On the Disney Wonder cruise, dining options include 3 full-service restaurants, a buffet-style restaurant, an adults-only restaurant, room service and several smaller quick bite options. Main seating (for the full-serve restaurants) began at 5:45 pm, followed by a second seating at 8:00 pm. Because we had 6 kids, we chose the earlier time frame. This gave us time to see shows after dinner.
Main Dining Rooms
On all of their cruises, Disney likes to mix things up at dinnertime with rotational dining. Each night, guests go to a different assigned dining room but keep the same servers. It’s a nice way to experience each of the different themed restaurants.
The three rotational restaurants on our ship were Triton’s, Animator’s Palate and Tiana’s Place. The most generic of the three was Triton’s, named after Ariel’s father in “The Little Mermaid.” Although it had a bit of an underwater theme, it reminded me of a standard, albeit large, sit-down restaurant.
My favorite restaurant was Animator’s Palate which offered interactive activities. One evening, we sat down to white placemats and markers. The servers asked everyone to draw stick figures before collecting them. During dinner, the participants’ artwork flashed on the screen dancing to music.
Animator’s Palate
Tiana’s Place hails from “The Princess and the Frog” and features a New Orleans jazz theme. In the middle of dinner, a 3-man band plays while “Tiana” belts out a few jazz numbers. Afterward, she walks around the tables. Personally, I didn’t like having dinner interrupted for a loud 10-minute show. However, on the last night, the performers passed out beads and led us in a parade around the restaurant.
Buffet-Style Dining
Besides the 3 main dining rooms, Cabana’s is the more casual, buffet-style dining area on Deck 9 offering breakfast, lunch and dinner on most days. It’s a great option for those not wanting to stick to their assigned dinner seating time.
Cabana’s offers something for everyone from chicken tenders to shrimp cocktail and gets busy at breakfast and lunch. My in-laws found it overwhelming and chose to eat every breakfast at one of the full-serve restaurants. My crew didn’t want to spend so much vacation time in a restaurant at breakfast so we went to Cabana’s to grab a bowl of cereal, yogurt and fruit, or in my kids’ case – muffins, Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes and hash browns.
Adult-Only Dining
Disney cruises are geared towards families with children. However, Palo is the upgraded restaurant for adults to get away from them for a date night. We ate there our second night on board. Afterwards, my brother-in-law asked me if the food was that much better or was it just like the other restaurants and you’re paying to get away from kids. Sadly, it’s the latter. The Italian inspired food was delicious, but we came away spending $200 in one evening. It was good, but not that good – especially since a comparable meal at our assigned restaurant wouldn’t have cost anything extra.
Other Dining
While the full-service restaurants and Cabana’s close at various times during the day, the ship offers several quick bite options where we could order food between meals or in lieu of leaving Deck 9 where most of the poolside activities occurred. Although I didn’t try Pinocchio’s Pizzeria, we did like the salads and panini sandwiches at Daisy’s De-Lites. Another favorite was the chicken and lamb shawarma at Pete’s Boiler Bites, which also offered kid-friendly fare such as hamburgers, chicken tenders and fries.
Also, Disney offers a complimentary beverage station with soft drinks, coffee, tea and water. Many passengers walked around Deck 9 eating soft-serve ice cream, also complimentary, from Eye Scream.
A little known secret is that most room service items are free of charge except for the gratuities. My favorite item is the Mickey Ice Cream Bar that doesn’t even appear on the menu. My dentist told me about it and it’s a real treat!
Room service comes in handy on the mornings of an early port of call and the days we didn’t feel like dealing with the throngs of people at Cabana’s.
Alcohol Purchases
Most non-alcoholic beverages are complementary. However, special coffees and smoothies are extra and we had to watch out for waiters offering them to the kids in our group.
Purchasing alcohol is where we had to watch the extra charges. Each adult guest can bring up to two bottles of unopened wine in their unchecked luggage. This is key. You may not bring it in your checked luggage or they will confiscate and hold it until debarkation on the last day of the cruise. Unforunately this happened to some of our family members. For a $25 corkage fee, we could bring the bottle we brought with us in unchecked luggage to dinner with us.
Our family enjoys wine and lots of it on vacations. We found purchasing the various wine packages also to be easy. In each wine package, we had a choice of red and white. One package offered classic wines, while the other offered premium wines. We did a mixture of both and everyone seemed to enjoy all the selections. What we didn’t finish at dinner one night was corked and ready for us at dinner the following night. One thing I wish we’d done was to pre-purchase the packages in the weeks before the cruise, where we would have saved about 30%.
A Final Note
Disney does desserts very well. I can’t tell you how many nights I ordered something just to try a small bite and ended up devouring everything on the plate. With that said, save lots of room of them. They are truly worth it!