A brand-new restaurant has opened at Disney World, and we think it’ll be popular!

Hurly-Burly at Disney’s BoardWalk Inn has replaced the former Jellyrolls building and brings new eats, drinks, and entertainment. We’ve been waiting and waiting for this space to come back to life, and we’re taking you with us to check out the new building and everything it has to offer.

Atmosphere

You can find Hurly-Burly on Disney’s BoardWalk, which means it’s only a few steps away from EPCOT’s International Gateway entrance. You can park at EPCOT and walk through the park to the entrance if you have an EPCOT ticket, or park at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and use the Skyliner to the International Gateway. Other options include walking over from Disney’s Yacht and Beach Club Resorts, and walking or taking the boat from The Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort. 

The setup for Hurly-Burly is a little different than we’ve seen with other Disney restaurants. The restaurant is welcoming the entire family, including kids, from opening until 9 PM. After 9 PM, though, guests must be 21 or older and have a valid ID to enter. During the day, a host will lead games and activities (we got to see trivia that was pretty hard!), and at night, the Hurly-Burly will come alive with musical acts taking the stage, with genres changing nightly.

Everything has a bit of a coastal flair with the 1920s vibes. When we arrived early in the day, it was raining pretty hard, so there were usually only about one or two groups waiting to be seated. Even when the rain died down, people were trickling in, so crowds didn’t seem too intense. However, around 5 PM, the waitlist on the My Disney Experience App was full, and if you came in person and waited to get a text from the host, your wait time was about an hour.

The same was the case when we stopped by again right before 9 PM, so it certainly seems like the late afternoon and evening hours are the most popular right now. If you’re trying to get a reservation on the day of (instead of booking in advance), we recommend stopping by at least an hour early to get your name on the list. However, we did have an interesting experience that we’re partly assuming may be the fact that we were a party of one — when we put our name on the list at 8:28 PM, we were told our wait time would be an hour. So, imagine our surprise when we got a text in the SAME minute saying that our table was ready!

Enough about the space, let’s see what’s on the menu!

Menu

The Hurly-Burly menu blends coastal 1920s flavors and styles with Small Bites, with options like Antipasto, Tomato Pie, and Mini Pretzels.

You can also grab multiple Beer options, as well as Wines, Cocktails, and some Mocktail options for those who don’t drink.

Now that we know what’s on the menu, we’re starving, so let’s eat!

Eats

We took it upon ourselves to try nearly the WHOLE menu to bring you our full thoughts, so get ready! We dug into the Tomato Pie first, which is made with Focaccia, tomato sauce, oregano, and Pecorino Romano for $11.

This is a very simple dish but well executed! The tomato sauce isn’t overly sweet, and there’s just enough Parmesan and herbs to bring some balance. The bread itself is so pillowy and soft, which we adored. Now, we don’t think this will be a hit with everyone, since there may be some who don’t understand it. It isn’t a pie in any sense of the word, but it is a very tasty bar snack to go with your cocktails. We do feel it’s a little pricey for 4-ounce pieces of bread topped with tomato sauce, but if you’re looking for something simple yet delicious, we’d recommend it!

We also got to try the Vegan Tomato Pie later in the night, which is also $11. This was just as delicious as when we had it the first time, and we’re so glad there’s a vegan version available! Again, some people may not like that it’s called a pie and certainly isn’t a pie in the slightest, but the focaccia was still soft and pillowy, and we felt the flavors still blended well together.

The Oven-Roasted Shrimp is served with garlic, herbs, and sweet pepper-onion relish and will cost you $19.

These were one of our favorite bites of the night! The shrimp are so well cooked, seeing as they have a pleasant bite to them and aren’t mushy at all, and there’s a beautiful acidic flavor coming from the onion pepper relish. These taste really fresh and light and full of herbaceous flavor. We appreciate that these are butterflied, and it’s clear they’re prepared with a lot of care.

The Antipasto on the menu will cost you $21 and is made of sliced meats, Burrata, Pecorino Romano, and marinated vegetables. This is very well put together — the burrata is so smooth and creamy, and the balsamic that tops it brings a nice acidic balance to the super creamy, rich texture. Our favorite bite on the plate was the burrata with the crostini, because the crunch of the grilled bread was the perfect pairing. The mortadella with pistachios was our second favorite. The meat is super rich, and having the flavor of pistachio adds a great balance. It’s pretty costly, though, so we can easily see how it won’t be for everyone.

The Mini Pretzels with Bacon-Cheese Fondue will cost you $12. These are the same pretzels you’ll find in many other bars and lounges, so they’re not anything super special. The texture is good with the right amount of salt, but these seem to be the most boring selection on the menu. The beer cheese sauce is the star here as it’s super flavorful and topped with chopped scallions. If you really love pretzels, it may be for you, but otherwise, we feel there are better options out there.

The Meatballs in Tomato Gravy are $15 and are veal, pork, and beef meatballs with tomato gravy, stracciatella cheese, Pecorino Romano, and toasted focaccia.

These are tasty and mild enough for all members of your party. We feel that kids will find comfort in the classic meatballs, and the bread is a great pairing, especially since you can use it to dip into the remainder of the sauce afterwards. These meatballs are fresh and tender instead of tasting like they were frozen and reheated. The sauce is extremely mild with a slight sweet aftertaste, so you can consider us fans!

This also comes in a vegan version! The Vegan Meatballs in Tomato Gravy are also $15 and were so incredibly solid. The meatballs were delicious and almost frighteningly realistic. They were so well seasoned and moist, and the sauce was so delicious that they tasted authentically meaty. Of course, they were completely vegan, and we appreciate them providing this alternative. They’re served with the same crostini on the side, and we loved it just as much as we did the first time around.

Theater Concessions will cost you $12, and this is a trio of meatballs, sugar cookie, and buttered popcorn. This is like it was designed for the kids! It’s simple in the best way. Will it knock your socks off? No, definitely not, but the meatballs are fresh, the cookie was soft and delicious, and who doesn’t love popcorn?

The Roast Beef Sliders are also available for $17, and these are shaved roast beef and horseradish-mustard sour cream on slider rolls.

This is another one of our favorite items here. The bun is soft, and the roast beef is easy to bite through. Not to mention, it’s a pleasant pink color, whereas we find a lot of roast beef to be a more unappetizing gray. The biggest surprise here is that there are caramelized onions on this, so keep that in mind when you order, since it’s not listed on the menu! We’d absolutely get these again, though we would personally ask for an additional side of that horseradish-mustard sour cream.

Finally, the Mini Apple Cider Doughnuts are $11, and these are served with miso-caramel sauce.

These looked a little underwhelming to us at first, but we were pleasantly surprised! You can actually taste the apple cider, which isn’t the case for a lot of apple cider treats. Are they the best donuts we’ve ever had? Well, no, but on an otherwise savory menu, they’re a really nice sweet option.

We think the miso caramel sauce was an incredible addition, because the miso helps cut down on the sweetness, so it wasn’t too overpowering. They’re nothing to write home about, but they’re solid if you want something sweet!

Drinks

We decided to snag one of the mocktails on the menu, the Cherry Marquee! This is Minute Maid Premium Lemonade blended with Amarena cherries and garnished with a gourmet cherry, and it will cost you $6.49. This was a really pleasant nonalcoholic offering that didn’t go over the top with syrupy sweetness. Somehow, adding cherry to Minute Maid Premium Lemonade didn’t push it into Jolly Rancher territory. That’s why “pleasant” feels like a revolutionary word here. It’s definitely sweet, but it’s completely drinkable. An adult who isn’t drinking alcohol could have more than one without feeling like they’d have a horrible sugar hangover in the morning.

We also grabbed the Caramel Corn Old Fashioned for $21. This is made with Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon, caramel corn, and The Bitter Truth Decanter Bitters.

This has the classic flavors of an Old Fashioned, but it’s not overly sweet. This is a very smooth cocktail with no burn, and we loved the caramel corn that comes on the side. It tastes like it might be house-made — it’s the perfect caramel corn, sweet and crunchy without being too much.

We’re not totally sure the flavors go perfectly together, so we found ourselves spacing out munching on the caramel corn with taking sips of the drink, but overall, we’re fans of this drink!

Nosh or Not

You should head to Hurly-Burly if…

• You’re looking for a fun, themed bar with lots of space. This is a big space with a lot of seating. It’s very well decorated, and the story and theming feel very at home with the BoardWalk. The best part of the theme is the bulletin board by the bathrooms. There are tons of “old papers” from Polly’s dressing room, including letters and notes to other boardwalk characters, and 1930s ads for other BoardWalk spots.
• You need a late-night bite. This spot is open until 1 AM, so if you’ve just left an After Hours event in the parks, or you’ve participated in Extended Evening Hours and want to stop somewhere to eat, this is a great choice if your party is 21+.
• You want an outdoor bar with an amazing view. To us, the outdoor part of the bar is literally a stroke of genius. The vibe is not Pleasure Island or Atlantic Dance Hall. It’s not a rager. You’re sitting down in the newest environment in Walt Disney World, and it’s really beautiful. It uses the original space ingeniously and transports you to another place. Even though it’s set in current times, it feels like it takes you to a different time, too. There’s a disorienting onslaught of music, switching rapid-fire through decades and centuries, that makes you forget what year it is, if only for a moment.

You might want to skip if…

• You want a genuine nightlife experience. We definitely think this is the final true blow to anything resembling true nightlife in Disney World. The tables are too close together that there’s nowhere to dance or stand with your drink and chat. It’s very much a seated lounge, like the many others you’ll find around Disney World.
• You’re not a fan of live entertainment or live music. During the day, you’ll find activities like trivia happening in a 30 minutes on/30 minutes off situation, and each night, you’ll get to hear amazing live music by numerous different groups, such as the Siren Sisters, who we got to see during our visit (and they were fantastic!). If you’re looking for a lounge where you can easily talk with your group without having to raise your voice, though, this may not be for you.
• You’ve got really picky people in your group, kids or adults. While the menu here does have some options that are good for pickier eaters, it’s not the most expansive.

Overall

We’re really big fans of this new spot, that’s for sure! We can see this place becoming very popular once people understand what it is, so we’ve put it all together in just a few sentences to try and relay how awesome it really is. You’re coming to a Disney World lounge with live music. There’s no time limit and no drink minimum or maximum. They have a full bar, so you can order whatever you want, but they also have fun signature cocktails and a small bites menu, some of which are cooked in the kitchen over at Trattoria al Forno, which is part of why it’s as delicious as it is.

We feel especially that this spot is a massive upgrade in terms of environment, especially with how much story has been added to the venue. The outdoor bar is worth its weight in gold! The fact that you can come and sit outside without having to do the walk up list is such a great touch and seems immediately popular. The fact that it’s open till 1 AM gives night owls a place to eat and drink in Disney World too, which is rare around the resort.

We’re still dreaming about our experience at Hurly-Burly and already planning our next visit, but in the meantime, keep following Disney Food Blog for more food reviews you need to know for your next Disney World vacation. We have full planning guides so your next trip will be the best one yet.

FULL GUIDE TO RESTAURANTS AT DISNEY’S BOARDWALK INN

What do you think about Hurly-Burly? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.