I went to the character lunch at Crystal Palace in MK and Hollywood & Vine in Hollywood Studios (better for the preschool set). I was pleasantly surprised by the deliciousness of the food. Of course, it was overpriced, but I was really expecting Golden Corral quality and it was much better than that. Plus I really appreciate how they set up the characters to make the rounds and the reservations made it easy.

- If you want to do a character meal, I would do either Crystal Palace in the MK for breakfast (Winnie the Pooh crew)

My whole family, including my picky PITA sister-in-law, thought the buffet here was excellent.

We go to WDW every year. There are some decent places, a few good places, and some bad places. Here are our favorites:

Character breakfast:
Cape May Cafe (good)
Chef Mickey's (decent)
Crystal Palace (decent)
Tusker House (decent to good)


Breakfast buffet without characters:
Boma (good)

Sit-down:
California Grill (very good)
Artist Point (very good)
Grand Floridian Cafe (very good)
Teppan Edo (good and very fun for kids)
Rose and Crown (good)
Brown Derby (good)
Waves (not bad)
Kona Cafe (very good)

Counter-service:
Flame Tree BBQ (decent)
Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe (just barely acceptable, but fast)
Kringla Cafe (good)
Backlot Express (varies; sometimes acceptable, sometimes good)
Wolfgang Puck Express (excellent!)

Anonymous wrote:the buffet at Fort Wilderness was suprisingly good (we are not big buffet people).

I also really liked Artist Point at Wilderness Lodge

I enjoyed lunch a be our guest.

Everything else- I found to be fairly standard, significantly overpriced but not good, food.

I would strongly recommend taking or ordering groceries to make breakfast and lunch-- you will save a lot of money and eat better.

Agree here. Artist point was fantastic. We did the Mickey's Backyard BBQ at Fort Wilderness and thought the food was very good. And the kids ad a great time dancing with the characters. If you are looking for a good character experience, I recommend it.

Epcot is the place to eat. HS and MK don't have that good of options, but you can get by. If you are at Animal Kingdom, Tusker House is the way to go.

I thought the food at MK and HS was terrible, but we liked the food we had at Epcot (in Japan and Mexico, particularly). But it's not like we were going for the food.

We have been to Disney twice. The first time I went, I did no restaurant research and had the same reaction as you. I thought the food was awful. The second time I went, I did my research with contingency meals. We all ate so well. We stayed at Polynesian and thought the breakfast there was amazing. The character breakfast at Ohana was awesome and the food was surprisingly delicious. It was probably single handedly the best breakfast/brunch our family ever ate. The other 2 restaurants at Polynesian were also good. The Tonga Toast was fabulous. I ate dole pineapple whip daily. I had decent udon in Japan at Epcot, decent bbq at Animal Kingdom and good hot dogs at Magic Kingdom. Were they 5 star meals? Of course not but they were as good as you can get at an amusement park. I really did think the food at Polynesian was excellent.

the buffet at Fort Wilderness was suprisingly good (we are not big buffet people).

I also really liked Artist Point at Wilderness Lodge

I enjoyed lunch a be our guest.

Everything else- I found to be fairly standard, significantly overpriced but not good, food.

I would strongly recommend taking or ordering groceries to make breakfast and lunch-- you will save a lot of money and eat better.

Recommendations, although for many of these I only have n = 1 anecdata:
- Kona Cafe. Go at dinner time, special request "the bread pudding from 'Ohana" for dessert. Or go for a leisurely lunch as a break from a MK day. I'm not willing to pay Polynesian prices for my room, but I do love to visit the resort once per trip.
- Tangierine Cafe at Epcot (counter service). Huge portions, so you can easily share. Has a great vegetarian plate.
- If you want to do a character meal, I would do either Crystal Palace in the MK for breakfast (Winnie the Pooh crew) or Tusker House at AK for lunch (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy). Tusker's lunch buffet has more interesting options than the other character meals, including better vegetarian options. The dinner character meals are incredibly pricey.
- BlueZoo is not really a Disney restaurant - it's in the Dolphin hotel, which is on Disney property but owned by Starwood. BlueZoo has great seafood, and will also have far more of an adult/dressy atmosphere.
- Columbia Harbour House at the MK has some of the healthier options, including grilled salmon and various veggie-heavy sides and salads. They also have fried seafood, if you need to balance the healthy eaters and the junk eaters...
- If you go in October or early November, I was surprised by how good many of the Food & Wine festival booths at Epcot were. Pricey, but I had lots of great things.

Ok, I think that covers most of my budget-focused list. I know there are fancier options available, but living in DC, I'm not going to Disney for the exotic food, so I focus on reliable values.

Menus: http://allears.net/menu/menus.htm

19:21 Not the OP, but we recently went to Disney and our favorite restaurant was Mama Melrose's in HS. We thought that the food was good and were able to share entrees, so it wasn't really expensive, either. I also thought that the food was good at the character meals at the Garden Grill at Epcot for dinner and the Cape May Cafe at the Beach Club Resort for breakfast, but as has been stated above, the character meals are expensive. We also really liked T-Rex in Downtown Disney and Rainforest Cafe in Animal Kingdom, but completely for the atmosphere - food was typical - and expensive.

My DH also loves the huge turkey legs that you can get at any of the parks!

The only places that we went that I would NOT recommend was the 50s Primetime Cafe - we were not impressed by the food and didn't feel like there was any type of special dining experience.

I thought the food was very overpriced. So, we spent a fortune to have a meal that would be 2/3 the cost here.

OP, we are currently planning a trip...would you care to share which places you thought were really bad? In fact, if anyone else has suggestions, I would welcome them.

I've had some great meals at Disney--The Brown Derby in HS was excellent, as was Flying Fish on the boardwalk. I've found pretty much everything else that I have been to to be tasty and edible, though certainly not gourmet food. But I don't go to Disney to experience fine dining.

Given how shitty the Disney merchandise available is, how on Earth did you imagine that the food at Disney World would be any different?

All horrible, no. In my opinion, a lot of mediocre, some terrible, some fairly good, and some really good. Nearly all of it is overpriced both for reasons of having a captive audience and also the mechanics of the dining plan they'd like to sell you. If you plan ahead and research, you will do much better both in terms of quality and cost.
Also, I say this as a vegetarian, whose options at Disney were more limited than most visitors' (but then again, that also pushed me to research ahead of time, which probably put me ahead of where I'd have been just picking at random.)