Ya Gatta Eat

I would like hear some comments on the food served at theme parks. I'll start. The food served at Six Flags America is terrible and the service is even worse.

The food at the Epcot festivals is amazing and I spend a lot of money on it. And the drinks. The various permanent restaurants also tend to be excellent throughout the resort. My favorite spot is Three Bridges at Coronado Springs, where they also have sangria school.

Also, the counter service stuff on the Triton class ships is amazing (and the dining room is generally great).

I have this thought about this all the time when at parks. There are parks I smuggled food into because their offerings are abysmal. Why not have a good product so people want to buy it? You would sell more and could possibly charge more.

Six Flags - Ass

Elitch Gardens - Double overpriced ass

Cedar Fair - Majority Ass

Cedar Point Ass, except for Dave’s, Melt, and Happy Friar, and a couple other oddities.

Herschend - Awesome!

Uni - Awesome outside the parks, park food mid except for a couple restaurants. Volcano Bay Awesome!

Disney - Awesome!

Knoebels- Awesome! You should swing by.

I think CP's newer large venues are pretty great. Well above most of the rest of the park. Universal I've been deeply disappointed with outside of the Potter locations, which are really good. The big place in the Simpsons area is "ass," as you say, and on the IoA side, same for Fantastic 4, Circus, etc.

I haven’t been to CP since 2019, and have sort of drug feet because of noise that ops and the park have gotten worse, which 2019 vs. 2013 was already noticeable. Hence why my venues are a bit dated.

Universal- In park you have Confisco and Mythos, on the other side the Irish place isn’t half bad, well way better than lousy hot dogs and whatever. The potter locations aren’t my favorite, but not horrible.

I often wonder who eats this junk, but then I see a massive line on the cruise ship buffet and what is it for? ****ty hot dogs, lukewarm crap burgers and soggy fries.

What a lousy country we live in, it’s so depressing.

Most of the food at Epic Universe seems to be at the Wizarding World level. Everything I tried was really good. The mac and cheese cone was next level, the butterbeer crepe was 🧑‍🍳. They have local breweries on draft everywhere and the themed drinks all looked really good.

Universal has made some improvements, Circus had a major refurb recently, no more counters, and far better food. They have a meatball and pasta dish that comes in a giant garlic bread horn. It’s quite good, as is the caramel corn cupcake. Minions Cafe is also quite good.

Cedar Fair BBQ places are generally the best restaurants in their park and almost always one of my meals there. The rest is meh.

Love WDW’s festival booths, sit down restaurants and the counter service places at Epcot and especially Animal Kingdom (the protein bowls served in Pandora is probably my favorite counter service meal anywhere) Disneyland’s sitdown restaurants are more of a mixed bag, but their counter service stuff is better as a whole.

Sea World used to be amazing, but is sliding down to Cedar Fair levels, that whole chain needs a flushing of anyone from Blackstone, they are killing those parks.

I completely agree Herschunds is amazing. Holiday World is also good (Pilgrims Cafe for the win.)

Pilgrims Cafe was a gem of park food, I still remember the butter glistening across the top of those potatoes, gathering in little pools of flavor and greatness.

Mrs Knotts Chicken Dinner was also good, in 2016 at least. Is it still good?

I can't get enough at Granny Ogle's Ham and Beans at Dollywood. One of my favorite places to eat at a theme park.

Kings Island has a lot of good food.

Ms. Knotts is still good, but I prefer the Plaza Chicken at Disneyland to it.

Dollywood’s revamped Ms. Lillian’s is now counter service and serves Aunt Granny’s Fried Chicken as a counter service meal which rounds out the trifecta of good fried chicken in a theme park.

Dollywood is probably the best that I've experienced.

CP's new venues are pretty spectacular when they first open, but they have all suffered from menu/ingredient changes that take them down a couple notches.

Kings Dominion seems above average, probably comparable to CP.

Kings Island about the same.

BGW last time I went was very disappointing compared to what I remember. Probably related to the Sea World decline.

Universal is a mixed bag. I agree with Jeff that the Simpsons place is gross.

Michigan's Adventure is still ass for food.

I've heard Cedar Flags have made some improvements in food at Great Adventure.

Was at a season passholder event at Hersheypark last night they had a $15 buffet. Hamburgers with toppings bar, hotdogs, pulled pork bbq, chicken tenders, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, watermelon, and Pepsi products. It was decent for park standards, and a good value.

Busch Gardens/Sea World, Knoebels, Herschend, Universal and Disney are all a step above Six Flags/Cedar Fair. Although their offerings are ok depending on the park.

MDOmnis:

I've heard Cedar Flags have made some improvements in food at Great Adventure.

They could hardly do otherwise.

You know what's great about hitting rock bottom? There's only one way left to go, and that's up!

When I visited Efteling, Phantasialand, and Europa I died of embarrassment for our US parks and what we call Dining. It almost seemed like it was an expected part of the park visit, and even walk-up locations had really good things to eat. The large, themed locations were cafeteria line-style (and it seems in the meantime the CF parks, especially CP, are going to that system) and one automated restaurant sent your order to your table on a roller coaster.
Back home in North America I guess I’d rank Herschend parks as the top of the line (after Disney, right?), then CF, and I’d have to call the legacy Six Flags parks, well, … ass. I’ve never been so glad to see a Panda Express in my life. At Universal I always eat in PotterLand, and I always get the fish and chips, lol, because it’s decent. Once I ate at the big place by Simpsons and it was awful. Busch parks are hit or miss. The best bet there are their BBQ joints, I think each park has one, but they seem slightly less than authentic.
I’m permanently mad at Dollywood for changing Aunt Granny’s to family style- I’m frequently a single visitor and that kind of food at that price point doesn’t work for me. I saw a video review of a new buffet-style set up at a different location but the reviewer didn’t like it. It seemed like an amusement park catering buffet, nothing special.
I think hidden gems can be found at smaller parks, with regional specialties. Shore dinners can still be found in New England and DelGrosso’s in Pa. has a famous spaghetti hall. Knoebels is known for good food and unique venues, but sadly, the good stuff found at the Covered Bridge Festival is no more since it moved to the fairgrounds and I would miss that.
Lastly, then I gotta go, many times it’s worth exploring what can be found outside the gates. A good example for us was Seabreeze, where the park food wasn’t great but there was a nice Italian restaurant directly across the road, walking distance. There was also a popular frozen custard stand adjacent to the park and we were happy to hit that once we left for the day. So sometimes Ya Gatta get creative.
(Btw, I’m totally stealing “ass”. “Ya Gatta”, not so much.)