Disney World: Best Quick Service Restaurants & Tips
Save this list of Disney World best quick service restaurants for your next family vacation and learn to save money with these quick service dining tips!
An active Disney family vacation is going to spark an appetite quicker than you can say “Mickey pop.”
When you’re on the go in one of the Disney parks, hunger is going to strike and it is important to be ready with the list of the best quick service restaurants so you get the greatest bang for your dining budget buck.
If you want to spend less time standing in line for food and more time enjoying your treats and getting back to the business of Disney merry making, these tips will help you plan quick service meals you’ll love.
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What is a Disney Quick Service Restaurant?
The purveyors of food in Disney World fall into two categories:
- Table Service: Where you sit down at a table and are waited on by a traditional restaurant server.
- Quick Service: A counter service restaurant where you order your food first, then sit down at any table you can find open to eat or take your food on the go back into the park.
All four parks including Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom, have several quick service restaurants available for a fast meal.
You’ll also find a quick service restaurant at each of the Disney Resorts and Disney Springs.
Quick Service Dining Tips
No matter which quick service restaurant you choose to dine at, these handy tips will help you save time and money on your meal.
1. Preview the Menus Before Your Trip
Before you even head into the park for your day of fun, take a few minutes to preview the menus at a few of the quick service restaurants and make a mental note (or list on your phone) about which ones will work best for your family.
This helped us to be more flexible during the day because I always had an idea of a good restaurant nearby if we needed to grab some food or a snack.
2. Pre-Order Via the Disney World App
Do NOT wait until you are starving to try to find food in the Disney Parks.
This is the surest way to a family melt down.
About an hour before you want to take a break to eat, use the time standing in line for your next ride to pre-order your quick service meal via the Disney mobile app.
The app will give you 30-minute windows for your arrival time.
Simply show up during your arrival window and Disney cast members will direct you towards the counter to pick up your food.
We LOVED this service because:
- Less Wait Time: Our food was ready quickly and we were able to just sit down and eat.
- More Open Tables: Since the windows of time control the crowds, it is much easier to find an open table to sit down and rest at.
- More Decision Time for Food: Meal negotiations can be a process with kids, especially if you have a picky eater. Ordering via the app allowed us to make the special requests for holding ingredients as needed.
3. Use the App at Disney Resorts, Too
Don’t overlook the quick service restaurants at your Disney resort.
We ended up enjoying several meals at the quick service restaurant in Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter during our stay.
It was a great way to have a more quiet meal and relax outside of the hustle and bustle of the parks.
The lines are likely to be a lot shorter at your resort so you may be tempted to skip using the mobile app.
However, most quick service restaurants have separate order counters for different categories of food.
For example, you may find hamburgers at one counter and spaghetti at a separate counter with a totally different line.
If you order via the app, you can order across the different counters and all your food will be available at one time for pick-up at the service counter.
This helps you to avoid separating up family members standing in different lines for different foods and lets you all sit down together at once to eat.
4. Redefine a “Meal”
Many of our family’s very favorite dining experiences at Disney World didn’t look much like a normal family dinner we’d have anywhere else.
That is part of the fun of a vacation! And definitely a big part of the Disney Magic.
Out of the three traditional meals of the day (breakfast, lunch, dinner), definitely at least ONE of them looked normal and relatively healthy.
But the other two? Totally up for grabs.
We’d eat pretzels and lemonade as our “lunch” or a fresh fruit waffle sandwich as a light “dinner” as long as one of the other meals was more filling.
Get creative with the menus:
- Order something healthier like an entree salad and share just one with the whole family. Kids are more likely to eat a few bites and get some veggies in.
- Order fewer entrees than people and share so you all have room to share a dessert, too.
5. Choose the Best Restaurants
Not all quick service restaurants are made equal. Some are definitely better than others.
If you want to make sure every Disney dollar counts, you want to be sure to pick the tastiest of the places to spend your money!
Here are our family’s favorite places to eat at Disney:
Budget Tips for Quick Service Dining
While not totally specific to quick service dining, you may also be interested in how to eat cheap at Disney World.
These tips will be super useful no matter where you plan to dine during your stay.
