Dining at Magic Kingdom

Ranking restaurants at Disney’s least food friendly park

Dining at Magic Kingdom is both crazily underrated and perfectly and correctly rated at the same time. We are ranking the Magic Kingdom restaurants.

While the above sentence may not make literal sense, I can assure you that the concept is sound. While Disney’s other Orlando parks – especially Animal Kingdom and EPCOT – are epicurean friendly, Magic Kingdom is first and foremost a kid’s park and the culinary vision is aligned.

Magic Kingdom is filled with places slinging hot dogs and chicken strips and flatbread pizzas and the like. There are places for adults to eat a meal but even then, they tend to pale in comparison to the options in the World Showcase, Asia and Africa in Animal Kingdom, or even across Hollywood Studios.

Another thing that affect Magic Kingdom’s dining reputation is that many of the best items are really snacks or sold from the snack locations.

Your best dining day at Magic Kingdom may well consist of cheeseburger spring rolls, Dole Whip, Tiana’s beignets, or a waffle with Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread, Bananas, Berries, and Whipped Cream. You can feed a family with a turkey leg from Prince Eric’s Village Market and never set foot inside a proper restaurant all day.

Still, there are gems among Magic Kingdom’s restaurants. And we’re going to help you find the diamonds in the rough.

To be clear, however, this isn’t simply a list of the places where they have the absolute best food. We’re weighing a variety of factors including price, overall experience, and the practicality of the meal. The food in The Diamond Horseshoe is quite good, for example, but there’s a reason we don’t eat holiday-style feasts year round. Downing a Diamond Horseshoe meal of roasted turkey, pot roast, pork loin and heavy sides is fine if the agenda for the rest of the day is watching football and napping. When you eat all that stuff and then go out into 105-degree heat index, walk more steps than you do in a typical week, and start jumping on and off rides that spin, duck, dodge, dip, and dive, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Ranking Magic Kingdom dining experiences

No. 1 Cinderella’s Royal Table

Years ago, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a writer mentor of mine wrote about the New Orleans he loved. He told an anecdote about a dinner at a fancy place and a waiter who approached his duties with pride, precision, and care.

He treated waiting like it was his calling, a great avocation and not merely a job. The closest I’ve ever come to that was at Cinderella’s Royal Table of all places. I can’t guarantee that your experience will be the same, I suspect it was more unique to our individual waiter than the whole operation. But it was indicative of the experience.

I suspect Cinderella’s Royal Table has the best food in the park though I can hear the wisenheimers out there saying, “For that price, it better be.” And things like the price – dinner is $90 per adult – and the lack of availability made me consider lowering CRT in the rankings,

But ultimately, Cinderella’s Castle is the centerpiece of Disney World – not just Magic Kingdom – and you could make the argument that it’s the most significant single location in Florida tourism, the hub of the wheel. Is there anything that can beat getting to dine there? At any price?

No. 2 Casey’s Corner

We swing wildly across the spectrum of dining experiences to a quick service hot dog spot with not nearly enough available seating, a flock of unruly ducks ready to snatch a corndog nugget at a moment’s notice, and a fairly limited menu.

And still, we love it.

Casey’s Corner is Walt Disney icon that still slings Walt’s favorites – the hot dog – with surprising aplomb.

In a place where budgetary factors are always a concern, Casey’s a place where a family can get a filling and tasty meal for $60-$75. I’m not here to tell you that’s cheap or affordable, but I’ve been to other theme parks where the quality is less and the price is higher.

No. 3 Jungle Navigation Co. LTD Skipper Canteen

Probably my personal favorite of the Magic Kingdom restaurants, I spent years walking past this place in Adventureland – probably on my way to get Dole Whip without ever really considering or trying it.

I like the theming.

I like the menu even if it isn’t cheap.

Most of the entrees are over $30 but my favorite, the Hanger Steak, comes in at $41. But it’s good – slightly adventurous – food that won’t sit too heavily on your stomach.

No. 4 The Crystal Palace

I didn’t mention this above but my general position on character dining is don’t do it in the park. Character dining is extraordinarily expensive and if you’re going to do it, you should do it at one of the hotel spots so that you can take a little bit more time and not spend a significant part of your park day – which you paid quite a bit of money for – waiting to meet a character at a buffet place. Still, the Crystal Palace buffet is good, and the chance to meet the Hundred Acre Wood gang is not offered outside the park.

If you’re going to do the Crystal Palace buffet, your best bet is to rope drop as much as you can and make your reservations just before the end of the breakfast service at 10:45 a.m.

A 10:30 a.m. reservation will cost $54 but will allow you to access both the breakfast options as well as the lunch, which costs $10 more per head. Saving $20-$40 on a $200 meal may not seem like much, but any savings you can realize at Disney is good savings.

No. 5 Columbia Harbour House

Somewhat hidden, somewhat under-appreciated, the dining spot at the back end of Liberty Square offers a surprisingly credible lobster roll.

This is a good option for families with several entrees under $15, including the chicken tenders or fried seafood plates.

The lobster roll isn’t huge, but if you’re eating fairly light in the park, there are worse ways to go.

No. 6 Tony’s Town Square

Much maligned spaghetti and meatball place is better than its reputation.

The menu exists – on the heaviness scale – somewhere between the Jungle Navigation and the Diamond Horseshoe, but a good blast of carbs can be just what the doctor ordered on a Disney day.

Prices are a little better than Jungle Navigation Co. LTD Skipper Canteen.

N0. 7 Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn & Cafe

Not a lot of choice out in the old west. You can get a burger, or a Coca-Cola Cherry-braised pork sandwich. Or choose from a small variety of bowls.

The affordability score is good as is the BBQ sandwich. Disney does BBQ pretty well. Location isn’t great. It feels like you have to walk past a lot of restaurants to get out there.

However, it is a great place to grab lunch and eat in your parade viewing spot while waiting for the parade to start. The Festival of Fantasy parade starts in Frontierland in the pathway between Pecos and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Grab a bowl and lockdown your parade spot.

No. 8 The Plaza Restaurant

A variety of sandwiches – good but with prices that are a little out of whack with the rest of the park. The Bacon Cheeseburger is $27, $11 more than the one at Pecos Bill.

The Plaza’s is the better burger – fancier – but it’s not $11 fancier. A Chick-fil-A style chicken sandwich will cost you $25, and a club sandwich comes in at $21. The food isn’t bad. It’s nice. But the value isn’t fantastic.

No. 9 Be Our Guest

This is simply a matter of cost.

Going by the food alone, Be Our Guest would be higher – maybe top 4. The pork chop is quite good and I like the short rib beef bourguignon.

But the $72 per adult prize tag is a lot.

It’s also tough when you order from the kids menu where the chicken strips or mac and cheese or pan-seared chicken will cost $43.

No. 10 The Diamond Horseshoe & Liberty Tree Tavern

These two restaurants are ranked together because they share a kitchen and serve the same Thanksgiving-style meal.

It’s all you care to eat and is actually quite good.

But as we said above it’s so heavy, and at $42 an adult, you have to eat a considerable amount to feel like you’ve got your money’s worth.

From November – January, I’d rank these higher on the list, but if we’re talking the whole year round? They’re just not overly practical dining options.

No. 11 Pinocchio Village Haus

The menu, I will admit, is not adventurous. Flatbread pizzas, chicken parm, chicken strips, and all that. But there’s a lot of seating, not a terrible wait – usually – and if you can get the tables overlooking It’s a Small World, there is fun to be had.

In fact, one of our favorite Disney memories is our youngest two, being silly and trying to get the attention of the boat riders before they enter the ride proper.

They held up the Disney-provided signs, they shook and flapped like those air-blown figures used car lots employ to attract any attention and generally had a blast.

The folks in the boats played along to the point I feared our youngest daughter was covertly building her own army of arm-flinging tourists willing to do whatever she bade.

No. 12 The Beak & Barrel

This bar-lounge table service restaurant leans heavily on the bar side of things. I started not to rank it at all due to the limited menu which includes a couple of kinds of corn griddle cakes, a handful of chips and dips, and the completely ordinary choice of marinated octopus tentacles.

Somehow, I still rank it above Cosmic Ray’s.

No. 13 Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe

In my experiences, Cosmic Ray’s has been frequently overwhelmed.

The sandwiches are pretty flavorless, and the chicken strips and fries are the same as most places in the park. The animatronic piano player is fun for a few minutes, but this places is where you go when you’ve zombied out, need to rest, cool off, and absolutely, positively need to eat something, anything.

It’s sustenance and little more.

But, it is affordable sustenance, so there’s that.