The Be Our Guest Conundrum

Decisions, decisions, and more decisions. It's no longer an easy and spontaneous thing to plan a Walt Disney World vacation! And it's really too bad. As I mentioned in an earlier post, My Booking Nightmare, it's often a mess and not as much fun as the whole part of trip preparation should be. 

Imagineering Concept art of the Beauty and the Beast mini-land.

Our trip is prior to the big July change, when the restaurant changes to a prix fixe three-course dinner. Happy about that! I really don't want to pay those new prices for a theme park dinner quality food regardless of what should be stunning atmosphere. 

As many others have said, including my good friend and co-blogger Len Yokoyama in his Magic Kingdom trip report, Be Our Guest tends to serve mediocre food at best. Unfortunately, this creates a "one and done" end result, even for a fan like me who counts Beauty and the Beast as his favorite Disney animated film ever.


Taking an objective look at it all, I see three options:

Breakfast- The highlight here seems to be the fact that if you book first thing in the morning, you get to walk down Main Street through an empty Magic Kingdom. Going through the castle into the New Fantasyland and out to the bridge to the restaurant with no one around sounds pretty cool. Is it worth $25 a head for breakfast pastries, pancakes, and other cheap to make items? Tough call. 

Lunch- Cheaper (for now) than breakfast or dinner and a chance to get out of the Florida heat in the middle of the day. Two strong plusses, I'd say. I just love the moonlight at midday atmosphere of places like Disneyland's landmark Blue Bayou and Epcot's San Angel Restaurant at World Showcase's Mexico pavilion. It's a special kind of Disney magic few places can match.

Dinner- Would you want to spend your hard earned money eating dinner here? It's the only meal of the day that Beast comes out, making it a character meal of sorts. (And it also eliminates having to do another one.) It sure would be fun to be in New Fantasyland at night upon leaving. But, oh the prices for theme park food!

What choice would you make and why?

(Top photo copyright Len Yokoyama. Art copyright The Walt Disney Company)