'Ohana Dinner Disappointment

righttrack

righttrack

Well-Known Member
All kinds of people with all sorts of agendas come into table service dinner. Being in the NYC area we are familiar with pre-theater meals. The assumption when you are in that district and arrive for dinner at 5pm is that you are going to the theater for a 7:30pm arrival. They race to bring you everything and slam a check on your table. They don't expect you to finish, but they know their trade and part of getting a good tip and good Yelp review is giving you good food and drink and getting you out of the door on time. When you're "just visiting" and not going to the theater, you tell your server, we are taking it easy, no theater.

I think the experience of TS restaurants at WDW is similar. Some people do want to get out as quickly as possible and find the whole TS experience to be a speedbump on their vacation. Still others want to enjoy the meal. I've slowed them down at O'hana and others where our schedule was relaxed and sped them up too. Just say something. I find the servers accommodating. That said, they do plop the food on your table right away at O'hana and you can motor through it or take your time. For O'hana we prefer to be not rushed.
 
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DisneyDebNJ

Well-Known Member
tinkgrl1685 said:
Right?!!! It always seems to be a favorite replaced with something just BLAH! And this has become a trend at many restaurants on property.. I find it hard to believe that they got rid of the delicious chicken at Ohana because of the cost.. I don't know about you, but I doubt disney is hurting anywhere when it comes to money. They are a money machine!!! Just don't get it.
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I cant see the chicken being removed for money, it's cheaper than the pork, steak or shrimp. I wonder if there were a few occasions where the chicken was packed too tightly on the skewer and wasn't cooked through. That happened to us with the sausage back in 2006, sausage wasn't done and we sent it back. I wonder if they intend to completely revamp Ohana after the construction at the Poly is close to completion, maybe thats it? Sigh... I wish they would stop messing with favs! LOL ... My fingers are crossed that they don't remove the Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake at LTT by the time October rolls around. I.WILL.BE.UPSET!!!
 
Tinkerbella16

Tinkerbella16

Well-Known Member
DisneyDebNJ said:
I cant see the chicken being removed for money, it's cheaper than the pork, steak or shrimp. I wonder if there were a few occasions where the chicken was packed too tightly on the skewer and wasn't cooked through. That happened to us with the sausage back in 2006, sausage wasn't done and we sent it back. I wonder if they intend to completely revamp Ohana after the construction at the Poly is close to completion, maybe thats it? Sigh... I wish they would stop messing with favs! LOL ... My fingers are crossed that they don't remove the Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake at LTT by the time October rolls around. I.WILL.BE.UPSET!!!
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Oh no! I just checked allears and Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake is not listed on the menu!! The only dessert is the Johnny Appleseed Cake! I read a TR recently that someone was there in May and they didn't have it when they went and it is their FAVORITE!!!! See what I mean?!!! It is very popular!
 
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DisneyDebNJ

Well-Known Member
tinkgrl1685 said:
Oh no! I just checked allears and Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake is not listed on the menu!! The only dessert is the Johnny Appleseed Cake! I read a TR recently that someone was there in May and they didn't have it when they went and it is their FAVORITE!!!! See what I mean?!!! It is very popular!
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Im gonna flip the freak out......... it was availble for lunch.... Grrrrrrrrrr
 
PhilharMagician

PhilharMagician

Well-Known Member
Food has always hit our table fast, which to be honest is nice that you don't have to wait. We have never had any problem with servers bringing around skewers of meat. It seams like there is always someone asking if we wanted more and it was multiple servers typically asking.

Ohana has gone through many changes over the years and it never seems to get too far from it core offerings. Every time the menu changes there seems to be an uproar and then things settle and people relax. I would expect the chicken to return at some point as well as the sausage, turkey, pot stickers and potatoes.
 
Weather_Lady

Weather_Lady

Well-Known Member
We had dinner at 'Ohana for the first time on our visit last month. Apparently ignorance is bliss: with no prior experiences with which to compare it, I guess we didn't know what we were missing, so we enjoyed it very much. (Although, you mean, there was supposed to be butter with that dry bread!??! That would have made much more sense. We were just given the bread, and trying to choke it down was the only disappointment of the evening, other than not getting a lei.)

We actually found the pace of the service to be a bit slow. I thought that perhaps it was done intentionally (if people are stuffed full of lettuce wraps and dumplings that they've been pounding down while waiting for the "entrees" to arrive, they won't have room for the more expensive steak and shrimp). I am sorry to hear that it's gone downhill from days of yore. It's a refrain I am hearing far too often to feel that any of the things I enjoy about WDW are "safe from elimination."
 
aladdin2007

aladdin2007

Well-Known Member
Weather_Lady said:
We had dinner at 'Ohana for the first time on our visit last month. Apparently ignorance is bliss: with no prior experiences with which to compare it, I guess we didn't know what we were missing, so we enjoyed it very much. (Although, you mean, there was supposed to be butter with that dry bread!??! That would have made much more sense. We were just given the bread, and trying to choke it down was the only disappointment of the evening, other than not getting a lei.)

We actually found the pace of the service to be a bit slow. I thought that perhaps it was done intentionally (if people are stuffed full of lettuce wraps and dumplings that they've been pounding down while waiting for the "entrees" to arrive, they won't have room for the more expensive steak and shrimp). I am sorry to hear that it's gone downhill from days of yore. It's a refrain I am hearing far too often to feel that any of the things I enjoy about WDW are "safe from elimination."
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This has been happening property wide. There are no condiments, no butter, no salt&pepper. etc. You have to ask, and depending on where you are its usually not a problem but in some spots they act like its a chore to have to get it or use it, or you feel like they think wow how dare they ask..these are restuarants aren't they? cmon Disney your getting so cheap you cant provide butter or pepper anymore etc?. I think its atrocious really.

regarding ohana, rethinking our reservations in a couple weeks as well, between the cuts and the beautiful walled off gutted lobby, it just doesn't excite me anymore.
 
PrincessMia

PrincessMia

Active Member
Just made my ADR's on Monday for a trip. My original plan was Ohana on our first night, but that was scrapped when I heard about the menu changes. The chicken skewer was the only thing my daughter truly liked, though she ate some of just about everything. It's certainly not worth the money for us, though.
 
Tuvalu

Tuvalu

Premium Member
Original Poster
tinkgrl1685 said:
Oh no! I just checked allears and Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake is not listed on the menu!! The only dessert is the Johnny Appleseed Cake! I read a TR recently that someone was there in May and they didn't have it when they went and it is their FAVORITE!!!! See what I mean?!!! It is very popular!
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DisneyDebNJ said:
Im gonna flip the freak out......... it was availble for lunch.... Grrrrrrrrrr
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Ooey Gooey is for lunch only. I can confirm it was on the menu last Sunday (June 1st) because we shared two of them :hungry:
 
Minnie1976

Minnie1976

Well-Known Member
This goes for all places not just O'Hana. You order wings(which means the whole wing). If they are going to give you pieces of the wing and call that a wing, they should advertise wing parts not wings. A wing has 3 parts to it. Rip off!
 
DManRightHere

DManRightHere

Well-Known Member
Tuvalu said:
Hate to say this, but 'Ohana is no longer on our "must-do" list.

For years we have booked dinner right at our 180 days mark. This trip too, and the best time I could get was 5:10 p.m. I tried numerous times to adjust our reservation, both by calling and checking the website, to no avail. I checked multiple times the day prior and day of, thinking there may be some cancellations. But the message was always the same, "Reservations Unavailable."

So we met our friends there last night (June 4th) at 5 p.m. We barely sat down and the server asked for our drink order...and the salad was literally tossed on our table. Our drinks had not yet arrived when the bowl full of noodles, vegetables and wings was plopped down, to be quickly followed by the pork wontons and new lettuce wraps (which weren't very good.) We were given only two small containers of dipping sauce for our party of five, and had to ask for the macadamia nut butter for our bread.

As soon as our server gave us our drinks, she returned with the pork skewers. Seriously, it was like being in a food eating competition to see how fast they could make us eat. AND THE CHICKEN SKEWERS ARE GONE, despite posts to the contrary. Sorry, chicken wings are not a substitute especially when we were given only 2 drums...the rest were tips.

After the first round of skewers we had to flag our server down for seconds. It seemed like we were just supposed to finish whatever we were given the first round so that they could come clear the plates and bring dessert.

Coffee was not offered after we received our bread pudding. It was very clear we were not supposed to linger.

We adjusted when 'Ohana removed the yummy Maui potatoes and replaced them with the bland noodles. We miss the fried wontons and three different sauces. The turkey skewers were our favorite but we accepted the chicken. But we are done accommodating. We don't want to "settle" when we are paying $38 plus tax and tip for dinner (the price is nowhere noted, BTW. You are at the mercy of the whatever seasonal price they want to charge.)

THE FUNNY PART? The restaurant was only 75% full. Lots of open tables when we were eating and when we left and when we stood nearby visiting with our friends in the hallway. Are 'Ohana reservations intentionally under-booked to keep up the hype?
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We had a rushed meal too. The waitress seemed overworked. I thought before they had actual servers bring around meat and not the waitresses/waiters. I could be wrong on that.

I think management is pushing them too much.

I never even received a drink refill and i typically have 2-3 glasses of water.

Maybe next time we'll just get our pineapple drinks and skip dinner. Can you do that?
 
aladdin2007

aladdin2007

Well-Known Member
DManRightHere said:
We had a rushed meal too. The waitress seemed overworked. I thought before they had actual servers bring around meat and not the waitresses/waiters. I could be wrong on that.

I think management is pushing them too much.

I never even received a drink refill and i typically have 2-3 glasses of water.

Maybe next time we'll just get our pineapple drinks and skip dinner. Can you do that?
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I think so from the adjacent bar right there.
 

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