Lunch and A December Walk Around The Grand Floridian

During our most recent visit, we decided to visit the Grand Floridian to grab lunch and take in the decorations before heading over to Magic Kingdom for MVMCP. I know Christmas has come an gone, making this post instantly outdated, but I’m rolling with it anyway.

We arrived at the Grand Floridian around 1:00 on a party day. This gave us some time to walk around and enjoy the resort before lunch. We had a 1:50 reservation at Grand Floridian Cafe, which is the latest lunch time available. The restaurant is does not seat guests between 2 pm and 5 pm as it transfers from lunch to dinner.

The self parking lot is a bit of a walk from the main building so be sure to plan on arriving at least 15 minutes before you reservation time.

The resort has 2 main pools, as well as a kids “spray park” type area.

The ground are gorgeous and always well maintained, but the Victorian theme doesn’t do a ton for me personally. I mean its nice, but if I were splurging a crazy amount of money stay a night or two somewhere, it definitely wouldn’t be here.

The main lobby is gorgeous, but its always super crowded during the day. This is especially true during the holidays.

Let’s move on to lunch.

The restaurant was beautifully decked out for Christmas.

We had a table right next to a window but the view was nothing special as you can see here.

Still the restaurant provided a lovely atmosphere with lots of nice details.

The lunch menu is very much a brunch menu here, serving several dishes that would be at home on any breakfast menu. Here we have the seasonal squash soup, as well as the “Cafe Garden Quiche” entree. Both the soup and quiche were delicious. Each was served piping hot and seemed to have nice fresh ingredients. The watermelon and side salad were fine as well.

If you are looking for something a bit more filling, I’d recommend the Steak and Eggs. The steak had a perfect sear to it, giving it a great charred flavor on the outside. It was cooked to a perfect medium rare on the inside, allowing it to basically melt in my mouth. The cheesy hashbrown casserole biscuit looking thing (we use real technical terms here) was fantastic as well. The eggs were nothing special. At $20, this dish is only slightly more expensive than most quick service restaurants on property.

Overall, we were really happy with our meal at Grand Floridian Cafe. I wouldn’t hesitate at all to recommend this restaurant to anybody visiting the Magic Kingdom area. The prices are on the low end of Disney table service and the quality is excellent. Service was wonderful as well. It’s also one of the easiest reservations to get on property.

After lunch, we made our way over to the boat launch to head over to Magic Kingdom. It’s definitely quicker to take the monorail but it was a beautiful day and its a very nice boat ride if you have the time.

If you are taking the boat over to MK for a holiday party, I would plan to get there prior to 3:30. Since the party starts entry at 4:00, this is when most people are going to be heading over. We got on line at 3:25 and were about 15 people back. By the time the boat arrived, the line was back well past Narcoossee’s. I’d bet the people at the back of that line had to wait for at least 2 more boats after ours.

Its even worse if you at the Poly. Since the boat travels to the Grand Floridian first, the only space available when it reaches the Poly is from anybody getting off there. In our case, it was only one family. The line was at least 60 people back I’d say and only 4 of them were able to get on our boat.

Once you are on though, the ride is wonderful.

We then proceeded to have a fantastic night at MVMCP, which you can read all about in these posts here:

Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade w/ Tony’s Very Merriest Town Square Party

Lets Watch… Mickey’s Most Merriest Celebration

A Totally Tomorrowland Christmas: A Quirky Christmas Treasure

Following the party, we took monorail back to the Floridian since it was pretty cold out by that point. Here are a few photos of the lobby area just after midnight. It’s really quite stunning without all the crowds and noise.