Starting out on Main Street you will find Casey’s Corner, a counter service corner store themed to the historical past of baseball and the spirit of watching the game. Casey’s offers such unique foods as corn dog nuggets, cracker jacks, cotton candy, French fries, and of course, hot dogs. My recommendation is the Barbeque Slaw Dog which features pulled pork, coleslaw, and barbeque sauce. Once you get your food, there is a small “stadium seating” area located behind the ordering counters which features a screen playing clips of old baseball features. You will truly feel transported to a classic baseball stadium as you sit there eating your hot dog and watching some of the game itself.

Over on the far side of Adventureland is my favorite quick service location in the Magic Kingdom- Tortuga Tavern. Offering a Mexican cuisine inspired menu, I love the open feel of the seating area and ordering counter. Here you will find such offerings as beef nachos, burritos, a taco salad, and vegetarian burritos. You will also find a toppings bar, the highlight of many quick service locations. I literally love toppings bars and am not ashamed to admit it. As I am always looking to save a little, getting more food for my money obviously helps to do so. Toppings bars offer such additional food items as tomatoes, onions, lettuce, shredded cheese, melted cheese, salsa, etc. (depending on the location) at no additional charge to enhance your meal. The toppings bars allow me to load up a sandwich, burger, or salad to make it a little heartier and more filling, and who doesn’t love toppings? Between the toppings bar and the delicious food, Tortuga Tavern is my favorite quick service location in this park and I highly recommend trying it!

Bordering both Adventureland and Frontierland is Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Café, a quick service location themed to the southwest and wild west. With a large seating area spanning several rooms, Pecos Bill’s can get crowded at meal times, so try and either eat a little early or after the rush to avoid a large crowd. This restaurant serves a wide array of food including onion rings, corn on the cob, burgers, sandwiches, salads, and a very delicious steak and pork platter. Most importantly, Pecos Bill’s contains, in my opinion, the best toppings bar in all of the Magic Kingdom. So load up and chow down in this great quick service dining option.

Continuing along through Liberty Square, there is a small quick service option located on the breezeway between the land and the central hub of the park. Sleepy Hollow offers the very unique and delicious option of a waffle sandwich. My favorite is the Sweet and Spicy Chicken Waffle Sandwich, but I am always open to the option of passing off something a little sweeter as an actual meal. After all, it is a vacation! So sometimes I like to indulge in the Nutella and Fresh Fruit Waffle Sandwich, which is every bit as delicious as it sounds. If you like waffles and unique eats, this is the place to stop!

Also located in Liberty Square is Columbia Harbor House which offers perhaps the most upscale and cost effective meals of all the quick service options in the Magic Kingdom. While items here can be a little more expensive, they are usually very good, very filling, and generally large portions. So don’t let the prices deter you here. The food offerings here are mainly focused around New England’s classic seafood meals, and there are plenty of healthy and nutritious items on the menu. The menu includes items such as lobster rolls, fried shrimp platters, grilled salmon, salads, vegetarian chili, clam chowder, couscous, and sandwiches. My favorite option is the Lighthouse Sandwich which features hummus, tomato, and broccoli slaw on multigrain bread. If you are looking for more unique items generally featuring seafood, this is definitely the place to eat in the Magic Kingdom.

Pinocchio’s Village Haus is located in Fantasyland across the way from Peter Pan’s Flight. This restaurant is the only one that offers flatbreads in the park, and it is worth a visit just for one of those meals. Ranging from pepperoni to caprese, the flatbreads are all delicious. You can also dine on other Italian inspired dishes such as a meatball sub, tomato basil soup, and breadsticks. Try and get a table near the large glass window overlooking the loading dock of it’s a small world- it’s quite relaxing to watch the boats load as you enjoy your meal.

Located inside the New Fantasyland, you will find the most opulent and intricately-themed quick service restaurant in the Magic Kingdom. Be Our Guest Restaurant is located across a stone bridge and inside the main ballroom of the Beast’s Castle. Be sure to make note that at this location, only lunch is offered as a quick service meal as the restaurant transitions to a full service sit down facility for dinner. The cuisine here is inspired by traditional French food and the menu includes offerings such as French onion soup, tuna nucoise salad, vegetable quiche, braised pork, croquet monsieur, and various cupcakes and cream puffs. Also, try the gray stuff- I hear it’s delicious! With a decadent menu and gorgeous surroundings, I can’t wait to finally try this new quick service dining location on my next visit to WDW.

Finally, in Tomorrowland there are two quick service dining locations. The first is the Lunching Pad, located on the bottom of the tower featuring the Astro Orbiter and the loading area of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. The Lunching Pad features an ordering counter and lots of outdoor seating, allowing you the opportunity to take in the sights and sounds of Tomorrowland while enjoying your food. The menu at this location is mainly centered on hot dogs and includes options such as the Philly Cheese Steak Hot Dog and the Coney Island Dog. Be sure to pick up a Mickey Pretzel or Sweet Cream Cheese Pretzel as some dessert!

Rounding out the quick service restaurants is Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café featuring the ever-entertaining lounge singer Sonny Eclipse. Sonny offers entertainment in the form of jokes and music for you to enjoy while eating. This restaurant features three ordering bays, each focusing on a different type of food. Bay 1 focuses on chicken and offers chicken, ribs, and a barbeque pork sandwich. Bay 2 focuses on burgers and its menu includes hot dogs and burgers. Bay 3 focuses on sandwiches and includes a turkey sandwich, vegetable sandwich, and a Greek salad. Cosmic Ray’s offers a fairly wide array of food options, and also has the all important toppings bar. So not only can you get some great options, but you can load them up with all the extras you would like.

As you can see, there are a lot of quick service dining options in the Magic Kingdom, all offering some delicious cuisine. Each has its own appeal depending on the atmosphere or type of food that you are looking for. Try and experience as much of the food offerings as you can, as there is no place quite like the Magic Kingdom to try some new and delicious foods.

What is your favorite quick service location to eat in while at the Magic Kingdom? Are you a big fan of the toppings bar? Let me know in the comments below, I would love to hear from you!

Caitlin Corsello was born and raised in New York. She graduated from Adelphi University with a Masters in Mental Health Counseling in 2012. Her love for Disney started as an infant and has continued to grow with family vacations to Disney parks almost every year since. She holds a particular interest in WDW’s parks and attractions, never passing up an opportunity to visit. She looks forward to continuing to explore and learn about all things Disney and to share that passion with readers.

The post Disney From The Twenty-Something: Quick Service Dining In The Magic Kingdom appeared first on WDW Radio - Your Walt Disney World Information Station by Lou Mongello.

All-Star Sports Resort:

We didn’t want to miss rope drop at the Magic Kingdom, so we woke up an hour and a half before the park was scheduled to open. While I got ready for the day, Kevin went and got breakfast. If you’ve read any previous posts from me, you’d already know what we wanted for breakfast; vegan, gluten-free Mickey Waffles! Per usual, Kevin requested the special waffles from the cast member working the food court station. The cast member called out the person making the waffles. It was an easy exchange. We learned that though the special order Mickey Waffles are the Kids’ sized waffles, they are double the Kids’ portion! The Kids’ portion is 2 waffles, while the Adult order of gluten-free, vegan Mickey Waffles is 4 waffles of the Kids’ Waffle size. I wish I would have known this before hand, because with the fruit, orange juice, and coffee on top of that, I was actually only able to eat 2 of the four waffles I ordered. Next trip I will order the Kids’ portion!

Magic Kingdom:

We walked out to catch the bus at 7:20am. The Magic Kingdom (MK) bus was already sitting at the bus stop and the driver waited for us to board. Thank you for the kindness, cast member! The ride seemed shorter than usual and we arrived at MK 20 minutes before rope drop. We were the first ones in line at our turnstile. For some reason, our park tickets weren’t on our Keys to the World, which was unfortunate because being sent to Customer Service made us miss the show, after having stood in line for 20 minutes! It’s tough to recover from a disappointment like that, but we did after our first ride on the Haunted Mansion (by the way, I am listening to “Grim Grinning Ghosts” as I write this line!) I won’t name all of the attractions we experienced that day, but I WILL brag that the number of attractions we experienced was over 20 and, according to Touring Plans, MK had a rating of 9 out of 10 for the day! I will also say that we stayed in MK until 11pm that day with a 4 hour nap break midday, though!

We had heard the song mashup for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh earlier that day which is an all time favorite of ours. I think it’s safe to say Heffalumps and Woozles is “our song.” I wanted to ride it because it was stuck in my head… “a heffalump or woozle – is very – confuzle.” On our way around we noticed Peter Pan’s Flight was a FIVE MINUTE WAIT! I don’t even think we spoke to each other, we just looked and turned and walked onto the ride. It was almost as if speaking would make it not true, like maybe they would notice if we said something and somehow make it a 45 minute wait. So, I guess it is a good thing to note that if you want to ride Peter Pan’s Flight on your next trip to WDW, go early!

No matter how many times we tried to charm cast members into letting us in the Fantasyland Enchanted Forest preview only available to Annual Pass Holders, we were only able to experience the open section from the expansion, which is the Storybook Circus section, which was so well themed! Please read one of my upcoming posts for a review of the snacks you can buy at the gift shop there, Big Top Souvenirs.

“I want popcorn. I want cotton candy!” I kept bothering Kevin with this chant, so he suggested lunch-time. Of course lunch-time meant what it always means for us at MK; Columbia Harbor House. Something about Columbia Harbor House’s theming and it’s “secret nook” (the whole second floor), deemed it my favorite lunch spot in MK since my family’s first visit. Since then it has remained my favorite for one simple reason; the vegetarian chili. Chili has always been one of my favorite dishes, but it’s rare to find a vegan one, especially one that actually tastes good on top of that, and, let me tell you, this chili far surpasses my standards for chili! It’s hearty, the portion size is filling, and it’s guilt free; not just because it’s vegan, but because it’s full of good-for-you ingredients! Oh, and it’s cheap! Well, let me rephrase: Oh, and, for Disney, it’s cheap! Together we ordered 2 chili’s, 2 sides of fries, and 2 cups of ice water. It came to about $15 for 2 people for a filling lunch.

After a few more attractions, and defeating 2 villains trying to sabotage the Magic Kingdom with our sorcerer powers, we really started to see why Touring Plans called today a 9 out of 10 for MK that day. Kevin was getting cranky from the lack of sleep and a post-lunch crash, so we decided to try and get some energy back with the best thing we could come up with (besides sleep); ice cream. We made our way over to the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor and got our Tofutti ice cream. It’s nice that they actually have Tofutti and Rice Dream ice cream listed on the menu, in case you either didn’t know they offer them, or were too shy to ask! I got vanilla and Kevin got chocolate. We were disappointed to hear that the cones had milk powder, because last time they didn’t. Maybe they switched brands, or the supplier changed their recipe, or maybe we were misinformed either this time or last time. This reminded us that asking to be sure is always a good idea!

The ice cream was good, but didn’t change the pushing and shoving in the queue for our second ride on Haunted Mansion, so we decided a nap at the resort would serve some good. But, before I talk about the nap, let me talk about Haunted Mansion. It seems like every trip to WDW, we get a higher appreciation for this attraction. This year we did a couple things to enhance that experience. First, we hung back in the stretching room to hear the gargoyles whisper, do you know that they do that? It was so exciting! When we heard the whispering we turned to each other with our jaws dropped to the floor! Next, we took our time walking to the Doom Buggies and I said to Kevin, “Pretend we aren’t in a ride, look around and really imagine we are in someone’s old abandoned mansion.” Something about that made me have a new feeling about the ride, and I actually got a little scared during the ride-through pretending I was walking and not riding on a track!

Anyway, it was then nap time back at the resort until 6pm, so then we headed back to MK. I wanted to eat somewhere different for dinner, but that chili was calling to me, and we were on a budget so didn’t want to do table service, so we had to go to Columbia Harbor House again. It was actually pretty busy, which I didn’t expect, but we still got a window seat upstairs.

More attractions and exploring followed dinner. I recommend riding or at least visiting Dumbo once during the daylight and once at nighttime to experience the two looks it has. If you haven’t already seen what they’ve done with the attraction, they are two completely different visuals!

One highlight was seeing some of Wishes during Splash Mountain! We decided not to watch the show from the castle because we wanted to see it from Splash Mountain and didn’t mind if we ended up missing it since we’d seen the show from the Polynesian Resort the previous night. We didn’t catch the finale outside, but saw some of the fireworks during one of the outside parts of the attraction.

After the park started winding down, Kevin and I decided to ride Space Mountain and someone came up to us and kindly gave us their FastPasses! It was the first time this happened for us, ever! Sadly, the ride was closed, but the PeopleMover wasn’t, so we thought we should ride it. One the way up to the ride, we realized we MIGHT just see Space Mountain with the lights on on the way through! We got our cameras ready, and, sure enough, we saw what we’d never seen before: the whole Space Mountain track with the lights on, and now I am even more freaked out by the ride than ever before (though that will never stop me from riding it!)

We strolled over to the castle to get our tradition of eating popcorn on Main Street. We walked over to a bench in front of the castle and just gazed at it as we snacked. It was perfect. Popcorn on Main Street in front of Cinderella’s Castle. What could be more perfect?

It was hard to get to sleep that night because the next day would be the WDW Radio Dream Cruise 2.0!

Angie has been a WDW addict since her first visit at age 8, and since then her life has never been the same! She lives in upstate NY with her boyfriend, Kevin (fellow Disney lover), and their 3 dogs, Flip, Josie, and Hildy, where she works at Farm Sanctuary as an animal caregiver. Please join Angie every week in “Fish Are Friends, Not Food: Eating Vegan in WDW!” Angie believes that WDW is the most magical place for people with special diets, so, should you have any special diet questions (especially about vegan and gluten-free dining) she’d be happy to help!

The post Fish are Friends, Not Food: WDW Radio Cruise Trip Report, Part 2 appeared first on WDW Radio - Your Walt Disney World Information Station by Lou Mongello.

Hello everyone! My name is Caitlin and I’m a twenty-something New Yorker and self-proclaimed Disney geek. My love for Disney started very early on. In fact, my first visit was before I was even born! Before I was due, my mom dutifully trekked through Disneyland with my family giving me my first taste of Disney. But it was when my family visited Walt Disney World two years later that the Disney magic really won my family over. I had come down with the chicken pox our second day there. While you might think this would ruin our entire vacation, it ended up being quite the opposite. Despite being quarantined in the resort room with my mom, we still had a magical time. This was all thanks to wonderful Cast Members and “Mickey’s Doctor” who helped us to have a special time at the resort despite it all. (And maybe a little help from the small Disney toys my mom would bribe me with everyday!) They were able to make a vacation spent almost entirely in a resort room just as special for a little girl and her mom.

Since then, I have visited Disney nearly every year with my family and boyfriend in the summer, fall, and even Christmas week. Nothing will ever beat the special memories of waking up at 4:30am to leave New York and start our drive or flight to Disney! While I have most frequently visited Walt Disney World, I have also been to Disneyland multiple times and even Disneyland Paris. As both of my parents were teachers, they had every summer off. Thus for the most part, we visited the parks in the heat of summer. But in the recent years since I have graduated from college, we have been taking our trips in the fall months. This has allowed me to enjoy the different pace, cooler temperature (definitely the cooler temperature!), and various holiday festivities. Especially in these more recent trips, I have made it a priority to experience as many new resorts, dining options, and experiences in the parks as possible resulting in a more developed view of Walt Disney World.

Through all of these visits, my love for Disney has continued to grow. In recent years, I began researching the parks and have come to develop a deep appreciation for the fun, exciting, and ever progressing experiences they offer. And as the parks have evolved, so have I. I’ve gone from a little girl growing up with the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, to a child who would disembark Peter Pan’s Flight just to turn around and get right back in line. Ultimately, all of my Disney experiences have led up to the person I am now. As a recent graduate with my Master’s in Mental Health Counseling, I am now a twenty-something, continuing to watch my love for Disney grow as I experience and learn new things.

In this blog, I want to share with you my viewpoint as a twenty-something fan of Disney. Looking at everything from the most thrilling rides to the best drinks on property, I hope to share my fun perspective. While I do have my degree, I am currently unemployed and having difficulty finding a job. This applies to a majority of my twenty-something friends, given the current economy. So I aim to always share with you ways to save while experiencing the parks. Most of all, I hope to share with you a unique perspective of planning a vacation and enjoying the attractions, dining options, experiences, and details that will spark your own love for Disney.

While this is titled “Disney From A Twenty-Something”, the topics discussed are for any Disney fan looking to save a little, experience new things, learn about the parks, and overall just have fun! Whether you are young, old, a first time visitor, or a Disney veteran- join me in exploring Disney World through the unique perspective of a twenty-something! And most of all enjoy!

Also, if you have any feedback on topics you would like to see discussed by me in the future, please leave a comment below! I would love to hear from you!

The post Disney From a Twenty-Something appeared first on WDW Radio - Your Walt Disney World Information Station by Lou Mongello.