I have thrown together a trip report regarding my 2 year old son’s EGG and PEANUT allergy, and our experience with dining at Disney. I took very detailed notes of what foods had egg, for both kids and adults, using the notepad on my cell phone. On our last night at the World, my cell went crazy and I had to take the battery out to get it unfrozen. The next morning, all of my notes were gone. So this report is an attempt to salvage what my wife and I can recall 7 days later.

(*** As I was reading back my report, I realized that I used the term egg-free instead of egg AND peanut free. I do this because egg is our big allergy, but at each occasion, we ALWAYS asked about egg and peanut, even if I didn’t type peanut in my post.)

First, a few general observations about managers and chefs. Almost all of them instinctively assumed that a peanut allergy included all tree nuts, which is not the case with our son. One or two did ask up front whether tree nuts were ok, but most would start rattling off what was NOT ok and say something to the effect of “you can’t have that because it has tree nuts....” and we would have to stop them and say that tree nuts are not a no-no for us, just peanuts. By the end of our trip we made sure to say up front that peanuts were bad, but tree nuts were ok.

Another issue was the difference between “Contains” vs “Made on the Same Equipment” vs “Made in the Same Facility.” Particularly with the CS manager at the Contempo Cafe, about half would fail to make that distinction unless we went out of our way to say that “made on the same equipment” was okay for eggs, and “Made in the same facility” was okay for Peanuts. Again, this is based on our son's level of allergy, and is something that will vary from child to child, but was something that a handful of managers didn’t understand much at all.

Another issue that we always had to bring up ourselves was the fact that Mom and Dad wanted to eat egg-free also. While everyone was happy to accommodate us once we got that across, some seem surprised that we did not want to eat contaminated food while tending to our wild and crazy 2 year old. We always had to make sure to ask about our foods first because the times when we asked about the kids meals first, the chef would start to leave before we would get to the adult entrees.

Four final points: 1) All Mac and Cheese, whether CS or TS, contained egg. 2) While we never asked about them at CS locations, all TS breakfast buffets can make special EGG FREE waffles. I must admit that I was stunned that nobody on Intercot had ever mentioned this fact, but the Chef at Chef Mickey’s offered them as soon as he came out. I nearly fell out of my chair with excitement! 3) All of the biscuits were okay as well. 4) We noticed that when you place an allergy order at CS locations, its is indicated on the printout, meaning if you order FF it will say ALLERGY FRIES, so it seems like they actually enter a special button on the register as well as let the manager handle things.

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