Two in our party need special diets. The food allergies are pretty easy for us to manage at Disney, but we are still learning to eat lower sodium/heart healthy in restaurants. We have found that limiting sodium is actually more challenging than avoiding peanuts and soy! Any suggestions for the most accommodating restaurants would be welcome.
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All of the restaurants that can handle allergies are good for food restrictions, in my experience. My husband has a great deal of food restrictions that aren’t covered in the allergy menus, but a chef will come out and work with you on your choices and usually end up making a special dish just for you if nothing on the menu works. I think that’s why we like WDW so much, because they will cater to your needs.
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Thank you for your response! Have you found this to be true at quick service restaurants that have allergy safe options listed in their menus?
They do have a binder that shows ingredients that you can look at. They will do the best that they can to make changes, but my confidence level is lower for them making changes. I doubt they start with raw ingredients. Others may know more. Definitely be wary of festival booths.
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There are a lot of common prep facilities and shared kitchens that would make this very difficult.
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One person in my family is on a very low sodium diet. QS in the parks was very challenging. For the most part, salad was the only option. QS is set up to accommodate many different allergies, but very low sodium is not one of them in my experience. On the other hand, TS were all great both at the parks and resorts. At each TS, after we informed the waitstaff of the dietary restriction, the chef came over to our table to discuss the dietary restriction with us and was extremely accommodating.
Note: Contrary to our QS experience in the parks, QS at Contempo cafe at CR was very accommodating and had some options that could be made to accommodate.
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Does anyone have experience working with “special diets” at WDW in advance of their trip? We’re planning a trip in February, and one person in our party is on a very low sodium diet. I know a lot of the food is prepped offsite, which makes it hard to control sodium.
I can’t contact them until late January, and am trying to set my expectations and look at options.
I have heard some people say special diets was helpful, but all we’ve ever gotten from them was “here are some links to the menus - you need to speak with the CMs and/or chefs at each location.”
At the time we were asking about nut allergies before the online menus really had any of that info.
Caveat: it has been several years since we bothered after that initial contact on our first few trips so things could have changed since then I suppose.
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It certainly doesn’t hurt to contact them, but in our experience the restaurants didn’t get notified ahead of time and you STILL have to talk to the server and the chef. That was back in 2017 or 2018, I think. We didn’t ever try it again because it was so not worth the effort or time.
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I will add that many of the TS restaurants are very accommodating for allergies and restrictions and will create dishes that aren’t on the menu using fresh ingredients. They are also very careful. Buffets aren’t that great at non-normal stuff, but even some of those can make special dishes. The only places I’m reticent in going to is some of the Epcot international restaurants like Italy, France, and Mexico.
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My Dad has the same issue. See my post right above yours. The first time he went to WDW with the diet restriction, he called in advance, but he didn’t feel like that was helpful. That was many years ago so maybe things have changed.
If you have any questions about his low sodium diet WDW experiences, please feel free to ask me.
I was reading @len ’s amusing (and sad) blog post about the AI guides to WDW flooding Amazon, which suggested a blog post on the green check on WDW menus which included a link to Disney’s nutritional guide for green checked food that folks looking for details might find helpful. The upshot for me is that most meals are too high in sodium for a person who is limited to 1200 mg/day, BUT, there are options (like kid’s meals or soup) which could be the basis for a small meal that’s supplemented with unsalted nuts or beans that we could prepare in the room and store in a backpack.
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I travelled a couple of years ago to an Orlando conference with a coworker with many food allergies. The special diet team sent her an email ahead of time with suggestions of QS restaurants best able to accommodate her. We went to Sunshine seasons twice because they were able to cook her a meal from scratch that she really enjoyed.
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