Fantasmic! River Belle Terrace Dining

We ate at River Belle Terrace with the Fantasmic! dining in May. I felt the need to post this as it is was the only sub-par dining experience we had on the whole trip. My son has a lot of allergies so we pretty much have to eat at the sit down restaurants and avoid the counter service. Since we have to do the sit down restaurants anyway, I was very excited when they implemented Fantasmic! dining because it works very well for World of Color and I thought not having to stake out my fav spot for Fantasmic! hours in advance would be a good thing.

That said our experience at River Belle Terrace was not worth repeating. We will try Blue Bayou next time. First problem with River Belle was that it did not appear that they had the system in place and there is fairly limited seating compared to other sit down restaurants. Our first thought was that since there were fewer tables and what appeared to be the same number of cast members, the service would be good but instead it was the opposite. The service was very slow and our meal took forever - much longer than a typical meal. The food was only so-so. And most disappointing was that this was the only restaurant the whole trip where the chef did not come talk to us about my son's allergies. Instead the server felt they could handle it but then brought gluten-free bread without confirming with the chef that it didn't have egg. I was not initially concerned about the chef not coming out but when it was clear that the server did not quite have a handle on things I wondered why they wouldn't just send the chef out as that is the standard practice at the sit down restaurants (and even the few counter service places that we have tried that can accommodate most allergies).

So between the odd treatments of allergy concerns, sub-par (slow) service and only so-so food I would not recommend this dining option to others especially for the price you have to pay.

But the seats for Fantasmic! were great and the cast members at the seating area were very accommodating. My husband got stuck in a longer than anticipated single rider line for Indy and the cast members were great about letting the rest of us into the reserved seating area and directing my husband to us even without his ticket. So I am still in favor that they have added dining and fast passes for Fantasmic! (it was nice to sit) but will not be trying River Belle again for quite some time.