Disney Springs

Eating out is the main reason most families come, and Disney Springs has dozens of places to do it, in two kinds. At a table-service restaurant a waiter takes your order at the table, and almost all of them need booking ahead and rarely take walk-ins. At a counter-service place you order at a till and carry your food to a table yourself, with no booking. For a family the useful groups are the themed table-service restaurants that entertain young children through a meal, the counter windows for a quick lunch and a handful of grown-up rooms for an evening without the children. Three themed restaurants stand out for young children.

Beyond the themed trio, Chef Art Smith's Homecomin' does Southern farm cooking, its fried chicken the dish everyone orders, and it's both very child-friendly and one of the hardest tables to get. Southern American cooking is hard to find at home, so it makes a proper change. The BOATHOUSE, on the waterfront in The Landing, is a smarter seafood and steak restaurant with a children's menu, best known for the vintage Amphicars that drive off its dock into the water, and children love watching the cars launch even if you don't pay for a ride. Spending on a meal there takes a set amount off the tour price if you take a ride. Planet Hollywood Observatory in Town Center is a three-storey table-service restaurant hung with film memorabilia, with a burger and sandwich range developed with the American chef Guy Fieri, and its floors of props give older children plenty to look at. The Polite Pig in Town Center is a counter-service barbecue place carrying the Michelin Guide's "plate" mark, which flags a good restaurant rather than awarding a star. It has children's options and is good value, though you order at the counter rather than being waited on.

Disney's dining reservations open sixty days out through the My Disney Experience app, and the themed and popular tables go early, so reserve before you fly. Homecomin' for dinner and T-REX in peak season are the ones that fill first. If you haven't reserved, you can join a walk-up list in the app once you're near a restaurant, or check the same-day booking podium by the Orange car park on arrival. If you plan to eat at both T-REX and the Rainforest Cafe, the Landry's Select Club, a one-off paid membership run by the company behind them both, gives you some dining credit back and priority seating at the pair.

At a table-service restaurant in the US it's normal to add a tip of eighteen to twenty per cent on top of the bill, which is a real addition to a family bill and is easy to forget when you're used to service being included at home. A Disney dining plan, a pre-paid meal package you add when you book the holiday, covers the food but not the tip, and we set out how it works on our tickets and passes guide. The quick-service counters where you order at a till, like Earl of Sandwich, Blaze and Cookes of Dublin, carry no tip at all, so a casual lunch stays simple.

Quick bites and treats

For a quick meal without a booking, Earl of Sandwich in the Marketplace makes hot sandwiches to order and is much cheaper than the sit-down restaurants, with unfussy children's items. Blaze builds pizzas cooked in a few minutes, D-Luxe Burger does gourmet burgers and shakes and Chicken Guy does chicken tenders with a wall of sauces, all counter service where you order and take a table. Cookes of Dublin, beside Raglan Road, batters fish and chips to take away and is one of the cheaper counters, though a UK family after a proper chippy tea may find it doesn't quite match home. For an allergy household, Erin McKenna's Bakery is entirely gluten, dairy, egg and soy free.

Gideon's Bakehouse sells enormous, near half-pound cookies from a gothic little bookshop in The Landing, and it's regularly the longest food queue at Walt Disney World. It runs a virtual queue you join on your phone, with a wait that commonly runs thirty to ninety minutes and sometimes longer, so put your name down as you arrive and browse while you wait. Twice a day, at the early-afternoon and mid-evening Hot Cookie Hours, the cookies come out of the oven warm. The bakery can't cater for allergies at all, so it's one to leave if that matters for your family. Salt & Straw on the West Side makes small-batch ice cream in unusual flavours and lets you sample freely, which takes the risk out of a child committing to a scoop they won't eat. It's a walk-up whose queue moves steadily, with a virtual queue only on the busiest days, and a few of its flavours are Florida-only specials that change month to month. The Ghirardelli soda fountain hands every visitor a free square of chocolate on the way in and makes hot-fudge sundaes to sit down with.

A meal out for the grown-ups

If grandparents or older family take the children for a night, Disney Springs has one of the stronger adult evenings on Disney property, with wine bars, late sushi, Spanish tapas, an Irish pub and a power-plant cabaret bar within a few minutes' walk. For a quiet dinner or a romantic evening, Wine Bar George is a wine bar that pours by the ounce as well as the glass, with an upstairs balcony over the water. Enzo's Hideaway is a candlelit cocktail bar reached through a tunnel, known more for its cocktails and its charcuterie board than for a full dinner. Morimoto Asia serves pan-Asian cooking under vast chandeliers, with a fourteen-seat sushi bar upstairs, the Forbidden Lounge, open late with its own late-night menu. Jaleo by José Andrés does Spanish tapas, with a jamón carving station and wood-fired paella pans, familiar ground for anyone who's holidayed in Spain, though the plates run small so it's easy to under-order. Paddlefish keeps a rooftop bar aboard a permanently moored paddle-steamer, with no reservation needed for a drink.

For more of a buzz, The Edison is a theatrical 1920s power-plant bar that becomes 21-plus after 10pm on Thursday to Saturday, with aerialists and cabaret acts later in the evening and a cover charge to get in after the switch. Raglan Road runs live Irish bands and step dancing nightly, a lively night rather than a quiet one. STK is a steakhouse with a DJ whose weekday happy hour is the calmer, better-value window. For a themed drink there's Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar, an Indiana Jones aviation lounge that takes walk-ups only and allows pushchairs in its outdoor seating, so it works early even if the children are still with you, and Frontera Cocina's central bar for margaritas and Mexican small plates.

The sit-down places among these, Wine Bar George, Enzo's Hideaway, Raglan Road, Jaleo and Morimoto Asia, book up sixty days out through My Disney Experience or OpenTable, while Jock Lindsey's, STK's bar and the Paddlefish rooftop take walk-ups. The evening runs late. The Forbidden Lounge stays open into the early hours, several venues serve a late-night menu, and the district keeps its walkways open until 2am while the restaurants and bars close from about 11pm. For a show there's Drawn to Life, the Cirque du Soleil production woven together with Disney animation in its own theatre. It's marketed for all ages, though ninety minutes in a dark, loud theatre suits older children more than toddlers, so weigh it against your own child. There's also a 24-screen AMC cinema with dine-in seating, and Level99, a venue of physical challenge games that opened in 2026 and is aimed at older children and adults rather than little ones.