Coming to run the half marathon and I have a plea

[nicholas]

Hey to all the west coasters here! Holla!

So here's the deal. I am coming in Sept to run the half marathon with a couple friends. Looking forward to it considering how much fun I had on my last trip to Disneyland. I find it far more magical and enchanting than the MK. I have my hotel booked and everything set to go. Staying across the street like I did last time. Sure, on property would have been amazing, but the price was an issue and they were all booked for that weekend.

Anyway, on to my plea. My friends and I are wanting to have a special lunch after the half marathon to celebrate our completion of the run. We are thinking Blue Bayou at the moment. But since I'm not the most knowledgable when it comes to the restaurants there, I wanted some input. Would this be the best place to have a good meal to celebrate finishing the run?

Also, I thought I would ask around (without them knowing in case it didn't come to fruition), but what are the odds of finding someone to have us as guests for a lunch at Club 33? I realize this is asking a lot, and there may be a limit on the number of guests someone can bring, but I just wanted to ask around in case it was possible. It would be a fun and special surprise for everyone if I was able to swing it somehow.

Thanks for the input everyone, and lookin forward to Sept!!

 

[TP2000]

Sorry, can't help with Club 33, but can offer some advice on the other restaurants around Disneyland.

The Blue Bayou is indeed a fun place to "celebrate". The food is pretty good for Disney in-park dining, the service is always at least good, if not excellent, and of course the atmosphere can't be beat in North American Disney parks. The lunch menu is similar to dinner, but with the famous Monte Cristo sandwich being the star attraction for lunch, in addtion to being inside Pirates of the Caribbean in perpetual moonlight.

Now, if you want food that is noticeably a step up the sophistication and quality ladder from the Blue Bayou, I highly recommend Catal. It's in Downtown Disney and it's run by Joachim Splichal's Patina Group (He's a trendy celebrity chef from West LA with a small empire of hip eateries in West LA/Hollywood/Bevery Hills. What saves him from all of that painful hipness is that there is a surprising lack of attitude, so it's all rather bearable). Catal is Splichal's flagship location for OC, and the food is Continental-Californian. They have a good bar, an excellent wine list, and the service is always very good. The food is fantastic, and the old classics like Escargot or oysters as starters never fail me. The entrees are more contemporary in flavor and presentation, but still very good. They are located right in the middle of DTD, on the second level with a big indoor dining room and a rambling patio with outside seating. The decor is sort of a "Modern Tuscany" thing, and a real contrast to the rest of DTD, but it works.

Of course, if you want to have dinner, then the Napa Rose is a must. It's higher on the price scale than Catal and only open for dinner, although I think they do a brunch on Sunday's. Napa Rose is quite famous, and easily the best Disney dining experience I've had in North America. Better service than Victoria & Albert's, the best wine cellar and list in all of Orange County, and simply stunning food and presentation. You have to go to Tokyo Disney Resort to find better service or food, and the Napa Rose simply blows anything at WDW out of the water. It's a favorite with the locals, so you see more date night types in there and the tacky tourists you see in the nice places at WDW don't really get through the front door. No offense to tourists and their darling little children, but when you are dropping hundreds of dollars on dinner in a beautiful restaurant you don't want chubby housewives in capri pants and cranky kids playing with light sabers sitting next to you.

Places to avoid in DTD are the following;

Naples Pizzeria - It looks nice from the outside, but the service is either dreadful or at best simply bearable. The wait staff is comprised of bored guys with unpressed shirts and spiky hair talking to each other about the surf earlier that morning, or what the surf may be like tomorrow. They pay very little attention to the actual customers, although my mistake may have been not engaging them in a discussion about surfing. I just tried to order a pizza, silly me. The pizza isn't that great either, unless you like very, very thin crust and sparse toppings.

Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen - Started off with a bang in 2001 as Brennan's only location outside of New Orleans, slid downhill quickly in 2002, and now can't seem to get anything right. The service is always horrible and inattentive. Remembering how great it was in '01, I always try and go back about once per year, and I always get burned. The last time I went was only because Catal was hosting a private event that night, and I thought I'd give it another shot. Big Mistake, again. Their presentation has gone into the toilet from what they started with 5 years ago, and the good food isn't great enough to make up for all of the other mistakes and missed opportunities. The live jazz is usually good, and the bar in back has decent bartenders, but service in the dining rooms is just lousy. The hostesses, bussers and waiters are all just bad, bad, bad. They always seem understaffed and stressed out, and usualy manage to get only two thirds of what you actually ordered to your table. And just try to get a refill on a cup of coffee at the end of the meal. The bad service has been going on for years now, so you can't blame some sort of post-Katrina depression for it.

The bad places at DTD have a steady stream of clueless tourists tromping through every day looking for dinner, so they never seem to have to worry about going out of business or losing clientele. The good places in DTD have built up a local following, and the tourists generally can't get in unless they thought ahead and made a reservation. Call (714) 781-DINE at least a week ahead of your visit to secure a reservation at Catal. Napa Rose can book out up to 30 days in advance, so call earlier if you want some serious dining enjoyment at Napa Rose. Blue Bayou also requires advance planning, just because it's such a cool place to eat lunch or dinner.

 

[TTATraveler]

Blue Bayou is very good, make sure you make advanced reservations as it gets crowded there.

I second the don't eat at Naples. We didn't have any specific problems with the wait staff eventhough our waiter looked related to Michael Jackson. The food, however, was nothing to write home about.