I'm going to WDW in late March with my 8 and 5 year olds. Currently have reservations at Polynesian.
Is there anywhere to check the kids menus of walk up and table service restaurants we might use with the plan?
My 8 year old is a gourmet and really needs quality food and rarely finds anything appealing on kids menus. The 5 year old, however , is fine with typical kids' menus.

Thanks,
Elaine from California

I think MP has menus somewhere, but I usually use allears'.


Kona Cafe kid's menu (http://www.allearsnet.com/menu/menu_kck.htm) (O'hana is family style)


All menus (http://www.allearsnet.com/menu/menus.htm)

This link (http://allears.net/din/dining.htm) is probably your best bet.
As a side note, I will be the first one (and surely not the last one) to say that the child menu's are limited (selection-wise) at best. The good part is that for buffets (or AYCE eateries) your kids can choose anything that is offered.

While on the dining plan, with usually go for buffets, or one of the places, like LeCellier that offers a steak for kids. Some of the buffets are very good, particularly Boma, or, if you like clams and other seafood, Cape May Buffet at the Beach Club.

These are great hints.....I'll do some research and we'll decide the bes tway to go.
Thanks much,
Elaine

We were on the meal plan in August with my 5 and 6 year olds. I was very disappointed in the children's menus. Most places only had macaroni and cheese and chicken fingers. Neither of which will my son eat -- so it was a challenge. I also felt that there were no healthy choices for my kids. My son loves salad (strange I know), and what would it take to offer a tossed salad for the kids. I agree with the other posters that the buffets are a better way to go.

You should be fine for sit down dining with the research however the counter service will be a challenge. Mostly high fat choices. At Peco's in MK we ordered the apple slices in lieu of french fries. They gave her fries - out of apples today was the retort, no healthy choices, more take it or leave it.
The choices were limited on the kids menu's at the counter type at our hotel also. Yak & Yeti's choice of a like children's fare was Fried Rice and an egg roll. My opinion was Yak's kids meal was a side dish and an appetizer no main course. I wish they would offer the same entree's in child size portions.

If you are not on the Dining Plan, and not at a buffet, you can always order appetizers, salads, etc. a la carte for a child, and can share an entree with your child, or split one between them. We have ordered a regular adult entree that both kids will eat, and just split it between them. With the changes to the Dining Plan, starting in 2008, it is not as good a value as it was (they no longer include the tip).

My 8 year old is a gourmet and really needs quality food and rarely finds anything appealing on kids menus.


We've had that problem with our son ...he typically wants whatever mom and dad are eating...he's now four and we have found very few foods that he doesn't eat. The kids menu's tend to be the same four or so items everywhere...hot dog, hamburger, chicken strips...that's it.

While they don't generally advertise it, there usually is no problem at all with ordering your child something off the adult menu at the counter service locations when using a Dining Plan credit. I think there was only one case that we ran into any kind of resistance (at Flame Tree Barbecue in Animal Kingdom) and there the cashier just insisted on ringing up our son's sandwich in a separate transaction from my wife's and mine (a CM that I trust told me later that this likely was just a confused cashier).

We did find that the poor kid's meal selections at the counter service restaurants was often a problem as the kid's choices rarely met our son's tastes. Flame Tree was actually the stupidest one we encountered. The only kid's choices were baked chicken wings or hot dogs. They didn't have any of the BBQ items available for kids and our son absolutely loves BBQ. He certainly wasn't going to be happy with either of the kid choices while my wife and I were eating BBQ beef or pork sandwiches. We ended up just getting him one of the adult sandwiches and he was perfectly happy with that. There are also some completely inexplicable kid's menu situations in the parks such as Cosmic Rays in the Magic Kingdom, which doesn't have a kid's burger available.

They are very strict about enforcing the use of kid's credits only for items on the kid's menus at the table service locations, but we didn't really find that to be a problem. Most of the table service locations do have pretty decent selections on the kid's menu and he even got to try a couple relatively exotic items. The one that particularly comes to mind was the lobster bisk at Coral Reef, which he actually really loved. In fact, our son seems to love soup of any kind and he pretty much managed to get a bowl of soup as an appetizer at just about every table service meal on our trip (we also did the 4-night cruise and the waiter was pretty much just bringing him the soup automatically by the end...)

-Jeff

Most of the table service locations do have pretty decent selections on the kid's menu and he even got to try a couple relatively exotic items.
To add to what Jeff mentioned, there have been some related threads in the past that talked about getting a childs portion of an adult selection. However, if I recall correctly, it was not really confirmed or denied that this could be done, let alone done at all the TS places. In short, some mentioned that it was up to your server if they would allow it.

So, I guess you could try doing such and letting us know what happens. :)

Interested in seeing comments from people since the last posting on using Child CS DDP credits to purchase Adult CS Meals, as I also have a soon to be 8 year old who won't always be happy withthe Kids Meal choices at some of the CS stops we're planning on.

Don't want to tell you how to break the rules, but when we were at WDW on the free dining plan last August my son had adult CS meals several times. The lines were long, so he would usually sit with Daddy while Mommy was in line. At the time, there was no differencein how the dining plan credits appeared, so I would just order 3 adult meals.

i do believe on the WDW computer they will just say you have x number of CS's They do not say child or adult. We had no trouble getting adult food.