Well, today was a rare day for our group - two brand new dining experiences on the same day ! Not easy to do with old vets like us. I'll cover our trip to Paradiso 37 in another post, but here's our experience with the Picnic in the Park lunch.

We started off the day at Animal Kingdom at the rope drop. After riding for a few hours, including an insane "five in a row" at Kali River Rapids (the 3 year old loved it), we were hungry and headed over to the Tusker House area in Africa to pick up the "Picnic in the Park" lunches the 15 of us had ordered at the Park Entrance 3 1/2 hours before.

My family went with the Rotisserie Chicken and 3 sides (potato wedges, fruit salad, and green beans). The meal, frankly, was excellent. The chicken was solid, though I wish there was an all white meat option. Well done, flavourful and a nice change of pace from the usual corn dog or burger at AK.

The meal came in a really cool picnic carry bag (which my wife quickly co-opted as another park bag), with 4 bottled waters, the sides, the chicken, and 4 desserts (huge chocolate brownies and chocolate chip cookies). The green beans were spectacular, though the fruit salad was a little lacking (mostly cheap green melon).

The Picnic experience was a lot better than I imagined it would be, with park temps nudging 100 degrees today. We found a great little area off the river behind the Dawa bar, with some large umbrella covered picnic tables. There seemed to be a lot of other diners in the area who were also trying out the lunches, and the reviews were pretty positive.

It's been a long time since I thought I got "value" for my meal money at Disney, but at $10 a head for our group, this was certainly a great option. I heartily recommend it.