DisneyFive
When is the 3:00 parade?
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2011
In short, our party of 7 walked away from our dinner thinking, “that was a weird experience, don’t need to go back there again” I’ll explain…
We decided to try Sci-Fi Dine-in this year for the first time. It’s never made our list primarily because we’ve had Free Dining in years past and it wasn’t a good use of a TS credit vs other locations. However, this year we paid out-of-pocket for all meals and Sci-fi looked like a fun new place to try, with a more economical menu. This is a “one off” review, so keep that in mind, and with any review a lot of this comes with our own personal preferences.
Venue:
We arrive for our 5pm dinner with the restaurant entrance very full and some folks complaining about how long they’ve been waiting. I think this was primarily walk-ups complaining. The CM’s were very nice trying to handle the situation. We checked in and got our buzzer and our car “table” was ready within 10 minutes. Much better than expected. We knew ahead of time that the venue is supposed to replicate a drive in movie theater, but all indoors, a cool concept. We get brought to our seat in an excellent location just to the right of the screen. The first thing we noticed was how eerily quiet it was in the restaurant. It’s dark, which was expected, but it was WAY quieter than any other Disney restaurant we’ve ever been in. You couldn’t see the other tables all that well because of the dark, and combine that with the hushed environment, it was just awkward and different. If you spoke at a normal voice level it felt like way more customers than normal could hear you. Overall not too bad though.
The movies and ads they show on the big screen are cheesy, but they were nostalgic. I imagine they don’t put anything very interesting up on the screen because then customers may linger in their seats longer and reduce throughput and revenue in the restaurant.
Seating:
Seating was awkward for us. We had the three kids in the front row of our vehicle, my wife and I in the middle, and my parents behind us. It made conversation really difficult. We knew about the seating arrangement beforehand, but didn’t realize how weird it would be. I don’t enjoy talking to the back of my kids’ heads, or craning my head to talk with my parents. It made it hard to carry on any conversation other than with the person next to you. Maybe this why the place was so quiet? I would have much preferred the tables in the middle of the restaurant where we could have sat together at a typical table setting.
Menu/Food quality:
The menu is somewhat limited focusing primarily on burgers with a few other sandwiches, salads and entrees. We had heard good things about the burgers so 4 of the 7 got those (3 All American, and 1 Beef and Blue Burger). My youngest got chicken tenders, my mom and I split a wedge salad and the Blue burger, and my oldest got the Prime Rib Sandwich. 6 of the 7 in our party also got shakes. The burgers were absolutely HUGE, so you won’t go away hungry. All were ordered medium. None of us were impressed with the meat. I’m not sure what “signature blend of beef” they use, but it didn’t taste much like beef, didn’t feel like beef, and had little flavor. The blue burger had an unfamiliar tang to it and the blue cheese was barely tasted. I’m sorry to say that it was probably the worst tasting variety of this type of burger that I’ve ever had. The steak fries were very good. The wedge salad, while pretty basic, was just what I was looking for and I really enjoyed it. The chicken tenders were good. The prime rib sandwich fell flat as well. Not much taste to the meat and kind of on the dry side. Just an average sandwich at best.
The shakes were enjoyed by all. Most got the cookies and cream, with one getting the special pineapple, and myself getting the chocolate. I tasted all three, and mine was definitely the most generic. Tasted very much like an inexpensive Frosty at Wendy’s. The others were very good though.
Summary:
So, in all, while an economical choice, it was just a weird experience with overall below average food quality. If I would have known ahead of time I would have requested a table where we could sit like normal and enjoy the atmosphere that way. It is a very unique environment that looked awesome in pictures but didn’t play out well for us. At least now we know.
Dan
We decided to try Sci-Fi Dine-in this year for the first time. It’s never made our list primarily because we’ve had Free Dining in years past and it wasn’t a good use of a TS credit vs other locations. However, this year we paid out-of-pocket for all meals and Sci-fi looked like a fun new place to try, with a more economical menu. This is a “one off” review, so keep that in mind, and with any review a lot of this comes with our own personal preferences.
Venue:
We arrive for our 5pm dinner with the restaurant entrance very full and some folks complaining about how long they’ve been waiting. I think this was primarily walk-ups complaining. The CM’s were very nice trying to handle the situation. We checked in and got our buzzer and our car “table” was ready within 10 minutes. Much better than expected. We knew ahead of time that the venue is supposed to replicate a drive in movie theater, but all indoors, a cool concept. We get brought to our seat in an excellent location just to the right of the screen. The first thing we noticed was how eerily quiet it was in the restaurant. It’s dark, which was expected, but it was WAY quieter than any other Disney restaurant we’ve ever been in. You couldn’t see the other tables all that well because of the dark, and combine that with the hushed environment, it was just awkward and different. If you spoke at a normal voice level it felt like way more customers than normal could hear you. Overall not too bad though.
The movies and ads they show on the big screen are cheesy, but they were nostalgic. I imagine they don’t put anything very interesting up on the screen because then customers may linger in their seats longer and reduce throughput and revenue in the restaurant.
Seating:
Seating was awkward for us. We had the three kids in the front row of our vehicle, my wife and I in the middle, and my parents behind us. It made conversation really difficult. We knew about the seating arrangement beforehand, but didn’t realize how weird it would be. I don’t enjoy talking to the back of my kids’ heads, or craning my head to talk with my parents. It made it hard to carry on any conversation other than with the person next to you. Maybe this why the place was so quiet? I would have much preferred the tables in the middle of the restaurant where we could have sat together at a typical table setting.
Menu/Food quality:
The menu is somewhat limited focusing primarily on burgers with a few other sandwiches, salads and entrees. We had heard good things about the burgers so 4 of the 7 got those (3 All American, and 1 Beef and Blue Burger). My youngest got chicken tenders, my mom and I split a wedge salad and the Blue burger, and my oldest got the Prime Rib Sandwich. 6 of the 7 in our party also got shakes. The burgers were absolutely HUGE, so you won’t go away hungry. All were ordered medium. None of us were impressed with the meat. I’m not sure what “signature blend of beef” they use, but it didn’t taste much like beef, didn’t feel like beef, and had little flavor. The blue burger had an unfamiliar tang to it and the blue cheese was barely tasted. I’m sorry to say that it was probably the worst tasting variety of this type of burger that I’ve ever had. The steak fries were very good. The wedge salad, while pretty basic, was just what I was looking for and I really enjoyed it. The chicken tenders were good. The prime rib sandwich fell flat as well. Not much taste to the meat and kind of on the dry side. Just an average sandwich at best.
The shakes were enjoyed by all. Most got the cookies and cream, with one getting the special pineapple, and myself getting the chocolate. I tasted all three, and mine was definitely the most generic. Tasted very much like an inexpensive Frosty at Wendy’s. The others were very good though.
Summary:
So, in all, while an economical choice, it was just a weird experience with overall below average food quality. If I would have known ahead of time I would have requested a table where we could sit like normal and enjoy the atmosphere that way. It is a very unique environment that looked awesome in pictures but didn’t play out well for us. At least now we know.
Dan
We don't try to have conversations but we are usually with each other 100% of the time. It would be odd if you were broken into smaller groups and want to meet up and share about your day so far.
