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Have you visited Disneyland on a holiday such as Thanksgiving or Christmas Day?
If you did, did you make reservations at one of their sit down restaurants? If yes, did they have the entrée you had planned to order when you arrived?
The reason I ask this is because, my family and I made reservations at one particular restaurant for Thanksgiving and we were shocked to find out that our favorite dish was not available on that day!!!
Continue reading to find out what went wrong and how to avoid our holiday mishap!
Via the official Disneyland app guests can view menus from every walk-up and sit-down restaurant and food cart. They can also make reservations up to 60 days in advance. Reservations can be made through the app, online, or by calling (714) 781-DINE or (714) 781-3463. Reservations are recommended, especially during peak and holiday seasons.
As you can see in the picture above, we were able to view what the Thanksgiving special entrée and dessert were going to be as well as view the rest of the menu for Café Orleans.
We knew that not everyone in our party would be interested in the Thanksgiving entrée, but felt safe making reservations as there were other dishes that our guests would have been thrilled with. With that said we placed our order……..
So the person who was not looking forward to trying the Thanksgiving Monte Cristo was me!! Sorry, but it just sounded disgusting (get used to this word)….. What I wanted to stuff my face with was their original Monte Cristo. Here is how placing our order went:
My husband: We need two checks. One with a regular Monte Cristo and basket of Pommes Frites and the other with one Thanksgiving Monte Cristo, one regular Monte Cristo, and a basket of Pommes Frites.
Waitress: We don’t have the regular Monte Cristo today.
Me: Is it possible to get the gravy on the side?
Waitress: No
Me: That’s disgusting!
My husband: Could they get the cheese Monte Cristo?
Waitress: Yes.
We were off to a bumpy start, but I let it go since it appeared that I would get to eat something that I liked. By the way, any Monte Cristo from Disneyland is huge and easily feeds 2 people, keep that in mind when ordering. Thankfully this is something that we already knew and didn’t order more than we did for four people. Thinking that the worst of our dining experience was over, we waited patiently for our food to arrive.
Well hello basket of Pommes Frites (garlic, parmesan fries)!!!
OOPS, where’s our second basket??!!!
We requested that both baskets be served prior to our entrees, but our waitress only noted our request on one of the tickets…. so we waited and waited and waited for the second to arrive.
By the way, the fries are delicious and come with a special sauce that has a little kick to it. Personally I am not a fan of the sauce, so I request a side of ranch.
Whew, we all have our fries! Now we can relax, dig into our baskets, and enjoy the rest of our meal when it arrives.
So, what should arrive? A mess!!!! Not one dish was correct!! Even the Thanksgiving Monte Cristo that was ordered was delivered to our table with gravy on the sandwich and on the side!!
Then instead of receiving two cheese Monte Cristos, our table was graced with the presence of two more Thanksgiving Monte Cristos with gravy on the side. DISGUSTING!
At this point there was a shift change and our new waitress was stuck with the mess our original one created. She apologized for the misunderstanding, but couldn’t fix it because the Thanksgiving Monte Cristo was the only one being served that day. My heart went out to this girl, first for having to work on Thanksgiving, the second to deal with the mess another cast member created. We had a good laugh and she charged us the lower price of the entrée we had actually ordered. My daughter and brother in-law ended up liking the Thanksgiving Monte Cristo, but I thought it was…. wait for it…. disgusting… LOL….
I did mention to her and the manager that it would be nice if they app and website could inform guests not just of what the holiday dishes are, but what won’t be available on the holiday. Had we known this, we would have made our reservations somewhere other than Café Orleans. Because of this fiasco, we changed our Christmas Day reservations to Carnation Café, where there are plenty of entrees for us to choose from should we not decide to order the Christmas special.
My favorite part of the meal was dessert! Santa’s Lumps of Coal Beignets were amazing!!! You are lucky I snapped this picture before they were gone! The dish came with four beignets and peppermint ice cream.
Do you have any Disneyland holiday dining disasters to share? We’d love to hear about them!! In all of our years of dining in the park, this truly was the worst dining experience we have ever experienced. And this was NOT our first Thanksgiving in the parks, in fact it was our fourth. I get it, mistakes happen, but all of this could have been avoided had the app and/or website noted that the other Monte Cristo versions would not be available on that day. Having a waitress who understood this would have helped too, but………… Anyways, what is your favorite meal from Café Orleans?
