Ranking the Internet’s Most Recommended Disney World Snacks and Restaurants

Addicted to the Mouse: Disney Podcast | Disney World, Universal, & Cruise Vacation Planning

In this episode of 'Addicted to the Mouse,' hosts Dan and Leslie rank the internet's top 50 most recommended Disney World snacks and restaurants, sharing their honest opinions on

Key takeaways

• The internet's top 50 rankings include some well-deserved favorites but also miss several highly recommended restaurants like Morimoto Asia and Summer House on the Lake.

Main topics

• Ranking internet's most recommended Disney World snacks and restaurants
• Critique of popular rankings and overlooked dining spots

Notable quotes

"There's so many unique offerings. When you come to Disney, there's just so many unique offerings."

Conclusion

The hosts conclude by reaffirming the richness of Disney World's dining

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I love a good ranking episode and today have we got one for you. Hello and welcome to Addicted to the Mouse. Today is Sunday, September 13th. You're listening to episode number 832 and today we are ranking the internet's most recommended Disney World treats and restaurants. Speaker 2 (0:28) Hey everybody, Dan and Leslie here. Thanks for joining us today. I am always in the mood to talk about food. Oh Speaker 1 (0:34) yeah. I just Speaker 2 (0:35) made us some pumpkin bread today. Oh, it's so good. I tell you what, I love the fall season. food. You know, I love like getting to get into the, like the yummy treats that aren't good for you, but they're so delicious. Speaker 1 (0:49) Absolutely. All right. But before we get into the rankings, do we have any news and or reviews? Yes. Speaker 2 (0:55) So first this is from KL Wursts and it's titled comfort during hard times. I'm Speaker 1 (1:02) a Speaker 2 (1:02) fairly new listener, but love long. lifelong, excuse me, Disney lover. I live in Charleston, South Carolina, and for the past three months have been driving back and forth to Charlotte, North Carolina to help care for my mom who was in hospice care. She was a lifelong Disney lover as well and used to always talk about being the same age as Disneyland as she was born in 1955. She passed two months ago and your podcast has brought me joy and lightness during a very difficult time making those drives a little more bearable. I was also inspired to reach out to Fantastical Vacations for an upcoming trip to Universal. Kate was amazing and has helped plan and an epic, smiley face, trip for my family and I. Thanks again for all you do. It's literally life-saving sometimes. Speaker 1 (1:40) Wow. That is, wow. Okay, so thank you so much for leaving the review. Condolences on the passing of your mom. That is obviously a really, really difficult time and so glad that we could bring you a little bit of comfort on your drive to and from that. So my goodness, that is, that is. Definitely a challenging time. And thanks so much for using Kate and Fantastical Vacations to plan your epic adventure. Hopefully, I think she said that was upcoming, right? I think so, yes. Hopefully, you are going to have an amazing time over at Epic Universe. It's fantastic. If you've never been, it is a really, really great new park. And so, yeah, I just can't thank you enough for reaching out, for the kind words, your nice comments, and for following along. Speaker 2 (2:22) Yes, absolutely. All right. So then a little bit of news. So Disney did release some promos for 2027. So we've got promos that are out for room discounts for select nights valid January 3rd to July 28th. Those are, I'm sorry, that's for four night, four day room and ticket packages. And then the room only discounts are available January 3rd to April 29th. And then we also have Disney Visa card member Annual pass holder, Florida resident, all that stuff came out along with all of it. Speaker 1 (2:55) So all of that came out on Friday morning. Thursday. Sorry, Thursday morning. If you are a client of Leslie's, if you are a client for Fantastical Vacations, definitely reach out to your travel advisor. If you are one of Leslie's clients, if you have not heard from her about this promotion, that means that you are outside the travel window or your room did not apply. So if you are one of Leslie's clients, one of the things that she always does is automatically try and apply new discounts to existing reservations. So you may have gotten an email. How many clients did you say this was applicable for? Speaker 2 (3:27) good for several people. I mean, there was a lot of people who had bounce back deals already. The bounce backs were better. And then sometimes like depending on the resort, like there just usually is not a lot of availability at certain resorts, even though the resorts fall within the. Like Speaker 1 (3:44) the Speaker 2 (3:44) Polynesian was the Polynesian. Like the poly is usually kind of tough. Pop Century, Caribbean Beach. All the Speaker 1 (3:50) most popular ones. The ones that, yeah, Speaker 2 (3:52) people just always tend to book. Those have less options or no options for, which is hard to understand for clients. Sometimes they're like, but it says my resort qualifies. And I'm like, it does, but. Disney looks at like how many rooms are booked and they go, do we need to do any discounts for this time period? And so it gets a little funny. Speaker 1 (4:14) Yeah, it's a little bit annoying. So like Disney Cruise Line, whenever they release a promotion, it is generally good for pretty much like we can usually get that. But Disney World is really tough about when they release a promotion, it's only a certain percentage. of every room type or certain room types at the resort. So if it says the Polynesian qualifies, it may only be a couple of rooms in like a regular, uh, like, uh, like park view or a resort view room. And it just like, if you, if it doesn't, if it's not exactly the room that you're in or the dates that it's just like, it's really hard to apply that. So, um, anyway, uh, that is a, an interesting offer. I mean, we are. still in September, 2026. And we're already getting offers for middle of the year in 2027. Generally, like, uh, I feel like the, the bigger office offers or the biggest offers for the next year come in January for that year. So we'll see if they, uh, release anything in January. Yep. Speaker 2 (5:09) Well, I kind of suspect that that will be like our next big one. It'll probably be somewhere on or around January 5th. That's usually generally about when they do it. So, um, so that's, that's when I suspect kind of the next big, like. promo to come out, but, um, all right. And then they also announced spring offerings along with this, uh, new promo. So they're bringing back Disney after hours. Um, and so that's going to be an option for 2027, as well as they announced the official dates for flower and garden, as well as the offerings for that. Now we will do a full like flower and garden episode. As we get a little closer, we talked about doing that today and we were like, It's just too far away. We're in September. We haven't even finished Halloween and we need to still talk about Christmas. And so. And Festival of the Speaker 1 (5:56) Arts. I think they did release something about Festival of the Arts. What was in that one? Speaker 2 (6:00) Yeah. Okay. So let me, I clicked into the Flower and Garden Festival one first. So the dates for Flower and Garden are going to, let's see, run from March 10th to May 31st this year. And then, like I said, we'll do like a full episode where we can dive into. all the goodies and, and like what's being offered there. Um, and then as far as, um, festival of the arts goes, it is running, uh, let's see, they, they said it is going from January 15th until March 1st. Okay. So I, I feel like we already knew those dates, but, uh, they did, they did, you know, just kind of re-highlight festival of the arts. So, so we'll do full on episodes about those as we get a little closer and have like the foodie guide and, and all that fun Speaker 1 (6:43) stuff. Look forward to it. Speaker 2 (6:44) So that is all my news. Okay. And everything. Speaker 1 (6:47) All right. So I asked Jim and I, one of my good AI buddies, my buddy Jim and I, I asked Jim and I to scour the internet and see what the biggest, like the top 50 most recommended food items or restaurants were for Disney World. And so we're going to go 50 to number one. So the 50th most recommended food item slash restaurant to the number one most recommended Disney World. food item or restaurant. And we're just going to go through and give our thoughts here because some of these we absolutely agree with. Some of them we would rank a little higher or lower. And some of them like this first one, I don't think have any place on the top 50 highest recommended things to try or places to eat in Disney World. Are you ready? Speaker 2 (7:30) I am. And I just want to say first that there are so many good places and good things to eat whenever you come to Disney World that it's different than your typical everyday run of the mill theme park, in my opinion. Like, I feel like, you know, whenever you go to Six Flags or Silver Dollar City or whatever, like it's, it's a little bit more just like. normal theme park food that you're looking at. But when you come to Disney, there's just so many unique offerings. Speaker 1 (7:57) There's so many unique offerings. And look, we are going to talk through these top 50, but it literally took us three years to eat at every table service restaurant on Disney World property one time a week, right? So we were doing dining reviews three years to eat at every Disney table service restaurant. So that's not including the snack stands, the lounges, the quick service restaurants. That's not including all of that. So there is... a lot of recommendations out there. Speaker 2 (8:23) Yeah, and they are constantly changing menus and adding new places too. Exactly. So I'm Speaker 1 (8:27) pretty interested to see what this top 50, because I didn't go through all of these, so we'll kind of go through them together. But the first one definitely stands out to me. So number 50, the 50th most recommended food item or restaurant from the internets, it is the turkey leg. Ugh, Speaker 2 (8:42) gross. I have to say, all of you out there that like turkey legs, more power to you. It... the smell of it alone just like repulses me. So I can't do it. Speaker 1 (8:53) It is a theme park staple. In fact, when we were at Halloween Horror Nights just a couple of weekends ago, we were at the end of the night. It was like 1 a.m. We were walking back to go through one of the houses in the backstage area and there was a snack stand back there that we passed and it had turkey legs for sale. I was like... Who is buying a turkey leg at 1 a.m. to gnaw on around Halloween Horror Nights? Anyway, so yeah, the turkey leg, it just hurts my stomach. It is just so greasy. And I used to love these things back when we go to the State Fair 25 years ago, but I can't do them anymore. So if you love turkey legs, then there you go. Number 50 is for you. Number 49, we are going with the corn dog nuggets at Casey's Corner. And bonus if you pair it with the... Speaker 1 (9:39) plastic cheese. Speaker 2 (9:42) It's the cheese dip. That's like a dollar, but, um, you know, I kind of love these and I, I think it's, it's not, it's not necessarily like the best food item you can get in Disney world by any stretch of the imagination, but they're just. They're simple and they're tasty whenever you dip them in that cheese. You Speaker 1 (9:59) know, we haven't actually done a dining review at Casey's Corner for the quick service restaurant in Magic Kingdom. So we're going to do that soon. We've talked about doing it soon. We're going to get over there. We're going to try some Speaker 2 (10:07) corn Speaker 1 (10:08) dog nuggets with plastic cheese. Yeah. Okay. All right. Number 48 is the warm cinnamon roll that is as big as Leslie's head at Caston's Tavern in Magic Kingdom. Speaker 2 (10:17) Oh, I do love this. And, you know, bonus if you get it with the, you ask for the extra icing. Oh my goodness. It is typically usually very, very good. Now there have been times that we have gotten this and it was a little on the drier side. Um, but most of the time it is pretty good. And even if it's a little on the drier side, whenever you ask for that extra, um, frosting. then it kind of moistens that up a little bit. Yeah, Speaker 1 (10:42) breakfast options are still pretty limited. Even with the expansion of breakfast offerings in Disney World, they're still kind of hard to find for good breakfast offerings. And this is one of those. This is outside of your Starbucks or Joffrey's pastries. This is a good option if you're going to Magic Kingdom. It is also definitely shareable, especially if you don't want a super large breakfast. But that's usually when we're getting it for breakfast. Speaker 2 (11:07) Yeah, and you can get it all day too. So, yep. No judgment. All right. Number 47 is the Night Blossom. This is the little non-alcoholic beverage over at Pongu Pongu and Animal Kingdom. Speaker 1 (11:19) Yeah, I love this thing. I love that it's non-alcoholic. So we've gotten, we usually get like two for the four of us and we'll share those. It is, if you have the dining plan, it has been a snack item on there in years past. I'm not going to promise that it will always be in future years, but you could use it for that. And I really like this. It's basically a layered, frozen slushy, right? And so you've got like an apple lime layer, a couple of apple lime layers, and then a passion fruit layer. And then you have like boba pearls on top. I really like it. Speaker 2 (11:49) It's really good. All right. Number 46 is the pulled pork mac and cheese over at Flame Tree Barbecue in Animal Kingdom. I'm Speaker 1 (11:55) surprised this is actually as low as 46. I feel like everybody recommends getting a pulled pork mac and cheese. We've had this several times. It's been... You know, kind of like the corn dog nuggets and the orange cinnamon roll. Like sometimes it's amazing. Sometimes it's kind of like, eh, whatever. So it just kind of depends on what day you get it. But if it's good, it's good. And Speaker 2 (12:13) I will say it's a nice healthy portion for a reasonable price. So you could even get it as a snack and share it. Okay. Speaker 1 (12:19) So we've been doing individual like snack items, but the next one is an actual restaurant and it is the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant in Hollywood Studios. This Speaker 2 (12:28) one we adore. I mean, we started going here. I think on our first trip and we have, it became a staple for every vacation after that. We really just like to go in and have that like drive-in movie atmosphere. If you've listened to the podcast, you know, you've heard us talk about sitting inside those classic 1950 convertible cars that are, you know, transitioned into like little tables and just watching the kitschy old horror movies on the screen, drinking your milkshake, eating your fried pickles. The food