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View Full Version : soap opera bistro.......



missymouse
01-15-2003, 10:15 AM
I never got a chance to eat there, and I hear it is now gone, to be replaced with Playhouse Disney. Can anyone tell me what it was like? So many people really seemed to love it, and I was just wondering why???????????

Christiii
01-15-2003, 10:26 AM
It was really fun, and the food was wonderful!! They had different areas decorated from different sets of ABC sopas..Im not a big soap watcher, but Im sure the areas looked pretty good. They had all the staff dress and candy stripers or doctors etc, and then a group of actors that would walk around and make up a soap with the diners. It wa reaaallly funny...i ususally hate corny things like that, but these people did a great job!! One of the guys is on The Jamie Kennedy Experiment now, as kind of his right hand man..at the restaurant he wore a smoking jacket and played kind of the rich, snobby kind of guy. Ive eaten there more than once, and it was a great place to sit down, have a really good meal and have fun!! Also, attacted to the place they had a store where you could buy props and shoes etc..that were worn and signed by the soap stars. The prices were not bad either!! Im not a soap fan, but if I was, Im sure I would have bought something there...they had the props and then a pic of the scene with them in it....it was really fun, Im sorry that it did not catch on....

Ghoulish Delight
01-15-2003, 10:29 AM
I enjoyed it (and I'm not even a big soap fan), but the prices were just too high. There are already pleanty of other $15+ dining options at the resort. That location really didn't call for one. If they had made it in the $8-$15 range, I think it would have had much more success.

Christiii
01-15-2003, 10:44 AM
I really liked the indoor sit down factor...plus Ive learned how to eat at Disneyland...I eather get a kids meal (not at the sit down places) or the person Im with and I will split an entree and a salad or something...doing that....plus the AP discount..really helps!!! The meal portions are so big, that I find the kids meal perfect!! If you really look at the plates after people leave, there is sooo much food left...hardly anyone ever finishes all the food..especially those huge desserts..people have got to learn to split things or have a huge food budget!! Plus I like eating lighter at the park, I need energy for those rides!!

hbquikcomjamesl
01-15-2003, 11:22 AM
Even if you weren't a soap opera fan, if you knew anything whatsoever about TV production, the theming and the schtick all rang true. I didn't find the prices at all out-of-line, considering as how it was a full table-service restaurant with entertainment. I'm sorry to see it go, but there have been some suggestions that assuming ToT brings in enough traffic to support a restaurant, Playhouse Disney will eventually go bye-bye, and SOB will re-open, either as SOB, or as some other TV-production-themed restaurant. We can but hope.

Personally, I think the biggest reason why SOB wasn't more popular is that the soap opera theme scared off many non-soap-fans.

Back when Wolfgang still ran Avalon Cove as a pricey gourmet restaurant, SOB was really the only sit-down comfort-food restuarant in the whole park. Everything else was either fast food or expensive/gourmet. (For the record, it annoys me no end that the Plaza Inn went "food court," and that DCA has no buffeteria restaurants. Food courts may be trendy, but for comfort food on the cheap, you can't beat a buffeteria.)

Christiii
01-15-2003, 11:35 AM
I really love the Avalon Cove food!! It is not cheap but with my AP it isnt bad....the better deal is lunch...I love to get the oinion soup and the cajun ceasar salad..the best Ive had!! Yum!! I love the cotton candy that comes with the bill too....I never ate there when wolfgang had it ( I wish I had) and I dont eat there muc hnow since it is kind of out of the way, but I could go for some of that onion soup right now!!

disneynut
01-15-2003, 12:00 PM
We are letting our ap's expire and not renewing. So over New Year's when we went down we decided to try things we hadn't done before. One of them was eating at Avalon Cove. It was an experience we would not repeat again. The food was horrible and the service was even worse. And what's this about cotton candy with your bill??? We didn't get any cotton candy.

And not to completely derail this thread....I wish we would've tried SOB when it was still around just because of the atmosphere.

Christiii
01-15-2003, 12:16 PM
gosh I guess you hit a bad day!! Everything our party had was wonderful..the kids get little plastic pails and shovels with cotton candy, and we got a big wad of cotton candy with our bill...BUT I must say its been almost a year since Ive been there...so it certainly could have changed!! :-(

mad4mky
01-15-2003, 12:20 PM
We went to the now "Ariel's Grotto" two weeks ago. Ick. The Onion soup was soooo salty, you couldn't eat it. The hot dog "octupus" my daughter got was creamated, we should have buried it. She couldn't eat it, as it was all chewy and hard.

The service was awful. Pluto never came over (we were by the water at the end of the patio area). She was very disappointed. We did get to see Ariel though, and not another kid was around her.

The wait was too long...and the food over priced. The food tasted like it had been taken out of frozen packages and either microwaved or deepfried.

I wouldn't go back.:(

Christiii
01-15-2003, 12:47 PM
wow it reeaaly musta changed!! :-(

DisneyGuy03
01-15-2003, 01:03 PM
Ok, I was specifically told by guest relations one time that when you have a bad experience with the food anywhere in the parks you are supposed to say something imeadiately and it will be taken care of.

If anyone is wondering the details fo why I was told this:
I was at Disneyland with my family during thier once a year trip, I still love having the annual pass, anyway, we went to eat at the then brand new Red Rockett's Piza Port and got their BBQ Chicken Pizza and it was awful, the bread was stale and all, but myself, everyone says I have a lead stomach, were a little sick (not too bad, but just enough to be annoying) aftewards, oh and the BBQ sauce had no taste to it at all, I still can't stand any of their pizzas, anyway, we also had one of my friends with us, so my parents decide that they want to go back to thier horel room for a little while and we would meet back up in a few hours, so my friend and I go into City Hall and tell them what happened. They are extremely appologetic and give us coupons to get a free meal latter (at the time I think the value was like $7 per person, but you could get a complete meal, including drinks for that price and we had just gotten one whole pizza to share, so the dollar amounts worked out to about the same) My parents were shocked when we met back up with them and we told them what we got, we weren't suprised, we knew Disney liked to take care of it's guests, but when Guest Relations handed us the tickets they said that next time we should say something right then and there and that it would be taken care of and if it still wasn't to our satisfaction ask for the lead, then area's restraunt manager if needed.

As for the wait at Ariel's Grotto, am I the only one that notices all the empty tables (in areas that people are already sitting) even when there's a long line out the door? To me this in inexcusable, it was esp. bad on New Years Eve....I mean, I understand if one section is closed, but people are already sitting there, eating, being served, etc, so the area isn't closed, but there are tons of empty tables.

Ghoulish Delight
01-15-2003, 01:58 PM
Originally posted by DisneyGuy03
As for the wait at Ariel's Grotto, am I the only one that notices all the empty tables (in areas that people are already sitting) even when there's a long line out the door? To me this in inexcusable, it was esp. bad on New Years Eve....I mean, I understand if one section is closed, but people are already sitting there, eating, being served, etc, so the area isn't closed, but there are tons of empty tables. It may be a staffing issue. If they were short handed, filling more tables will not relieve any wati times as those sitting will just get served more slowly as the staff is stretched thinner.

It's a pale excuse, the solution to which is simple...spend some bucks and hire more people. Or, start treating your employees better and motivate them to show up for more shifts (depending on if the shortage was due to underhiring, or lack of desire to work a holiday).

cstephens
01-15-2003, 07:10 PM
Originally posted by missymouse
I never got a chance to eat there, and I hear it is now gone, to be replaced with Playhouse Disney. Can anyone tell me what it was like? So many people really seemed to love it, and I was just wondering why???????????

What I miss most about Soap Opera Bistro is their amazing breakfast (http://www.colddeadfish.net/bistro050501.html).

disneynut
01-16-2003, 09:42 PM
Originally posted by Christiii
..the kids get little plastic pails and shovels with cotton candy,

We saw kids with the pails and shovels but I just assumed that the parents bought them or something because my kids didn't get that. It sounds like your experience was wonderful Christii~I wish they could've maintained that service.

m4m...it sounds like we were there at about the same time. Were you there around the 4th?

blusilva
01-18-2003, 11:32 AM
What I miss the most about Soap Opera Bistro is the Code Blues. One was all it took for a nice buzz. And it didn't taste bad either. ;)

Seriously, though, they had great food (yeah, pricey, but sometimes I like an alternative to a respectively pricey burger/fries combo) and I liked the interior sets. My favorite was the Buchannan stables with the whinnying horse audio. It drove my dining companions nuts, but I really thought it was a neat touch. It reminded me of Blue Bayou, except not so serious. And the actors would play along with your table only as much as you wanted them to. If you made it clear that they would better spend their time at another table, then they wouldn't be up in your face while you were trying to eat or converse or whatever.

The Soap Opera Bistro was my third favorite thing in DCA (after the Animation Building and the roller coaster), so I really do miss it.

PurpleDove33
01-19-2003, 07:30 AM
I enjoyed eating at the SOB too. And it was a nice place to have a sit down meal. I got to eat in all the rooms except the Chandler Mansion. On the last day it was open, our party decided to eat there one last time. And there was a long wait. But the Chandler Mansion was full up, so we ended up again at Kellys diner. Each time when I ate there, I planed on trying something differant. That last day we all tried the BBQ chicken pizza and it came with a salad. And it came to about 10 dollors which I didn't think was so bad at lunch time. Sometimes you almost pay that much for a burger at other places anyway. I miss the dessert they had, the moca hazelnut ice cream smore. Oh was that soooooooo good!! To bad most of the time, I got full and didn't get desert. One time on the program on Soap Net, on the show Soap Talk, they had the head chef on to show some of the meals and they showed that desert and of course the next time, I had to try it. I did hear, they left the kitchen in their, so lets hope they bring it back or something else. IMO, I think they should have put Playhouse Disney back in the corner where Hollywood and Dine was. It has been closed for several months and IMO they need more foot traffic back in that area.