We’ve been looking forward to The Skipper Canteen opening at The Magic Kingdom for a long time. Themed after The Jungle Cruise, this Adventureland located restaurant is intended to be an overflow location. That means that as of right now, you cannot make advanced reservations for it. You can make day of reservations, and they accept walk-ups. Everything we’ve heard, from people that work at the restaurant, lead us to believe that soon, the policy of the restaurant will change, and they will become an advanced reservation site.
The restaurant has several rooms, including the Crew’s Mess Hall, The Fall’s Family Parlor, and The Secret Meeting Room of the S.E.A. Each room is elaborately decorated, but less so than recent offerings, such as Trader Sam’s, or Be Our Guest. We cannot fault The Skipper Canteen at all for the atmosphere, and think that they did a great job with the way the restaurant looks.
Here’s our problem with The Skipper Canteen, and it’s two fold. For starters, while I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s an expensive restaurant, the price points are higher than normal table service restaurants, and start bordering on signature restaurant prices. Which is fine – I don’t have a problem with high prices. But if you’re going to have high price points, I expect you to have amazing food. The bread service at The Skipper Canteen is almost inedible. As a devoted carb lover, this was one of the first times that I’ve only had one bites of a bread service, and then stopped eating it. The appetizer was good. Then we ordered the Skippers Mac N Cheese, which we thought was supposed to be a house speciality. I genuinely tried to think of a way to phrase this nicely, but it tasted like hamburger helper. I’m not saying anything negative about hamburger helper, but when you’re charging almost $20, my expectations were higher. We had dessert too, which was a coconut cake, and it was not only not a good tasting experience, but also a really small portion.
All in all, we were really disappointed in the Skipper’s Canteen, which make’s us incredibly sad to say. I can’t recommend it to you, and I hope that Disney brings in a different chef, and different menu to this restaurant, because the ambiance is already bringing a lot of potential to the table.
