get all the toppings on it. If you've never done it. ⁓ my gosh. It's so good. confectionary. So we were able to get that. Yes. Get that, bring it back, throw it in the fridge and like have it to snack on the rest of the week. And then like, the, ⁓ my husband got like some snacks from the Carmel Carmel Kusch hat in Germany. He brought those back, put them in the fridge, had them to snack on. So definitely, I could see for a fit. If you were flying in and you did do a nice big grocery order. And you were saying in one of those sweets, you'd be able to order a lot more like ⁓ diverse things because you have that full fridge. That's an actual fridge and not just a beverage cooler, waters, drinks, snacks, like snacks of substance, not just like chips and stuff like that. ⁓ So a grocery order is I get that question a lot from clients too, like, where do you usually order from? We'll do an Instacart from like a Target or a Walmart, or I've given another Amazon before. And it's been. a really good thing to have for those extra stacks so you're not just like constantly buying silly things in the parks and wasting your money on those. Or I I spent three or four dollars on a banana in Hollywood Studios for Kova because he just had to have it. And I was like, we had those in the room. Like we should have packed that and brought it with us. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. And I think we bought my daughter a banana that she did not end up eating. She just wanted to hold it. The best part about being a parent right there, watching that $4 just circle the drain. Yeah. like, I'm like, I could have bought like half a pin for that. Yeah. why did you a pin? How about that? Half a pin. This is where my brain goes when I'm buying souvenirs. I could buy pins or ears and then, you know, you're wasting it on bananas that you're not going to eat. So, but I digress. I'll throw two things out and we'll close this out. For sharing wise, something I always liked doing when we took our friends, we'd go to Biennapolis and we'd get a large pizza there, you know, because it's like 20, 30 bucks and we can all eat off of it and still have leftovers. If you're in Epcot, that's a great way to save. The other one I would do with some clients that didn't want the dining package, but wanted the benefits type thing of prepaid is I tell them to go to Target Costco Sam's Club when they're doing their sales. It's like, just take that per person price that you see on the website. put that off to the side and buy as many gift cards as you can and you'll save money. Cause it's usually like five, 10 % off on the ships type things. So you're saving money right there, right off the top of it. And then when you go in, you're quote unquote, prepaying for your meal too. But I'm going to do it for tonight's episode, today's episode. Diana, we appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much. Talking with us. was, was. Yeah. We will definitely have you back. ⁓ She is going to D23 and that's one of the episodes we love talking about. So we're going to have her back ⁓ at least by that, if not before. But ⁓ how can anybody get ahold of you if they want a book of vacation with you? So you can email me at dianadiana at magical travel.com. ⁓ or you can text or call me at eight five six three four seven zero two nine zero, or I'm on Facebook and Instagram handles. my Instagram handle is Disney by Diana and on Facebook I'm Diana with magical travel. ⁓ and authorized Disney vacation planner. for the rest of us, you can find us at magical travel.com. Any of the great agents over there will be glad to help you with any of your. travel needs. You can find us on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube at Castles of the Cauldrons. On the next episode, we're going to feature Micah because she just got back off Norwegian Cruise Line and she's going to tell us about her full cruise. We hope you have a great week and we will see you all on the next episode.