Disney Dream Cruise Ship Dining

Animator’s Palate, Royal Palace, Enchanted Garden and Palo

Nov 2, 2009 Debra Peterson

Disney Dream, Disney Cruise Line's newest ship, offers new restaurants and updated favorites that promise to make family-cruise dining culinary and visual delight.

Disney Cruise Line held a media event on October 29, 2009 to release information on the features of its newest ship. Among the Disney Dream’s special features are its various dining options. As with the line’s other ships, the Dream’s venues include the signature restaurant Palo, an adults-only venue, and the themed Animator’s Palate. Both restaurants have been updated with new features. The Dream will showcase two new themed restaurants, Royal Palace and Enchanted Garden.

Dining, Disney Cruise Style Features Rotational Dining

Animator’s Palate, Royal Palace, and Enchanted Garden will participate in Disney Cruise Line’s rotational dining. This strategy, developed and exclusively used by Disney, allows guests to enjoy different dining experiences while receiving personalized service. In rotational dining, guests eat at the different themed restaurants, but their servers move with them.

Animator’s Palate

The Dream updates the Animator’s Palate, one of Disney Cruise Line’s signature restaurants. The restaurant is themed as an animator’s studio where the magic of animation comes alive. The venue is decorated with animation tools: paint brushes, character sketches, maquettes, computer stations, and film strips. Moments from Disney and Disney-Pixar films decorate the walls.

The contemporary dining room is colorful and filled with fun details. Chairs, for example, use Mickey’s Mouse’s color scheme of red, black, and yellow, with the seats having two yellow buttons to suggest Mickey’s famous pants. In another colorful detail, the ceiling – the artist’s palate of the restaurant’s name – is “painted” in light by fiber-optic brushes that form part of the décor.

The Artist’s Palate will serve contemporary, Americanized Pacific Rim food, and offer adult diners a number of wines from the Pacific Rim and California.

Royal Palace

Royal Palace is inspired by Disney princesses and their films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast. The restaurant’s décor is lavish, with marble floors and plush carpeting. A chandelier made of glass slippers adorns the room, which is filled with other princess elements, including portraits of the princesses and their princes. Guests may recognize that many restaurants details are taken from the films, including the floor plan from the Cinderella ballroom scene.

At Royal Palace, guests will enjoy a four-course dinner, written on a menu that looks like a royal decree. In addition to dinner, a breakfast buffet and lunch will be offered on select days.

Enchanted Garden

Enchanted Garden is inspired by the Versailles gardens, with its white trellises, landscape frescoes, and blue-sky ceiling, Custom glass fixtures designed to look like flowers are suspended from a canopy. A promenade lined with light posts leads to a seven-foot terrace fountain with a statue of a cherubic Mickey Mouse.

These fanciful touches are matched by the restaurant’s enchanted component. Over the course of a guest’s dining experience, the room transforms. The daytime sky becomes a sunset, then a twinkling canvas. The flower fixtures blush with color, wall sconces transform into fans, paintings shift to a night perspective, and the fountain becomes awash in light.

The Enchanted Garden’s cuisine offers a seasonal menu that focuses on market-fresh ingredients and a four-course meal for dinner, while buffets are offered for breakfast and lunch.

Palo, Dining for Adults Only

Palo, an adults-only signature restaurant, was redesigned for the Disney Dream and offers guests two new experiences. Palo will continue to offer guests a lush, romantic experience featuring an ocean view, piano music with vocal accompaniment, and an Italian-inspired decor of wood tones and rich colors. But guests may dine on Palo’s private outdoor teak deck or enjoy drinks at Meridian next door, an adults-only lounge designed to evoke the early days of sea travel.

The upscale restaurant, named after the poles lining Venice’s canals, serves Italian cuisine – antipasti, handmade pastas, seafood, and prime meats – and a diverse selection of reserve wines. Palo’s menu on the Disney Dream is expected to shift to focus more extensively on Northern Italian dishes. At Disney's media event,Tom Wolber, Senior Vice President of Disney Cruise Lines, confirmed the chocolate soufflé with vanilla bean and chocolate sauce, a signature dessert and guest favorite, will remain on the menu.

In addition to dinner, Palo will offer an adult-only champagne brunch.

The Disney Dream is scheduled to begin sailing in January 2011, traveling from Port Canaveral to Nassau, Bahamas, and Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island. Trips will include three-, four-, and five-night itineraries. With these four restaurants, the Disney Dream continues Disney Cruise Line’s focus on offering family cruises vacations in which dining is as much an attraction as other ship activities.

Related Article: Disney Cruise Line Introduces AquaDuck Ride

The copyright of the article Disney Dream Cruise Ship Dining in Cruise/Island Vacations is owned by Debra Peterson. Permission to republish Disney Dream Cruise Ship Dining in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.