2024 Dining Preview

I am certain that is why they had to close Melt. People simply wanted their scrumpdillyicious hand breaded chicken tenders NOW wherever they were; they simply could not wait until they could walk to a location that served them.

The park realized that this was a demand that HAD to be catered to. They decided to use the Melt location as the delivered on demand location. The call will come in, the tenders will be freshly hand breaded and then fried. I still don't know how they do it, but somehow the very essence of the human breaders enhances the flavor - let's see a robot try to recreate than! And then the steaming hot tenders are delivered by the runners to wherever you want them. The problem that the park ran into during the trials is that the runners had such a difficult time making the delivery as they want the tenders for themselves! The park really had to scrutinize the potential runner candidates during the interview process to make sure that they would not eat the customer's tenders.

What a process!

Am I the only one who likes to sit and have food brought to the table? Especially when hiking around a park all day. When I was still local to CP, we very frequently went Famous Dave's, as one of the only table service restaurants available. This was the big appeal of Disney's dining plan, too, which I think they finally brought back this year.

The new wave of high volume stuff is definitely above average park food (Pavilion, Farmhouse, BBQ), so I'll give them that.

Historically I'd say that I liked sit-down venues because it allowed a time to get off your feet. But they come with the added cost of tipping a server, and depending on the server, can sometimes take too much time off your feet and I'd get anxious to get back to the park.

The downside of quick-service places prior to the last few years was that the lines were often long, so they weren't that quick. And also seating was questionable. I think the park has made superb strides in streamlining their service so that the lines flow quickly and there is generally ample seating at all of the newer locations. Also, dining plan.

Melt had a decent several year run at CP. It had taken the place of a Snoopy or Peanuts themed restaurant. I remember as during one of our first seasons as season pass holders our son reached over to that enticing large chocolate chip cookie that Snoopy is holding and snapped it right off his paw. We took it in to the manager who was kind and told us it was alright. A few months later it was glued back on. Hard to imagine our Little Bear turns 18 in a couple weeks and is taller than me (6').

Dragon's Inn will apparently become 21° and Colder (which is also the name of the new alcoholic beverage location at Kings Island). The official app map has that location pinned with the new name.

Sit down at Famous Dave's is the best ever after half day at the park!

Jeff:

Am I the only one who likes to sit and have food brought to the table? Especially when hiking around a park all day.

Well firstly, you can't be. I suppose it is a little strange that the park is nearly devoid of this option.

Maybe it's just the culture of the Cedar Point I have grown up with, or maybe it's just us (meaning the Meyer clan), or probably a combination of the two, but I really don't have this desire at Cedar Point. It's not that we are running around marathoning coasters all day (well...RCMAC may have something to say about this after hanging out with us), but I feel like the set-up of the Farmhouse and the Pavilion is damn-near perfect for Cedar Point.

As mentioned, the ability to really move people through the line is impressive, and the quality has leveled up.

At Disney, they have made sit-down-dining an attraction in-and-of itself; not to mention you have lots of people locked in for 5-7 day stays on the regular. I remember how awesome it felt to snag a reservation at "Be Our Guest" at the time we wanted 8 years ago (good lord, time flies!). Not to mention the restaurants there are quite literally attractions.

Being a destination where the typical guest is either there for a) "1 day and lets do it all!", or b) "let's stay for a couple days and try to do it all", I'm not sure that sit-down-dining complete with waiters/waitresses is that important at Cedar Point.

I would much rather just pick out my food and assemble with my clan and come and go as we please.

I do tip the bartenders as we come and go. ;)

I think both of you make great points here. I agree with Jeff and would totally welcome more table service options. Perhaps that's the Disney park goer in me though because before I started going there on the regular, table service really didn't matter to me as much in an amusement park.

As Kevin said, a big part of that is because Disney made dining experiences an attraction. I think he's right that the same model probably wouldn't work with CP's demographic. I do welcome the more recent additions though as they have much better food and better capacity.

I have said it before, i will say it again... C.P. needs a sit down style dining location like Miami River Brewhouse like Kings Island.

imadj:

C.P. needs a sit down style dining location

If they needed one they would already have one.

Oops - wrong coaster site. The Coasterbuzz folks will get that joke.

I think I just got to a point in my life, not sure when, that eating with some level of comfort and someone else taking care of stuff became vital to what I is non-work time. Certainly 20-something me was like, gimme your Kinzel-blessed "gotta eat" hotdog quickly so I can get back on Magnum, but priorities change. And yeah, Disney and Universal in previous eras likely changed the role of dining in my day, long before I moved here.

Yeah I know what you mean. For me I guess it's a combination of age and better table services experiences elsewhere. I remember getting so excited for Grand Pavilion and now it's definitely one of my favorite places in the park. And of course I think it's a huge improvement over Wicked Twister. I know the 20 year old inside of me is slapping me for liking a bar/restaurant/sitting area over a coaster. But as you said, priorities change.

I agree that many people visit Disney for several days, which can be hectic and tiring, so the occasional nicer dining experience can be a welcome respite. When we have gone, we would typically eat at a nice (or very nice) place a few times over the course of the week. But even those meals weren't always in a park, as we would often take a day or two off to relax and to spend some time at Disney Village/Downtown Disney, which also has some nice restaurants. And, maybe we're the exception, but being from Pittsburgh with its shorter summers, we would often elect to sit outside at Disney Village. On the other hand, in our annual CP visits though the 80s - 2000s, we only ate at Macaroni's (or whatever it was called) once. And I think we may have eaten once at what was then the Marina Steakhouse. But I will say that we often enjoyed grabbing a quick bite at the Red Garter or Lusty Lil's while we took in a show. Now that my kids are adults and we've resumed our annual visits the past few years, we've enjoyed eating at the Pavilion, BackBeatQue, and Farmhouse. But we usually eat later in the evening, and we still like to sit outside to enjoy the fresh air. So, for us, an indoor dining spot isn't really a big deal. I do wish, however, that they'd add shows to Lusty Lil's so we could grab a snack while getting out of the heat and enjoying a show.

Confirming what was reported earlier, the Poolside Parlor at Breakers is indeed now serving Blue Bunny ice cream instead of Toft's.

On Opening Day my family was told Chickie's and Pete's, I believe the only table-service restaurant left in the park, no longer accepts the yearly Dining Plan.

Pavilion also had a new meatball entree with a pineapple/pepper sauce. Was hoping to see the turkey back, but no luck there.

Hugos now has breadsticks instead of the cheesebread. Didn't try them, but looked like a downgrade.

Farmhouse has chicken pot pie as an entree. You receive a bowl of the chicken pot pie stew (like how the entree chili is served) and then an additional biscuit as the "crust". With two biscuits and a heavier side like the new broccoli cheese casserole it is easily one of the most filling meals on the dining plan.

Kind of disappointed that gravy buffet first result is CB. We'll have to work on that.

I also had the Farmhouse chicken pot pie with two biscuits and broccoli cheese casserole combo. It was restaurant quality and I'm glad I tried it before warm summer weather kicks in and chicken pot pie isn't something that will be appealing. If they opt to rotate it off the menu when summer kicks in, I would love if they brought it back for cool fall nights during Halloweekends.

The relatively high quality of the chicken pot pie struck me too, not to mention the value of two biscuits and what seemed to be quite a bit of chicken in the stew.

It definitely feels like a HalloWeekends dish.