If you’re booking a Disney Cruise, you may be curious about the food options on board.

One of the best parts of cruising is that a lot of the food is included in the price of your stay, and on Disney Cruise Line ships you typically experience three different sit-down restaurants that rotate throughout your stay. There are also fancier restaurant options you can book at an extra cost, but how do you decide whether to skip the included restaurants and spend the extra money? We recently cruised on board the Disney Dream, and we’re here to talk about one of the restaurants we visited! 

Atmosphere

The Royal Palace is one of three rotational restaurants (meaning it’s included in the cost of your cruise) on the Disney Dream, featuring a menu of French-inspired cuisine for lunch and dinner. It’s exclusive to the Disney Dream, so you won’t find it on any other Disney cruise ships.

Royal Palace’s decor is themed around Disney Princesses, and you can find various Disney Princess references around the restaurant.

Right before you enter, you can catch this crest on the floor, featuring Disney Princess icons like Cinderella’s slipper, Aurora’s tiara, Belle’s rose, and Snow White’s apple.

And inside the restaurant, there are Disney Princess portraits all over! Below you can see three portraits depicting Cinderella’s transformation with her Fairy Godmother.

And don’t forget to look up at the incredible ceiling details.

Now let’s go over the menu!

Menu

The menu for Royal Palace is all about French and continental/American fare served in four courses. There are three special drinks available, including the Double Crowned, Imperial Illusion, and the Princess Delight (non-alcoholic).

Among the appetizers are Duck Confit, Gaston’s Escargot Gratinee, Iced Lobster and Jumbo Shrimp, and Breaded and Deep-Fried Brie. Soup and salad options include French Onion Soup, Farmhouse Salad, Potage Parmentier, and Red Wine Bosc Pear Salad.

The main course options include Conchiglie Pasta, Oven-Baked Salmon Royale, Crispy Roasted Duck Breast, Roasted Rack of Lamb Medium, and Chateaubriand-Roasted Filet Steak. There are also vegetarian and lighter offerings available.

For dessert, choose from Grand Marnier Souffle, Apple Tart Tatin, Tahitian Vanilla Creme Brulee, Strawberry Shortcake Sundae, and Classic Opera Gateau. You can also opt for the no-sugar-added Duo Chocolate Slice.

Now let’s get into the eats!

Eats

We started our meal with some soda, which was delivered in a light-up Souvenir Skull Cup. (The reason for this off-theme item was that we ate dinner at the Royal Palace on Pirate Night!)

The meal started with Bread Service, which was supposed to come with warm French country bread and an olive spread. The rolls were pretty basic and during our meal, they weren’t served warm, which was disappointing. The spread was pretty good but you definitely have to like olives to enjoy it.

For our appetizers, we tried the Breaded and Deep-Fried Brie, served with an orange and cranberry chutney. This was the recommended appetizer and the brie was really gooey with a great mild cheese flavor. We also liked the fruit spread it came with!

We also ordered Gaston’s Escargot Gratinee, which came with herb-marinated snails with finely chopped mushrooms, topped with garlic butter. This was one of our favorite dishes of the entire Disney Dream sailing! It was SUPER buttery and garlicky and the snails were cooked perfectly — no weird textures here. If you’re a fan of mussels, you need to try this.

For the soup course, we ordered the French Onion Soup with Gruyere cheese crouton, which was your pretty standard form of French Onion Soup. We thought it was a little over-salted but it came with a LOT of cheese.

And the Potage Parmentier was a leek and potato soup, which was a basic potato soup. It was packed with heavy potato flavor, cut a little bit by the sharpness of the leek.

For our entrees, we tried the Chateaubriand-Roasted Filet Steak, which came with crushed new potatoes with shallots, buttered green beans, red wine jus, and a bearnaise sauce. Overall, it was a good steak, but not a great steak. It was cooked well and presented nicely, but not really anything special. We would have loved more of the bearnaise sauce!

The Oven-Baked Salmon Royale was made with King Smoked Salmon, horseradish crust, sauteed swiss chard, truffled cauliflower puree, and white wine beurre blanc. This was our least favorite of the fish dishes we tried on the Disney Dream. The horseradish crust was not very flavorful, and even though the salmon was cooked well and fell apart on our fork, it wasn’t anything special. It was basically something we could probably make on our own at home.

And for dessert, the Apple Tart Tatin came with caramelized baked apple served with vanilla ice cream. What’s not to like about a warm pastry dish? The presentation was cute and it was basically classic apple pie vibes. You can’t really go wrong with this, but it also wasn’t super unique.

And that was our experience at the Royal Palace! Let’s wrap up our thoughts.

Nosh or Not

You might like Royale Palace if:

• You LOVE Disney Princesses
• You typically prefer appetizers and small plates over larger entrees
• You’re happy with French and American cuisine, and you’re not looking for an adventurous meal

You might not enjoy Royale Palace if:

• You want BIG Disney theming other than Disney Princesses
• You’re looking for unique or more adventurous dishes
• French American cuisine is not your thing

Overall

If you’re trying to decide which dining rotational meal to skip in favor of a dining reservation at one of the extra-cost restaurants, Royal Palace might be a strong contender. The Disney Princess details are nice but it’s not as extravagantly themed or as beautiful as the other dining rotations, such as Animator’s Palette.

We ended up preferring the appetizers over the entrees so if you’re a fan of the meal BEFORE the meal, you might enjoy Royal Palace. But if you want something more unique, skipping Royal Palace in favor of a restaurant like Palo might be a good option for you!

If you’re considering a Disney Cruise, we recommend clicking on the following links:

• Full review of Palo Steakhouse brunch on the Disney Dream
• Full review of the Arendelle restaurant on the Disney Wish
• Full review of Worlds of Marvel on the Disney Wish
• Full review of 1923 on the Disney Wish
• Review of Marceline Market on the Disney Wish

Keep reading DFB for more Disney Cruise Line news and updates!

What to expect on a Halloween-themed Disney Cruise!

Have you ever cruised on the Disney Dream? Tell us in the comments!

Disclosure: In nearly all circumstances, Disney Food Blog writers and photographers pay full price for their own travel, hotel, food, beverage, and event tickets. We do this because it’s important to us as journalists to ensure not only that we give you unbiased opinions, but also that you can trust us to do so since we’re paying our own way. On rare occasions, when we are invited by a company to attend a preview as media, and when we choose to accept that invitation, we will always make you, our readers, aware of that situation. Today, we were invited by Disney World to attend their media event on the Disney Dream. Note that when we attend events as media we are 1) Not required to review that event/food on any of our channels, and 2) Not required to review that event/food favorably. You can always count on DFB to give you a 100% unbiased and honest review of any event that we attend, food that we eat, or beverage that we drink. You can see more in our Disclosure Policy. Thank you for reading. — AJ

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