By Soarin’ Diva
If you haven’t heard, Animal Kingdom’s Restaurantosaurus has recently introduced a different dining experience, gourmet burgers and a build your own sundae bar. This experience is available with a dining reservation for dinner only from 4:30pm-7:30pm daily, not lunch. Don’t worry though, it is still on the dining plan and still counts as just a quick service option, though it has the feel of a table service for this particular experience.
Tucked back in Animal Kingdom’s DinoLand USA, Restaurantosaurus looks a little unusual with chairs propped up on the roof, but has a cute dinosaur theme to blend in with its surroundings. As I stated, this particular dining experience is still a quick service option, but does cost a little more than the usual quick service meal if you are paying out of pocket at $34.99 per adult and $15 per child. Again, it would be in your best interest to make a dining reservation for this experience, though they may take walk-ups if they aren’t fully booked.
When we arrived, we checked in at the designated check-in desk located by the door. They took our names and wrote a number on a small chalk board, which they handed us, then they directed us to place our order at a register designated specifically for the gourmet burger and sundae experience.
After placing our orders, we were walked to a table which was covered in a white paper table covering. A small bucket with the same number that was on our chalk board sat on the table. It was filled with markers, crayons and templates to keep us busy drawing on the table topper while we waited for our food. I thought is was a cute addition, and though we didn’t have kids with us, who can resist drawing on a table?
This is a dining experience review, so I have to be honest and tell the bad as well as the good. We sat at our table for a while, drawing and not thinking about how long we had been there. My husband finally realized everyone seated around us came in AFTER we did, and they all had their food already, while we did not. When the hostess walked by, he asked her if she could check on our order. We didn’t have any unusual requests as there are only five different versions of burgers to order from, so there was no reason for ours to not be served yet. When the hostess came back, she asked for our order again and apologized as she told us that somehow, the kitchen never received our order. After re-placing our order, it didn’t take long at all for the food to come to our table, as well as a visit from the manager who again apologized and informed us she would credit the amount for the dinner back to our card. We never actually complained, only asked the hostess to check on our order, but I love the way Disney always makes a situation right.
DIVA TIP: This is a quick-service dining experience, so if it seems like your food is taking too long to arrive, ask someone to check, it should only take a few minutes!
There are five different hamburgers to choose from, the Chili-Cheese Corn Chip burger, the All American Burger, The Mushroom and Swiss Burger, the Sunny-Side Up burger and the Pulled Pork Barbeque Burger. There are also two other options for those who don’t eat beef, the Hand Breaded Chicken Sandwich and the Plant Based Burger.
My husband ordered the Chili-Cheese Corn Chips Hand-Crafted Burger, while I chose the Mushroom and Swiss Hand-Crafted Burger. I have to say, my Mushroom and Swiss was delicious. It was juicy, tender and cooked exactly the way I like it. It is a big hamburger that comes your choice of fries or onion rings. There is a small dipping sauce bar to choose which sauce you want to dip your onion rings or french fries in, or add to your burger. They offer your normal mayo, ketchup, mustard, bbq, honey mustard and ranch. In addition, you can get buffalo sauce, bbq mustard, a mayo ketchup blend and a horseradish sauce. My suggestion is to get a cup of each of the dipping sauces to decide which you like the best. I wanted to be able to finish it all, but I couldn’t, especially because I knew that ice cream sundae bar was waiting for me at the end of the meal.
When we ate all we could while saving room for ice cream, it was time to pick up those sundae coupons and take them up to the ice cream counter to decide which flavors we wanted. You get two scoops and can pick either one or two flavors of ice cream. You can choose from Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry and/or Mint Chocolate Chip. After you are handed your bowl with the two scoops of ice cream, it’s on to the toppings bar. There are a lot of toppings to choose from. I won’t list them all here, but the pictures should show you what, exactly they have to offer.
I’m a little boring and not adventurous when it comes to my ice cream toppings. I don’t like a lot of stuff in my ice cream, so I keep it pretty simple. My husband opted to make a version of a banana split without the bananas. The ice cream sundaes were yummy. It’s ice cream, of course they were yummy, you can’t go wrong with ice cream. I couldn’t eat much of it because I couldn’t seem to control myself when engulfing…I mean eating my gourmet burger, but the few bites I had were a nice, sweet treat.
So, to wrap up my assessment of Restaurantosaurus Gourmet Burgers and Sundaes in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, we did have a little hiccup, but the manager was very quick to make it right. While it was slightly inconvenient because we were trying to get done in time to make a fastpass, because we asked the hostess to check on it in a timely manner, we were still able to eat, enjoy and make our reserved fastpass. Would we do this particular experience again? Actually, yes, my husband has already asked me to make a reservation for the next time we go. The only problem is, that will be in February of 2020, and as of now, the reservation system is only showing availability until November 16, 2019. I’m assuming this is because it’s still in the testing phase, so if it appears to be a successful experience, hopefully they will extend this option into next year. If you are planning a visit before November 16th though, and are interested in this as a dining option, I do highly recommend it. It’s a great experience for a quick-service credit if you are on the dining plan.
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