A Foodie’s Guide to Traveling with Adventures by Disney 

If eating is as important to your vacation as sightseeing, you’ll want to think carefully about how you’ll eat on an Adventures by Disney tour. 

In my experience, the food is the least of the reasons you’d want to travel with ABD. It doesn’t really measure up to the top-flight experience of the rest of the tour, largely because so many meals are served banquet-style. You’ll definitely get to sample the local cuisine, and you will probably get to try your hand at making some yourself, but you may not get the best your host country has to offer. 

On our recent ABD trip to Switzerland, 15 meals were included in the price: 7 breakfasts, 3 lunches, and 5 dinners. The rest of our meals were on our own. This is pretty standard for ABD, give or take a meal here or there. 

Here I’ll offer an overview of our dining experience with ABD, as well as offer some tips for how to get the most out of dining with ABD. 

Breakfast

Breakfast is the easiest meal to recommend. Your days will get off to a great start with a hearty breakfast buffet. The spreads are as top-notch as the fancy hotels ABD typically chooses. You also have a good window of opportunity to eat before your daily adventures begin, and you can eat on your own at your leisure. Or, as leisurely as you can if you have to board your bus at 7 a.m.

Lunches and dinners

The rest of our meals fell into a few categories: 

Banquet style:  About half of our included meals were served banquet style—that is, all of us seated together with either a predetermined menu, limited choices we made in advance, or, in one case, a buffet. 

Two of our meals were cheese-based Swiss classics—Fondue and raclette —served family-style.  Several of our fellow adventurers were disappointed by the fondue, possibly because we were expecting something more American, like broccoli to dip in the fondue, or chocolate fondue for dessert. This is not the Swiss way. Sharing raclette in Gruyères, though, was unforgettable. (For the record, the sides for both cheesy classics are the same: bread, gherkins, and pickled onions.)

At the start of the trip, we were asked to choose our appetizers and entrees for several meals planned for later in the week, including the farewell dinner. In general, we could choose between 2 appetizers and 2 entrees for each meal. These meals generally went really smoothly, with some minor exceptions, including a small restaurant that clearly struggled to serve 30-plus people at one time. 

Disney certainly accommodates allergies and dietary preferences, but your choices might be even more limited, and these accommodations sometimes throw a wrench in the works at mealtime. But if you can’t be in the same room with an onion, don’t let your guard down. 

These group dinners can be a bit of a marathon. We had a dinner on our Scotland trip several years ago that dragged on for 3 hours; people started giving up and leaving the restaurant before the first course was even served. The problem is you can never tell if it’s going to be a marathon or not. 

One meal on this trip was a buffet, which we really appreciated, because it was at the end of a long day, and it was nice to have the opportunity to eat at our own pace and turn in early. 

Hotel restaurant dinners: On our recent trip, we had one night with dinner on our own at the hotel restaurant. This meant we could have dinner with just our traveling party, or with new friends we’d made along the way. We were given a reservation time, and we could choose 3 courses from the full menu. This was our only marathon meal on this trip. 

On your own: The rest of our meals were on your own. On this trip, we had 3 lunches and one dinner on our own. This is your chance to find some American-style food for lunch or a Michelin-starred restaurant for dinner. Lunch can be challenging because there is often a time crunch; you really can’t be late for the bus if you’re heading out right after lunch. With dinner the biggest challenge is where you happen to be on your free night, and how much you’ve eaten the rest of the day.

You be the chef

There’s one more edible aspect of an ABD trip: Depending on where you travel, you may also get a chance to learn how to make a local specialty, like shortbread in Scotland or pasta in Italy. 

In Switzerland, we were coached through making our own giant, round chocolate bar, choosing additions to the chocolate, pouring it into a mold, and decorating it with toppings. (Don’t worry, we also got plenty of samples of professionally made chocolate as well as making our own!)  

Tasty tips 

I love traveling with ABD, but the best I can say for the food is that it’s … fine. Sometimes it’s even very good. But if you are a serious foodie, I would suggest a few things: 

• Extend your trip by a few days to indulge in the best your host country has to offer. 
• Skip out on one or two of the group dinners to add to your “on your own” time. You absolutely can opt out of activities if there’s something else you’d rather do. 
• If you have dinner planned on an “on your own” night, be careful not to indulge too much during the day. On both of our nights off, we had no desire for a big dinner after our activities during the day.