I’m casting my mind back almost a year ago to when we visited Disneyland Paris for my 27th birthday to write this post (I’m 28 next week… where has this year gone?!)
We decided to book a short break in early 2018 and being the foodies we are added on a Premium full board meal plan to our package. Disneyland Paris often run seasonal offers and ours allowed us to get 2 nights free, making our stay a whopping 5 days. Disneyland Paris only has 2 parks and i’m not going to lie, when you haven’t got kids 5 days is a long time… especially with the meal plan we chose.
Our meal plan included:
- A buffet breakfast
- 2 x 3 course meals at any restaurant on property for lunch and dinner
… Each day! It was SO MUCH FOOD. At the time both Mark and I were a little overweight and just about managed to fit it all in haha, but there is no way I could do it now. However, as we had so much time and so much choice for food it did allow us to try out pretty much all the high end restaurants on Disneyland Paris property which inspired me to write this post.
Read on to discover my top 5 picks and why we liked them. Hopefully this post will be helpful to anyone planning a trip without a meal plan or a have a plan which involves less meals meaning you have to choose between them.
5th Place – Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Dinner Show
I’ll be honest the food here wasn’t the best – It’s American style BBQ food and is served on tin platters as you watch the Wild West show. The show itself is fairly impressive, it features both Disney Characters and a live action show with animals like cattle and horses.
We had this dinner show included on our meal plan, but on some lower grade plans tickets have an additional charge. You can also buy tickets for the show if you aren’t on a meal plan, tickets start at £57.
Despite the food not being the best it was edible, and I think Buffalo Bills is worth a visit for the show itself, especially if you have kids!
4th Place – California Grill
Situated in The Disneyland Hotel (I WILL stay there one day…) this restaurant is probably the fanciest on Disneyland Paris property. The dining room’s windows overlook Main Street USA with a great view of the castle. A big perk of dining here for dinner was the view of the evening fireworks show from your table.
The food was pretty upmarket, I believe we both had the pork as our main dish and the desserts were a really tasty chocolate torte bar and a cheese trolly which was brought to the table. The drinks in here were expensive but this was a theme at Disneyland Paris in general, even soft drinks are around €5 or so.
Service here is top class, with multiple waiters coming to place your food down at the table etc, it is a more grown up dining experience although there were children in the restaurant when we visited.
The reason this is on the list is for the fireworks view and the location, the food was ‘just ok’ compared to signature restaurants at Walt Disney World and other fine dining locations we’ve visited.
3rd Place – Walt’s – An American Restaurant
Walt’s is a really unique restaurant and is a Disney fan’s dream. It is situated right on Main Street USA and showcases the life and work of Walt Disney himself.
The food is ‘contemporary American cuisine’ and the dining rooms are themed to reflect the 6 areas of the Disneyland park. I’ll be honest I didn’t actually notice which room we sat in! But we did get a nice window table with a view over Main Street.
I think we ate at Walt’s on around day 4/5 and by this point we had eaten SO many meals that even looking at food was getting tough and i’m so annoyed because I don’t think we fully appreciated the food here at all!
I had pork and Mark had a burger which consisted of almost pulled beef… The desserts were also really pretty.
This makes the list for the setting, the experience and also the food… I just wish we could have enjoyed it more!
2nd Place – Auberge de Cendrillon
This one is a definite if you have little ones – Located in Fantasyland it is themed like a royal dining room and includes a special visit from various Disney Princesses.
I think we had visits from Cinderella, Belle, Aurora and Ariel during our meal, not forgetting Cinderalla’s mouse friends Suzy and Perla. The food here was a real surprise – we had read in lots of reviews that you are paying for the princess experience rather than a good quality dinner but we loved the food here.
Starters included large prawns which were so tasty (they did come in their shell which might not be for everyone) and scallops in a really lovely creamy sauce. I had steak for my main course which was cooked really well and the dessert was also amazing and looked so pretty – We visited during the 25th Anniversary year and managed to snag a special edition dessert.
I would 100% return here for the food alone and the characters are a huge bonus!
1st Place – Silver Spur Steak House
…. A very controversial choice!
I remember coming here as a child and enjoying it but it doesn’t seem to have the best reviews these days. As we had so many meal credits to use we were keen to try out all the table service locations so went to Silver Spur for lunch one day.
We were very pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed the food, I decided to rate this as my number 1 because it has such bad press on other blogs and Disneyland Paris forums so our good experience deserves to be showcased!
The steaks were great, cooked really well and came with a range of nice sides, dessert was a particular highlight, the ice cream brownie Sundae was amazing!
The setting of this restaurant is a little impersonal, the dining area is very large as it is situated in a very busy area of the park (Frontierland, next to Big Thunder Mountain) but the service was great and we liked the country and western theme.
Don’t write Silver Spur off! It is also a little cheaper than some of the other places mentioned above if you are paying out of pocket and it is 100% better than ‘The Steakhouse’ in Disney Village which is more expensive and didn’t even make our top 5 list!
Have you visited Disneyland Paris with a meal plan before? Did you find it to be too much food or a good way to try a little of everything? Let me know your favourite places to eat in the comments!
