Palo | Magical Travels with Barb

One of the best aspects of a cruise is the food. Disney Cruise Line is a notch above the rest when it comes to food and they know how to make a dining experience special and employee the BEST servers that will help take that dining experience to the next level.

Let’s go through the options for filling your belly on a Disney Cruise.

Main Dining Rooms

There are three main dining rooms on the Disney ships, they vary by ship, but each one has 3 main dining rooms with 2 seatings. Usually, the times are 5:45pm and then 8:15pm. Each ship has Animator’s Palette, although they are a bit different on each ship. The other restaurants vary by ship, but each will have two other themed dining rooms.

Disney operates a Rotational Dining experience onboard all Disney ships. Each night of your cruise, you and your personal wait staff will “rotate” to one of the 3 distinctly themed restaurants onboard the ship, ensuring you enjoy a delicious meal catered to your liking in a unique setting nightly. And since your servers travel with you each night, they get to know you quickly and will take fabulous care of you. This is definitely a #DisneyDifference. Servers know just how to make you feel special and entertain the adults and the kids.

There are 2 dinner seatings each night of your cruise. Although specific times vary based on itinerary, dinner is served at approximately 5:45 PM (Main Seating) and 8:15 PM (Second Seating). Once onboard the ship, check the dining tickets that can be found in your stateroom for assigned seating time, restaurant schedule and table number.

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One of the main dining rooms is usually open for breakfast and lunch if you don’t want to buffet or poolside options. This is open seating so you can sit anywhere and come in anytime during the opening hours.

ProTip: Order as many entrees or appetizers as you want. Can’t decide or don’t think one portion will be enough, go ahead and order two.

3BCRoXKPT1+g728xdimJTg — My son had 3 entrees nightly. The first night he finished his dish and wanted more so from then on, our servers would bring out a second and 3rd dish without us asking once he was close to finishing the first. He would pick something from the menu and then our server would bring him the basic chicken or steak and salmon dishes off the “offered every night” menu.

Buffet and Pool Deck

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Cabanas is Disney’s buffet restaurant located on the pool deck. Breakfast and Lunch are buffets and offer an incredible selection. Cabanas is also open for dinner, but the interesting thing is it has table service at dinner, it’s not a buffet.

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The pool deck also offers fast food options, there is a pizza window and burgers, chicken fingers, etc…window that are open most of the day and late into the night.

Disney Cruise Line Blog

Specialty Restaurants

Palo is one of Disney’s specialty restaurants available on each ship and is adult-exclusive. Palo is Northern Italian themed and is available at an upcharge, currently $40 per person for brunch or dinner. This does need to be booked in advance and is popular and can be difficult to get into. See more about Palo here.

Remy is another adult-exclusive French gourmet dining experience aboard the Disney Dream and Fantasy. Brunch and Dinner are available to be booked in advance, again, it is popular and reservations can be hard to come by. Why yes, that is gold leaf on the chocolate dessert!

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Eye Scream Treats is the ice cream shop available on all the ships on the pool deck. Self-serve soft serve is available here.

Room Service

Another #DisneyDifference is room service is available at no additional charge on all Disney Cruise Line ships. While room service is free, be sure to tip your servers.

ProTip: Mickey Bars are available at no charge from the main dining rooms and room service. All the Mickey Bars you can eat!

You certainly won’t go hungry on a Disney Cruise. Let’s get you on one soon!

As is typical on most cruise lines today, Disney offers choices beyond their Main Dining rooms. Already not typical with rotational dining and 3 main dining rooms, Disney offers Palo and Remy. Palo is Northern Italian cuisine on all 4 Disney ships. Remy is French cuisine on the Dream and Fantasy only. Both are adult-exclusive.

Upcharges and dress codes apply to both restaurants, but Palo is a little less restrictive than Remy. For Palo dinner, the charge was $40 per person.

Dress to Impress

To preserve the elegant ambiance of this restaurant, you are asked to adhere to a dress code when dining at Palo. We recommend dress pants or slacks and a collared shirt for men, and a dress, skirt or pants and a blouse for women. Jeans may also be worn if in good condition (no holes). Please no tank tops, swimsuits, swimsuit cover-ups, shorts, hats, cut-offs, torn clothing, t-shirts with offensive language and/or graphics, flip-flops or tennis shoes.

On our recent cruise, we had dinner at Palo on pirate night, which was the 3rd night of our 4 night cruise and our Castaway Cay day. We weren’t terribly interested in pirate festivities, our children are teenagers and we would be done in plenty of time to see the fireworks. On the Dream Palo and Remy are next to each other on the top deck in the front of the ship with the Meridian Bar in between. When you arrive you are escorted into the bar to wait for your escort into the restaurant. We had a drink here and then were escorted to our table. All tables have a wonderful view of the ocean.

The service is nothing short of outstanding! We ordered wine, and then Mircea our server brought the bread service and then the antipasto cart and we watched as our server prepared a plate of “a little bit of everything” to try.

We ordered several Primi to try and share, Calamari Fritti, Gnocchi and the Wild Mushroom Risotto. So so good. Even the gnocchi, which are usually not great in restaurants when you are used to my father’s homemade version, was wonderful.

Next, was a palette cleanser…

Then the main course, Rack of Lamb for me and Osso Buco for my husband. Cooked to perfection.

The dessert course was next. When you order your main course they will ask you if you will be ordering the chocolate souffle, their signature dessert because it does take some time to make. I knew about this in advance and was definitely getting it. There are no words, it was heavenly.

And there was other stuff, including a Happy Anniversary plate.

The dinner was well paced and lasted about 2 hours, but didn’t feel long at all. The restaurant was quiet, there were several tables around us, but it wasn’t full by any means.

Palo is well worth the upcharge and can be prebooked in your cruise account when your activities window opens.

Have you eaten there? I would go back in a heartbeat and next time will try the brunch too, I hear it’s phenomenal.