If you ask a Disney World vacationer about the restaurants that they feel they absolutely HAVE to visit, there’s one spot that will likely come up in the conversation.

Be Our Guest Restaurant has been one of Disney World’s most popular restaurants ever since it opened back in 2012. We’ve been many times in the last decade, but is it REALLY worth the hefty price for the experience? Things have changed a lot here since 2020, and we’re going back to bring you our honest thoughts.

Atmosphere

Whenever you talk about Be Our Guest with someone, they’ll almost always cite the “atmosphere” as the thing that justifies the price. And we’ll be honest — it’s pretty spectacular.

After you check in, you’ll head up the walkway into Beast’s castle, where you’ll be greeted by a Cast Member to seat you.

And from the moment you step inside, the theming starts. It really feels like you’re dining inside a castle!

There are murals and special touches from the movie all over, and Belle fans will be head over heels in love with the vibe here.

When it’s time to be seated, there are three separate rooms you could end up in. The most likely (and largest) is the ballroom. This giant main room is filled with tables and is complete with stunning decor — including magnificent chandeliers.

If you’re seated near the window, you’ll see that they even made it look like it’s snowing outside! (Fun fact: the snow is made up of animation cells from Beauty and the Beast — how cool is that?!)

The second room is the portrait gallery, which is exactly what it sounds like! There are portraits hanging all over the walls that depict scenes from the film.

In the middle of the room, you’ll see Belle and Beast in music box form, spinning and dancing in their ballroom attire.

Finally, perhaps the most coveted dining room is the West Wing, which is dark and moody, with lightning strikes and low lighting.

There’s the scratched portrait of Prince Adam hanging on the wall. It’s massive!

They even have the rose on display! And if you watch closely, you may even spot a petal falling off of the rose!

We don’t know if we can officially declare this the “best” theming at a restaurant in Disney World (there are some other really amazing ones out there!) but it’s definitely high on the list.

Character Interactions

Sadly, Be Our Guest Restaurant is not a full character meal, but there is a character “experience” while you dine. The Beast walks through the various dining rooms and you can see him from a distance — possibly closer if you’re at a table that’s near the walking path.

Before he walked through, they made an announcement telling guests to get their cameras ready, but it was very difficult to snap photos of the Beast because he walked so quickly through the rooms. During our visit, he came through about once an hour and took the same route each time. Guests were required to stay in their seats (meaning you couldn’t hop up to get a photo with him or to ask him for an autograph).

Overall, definitely not the best character experience that you’ll find in a restaurant…even in Magic Kingdom. If you are looking for more character dining in Magic Kingdom, you may want to head to The Crystal Palace or Cinderella’s Royal Table.

At Be Our Guest, you don’t really get any personal time to interact with the Beast, but it’s the only place where you’ll see him besides in the Festival of Fantasy Parade.

Menu

Now let’s dive into the menu! Dining here is prix fixe, so you’ll choose an appetizer and an entree from a list of selections. Every guest is given the dessert trio unless you request the plant-based dessert option instead.

Lunch and dinner at Be Our Guest have the same menu and the same pricing. You’ll pay $67 per adult and $39 per child. Tax and gratuity is not included.

As far as appetizers go, there are five different choices. You can get French Onion Soup, Escargot de Bourgogne, Endive and Roquefort Cheese Salad, a Duck and Pork Terrine, or Potato-Leek Soup.

There are also five different entrees. The options are the Duroc Pork Chop, Vandovan-spiced Vegetables, Roasted Poulet Rouge Chicken, Trout Amandine, and Center-Cut Filet Mignon.

Included in the dessert trio, you’ll get a Lemon Jam Macaron, a Chocolate Tart (topped with the Grey Stuff), and a Dark Chocolate Truffle. The plant-based option is Vanilla Cake with Lemon Curd.

Your meal includes a basic beverage, but signature drinks, cocktails, wine, and beer are all an added charge. They have an extensive beverage menu to choose from.

Eats

Ready to eat? So are we! We had two reporters covering this meal, so we’ve got quite a number of items to review.

As our beverage of choice, we were able to order coffee included with our meal. It was brought to the table with cream and sugar on the side, so you can dress it up however you’d like.

First up for food, our server brought out a basket of bread to the table. They were pretty basic yeast dinner rolls served with butter on the side. We wish the butter had a bit more salt in it, and the bread wasn’t warm when it came out, but it was nice and fluffy in the middle with a crust on the outside.

After that, it was time to get our appetizers! We chose two options off the prix fixe menu.

First up is the Escargot de Bourgogne, made with snails baked in garlic-herb butter and served with a partial baguette. We thought there was good amount of bread compared to the number of snails, but the baguette was just a smidge too crunchy and hard to bite on the edges.

When it comes to the snails themselves, we really liked the garlic and butter flavor, but we could taste a little too much of the earthiness from the snails underneath. (Typically, you’d want the snails to absorb the flavor of the sauce.) Our reviewer who tried these had eaten escargot a few times recently and said these weren’t the best of the ones she’d tried. We preferred the ones at Monsieur Paul instead. The texture was spot-on though and they were cooked well.

We also got the Duck and Pork Terrine, which is served with house pickles, frisée, and whole grain mustard. We got some little crostinis on the plate that were the perfect texture, along with a generous portion of the pickled veggies and greens.

The terrine is very similar to a pate, and we tasted much more pork than the duck. It was served chilled, which can be unnerving if you’re not used to that temperature with those particular flavors. Our favorite part was the mustard sauce, which was very flavorful.

After we finished our apps, they brought out the entrees! The first of our two orders was the Duroc Pork Chop. It’s served with double-smoked bacon, sweet potato lyonnaise, and dijon mustard sauce. It was the most recommended item from the Cast Members who work at Be Our Guest, even though the Filet Mignon is more popular for guests to order.

We ordered it at the recommended temperature of medium, and it came with the bone still in and a decent amount of fat on the meat, making it bit of work to eat. The meat was really moist and the sauce was tasty, though we wish there had been more sauce overall.

The pickled veggies had a nice zingy flavor to them and the potatoes had a great caramelization that added a much-need sticky crunch to the plate. The sides were delicious, but ultimately we found that some bites of the pork were a bit too salty. It was fairly good, but we weren’t sure if the quality matched the price of the meal.

We also got the Roasted Poulet Rouge Chicken with celery root puree, roasted root vegetables, and Pinot Noir jus. We enjoyed it, but it was also on the salty side. The sauce was a hit, and we could actually taste the Pinot Noir flavor in it — a mix of sweet and bitter.

Like the pork, we wish there had been more sauce on the dish, mostly because the chicken was so salty. However, the skin was nice and crispy.

We really enjoyed the puree, but there wasn’t nearly enough of it for our taste. Sadly, both the entrees we had were very meat-heavy without much else in terms of sides. Add that to the general saltiness, and we were definitely hoping for higher quality for the price.

After we finished our entrees, it was time to move on to dessert! We got the Dessert Trio, which was served with three different items.

First up on the plate is the Lemon Jam Macaron, which has a raspberry filling. It was light and tasty, and the raspberry in the middle was nice and tart. The filling had a vanilla base to it that made the raspberry flavor more subtle, but it paired well with the lemon. Overall, it was pretty delicious, but a standard macaron nonetheless.

In the middle, we have the Chocolate Tart, which is topped with Grey Stuff, crisp pearls, and a white chocolate wafer. This is somewhat the “star” of the dessert trio, because of the Grey Stuff, which essentially tastes like Oreo icing. The crisp pearls added a really good depth of texture to this treat, but the chocolate tart base wasn’t anything special.

You don’t get a lot of Grey Stuff on top of the cookie tart, but it’s not necessarily bad, considering how sweet it is. It’s a pretty small portion overall.

And finally, we have the Dark Chocolate Truffle, which was our favorite thing in the dessert trio. It’s filled with Dark Chocolate Grand Marnier Ganache and reminded us of a Ferrero Rocher truffle, but less nutty. There was a delicious hazelnut flavor in the background that we loved. Unfortunately, the portion is pretty small.

The desserts were fairly good, but we were left a smidge disappointed with the portion sizes, especially for a $70 meal. They reminded us more of tiny desserts that you would get at a buffet in Disney World.

Nosh or Not

Dare to venture into the Beast’s castle if…

• You really, really, really want to check out the atmosphere. If Beauty and the Beast is your favorite movie and you’re really hoping to have a Disney-fied dining experience, this might be for you.
• You’re unimpressed by other dining options in the area. Let’s be honest, Magic Kingdom isn’t exactly known for having the best food in Disney World, especially when it comes to table service choices. If you don’t like the menus at the other spots around the park, this might be a good choice since there are some crowd-pleaser items available.

Stay away from the West Wing (and this restaurant!) if…

• You’re on a budget. The meal here isn’t cheap…not by a long shot! You’ll be paying a LOT of money to eat here, and that money could be spent getting a higher quality meal elsewhere. Just think of all the Mickey bars you could buy for $67 per adult!
• You want to maximize your time in Magic Kingdom. With a 3-course meal and a character interaction (albeit a brief, at-a-distance one), this meal is pretty long! It’ll eat up a large chunk of your day in Magic Kingdom, and if you have limited time in the park, it might not be worth it to spend a couple hours on one meal.
• You’re looking for a character meal. This isn’t a “true” character meal when compared to other restaurants. If you go to Crystal Palace nearby, you can interact with Winnie the Pooh and friends, and each character will come up to your table and give hugs and autographs. That doesn’t really happen here, so we suggest heading to a more traditional character meal if that’s the vibe you’re craving.
• You want a truly high-caliber meal. While some of the eats here were “fancy” in name and ingredients, they didn’t come across quite as high-quality as some of the signature restaurants in Disney World. If you’re dining for the food specifically, you might want to try a different spot outside this park.

Overall

And now, to share our final thoughts! When it comes down to it, we have a hard time recommending this restaurant outside of the atmosphere component. The theme is over-the-top and spectacular, but the food just doesn’t live up to the price most of the time. They’re making these dishes in mass quantities (since it’s prix fixe and a LOT of people eat here), so you can taste the difference in quality.

Ultimately, you’re spending twice the amount (or more) than you would on a regular table service meal and $15+ more than you would for a character meal. You also then give up two hours of your day at Magic Kingdom to dine here. With those sacrifices, we were hoping to be a bit more “wowed” by our visit.

We enjoyed the desserts and some of the components of our meal were really delicious, but it’s not quite enough to make us want to come back again and again. We did take some time to explore the restaurant once we were finished eating though, and we’ll give props to the Imagineering team — the detail here is unmatched.

Those are our thoughts on Be Our Guest Restaurant! It’s a unique experience, but we would love to see things stepped up a bit on the menu. We’ll be interested to see if they ever bring back the quick service lunch option that they served before the pandemic — that was a great way to see the castle for cheap!

Stay tuned to DFB for more dining reviews and updates on the best restaurants in Disney World. We’ve eaten at EVERY SINGLE one of them and we have lots of thoughts to share!

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Have you been to Be Our Guest? What did you think? Tell us in the comments!

The post REVIEW: Is Be Our Guest Restaurant Worth the Price Tag in Disney World? We Found Out. first appeared on the disney food blog.