While the Disney Website re-vamp gave a lot of us headaches for a while, I’m very pleased to see that they’ve added two planning tools to the dining section that have been sorely needed.

Menus
You’re not the only one who faithfully prints out the menus for all your ADR restaurants and pores over them for weeks deciding exactly what you’re going to order. Apparently, enough of us are obsessed enough with Disney food that Walt Disney World has seen fit to pander to our idiosyncrasies and finally post many of their restaurant menus on their website! What’s so great about that, you ask? Two things:

1. The menus are authoritative, so they’ll likely be up to date.
2. They’re PDFs of the actual menus used in the restaurants! That means there’s just that added bit if Disney Magic and themeing that you get to glimpse before your trip!

Here are a couple of screen shots of how you can get to the menus on the Disney website. You begin by searching “Dining,” and clicking on the restaurant for which you’d like details. From there, you’ll see a screen that looks like this:

Location of Menus on Disney World Website Restaurant Pages

Simply click on the menu for the meal you’re curious about, and out pops a cool PDF that looks exactly like the menu you’ll get in the restaurant in Disney World. Here’s Liberty Tree Tavern’s dinner menu:

Menu PDF Pulled Up When Choosing Menu Option From WDW Website

Unfortunately, Disney doesn’t yet have ALL menus available, but you’ll find that about 80%-90% of what you’re looking for is there. Remember that buffet menus change daily, so those are often not posted.

Maps
Disney has also added what many of us consider to be the quintessential planning tool, maps, to its individual restaurant pages.

Map Section of Disney Restaurant Web Pages

Simply click on the “map” icon; when the map is pulled up, scroll down the list to the left until you find the restaurant you’re looking for. Its location will be highlighted on the map!

This is a great planning tool to help you determine where you’ll need to be in your touring plan (e.g. what rides you’ll want to be scheduling for before and after lunch) around the time of your restaurant ADR.

Visual When Opening Map From Restaurant Page on WDW Website

Happy Planning!
The Disney World website is getting more and more user friendly, and the inclusion of these tools, along with the interaction of the Mom’s Panel and other informative additions, makes me optimistic that the site has the potential to be a truly useful planning tool–even for veteran Disneyphiles!

If you’ve seen or used other great Disney dining planning tools, I’d love to hear about them!