Hi guys! We’re working on another brand new Disney Food Blog project, but we need your input and thoughts to make it happen.
So Here’s The Plan
Remember when we asked what you’d like to see in our DFB Guide to Walt Disney World Dining? One of the responses we heard quite a bit went a little something like this…:
“I…tend to plan where I’m eating based on where I am going to be, or vice versa, so I’d love something like “if you are at Animal Kingdom, eat dinner at …”
We got several responses similar to this one, and since we often plan our dining to be close and convenient to where we’ll be that day, too, we thought it was a great idea. So we included in the DFB Guide several one-day dining strategies for specific circumstances (see a sample dining strategy below for guests staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge).
DFBGuide.com Sample Dining Strategy -- Animal Kingdom Lodge p1
DFBGuide.com Sample Dining Strategy -- Animal Kingdom Lodge p2
The Disney Food Blog Mini-Guide Series
We knew we had many more of our one-day strategies to share, and we wanted to add week-long strategies including some of our favorite restaurants, but the large size of the DFB Guide meant we had to cut it off somewhere!
So since we know there’s still a lot of in-depth info to cover in that area — and other areas — we’ve decided to produce Mini-Guides dedicated to specific aspects of Disney dining! Several of these mini-guides will focus completely on turn-key one-day, one-week, and two-week dining strategies for your vacation. We’ll give you our favorite suggestions for breakfast, lunch, dinner, AND snacks based on where you’re staying, what park you’re visiting each day, and even what special dining criteria you have to manage.
And we’ll take the guesswork out of travel/transportation planning for you! Our strategies will focus on making getting from “here” to “there” easy, quick, and convenient.
We Need Your Suggestions
To make sure we’re putting out the right Mini-Guides for you, tell us in the comments below what you want to know more about. Here are a few examples to get your brainwaves going:
- Are you staying in a Magic Kingdom resort for a week and want to know the best places to eat and how to get to them?
- Will you be spending several days in Epcot and need to ensure you get some variety?
- Are you (or is someone in your party) eating vegetarian or gluten-free on your trip?
- Do you want to be able to walk to your dinner restaurant from wherever you are that day?
- Do you have three kids, two grandparents, a sister-in-law, and four cousins who all have a different wish-list when it comes to food…and refuse to take the bus?
Share with us what kinds of dining strategies would make your vacation planning 110% easier!
Other Disney Dining Topics You’d Like to See Covered in More Detail?
And let us know if there are other in-depth Disney dining topics you’d like to hear more about. The Mini-Guide series is slated to include a volume about planning for the 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival, one focused on the ins and outs of the Disney Dining Plan, a guide dedicated to dining with Special Diets in Disney World, and more! And don’t worry…we’re already working on a new Disney Food Blog project all about snacks!
I can’t wait to hear what YOU want to know!
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I love this idea! But as someone who lives close to Disneyland, WDW items are of no use to me. So maybe spread some of the love to the Disneyland Resort as well? That would be awesome =)
This is a great idea, and I can’t wait to see it come together! I think a guide for the Epcot resort area would be nice, as there are so many dining options between those 5 hotels, plus the ability to walk to Epcot and DHS opens up many more…
Just my 2 cents…I would like to see a separate, for each park, at a glance, restaurant listing (for lack of a better word). A PDF that you can pull up on a smartphone/ipod/ipad and see all of the options without searching for that section of the DFB Guide. Does that make sense? I do know there’s an app for that but it would be nice to see the options without having to go through various menus.
I am really looking forward to a F&W mini guide!!!
Of course, I think a DFB Guide for kids would be awesome, too.
I second Tanya’s request – but for the opposite reason. I am well familiar with WDW but am making a trip for the first time at the end of the month to DL and feel slightly overwhelmed on the food options. A mini-guide would be super helpful, especially since most of us won’t make it to DL all that often and aren’t as familiar with the food choices.
Of course I read all the DL posts here on the blog (thanks!) but have taken notes to take with me, so if we find ourselves hungry in DCA, we know what’s good and what’s not.
I love these ideas!! I would love to see transportation options as well. For example, you are at DHS and want to eat dinner at The Boardwalk. Which options do you have, and which are usually the most efficient. I would love to see something like “snacking around Epcot” that lists all the snack kiosks at the different countries and what are some of the items you can get! And last, what are the best table service restaurants for just adults or couples!!
My husband and I are planning a trip for mid-December this year, and would love suggestions on healthy options for at least one meal each day of our trip. We love to pig out, don’t get me wrong, but in order to maintain a good pace, we’ll need to balance out healthy dining options. Healthy = more than just a salad. Thanks, AJ – keep up the awesome work!
We’d like to see an at-a-glance guide for “Dear god i’m hungry, my blood sugar is low, the kids are crying, it’s hot, life sucks, and it’s New Years Eve – where can I actually get food without waiting an hour?”
If you can give advice for those situations which is tasty, we’d appreciate it.
I’d love to see a guide for last minute trips–with no dining plan and no ADRs.
Or how about a guide of tips from seasoned DVC members–I imagine they’ll have some knowledge about where the quietest, best, most out of the way places are.
Hi! I love this idea, too. Big fan of your blog! When we visited as kids, my parents almost NEVER let us eat out there, especially not anywhere sit down!! The reason is because my family of vegetarians (two sisters, parents, sister’s boyfriend, and my boyfriend) is convinced that Disney food is pointless, because they hate the idea of going out and ordering 6 or 7 plates of the same meal. Even just planning a smaller vacation with my boyfriend is difficult for the same reason (the strategy I’m starting to take is plan Deluxe Dining signature meals, since there are more vegetarian options among the appetizers). Whenever I do read anything about vegetarians at Disney, it’s usually one lone veggie in a family that otherwise eats meat. I think that’s only a portion of vegetarians, and many other vegetarians who might travel together are often unconvinced that a place is “veggie-friendly” just because there is a pasta option, for example. So– in summary– I would LOVE a really great vegetarian guide that I could use to PROVE to my family that you CAN eat out at Disney (perhaps on the Dining or Deluxe Dining Plan) and have a really sophisticated, delicious experience fit for vegetarian foodies!!
My family is vegetarian and the last time we went to Disney ( I was six months pregnant 9/2010) we needed to stop and read each menu to make sure there were vegetarian options in our favorite parks Animal Kingdom and Epcot. It would make it easier for our next trip to have a guide of all the places that are Vegetarian/Vegan friendly all over Disney. Since we have a vegetarian blog, we would love to be able to write about our vegetarian dining experience at Disney. There should also be more than one vegetarian/vegan option for us.
Great idea for mini-guides! When I go to the parks I like to spend a full day at each park (without any park-hopping). Dining ideas for all three meals (or just lunch and dinner) within the same park would be great!
I’d love to see information on organic, all-natural options without artificial dyes, preservatives, etc.
I think guides for one day visits or two day visits to each individual park would be great, or plans for half and full days and they should also feature Dining plan information or provide alternatives when Dining Plan isn’t available for that restaurant. You could set it out in columns for budgets and rows for different meals, and maybe they could work with the Unofficial guide to WDW touring plans?
I would love suggestions from the resort to other resorts and the easiest way to use WDW transportation – that’s the one thing that confuses me sometimes! 🙂
Great idea!!! Can’t wait to apply it to our next trip!
I think it might be good to include information for how to deal with the F&W festival. Like sample itineraries or guides on which booths to hit (and maybe which to avoid), along with where you would eat breakfast that day and if you’d make a dinner ADR and where. Maybe you could do one for a weekend F&W trip, as well as a longer trip. Also, maybe include which seminars are musts for you, if any.
Thanks for the awesome ideas and suggestions, all! Keep them coming! 🙂
What a great idea. I usually have our full service meals planned months ahead of time, but would like a guide to unique counter service meals and snacks in each park. What are the items unique to each park that I can’t find at every other place we visit? On our last trip we planned to have snack time in the Studios after I read the article on the blog about the carrot cake cookie; I’d love to discover more gems like this.
would love more info about Disneyland dining and snacking. : )
I live close to WDW and love to see photos of all the favorites at each restaurant. Also, any tips and advice on allergies would be terrifc since my son has food allergies.
Apologies on the belated response.
The main information that I would be interested in would be eating with certain dietary restrictions, since I am lactose intolerant. What would be the best places to go for someone who say, is deathly allergic to Gluten or Nuts?
A guide on kid-friendly and non-kid friendly restaurants would be great as well.
You put a thought into my head as well mentioning the day-to-day guide. You could either have a guide on local restaurants if you are say, staying in the Animal Kingdom Vicinity or one compiled with each park and you could just flip open to that park.
Oh, and a guide to Carrot Cake cookies would be a great one in and of itself. 😉
Hi AJ, although the DFB guide and website are AWESOME sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the detail and know that by the time my next trip comes along I’ll never find what I need to know!
Therefore I’d like some checklists of the items / restaurants covered on the blog. For example, I’d love to be able to print off a list of all the snacks found at DHS, with description and location, and then work my way down the list. Hopefully by the end of my 2 week vacation I’d have had the chance to sample most of the things on offer!
Thanks for all your hard work AJ!
Love the idea! We recently spent 10 days in the parks, and as a family of 5 who are all gluten intolerant it took some planning! We were on the dining plan and it took SO MUCH TIME to research all of the restaurants and request menus etc.. I would love a mini-book with all of the info on special diets in one place!!!! We purchased the first DFB guide before we went and it was great!
I see I’m very late to the party on this post, but I’d LOVE a cheat sheet for the best savory snacks available on a DDP snack credit. The DDP is so dessert heavy, I don’t think I’ll be up to eating my traditional favorite sweet snacks throughout the day. Thanks!
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