I just started my own blog about Disney dining with multiple food allergies (restaurant reviews). I am ambivalent about the allergy menus. I am avoiding a LOT of foods, and I go to WDW a lot. Several times a year, as a FL resident and DVC member, I'm there. I've also been on the cruises,
ABD, etc. But my choices are always pretty limited because of the multiple allergies, and I agree it seems like things aren't as easy or happy as they used to be. I've seen these menus in multiple restaurants already, and I just don't know yet. At first, I thought it would be good to see the allergy menu, as a starting point. But I always have to call the chef anyway. There wasn't a single thing on one menu recently that I could eat straight out, and I got pretty nervous. But the chef had no problem putting something together once I talked to him. I think they are trying to stop the trips out of the kitchen, and if you are in a TS restaurant with one food allergy, I think that's safe. Anything more than one allergy, or with a fairly untrained cashier at QS, I would ask for someone.
My one time trying to order off the QS allergy menu (Backlot Express), I ended up getting fries I couldn't eat on my plate, and even in my burger, with the manager who handed me my green tray just saying "Oops." She didn't pull the meal. If it were my child, I would have been sending it back. I picked out the fries away from my GF burger, instead. That type of flippant attitude had never happened prior to the allergy menus for me, at least. That being said, several months ago, at a fancy two-meal restaurant at HS that shall remain nameless, before the allergy menus were released, I spoke to the chef as usual, I was confident they understood my allergies ,but I got extremely sick a couple of hours after eating. That had never happened after any WDW dining experience. Sometimes I've had migraines, but none of the reactions were severe. This was enough that I won't be going back. So it can happen even in a nice place talking to a chef, I guess.
I think it is entirely possible that the kitchen staff are being encouraged not to call the chefs out if they think they can 'handle" the allergy now, because of these menus. I don't like it, because I rarely encounter a chef who seems annoyed to help, as busy as they are, and I feel infinitely more comfortable when I speak to them directly. I just keep asking for the chef, despite the menu in front of me, and they oblige. If Disney starts cutting back on special dining services, then what?
[As an aside, after reading other replies here.... What makes me really sad, though, is people complaining here about others with allergies somehow infringing on their rights. I wouldn't ask anyone not to eat foods I can't eat around me in a restaurant, but I would also ask to not be treated like a second-class citizen, asked to eat elsewhere, etc. If my child had an airborne peanut allergy, though, I might feel differently. It already sucks enough to have food allergies, but to have nowhere to travel or dine out, because it's somehow inconveniencing strangers who don't have these issues, I just don't understand that. What if the child (whose mom didn't want anyone eating peanut sauce near them at O'hana) really, really loves Lilo and Stitch? What if the family can afford WDW but could never afford Hawaii, and that's the closest they'll ever get? What if the peanut sauce on your table is enough to cause the 3-year-old at the next table to die? Someone like that can't go anywhere else. Disney is pretty much the only vacation when I don't have to be scared. Because of my allergies, I'm literally never going to go to anywhere in Asia or South America or Africa or the Middle East, or much of Europe or pretty much any standard chain restaurant or seafood or Japanese or Chinese or Mexican or Thai or Indian or mom and pop diner restaurant in the US, etc etc. I would just ask anyone who thinks they've been somehow wronged by someone else due to a food allergy, to stop and think what they would really do if that were them.]