2013 Disney Restaurants - Our Vacation List

So last night we had a fun game night with my husband's parents and we started to talk about our Disney trip coming up this Fall. Our conversation was mostly about the restaurants, Food & Wine festival, fun memories, rides, and fireworks. We are very excited to be taking our parents for their 40th wedding anniversary and in our humble opinion, think we did a good job picking out restaurants at Disney for all of us to enjoy.

Our first anniversary dinner at Narcoossee's

For our trip, we purchased the Deluxe Dining Plan - providing 3 meals and 2 snacks per day. We did this to minimize cost at the Epcot Food & Wine festival (you can use 1 snack credit for each of the tastes of food, therefore, a lobster roll = 1 snack credit...SCORE!) and enjoy some of the finer restaurants that Disney offers. There is some talk on other sites that using your dining credits at signature or character dining that uses two meal credits is a bad choice when maximizing your bang for your buck when it comes to the dining plan. We feel otherwise and actually kept all of our receipts from our previous trip with the the Deluxe Plan. We ended up eating $200 more than what we paid for the plan.

Here is the line up for our Fall vacation:

Breakfast:
- Chef Mickeys at the Contemporary
- Kona Cafe at the Polynesian (may not use a meal credit here - debating still)

Breakfast with Chef Mickey!

Lunch:
- Coral Reef Restaurant in Epcot
- Be Our Guest in Magic Kingdom
- Tusker House in Animal Kingdom
- Portobello in Downtown Disney

Lunch at the Coral Reef Restaurant

Dinner:
- La Hacienda de San Angel in Epcot
- Le Cellier in Epcot
- The Hollywood Brown Derby in Hollywood Studios
- Narcoossee's at the Grand Floridian Resort

Dinner & fireworks at La Hacienda de San Angel

I am keeping my eye out for when reservations open back up at the California Grill inside the Contemporary to maybe swap out our reservations at The Hollywood Brown Derby. Right now the California Grill is undergoing renovations, which are expected to be completed in August. Fingers crossed!

First Anniversary trip dinner at the California Grill

What are your must go to restaurants in Disney World???