Eating in The Magic Kingdom...

This post is essentially a partially-informed rant about the absurd cost and questionable quality of food we encountered on our trip. Feel free to skip it if you don't like negativity.

Eating at Disneyland Paris proved to be tricky for us. Since there were six of us, this was one area where we tried to economize. In our experience, there are two types of eateries at Disney: 1) rediculously overpriced garbage 2) outragiously overpriced "other" places.

Now we all expect to pay an "amusement tax" when we eat at a place like Disneyland. What I didn't expect from Disney was to pay an absurd quantity of money for the type of food prison riots are made of. On our first day, we had hamburgers for lunch at a place called "Au Chalet de la Marionnette". The meat on the kids' hamburgers was literally the size of a silver dollar. The buns were soggy and the fries were a grease-laden disaster. I probably wouldn't have thought twice about paying twice the market rate for food if it had been decent. No such luck.

Near the entrance of the park, we found a nice sitedown type joint that charged about 20 Euros per child, 50 Euros per adult. That's would have put the total for us at around $270 for a single (probably average) meal. Puh-lease... While this is obviously a luxury, the point is that the options we found at the park seemed extreme.

If you don't want to eat inside the parks, you can go to Disney Village across the "street", which has a few chain restaurants including Rainforest Café and Planet Hollywood. A plate of pasta at Rainforest was going for over 20 Euros. I'm guessing that a meal for the six of us would have run about 150 Euros. While some of you are probably saying "Quit whining! You're on vacation!", I still think it's abusive. Just one man's (strong) opinion.

We ended up having lunch the other days at McDonald's in Disney Village (it's kind of hidden -- turn right just before Rainforest). At least you know what you're getting. For dinner, we had sandwiches from the Exxon (Esso) station next to our hotel. They were actually pretty good.

I realize I sound like a cheap old fart, but if I had to do it again I would take plenty of food with us. As an amusing aside, we saw many people shoveling bread and sandwich meat into plastic containers at breakfast. We then saw these same people eating lunch on the cheap inside the park! Not such a bad idea! Here's to sticking it to "The Mouse".

In the spirit of ending on a positive note, the last day we ate at Cowboy Cookout Barbecue in Frontierland. It was decent food at a price you would expect from an amusement park (about 50 Euros for the six of us). There was also a live bluegrass band.