Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. Skipper Canteen
Image: DisneyHow much do I love Jungle Cruise? Well, I’ve written more than 5,000 words about it. Even if you’re not as passionate about the subject as I am, you should still enjoy a meal at Skipper Canteen, one of the newest restaurants at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. That’s because Disney has done something especially clever. They’ve extended the theme of wayward adventurers beyond the waters.
During a meal at Skipper Canteen, a cast member will jump into character as an incompetent explorer who wants to share tales of prior journeys into the great unknown. Unsurprisingly, most of these tales involve bad puns, by which I mean that Disney has added to the standard script of the attraction. Now, all the corny jokes that people love-hate about Jungle Cruise come in food form.
No, the concept doesn’t work for everyone, but that’s okay. You can politely ask your server to dial down the groan-inducing jokes if you prefer. If you want to have a wonderful time laughing at the worst jokes imaginable, however, it is a wonderful hour of entertainment. Someone feeds you while they regale you with tales of failure that they confuse with triumph. Skipper Canteen is glorious.
1900 Park Fare
Image: DisneyDisney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa has such a sterling reputation for fine dining that you may not know about a couple of its hidden gems. The Grand Floridian Café is a wonderful establishment with a rich menu and a particularly wonderful group of cast members. It’s also the easiest advance dinner reservation to get at the hotel. That’s because an adjoining establishment grabs all of the headlines.
1900 Park Fare is a character meal that Disney offers for breakfast and for dinner. What’s unique about this place is that the characters are different. At breakfast, you’ll encounter Mary Poppins and characters from Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh. That’s a delightful experience in its own right, but the most memorable offering here is at dinner.
Supper aka the Happily Ever After dining experience is when the Fairy Godmother, Cinderella, and Prince Charming host the evening’s festivities. These forces for good are counterbalanced by the presence of Lady Tremaine and her daughters, the proverbial evil stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella. It’s this menacing trio that levels up the Happily Ever After event.
Suffice to say that while Cinderella and Prince Charming are enjoying their storybook life together, the other three are rather bitter. They’re also vain, gaudy, and catty. Their odd behavior is one of the true joys of Disney, presuming that you’re prepared for it.
The way to maximize your evening at 1900 Park Fare is to enjoy cordial conversation with Cinderella and Prince Charming. Then, when the evil stepsisters arrive, join in the fun by trashing Cinderella as much as possible. The cast members who portray these women feed off the energy of the table. If you play along with them, they will go so far over the top that you will laugh so hard that you can’t breathe. It’s a gloriously great time that’s become a staple of every Walt Disney World visit that we make.
Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater
Image: DisneyAre you a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, both the classic version and the new one on Netflix? Do you love to watch bad movies so that you can laugh with your friends and talk smack about the terrible special effects? Do you enjoy classic 1950s cartoons about what animators once envisioned outer space to look like? And do you want to see every obscure clip of Walt Disney that you can?
If you’re anything like me, you answered yes to every one of these questions. Even if you said no to a few of them, I swear that you will still love Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. It’s the only place at Walt Disney World where you enter the hollow shell of a car and sit in front of a giant movie screen.
The premise here is to recreate the environment of a 1950s drive-in movie theater, and Disney excelled at the theming so much that it’s become something of a cult phenomenon. The restaurant was the Wikipedia entry of the day in 2015 (out of literally millions of Wikipedia options). Also, a pair of competitors have cloned the premise in opening knockoffs the original. Amazingly, one of them is at Universal Resort Orlando. That fact speaks volumes about how memorable Sci-Fi Dine-In is. Even the locals want to rip off the idea.
Comments
You forgot two HUGE ones.
Ohana's which feels more like having dinner at an uncle's home in Hawaii than a restaurant at Walt Disney World. The food is absolutely delicious and unlimited and the bread pudding desert is worth the price of admission on it's own. My personal favorite meal in all of WDW.
Victoria and Albert's maybe it's because of its ultra high class atmosphere or the difficulty in obtaining reservations or the high price of admission but V&A's is left off these lists way too often. This restaurant commands the very definition of unforgettable. This is definitely one meal you will remember for the rest of your life.