In this quick guide, we talk about rotational dining aboard the Disney Wonder. We’ll start with why it’s called rotational dining before discussing the schedule, restaurants, and our thoughts on the experience.
About This Quick guide
This quick guide is meant to give a simple, straightforward overview of the quick service dining options aboard the Disney Wonder cruise ship. It supplements our lengthy Disney Wonder Alaskan Cruise Trip Report. This post does not cover quick service dining, which we talk about in a different quick guide.
Rotational Dining Basics
Rotational dining is an innovative but straightforward concept for your nightly dinner. There are three table service restaurants on the Disney Wonder that are a part of rotational dining—Triton’s, Tiana’s Place, and Animator’s Palate. Over seven nights, you’ll be scheduled for dinner at each twice and one of them three times.
The “rotational” part of rotational dining is that your server team will “rotate” with you for all seven dinners. This means you’ll have the same Server, Assistant Server, and Head Server for each meal.
If you’re seated at a table with other guests, those guests will also rotate with you each meal. You can put in a request for a private table as part of managing your cruise reservation. In the past we didn’t do this as a couple and were always seated with other couples. This trip, with Zoe, we requested and received a private table.
Rotational Dining Schedule
When you book your cruise, you’ll pick whether you want the early (5:45PM) or late (8:15PM) seating for dinner. The early time is more popular, and if it isn’t available by the time you get to check in, you’ll be able to “waitlist” for it.
This scheduling coincides with the schedule for the feature entertainment on the cruise. Three nights had the “feature” shows that the ship is known for at 6PM and 8:30PM. If you have the early dinner you can watch the later showtime, and if you have the later dinner you can watch the earlier showtime. (To be clear, you’re allowed to watch either showtime if you, e.g., skip dinner.)
If you have small kids—we have one—you might feel like there’s no perfect answer here. With the early dinner, they get a normal dinner time and then have to be up late, in a theater, to watch the feature entertainment. With the late dinner, you’ll fit the feature entertainment in easily but then have a (probably) grumpy kid during a late dinner.
There are two decent options. First, you might skip rotational dining some nights. This allows you to see the earlier showtime of the feature entertainment and eat a quick dinner at your leisure (see our quick guide on the quick service restaurants of the Disney Wonder). Alternatively, you might eat the early dinner and then drop your kid off at the kids’ club while you see the feature entertainment without them (see our quick guide to the kids clubs on the Disney Wonder).
Disney Wonder Rotational Dining Restaurants
There are some differences between the three restaurants.
Triton’s is largely un-themed and basically a standard table service meal. It’s located on Deck 3 midship, adjacent to the Lobby Atrium.
Animator’s Palate (Deck 4, Aft) is a little more fun. The first night at Animator’s Palate there were cartoons being drawn in the screens around the room. Mickey also made an appearance. We had a total of three nights at Animator’s Palate, but we skipped the middle one. Our other time at Animator’s Palate, we got to draw cartoon characters at the start of the meal and then see them come to life around the room at the end of the meal.
Tiana’s Place features live jazz music and an appearance by Louis. It’s located on Deck 3, Aft, past French Quarter Lounge.
Our Thoughts on Rotational Dining
Before I get to our feelings, I want to say I think people generally like rotational dining. Keeping the same service staff throughout the cruise allows you to built a rapport. Disney Cruise Line’s restaurants are also, generally, known for having good food.
This is all to say that I’m about to explain why we don’t like rotational dining. Unfortunately for us, there isn’t any good alternative. So if you want, just leave here and go read some more positive commentary about rotational dining. Or at least read my commentary with a grain of salt—it’s just one blogger’s opinion, and it doesn’t mean you won’t have a good time. In any case, this is not at all a “make or break” for the cruise.
Altogether, rotational dining isn’t for us. There are three reasons for this. I can’t claim these are anything close to universal, but I nonetheless want to share them.
First, I’m just not comfortable with the attentiveness of the Cast Members. We’re not particularly extroverted people, and the attention from the rotational staff can be a lot to handle. Some guests, maybe most, are no doubt on the exact opposite of this and love the personal connections the staff will often try to form—you’ll even see people taking pictures with the Cast Members at the end of everything. This is Disney, there are tipped positions, so I’m not complaining, just saying it isn’t for me.
On a less personal note, I think the restaurants could use a bit more staffing. The loving attention from the staff was often starkly contrasted with visibly hurried moments where we’d have to quickly rattle off our order. Or flag someone down to quickly ask for some forgotten item. Because everyone is operating on the exact same schedule, the whole thing can feel a little too efficient.
Second, rotational dining is a big, fixed time commitment. You’re looking at about 75-90 minutes on Disney’s schedule. If you’ve had a long day of excursions, you might just want to kick back and enjoy the bars / kids’ clubs, or the feature entertainment. If you have to meet some character, you might wind up with the only option being during your mealtime. Overall, a 90-minute meal every night starts to feel a bit excessive.
Last—and least, because it’s important to fewer readers—the vegetarian options are…well, bad. The options themselves weren’t great (think “puff pastry with vegetables”), and on some nights some courses just didn’t even have vegetarian options. Zoe basically ate mac and cheese or pasta and marinara every night. There is a “solution” to this—you can request specially made meals according to your dietary restrictions.
We basically wound up on the “Indian” menu (I don’t know what the terminology would be, but it was Indian food) for the last few nights of the cruise. I honestly can’t imagine we looked that exasperated with our experience, but our server decided to offer this option to us on night five. This wound up being an enjoyable way to finish up the cruise, but it’s not like I would have wanted seven nights of Indian food either (though I do love Indian food).