T-Rex: An unforgettable dining experience at Disney Springs
The T-Rex restaurant at Disney Springs (formerly Downtown Disney) has reinvented the dining experience. Anyone with children knows how finicky kids can be when it comes to meal times. Leave it to Disney to come up with a way to turn mundane dining into an experience kids of all ages will look forward to.
The experience begins before you even enter the restaurant. The outside of the building features life size skeletons of the restaurant’s namesake, the T-Rex, as well as a brontosaurus. After standing in line to make a reservation you have a couple of options while waiting on your table to come open. If there’s just two of you you could skip the wait and go straight to the bar where they will gladly serve you. You could also browse through the restaurant’s expansive gift shop. Or you could let your kids pretend to be junior paleontologists and dig for dino bones in the restaurant’s bone yard. (Your little ones might prefer digging for gems— also an option.)
Once your table is ready your name will be called and your ‘expedition’ will be taken inside the restaurant. And what a restaurant this is. The restaurant is filled with life-sized animatronic dinosaurs including crowd favorites: T-Rex, Triceratops, Stegasaurus, Pteradactyl, among others. There are also a few Ice Age creatures such as Woolly Mammoths (and baby Woolly Mammoths.) And a giant octopus stretches across much of the ceiling seemingly guarding a giant fish tank filled with tropical fish.
Once seated you’ll be given your menu and the gargantuan task of choosing what to eat. The meals are quite ginormous so be careful on ordering. One adult meal could easily feed one parent and child if you don’t mind sharing. Prices are what you’d expect of Disney (i.e., overpriced) but considering the museum-quality dinosaur exhibits and fossil dig experience, you could always justify it as paying to go to the local science museum and getting a great meal thrown in for free.
Luckily, the food is great unlike the mediocre food in many restaurants in Disney’s parks. The ribs are delicious and so are the hamburgers. If you a meat lover with an enormous appetite then the ribs and half-rotisserie chicken meal should keep you happy. It could also easily feed an adult and a couple of kids.
After finishing your meal at T-Rex you’ll definitely need to wash up in the restroom. And this is one restroom you don’t want to miss. It is located inside the ice cave which features life-sized Woolly Mammoths and a T-Rex skeleton frozen in ice. The whole cave slowly changes color over time from blue to magenta to purple.
After eating one should definitely check out the gift shop where you can find T-Rex themed everything from t-shirts to personalized mugs. Your little one can even build their own dino stuffed animal.
Overall T-Rex is a dining experience like none other and if you have kids it is a must-see attraction in Disney Springs.
