It's been 2 years since my family has been to Disney world. I know that Disney is great at accommodating food allergies at all their restaurants especially the TS restaurants. But I was wondering if anyone has tips, experiences or preferred dining in dealing with food allergies. I have a kid who has dairy, egg, and beef allergies.
Best experiences? Worst Experiences?
Any recommended QS (at any park) that were better for allergies? As I plan what QS my family would like and look at menus, I'm always wondering what (if anything) my kid can eat there.
Is there a website that actually shows the allergy notebooks from each restaurant?
Do you think they will updated the mobile ordering to better work with food allergies?
I'll take any information you want to give. And thank you in advance.
The ingredient books are only available at the specific location, and can change due to what supplier they used, etc.
WDW has recently started putting the allergy menus for some of their QS restaurants on their website and
MDE app. For restaurants that have it online, it is at the bottom of the normal menu. Cosmic Ray's is one example, and often a good choice for many of those with allergies. There are a few problems with the allergy menus though:
- they may not reflect all of what is available -- e.g. sometimes other things can be made safe by changing how is is prepared or leaving something off and pretty much aside from turning hamburgers into cheeseburgers they really don't seem to reflect that well in the allergy menus.
- once you start dealing with multiple allergens the menus become particularly problematic -- e.g the same bun may be safe for allergies x y z, but they use a different one for allergy w. An example: often to get a dairy-free bun it will be the gluten-free bun they use, but those often have eggs. They may have an egg-free bun but it probably has milk and may have wheat. They may not have a bun that is both dairy and egg free.
We use the normal menu + allergy menu as a guide to the likely options of what is possible, or to ID places to a void outright (I am ana milk, peanut, tree nut, and seafood, so somewhere like Columbus House which has a massive amount of seafood is not an option at all for me -- can't even walk into the place).
But when we order we always ask to s peak with the allergy-trained supervisor or chef to place our order. On our last trip we got some pushback at some places, but insisted. We stopped getting pushback when I would start with "I have multiple life-threatening food allergies and would like to speak to someone who is allergy-trained about placing my order".
I highly doubt mobile ordering will change to allow for multiple allergies, and if it does it is likely to only account for the top 8.
As for restaurants, for QS we like backlot express (DHS), cosmic rays (MK), liberty inn (Epcot). Also many of the hotel resort QS are great, and often have more options possible than the in-park QS.
SW