Lunch at Tusker House and Free Reserved Seating for Finding Nemo Show

If you are booking your Disney World dining reservations at Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park, consider booking a lunch at Tusker House. This restaurant is always a popular choice for lunch at Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park. Now, it is even better with a free perk! If you dine for lunch between 1:00-1:40 PM, you will receive a free voucher for a guaranteed seat at the Finding Nemo Show at 3:15 PM. If you dine from 1:40-2:45, you will receive a voucher for a guaranteed seat at the Finding Nemo Show at 4:45 PM. This free voucher allows you to enter the show about 15-20 minutes before showtime with a guaranteed seat for the Finding Nemo show. This will save you alot of time waiting for the popular Finding Nemo Show.

Quick Service Dining Plan for 2009

Disney has announced the updates to their 2009 Magic Your Way plans for 2009. One of the most interesting is the new Quick Service Dining Plan. Here's the details:

2009 Magic Your Way + Quick Service Dining Plan

The Magic Your Way Package Plus Quick Service Dining offers you an easy and affordable way to experience a wide variety of participating Disney restaurants. The package includes everything in the 2008 Magic Your Way Base package -- Disney Resort accommodations, a Magic Your Way Base Ticket, etc., plus an arcade card valid for 30 minutes of game play at resort arcades (one per room) -- and a Quick Service Dining Plan that offers the following:

-- 2 Quick Service Meals per person per night: One Entree OR one complete Combo meal, dessert (lunch/dinner) or One juice (breakfast) & One single non-alcoholic beverage

-- 2 Snacks per person per night: Choose from items such as frozen ice-cream novelty, box of popcorn, single piece of whole fruit, medium fountain soft drink

-- One refillable drink mug per person

The new Quick Service Dining Plan prices: Adults $29.99 per person per night; children 3-9 $8.99 per person per night

Everyone in the room must be on the same package and ticket options. All tickets must be used within 14 days of first use, unless the No Expiration Option is purchased. All dining credits must be used by midnight the last day of your stay, otherwise they expire.

Although we generally stay off-site more often than we stay on-site, I have to admit that this new dining plan seems to make more sense for us than the others. It resolves some of the issues we had with the dining plan before. With all the table service meals in the other dining plans we found our vacation was too "planned" and that we had to stop having fun to go eat. We also got sick (literally) of food.

The way this plan is structured, we could eat most of our meals as counter service with a few planned table service meals during the week. I suspect that we would be much happier and less bloated by the end of the week on this plan. I also like that they throw in the free refill mug. To quote Woody Guthrie, "This plan is my plan."

The only real question I have is whether or not the price is a bargain or not. For most people it probably is. Especially if you use all the snacks. However, the problem I have is that when on the plan, you cannot share meals. When I'm not on the plan I don't really have any problem sharing a meal and we do share meals a lot, especially the kids, because the portions are so large. If we don't share meals, we end up throwing a LOT of food away or stuffing ourselves. So we tend to eat cheaper than the menu would typically lend someone to believe. Still, it's nice to know going into your vacation that your food budget is pretty well set rather than having it soar out of control as it so easily can do.

What do you think of the new dining plan? Is it something you will be taking advantage of? Or will you pay $10.00 a day more to get the basic dining plan?

Tips for making the most of free dining at Walt Disney World

The wait is over! The question has been answered! Free dining is back! Many people speculated that Disney would not bring back their popular perennial free dining package this year due to the increased crowds and generally increased tourism levels since 9/11. However, they have, in fact, re-introduced free dining during peak hurricane season again this year.

Granted free dining isn't quite as free this year. It doesn't include gratuity (tip) and it also doesn't include an appetizer at the table service meal due to the general changes Disney made in their dining plan. One can only hope these changes will curb the hordes of people who eat at Disney, but I doubt that it will.

We took advantage of the free dining plan last September during the week of 14-22. Our impression was that it was too much food and that it dominated our trip. We had to make reservations months in advance for the good restaurants and ended up eating a odd times even then. We didn't see any of the fireworks/nighttime shows at the parks because we were eating.

Don't get me wrong, we had a blast. It was just a completely different kind of trip than normal. It revolved around food rather than the parks.

If you are planning on going, here's a couple of suggestions that I've picked up from watching the forums since last year... It appears that the week we went was by far the worst week to go. It seems everybody tried to go as late as possible. Well, as late as we thought was possible. It turns out, according to one person that as long as you arrive on the last day of the free dining you get free dining for the length of your stay. I would verify this before making any assumptions, but they claimed it worked and allowed them to essentially get free dining the week after every body else and that meant the crowds were significantly less. If that's not possible, it appears that going earlier in the offer meant lower crowds, too.

Here's a link to more information http://www.mousesavers.com/packages.html

Toy Story Pizza Planet

Continuing in the thread of favorite counter service restaurants, here's our favorite at Hollywood Studios. Toy Story Pizza Plant has individual pizzas and really good salads not to mention cookies. The pizzas are big enough to be shared unless you are feeding teenagers. The restaurant is located next to Muppet Vision 4-D. Here's the menu:

• Buzz's Meal Deal - Individual Cheese Pizza, with Garden Salad $7.79
• Woody's Meal Deal - Individual Pepperoni Pizza with Garden Salad - $8.09
• Junkyard Meal Deal - Individual Veggie Pizza (with mushrooms, peppers, onions, and tomatoes) with Garden Salad $8.29
• Individual Cheese Pizza $5.79
• Individual Pepperoni Pizza $6.09
• Individual Veggie Pizza (mushrooms, peppers, onions, & tomatoes) $6.29
• Pizza Planet Chicken Salad - Mixed greens, grilled chicken, cantaloupe, cucumber, red onion, tomato, green peas, fresh basil and balsamic vinaigrette $7.19
• Caprese Salad - Mixed Greens, red and yellow grape tomatoes, mozzarella, kalamata olives, cucumber, fresh basil and balsamic vinaigrette $6.49
• Garden Salad $2.19
• Cookies: Chocolate Chip or Oatmeal Raisin $1.89
• Mickey's Crisped Rice Treat $2.69
• Chips $1.29
• Apple Slices $1.29

Flame Tree Barbecue

Last time I wrote about one of our favorite counter service restaurants at the Magic Kingdom. This time, I thought I'd continue in that theme and write about another of our favorite counter service restaurants; however, this one is at the Animal Kingdom. It's the Flame Tree Barbecue. You'll find it just before you get to Dinoland. It's a fairly small, walk-up only stand and is fairly easy to miss. There isn't any place to sit down and if you hit it during a crowded time you'll have to fight the tight space to get your food. But...the food is worth it.

Here's a sample of the lunch menu:

Soups/Salads

Smoked BBQ Chicken Salad - Served without chicken $4.99 - $6.99

Entree/Main Course

1/2 Slab of St. Louis Ribs - Served with baked beans and corn on the cob. - $8.49
Fruit Plate - Seasonal sliced fruit served with Honey Yogurt. - $6.99
Smoked 1/2 Chicken - Served with baked beans and corn on the cob. - $7.99
Smoked Beef or Pork Sandwich - Served with baked beans and corn on the cob. - $7.29
Smoked Turkey Breast Sandwich - Sliced turkey breast served on a multi-grain bun with coleslaw. - $7.29

Side Dish

Cole Slaw - Cole Slaw - $1.69
French Fry Basket - French Fry Basket - $3.49
Onion Rings - Onion rings - $3.79

Dessert

Chocolate Cake - Chocolate Cake - $3.59
Key Lime Pie - Key Lime Pie - $3.59

We found that the portions, typical of Disney, were large enough to split making this a very economical place to eat. We usually take our food and go over to Restaurantasaurs to eat so we have a place to sit down, too. If you get there by 11:30 you can beat the huge crowds.

Harbor House

One of our favorite in-the-park counter service restaurants is the Columbia Harbor House. It's located right across from the Haunted Mansion and between Fantasy Land and Frontier Land. If you didn't know better you'd think that it was a typical fried fish, french fries kind of place. In general you'd be right. However, in recent years, they've added some healthier, or at least some more appetizing menu items. We especially like the Garden Galley Salad (mixed greens with chicken, pecans, pineapple and feta cheese).

For a complete menu see http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/dining/diningdetail.cfm?Restaurant.ID=149