ESPN Club........

[Minnie71898]

My husband and I are football fans and would like to take in a sunday afternoon/night or monday night game at the ESPN Club. We will be staying at the BC near the Epcot entrance (hopefully!) so we should be near the club.

Has anyone ever been to the ESPN Club during game time? If so how is it set up? Can you just sit and have a cold one and watch the game or is it just dining? Should we have reservations for a special area? Any info on the place would be great.

PS any chance of a Minnesota game being on? (I don't want any laughs now.....every team, good or very bad, needs fans! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Thanks from one NFL fan [img]graemlins/clappy.gif[/img]

[wendy*darling]

We ate there during a Sunday footbal game last December.

Basically there are 2 rooms.

The room with the big screen is dining only (I'm pretty sure). In addition to the big screen, they have tons of smaller TVs set up around the room. They ask you when you come in who you are rooting for and seat you as close as they can to the TV that will be showing the game you want to see.

In the bar area, there are table for drinking and watching or eating and watching. There are lots of TVs in there too, but I don't know how many games they cover in the bar.

The bad news, is that they DO NOT take reservations AT ALL
It is first come, first served. Get in line early if you want to be seated and watch a game. (And, your entire party must be in line to be let in- you cannot advance in line if you are still waiting for someone).

The good news is that we had a blast that afternoon. We saw the pre-game show- done right there in the restaurant with lots of audience participation, and the first quarter or so of the games. We had no intentions of spending the whole game there, but felt perfectly welcome to do so by the wait staff. My sports-enthusiast sons (& I) were thrilled and the food was pretty good. Even my NON-sports inclined husband had a good time

[Niamh]

My DH and I love the ESPN Club. The food is good and pretty reasonably priced. I always get the footlong hotdog with cheese sauce. It's huge and yummy. [img]graemlins/tasty.gif[/img] The only problem is that the sports bar area doesn't have enough seating. It gets VERY busy and if you get there at a bad time you'll have to wait at least 30 minutes for a table. If you get one of the booths you get your own TV and all you have to do is ask your waiter to put on whatever sporting event you'd like see and they'll gladly do it. They even have TV's in the restrooms!!!!

[bjs6]

My wife and I ate at the ESPN Club during our last trip (1998) during at Monday Night Football game. It was probably just our bad luck but we ended up being seated just to the left of the big TV wall right in front of the speakers. It was so unbelievably loud! We had to yell to order. We had planned to have a full dinner there but because it was so noisy we decided to just get an appetizer so we would get out faster. We got the Red Wings which were terrific. The appetizer ended up being enough to satisfy the both of us. We would like to go back but probably not during a major sporting event though.

[Jared]

I've never eaten in the ESPN Zone in WDW, but have several times eaten in the one in Times Square. Yes, it is extremely loud, and yes in essence, it is nothing more than a bar and burget joint, but the food is surprisingly good! Have fun with your husband, you'll have a blast!

[Imagineer's Mom]

While I wouldn't say the food was great (I'm a vegetarian so probably not a great judge of sports bar food) but my son got a cute water game to play with while we waited, that he got to take home. DH took pictures of the men's bathroom - I won't say why in case you haven't been - he did run in and out 3 times taking pictures like a little boy who just discovered a candy mountain. [img]graemlins/rotfl.gif[/img]

As far as the wait - we got there probably about 4:30 - 5 and it was empty but rapidly filling while we were there. I bet the crowd is fun on a game night...