California Grille and fireworks ?

[Daisy57b]

I've heard so much about this restaurant and I'm putting it on the list! Got a few questions:

1. The fireworks in MK aren't every night, right??? Where can I get park hours and fireworks info for March 2004?

2. Do you need to request a certain seating area to see the fireworks, or is every seat at California Grille a good seat?

We're thinking the Sunday that we are there would be the best day for us to go - it will be our relaxing day! But I don't want to make reservations if there will be no fireworks that night.

THANKS!

 

[Peter Pirate]

The fireworks are not every night...Check Disney.com for the hours for your visit.

As for the CG you can't request a fireworks view. It's just hit or miss. Only a small percentage of the tables actually have what would be considered a good view of the fireworks so it would be a nightmare for them to try and accept requests.

They have a great Observation deck where the music is also piped and the view is wonderful, so it's really no problem...

 

[ahutton]

We looked around for what the park hours "usually" are for the time period we were going, and then tried to approximate when fireworks might be if they are having them. March is a good chance they will have fireworks, it gets a bit more crowded with Spring Break so the MK is open a bit later. The hours are often not yet available when the 90 day window hits, so make your best guess, and then once the hours do get posted you can always call back and try to adjust.

We got lucky this year, I made the PS for 6:20, figuring the park would close at 6 or 7. Either we would watch from the deck before dinner if it was early, or we would be seated if it was later. If it was too much later we could have tried to push dinner back. Turns out the show is at 7:00, so we should be seated and maybe close to waiting for dessert depening on how fast things move that night!

 

[Uncleromulus]

Daisy:
Only the window tables have what I'd call an excellent view of the fireworks. You can request one when you arrive.
But as Pirate indicated, they have an observation deck where you can just walk out (even in the middle of your meal) enjoy the fireworks, then come back in and resume eating. The staff there is quite used to that and it's no problem. In fact, it's what we always do when we eat at CG--we don't even bother requesting a window table.

 

[justhat]

We decided to eat there at the last minute on our trip last week and called Friday for a Sunday night PS and got a 9:20 seating! It was a MNSSHP that night so the fireworks were scheduled for 9:15, so we figured it would be perfect since we'd get there early, watch the fireworks from teh observation deck, then hopefully we'd have a table when we came back in. Well we ended up getting there much earlier because we went to the 7:30 Fantasmic, shopped a little at the Contemporary, then went up to CG, around 8:45. Our table wouldn't be ready for awhile they said but since my 'morning' sickness had returned that night, I was perfectly fine with sitting in the lounge area to wait. We got lucky enough to get a window table in the lounge and after waiting there awhile we noticed people were eating at the other lounge tables. So we asked how long it would be till our table was ready and they said maybe 15-20 minutes from that point, but that there were no fireworks that night so it might be sooner with people leaving faster. I thought that sounded funny, but they showed us the note they got that said no fireworks on 10/19 so we believed it. Anyway, since our table wasn't ready, we asked if we could order food int he lounge and they said we could get anything off of the menu and eat it there. We decided to do that since it was getting late and it was a good thing we did because no sooner did we get menus when the fireworks started going off! They called our table about a minute later, so we ended up moving after the fireworks ended, but we thought it was a good tip to know that you can eat a full meal at those tiny lounge tables (as long as you don't mind not being at a full size table). We saw some people who came into the lounge just to watch the fireworks, and they were able to sit at the tables and order drinks and food too, with no PS and no waiting to eat. The next time we go back we might do this if we decide to eat there without a PS again.