Month: October 2016

If you have been to the Liberty Tree Tavern for lunch at the Magic Kingdom, you without a doubt are familiar with the New England Pot Roast and Pilgrims’ Feast meals. If you aren’t, here is the old menu to refresh your memory a bit:

Liberty Tree Tavern has always been one of my favorite lunch spots at the park, being fairly inexpensive and having a menu of really solid comfort food. In fact, you can read my glowing review of the former lunch menu that I did back in February if you want to hear more about it.

On Wednesday, October 26th, 2016, the menu above ceased to be. In its place was this:

Now, not only are the Pot Roast and the Pilgrims’ Feast gone, but as you can see, the menu has been greatly reduced in overall options. You can still get turkey if you really want it, but you will have to order the infamous “All-You-Care-to-Enjoy” meal which is now also offered at lunch in addition to dinner, where it has always been.

Is the move a positive one, or is this another Plaza Restaurant style disaster? Let’s find out.

Liberty Tree Tavern “All You Care to Eat” Family Style Meal ($33.00 Adults, $19.00 Children)

The “all you care to enjoy” feast includes 3 courses: Declaration Salad, The Patriot’s Platter, and then dessert.

The meal begins with bread and the Declaration Salad. The bread is probably the highlight of the meal, soft, flaky rolls served with a sweet honey butter.

The salad is very standard, but good for what it is. I actually prefer the salad at the Diamond Horseshoe, but that is where compliments for that dining establishment end.

On to the main course, the macaroni and cheese is a highlight if you enjoy such a dish, but there’s nothing really special about it. Sometime you just want some good mac and cheese though, it doesn’t always need a gimmick.

As for the meats, the turkey is always a highlight, cooked well enough and rather enjoyable. I thought the pork had a weird flavor to it and was a little fatty for my taste. The sliced prime rib was fine, although depending on the batch you end up with, it might more closely resemble an inferior piece of beef. There was some au jus on the side with it, which I would recommend dousing it with.

Our second helping was much healthier, but the prime rib had a very different appearance.

The mashed potatoes and the stuffing are just as good as I remember, and the seasonal vegetables were good enough.

The dessert offered with the feast is the warm bread pudding. This was really good, but the entire time I was eating it, I just wished that I was at Ohana at the Polynesian Village Resort (home of the world’s greatest bread pudding in my opinion). Also, the pieces of crust in here were really hard to chew, but otherwise the rest was moist and delicious.

OVERALL

Since the clam chowder and the cheeseburger stayed on the menu, my usual lunch order from Liberty Tree Tavern is still available, but it is hard to deny that this is a significant downgrade to the Liberty Tree Tavern. The Liberty Boys BLT with pork belly was delicious, the soup of the day was a nice offering, and the pot roast and cheaper Pilgrims’ Feast were a beloved mainstay of the menu, and now all of that is gone. In the short time we sat down for lunch, we saw two guests complain about the removal of the pot roast and Pilgrims’ Feast. The couple seated next to us up and left just minutes after being seated, and the table adjacent to them was given a “no strings” FastPass after complaining that they had to order something else.

While I occasionally find myself craving the comfort food of the “all you care to eat” offering, I would much rather have the diverse lunch menu and instead come to Liberty Tree Tavern for dinner if that is in fact what I wanted. Instead, you now have a restaurant that may only be a notch above the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon… and that’s bad… really bad.

I still enjoy the “all-you-care-to eat” meal, but the Magic Kingdom has changed a lot in the last few years. What was one of my favorite meals at the park (albeit originally with the added offering of Disney characters for dinner) now exists in a world with Skipper Canteen, the sweet and spicy chicken and waffle sandwich, and even a Pecos Bill’s menu that I really enjoy. In a brave-new-dining-world of far superior choices, I can’t in good conscious recommend a visit to Liberty Tree Tavern for lunch unless you really just want what is pictured above (and maybe the Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake, because that is amazing). Otherwise, there are plenty of other fine restaurants at the Magic Kingdom, they just don’t exist along this street between Frontierland and Liberty Square.