Tips for Finding Restaurant Information on TouringPlans

Hey, did y’all know that here at TouringPlans we have menu information for all the restaurants at Disney World? “Yeah, yeah,” you say, “All that stuff is on the official Disney World website. Why do I need you?” Well, you are right there are menus on the Disney website, but those menus are static. You can see them, but you can’t do anything with them.

The TouringPlans menu function has interactive features that can help make your dining planning faster and easier, working better for your personal needs.

How do I find the TouringPlans dining information?

Head on over to our Disney World Restaurants page. That’s the starting point for all your research.

I want to see information about the restaurants in a specific theme park. How do I do that?

There are several ways to do this on the TouringPlans website, but one of the easiest is to look at the sidebar that appears on many of our pages. Look for the Disney World Dining section. To see the menus for a specific park, click on one of the “In-Park Dining” links. For example, MK for Magic Kingdom. (EP is Epcot, HS is Disney’s Hollywood Studios, AK is Animal Kingdom, TL is Typhoon Lagoon Water Park, BB is Blizzard Beach water park).

What next?

After you click on the Magic Kingdom (for example), you get some basic tips specific to that park. Then scroll down a bit to our lists of Best Table Service and Best Quick Service restaurants at that location. Right there you have oodles more information than you’ll get on the official WDW site because we give real evaluations. You can tell at a glance which restaurants will give you a better quality experience.

How can I learn about the specifics of a particular restaurant?

Just click on the name of any restaurant and you’ll be taken to a page with in-depth details including prices, hours, discount options, links to blog articles and recent news coverage of the location, separate ratings for quality and service, links to full menus, our recommendations for the best food on the menu, photos of the venue, and even the phone number of the restaurant, if there is one.

For example, if you clicked on the Skipper Canteen link, this is just some of the information you’d find.

Can I see full menus?

Sure, just click on the individual menu links. Note that if there is a special menu of any sort (kids’, dessert, breakfast, allergy-friendly), we’ll have a link to it.

All the menus include pricing.

My kid only eats mac n’ cheese? Do I have to click on every menu to find places that have it?

No way! This is where the TouringPlans version of menu planning really excels. At the top of every restaurant page and at the bottom or the main WDW Dining page, you’ll find a search box.

You can search for a particular menu item across all locations, or (via drop-down menus) you can limit your search to a specific theme park or other location within Walt Disney World. You can also limit your search to a particular type of restaurant such as table service, quick service, or bar.

Searching just mac cheese gets LOTS of hits.

Limiting your search to just one park makes it more manageable.

Are there other search tricks?

Yep. Using some standard Google search tools works here as well. So a search for cheese pizza gives a list of everything with cheese OR pizza in the item or description field.

But searching “cheese pizza” (with the quotation marks) limits the search to just the exact phrase cheese pizza.

That doesn’t seem like a lot of places that offer pizza. Is that really right?

Well, sort of. That’s all the cheese PIZZA in the Magic Kingdom, but remember that Disney often tries to be fancy when naming its menu items. In many restaurants, they use the term “flatbread” to describe baked dough with sauce and cheese. Searching cheese pizza flatbread captures both.

Similarly if you want chicken nuggets, search chicken nugget fingers strips to get all the permutations.

Anything else?

In my opinion, one of the best features of the TouringPlans menu tool is the ability to search for items relevant to guests with allergies. For example, searching allergy pizza in the Magic Kingdom easily uncovers places that have pizza amenable to the needs of various allergy constituencies.

Even just searching allergy in Magic Kingdom Quick Service brings up information that would take dozens of clicks on the WDW website.

Another fun trick is using the TouringPlans menu tool to find interesting snacks. Try leaving the search field blank and select Quick Service and a particular park (Magic Kingdom, for example) and check the “Show DDP-eligible snacks only” box.

This will result in a list of ALL the snack-credit qualifying items. Did you know that you can get a Venti Frappuccino or a side of guacamole for snack credit? Now you do. And since the prices are listed right there, you also know which is a better value use of your snack credit.

A well planned search on TouringPlans can save you hundreds of clicks on the Disney website and thousands of steps in the parks as you look for food that’s right for your family.