Be Our Guest Restaurant To Serve Wine and Beer

25 thoughts on “Be Our Guest Restaurant To Serve Wine and Beer”

• Crowds during Wishes & parades is already fraught with jostling & flare-ups between guests who lay claim to turf.

  Add alcohol to that mix & it’s a recipe for disaster, in my opinion.

  Time will tell if I’m correct. I would hope that WDW will monitor the behaviour during crowded situations very closely & either continue to serve alcohol, or cease the practice if things get out of hand.

• Count me as someone who finds it a positive! I don’t imagine anyone is going to get wasted and stumble around Fantasyland, so I think we can all stop the hand-wringing. The park will be no less family friendly because of some wine and beer being served at a fancy sit-down restaurant.

  I cannot imagine anyone is going to get wasted there. And as other posters have pointed out, you see MUCH worse behavior from sober folks (hello have you SEEN these tour groups???) than you’re going to see from the one lady who has a wee bit too much wine and giggles her way through Winnie the Pooh.

  I think Walt would have completely understood the changing times as well as the reasoning behind this, and wouldn’t have minded it in the least.

  I really look forward to eating there and enjoying a nice glass of wine with dinner!

• I had no idea that MK was a “dry” park. I think the addition of beer and wine to the non-character sit down restaurants would be an excellent idea. A glass of wine at Tony’s would have made the meal much better.

• I am very sad about this. I do not drink and while I am used to being the odd family out, I loved that there was a place on earth that I could bring my kids to that I didn’t have to worry about intoxicated people. While I agree that it is unlikely for people to get wasted at a nice sit down restaurant (though some will DEFINITELY do this), my fear is that it is just a matter of time now that many other MK venues will offer alcohol. I also agree that people can be inappropriate while NOT under any influence, but I am saddened to imagine a sloppy drunk in front of us while my very small children wait to board Peter Pan’s Flight.

• Im going to keep pushing for alcohol on the jungle cruise

  • lol

• Count me in as another person in favor of this move. BOG would appear to be cut from a different cloth than most of the MK table service places and finally offers a “nice” place to eat at MK. Offering wine and imported beer is consistent with the menu offerings and the overall vibe it looks like Disney is trying to create.

  Moreover, given that it’s only for dinner, it has to be consumed on premises, and that there aren’t kiosks sprinkled throughout the park, I can’t see this leading to drunks stumbling around MK. As another poster indicated, though, even if someone WERE to have a bit too much, it would be a drop in the bucket as compared to some of the other behavior you witness at the parks at times. 🙂

• When I go, I’ll just pretend I’m boozing it up in a slightly less selective Club 33. True definition of Fantasyland…

• Count me as a vote in favor. Be Our Guest is the closest thing to a fine dining restaurant in the MK, and it’s thematically a French restaurant. In France, wine or beer with a meal is expected, and hardly a vice. It’s not serving hard liquor or cheap domestic beer, but fancier imported French and Belgian beers and French and Californian wines–by the glass, not by the bottle. It’s really a very similar drink menu to Le Cellier, and how many people do you see getting sloppy-drunk there?

  And maybe this will open Disney up to remedying the absurdity of selling engagement packages at CRT with no champagne 🙂 (One of the reasons my planned post-engagement dinner in May 2011 was at Les Chefs de France, not CRT–that and the fact I wanted a more unusual location than Cinderella’s Castle)

  • Obviously you have never gone on the Whisky Flight at LeCellier! 🙂

• “Belgian choices” – Belgium is the country, Belgian is the adjective.

  Sincerely,

  Your Friendly Neighborhood Grammar Police.

  P.S. Now maybe they will serve beer at Gaston’s Tavern, instead of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butterbeer” – after all, it’s a tavern, where you do things like drink beer.

• Allow me be the only positive response, then…

  First, it’s only for dinner service at a restaurant that is very difficult to get an ADR at. So, if you’re Dan Connor (John Goodman’s character from Roseanne), you STILL can’t find beer at the Magic Kingdom – unless you reserve the right to do so at 8am, 180 days earlier. You’ll still need to sprint over to the monorail and head over to EPCOT!

  I don’t see people sitting in Be Our Guest for dinner, pounding back $7 beers and getting wasted. I just don’t. People will have 1-2 drinks, or split a bottle of wine, and that buzz will maybe last them through Wishes. We’re not talking about the Food & Wine atmosphere, where people start double-fisting the drinks at 11am, under the hot Orlando sun, getting dehydrated and sick. This is a short window of time at the end of the day, where you may order a from limited selection of adult beverages to go with your meal. And by the way, have you seen the menu for Be Our Guest? The food is very heavy and hearty. These guests won’t be drinking on an empty stomach – they’ll be washing down a large, rich, multi-course meal, which would significantly cut down on their level of intoxication.

  The only reasons people have a problem with it is because there hasn’t been alcohol in MK for so long, and because there was a stated reason for not having it. It’s not like they used to serve, but things got out of hand, so they had to stop. When folks are walking around all of the other parks, beer in hand, we barely notice. Other than college kinds drinking around World Showcase, I rarely if ever notice people being overly intoxicated. Again, nobody here would be walking around with their drinks, as they must be consumed inside the restaurant.

  I don’t know. It seems to me like the only reason to refrain from serving alcohol in an expensive restaurant is for the sake of keeping up a tradition. I know it’s not what Walt wanted, but we’re not throwing up our arms, saying it’s “very, very sad” that EPCOT isn’t a fully functioning city. Isn’t that what Walt wanted too? If Disney cared THAT much about not changing old standards, there would be no characters in EPCOT. Things change, and unfortunately, many Disney Parks nerds fear change.

• One restaurant serving fine wines and beers (at outrageous prices) only during dinner to compliment fine dining…some 40+ years after the park opened, a park Walt never lived to see. (…so no one knows what Walt would do.)
  I don’t drink alcohol and I don’t own WDW, and I’ll continue to enjoy visting “the happiest place on earth”…and continue to tolerate all manner of ‘stupid guest tricks’ by all the perfectly sober guests I’ve endured over the years in the Magic Kingdom.
  If it bothers people that much, might I suggest they stay home.

  • I completely a agree with you, Joe. Of all of the pet peeves I have about other guests – unsupervised children in sit-down restaurants, people using their smartphones during attractions like Muppet Vision and Star Tours, flash photography during attractions, my view of fireworks being blocked by someone’s cell phone (when you know their video will look like garbage anyway), people using ECVs who clearly don’t need them, slow-walking families blocking walkways, people not using both sides of the line at counter service restaurants, bus line-cutters, etc. – intoxicated guests are very low on my list.

    Not only am I less bothered by them (“Hey, they’re on vacation”), I come across people who are noticeably drunk FAR less often than any of the annoyances I listed above.

  • Joe, are you suggesting that because people do stupid things in theme parks that something should be done to encourage people to do more stupid things? I apologize, but I’m not quite following your logic.

    I also don’t understand why someone has to take the extreme position of either liking everything a park does or not going at all. Obviously, you weigh all good and bad experiences before deciding whether to return for a vacation and there are a lot of aggravations traveling to crowded theme parks, but this decision is a lot bigger than closing a favorite attraction or changing a storefront window. This fundamentally changes one of the principles that made the Magic Kingdom stand out from most other family parks. This alone doesn’t ruin Disney World, but it’s a step in the wrong direction.

    • Exactly, it the step in the wrong direction.

• Disappointed for all the above reasons.

• Im still waiting on drinks during jungle cruise

• Very, very sad. Let’s serve alcohol in Fantasyland. It’s something Disney can be proud of and I don’t care if it’s only beer and wine. It just demonstrates that Disney wants the money more than they want to uphold their traditional image in a children’s park. When we see all the family photos in front of the castle in their advertisements, the adults can be holding a beer. Am I dramtic, yes, but if you look back to when Disney didn’t serve and the amount of intoxicated poeple wandering around, there is quite a difference.

  It will soon spread to all the other sit-down restaurants in the Magic Kingdom if they don’t receive much negative criticism when they do their surveys. It’s only a matter of time. Hypocrites…

  I do my drinking at Epcot and with all the new opportunities and options to drink, I think EPCOT is on its way to getting out of hand. I see many more drunks just in the last few years. Reminds me of the original Pleaseure Island with all the open bars.

• I’m disappointed too. Yes I drink, but i’ve yet to have a meal that I thought wasn’t “just right” because it was missing an adult beverage. I can enjoy a relaxing meal in a wonderful restaurant just fine with a diet coke. IMO, if you can’t go 1 dang day without wine with your meal, than you have a problem. Walt didn’t want Alcohol in the Magic Kingdom. This is a bad move.

• While I do imbibe, I am disappointed in the decision to serve alcohol at the new Be Our Guest restaurant. It will only be a matter of time before the other sit-downs in the park will serve it as well. (And don’t those sit-downs fill their dining rooms night after night?) Walt himself did not want alcohol served. In a place of innocence and wonderment, I don’t like to think of the possibility of drunks stumbling around.

• I too was disappionted by this decision. I was not aware that this was going to be an option when I sat for literally hours on hold to book a reservation the day lines opened. I hope this will not ruin our dining experience because I did get my new years eve reservation!I would like to believe that this will not be a problem but, we have not enjoyed other parks particularly during certain times of the year due to excesive drinking and new years eve can be a reason for some to over consume.
  With Disney having so many options for adults to enjoy a drink, I struggle to understand why they choose to make this change in policy at Magic Kingdom. I hope that this will not mean that more options at MK will become available in the future.

• I drink occasionally too, but I also don’t like this idea. Not attaching any morals too it, just think there are plenty of other places to drink. The Magic Kingdom is unique and this takes away from that a bit(although I’m sure it will remain one of my favorite places:)).

• I drink and often enjoy an adult beverage with a meal or while walking around the parks, but this news saddens me a little. I’ve grown to like the uniqueness of the Magic Kingdom keeping alcohol off the premises. That’s not to say I haven’t had a few drinks at the Polynesian before going into the park, but the idea of people drinking inside the park doesn’t sit well with me. Just picturing some of the people I see stumbling around Epcot at night doing the same thing while riding Winnie the Pooh makes the park a little less family friendly.

  • I too liked that MK was a dry park but i really really doubt it will be at the same level as epcot. at epcot you have the world showcase with dozens of places to get dozens of types of beer, wine, and spirits. you can also carry it freely from country to country. here we’re talking about one single venue and only during dinner service. and you’re not permitted to bring the drinks outside of the restaurant. i doubt people are really going to sit down and have a dozen beers at a nice dinner seating especially at normal disney prices. and remember at epcot you can start drinking at 11am and keep on truckin until you pass out.

    to be honest i’ve been stepped on and cut off by plenty of stone sober people, especially at MK. i’ve even seen a fist fight between two grown men because one kid wanted to ride the haunted mansion and the other kid was too scared.

    hopefully this won’t be a huge issue, but again i do agree that i liked the dry environment of the park. i haven’t had any drinks at the poly, might have to check them out next time i’m down there 🙂

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