In April we went to Paris for 3 nights which included one day at Disneyland. You can read my very detailed review of our day in Disneyland here, and you can also read our full itinerary and how we made the Disney feeling stretch across the whole 4 days / 3 nights but whilst only paying for 1 day in Disneyland on my personal blog here.
One of the ways we made the Disney-feeling stretch, was to explore Disney Village - which is at the entrance to Disneyland but you don't need to pay to enter - on our way from the airport to our hotel. Read more about Disney Village here. And as part of that exploration, we headed straight to the Rainforest Cafe for an early lunch.
The Rainforest Cafe
The Rainforest Cafe was a great way to start our holiday and the kids loved it. To be brutally honest, my husband and I were a little underwhelmed just because it did all feel a little old… it was well maintained, but it felt very 90’s - like it had been made 30 years ago to a really high quality and looked after so that paint wasn’t chipped or anything but the models kinda showed their age.
When you arrive, you enter through a gift shop. Great! Lots of things for the kids to ask for, especially in our case as we had to wait for it to open as we arrived a little before 11 (but we had been up since 3am to fly to France!). There is though a massive aquarium over the entrance to the restaurant, so you can see the fish swimming up one side (if they feel like it), over the top of a square arch, and then on the other side. Our toddler watched this for ages from his push chair. This is in the photos below - you can see my husband looking at what looks at first glance like a blue wall, but it's actually a fish tank. The gift shop was paradise for kids who are into wild animals and cuddly toys, but it was - as was to be expected - expensive compared to Amazon for the same toys (my 10 year old was price checking!).
My husband and I each had a burger for around €25 - which I’d class as expensive, but it was perfectly nice. I had a plant based burger (I’m not vegan so can’t comment on vegan food in general, I just often like plant based burgers) so that showed the menu wasn’t 30 years old. Our 6 year old had a pizza and our 10 year old had a burger and chips (shown on the right, below) - each of which came with a drink and desert (pancakes for one and a big bowl of ice cream for the other) for - I think! - around €14. Our 10 year old is always asking to order off the adult menu now a days, but he appreciates good (or, better) value and was very happy with the child’s portion. Our waitress was also quick to offer to bring us spare plates so we could share our food with our 2 year old, who we bought a drink but didn’t want to buy a whole big meal for! So we didn’t feel awkward or cheeky for not buying him anything to eat.
We worked out it was around every 20 minutes there would be a “thunder storm” and some of the animals (gorillas and elephants) would start to move. It was definitely more interesting than a standard restaurant, and a great way for the kids to start their holiday, but it was just tables in a room with stuff around the edge and I feel if anywhere was building a big themed restaurant today and going all out, they could do more. (Very niche question - does anyone remember the Beachcomber bar at Butlin’s Minehead in the 90’s? With the volcanoes and storms? I might have been little, but that’s what I was expecting and I think this wasn’t quite as impressive as I remember all the tables being surrounded by (fake) rocks and little bridges to walk over just to move around the venue).
The tables and chairs themselves were just very ordinary, but we were on an edge which meant we were against a wall and so close to some "wilderness". There's a wall (about as tall as my 10 year old) that surrounds the restuarnt part of the building and separates it from the shop and the walk way to the toilets - so you go back out of the restaurant area and into the shop to go to the loo - and that does feel a little different, like you're in more of a themed place with stone.
Ends up I mostly took videos of the cafe itself, rather than photos, so follow my Activibees profile on Insta and I’ll post a reel.
Overall, for young children who are just so, so excited to be in Disney Land (even though you're not "in" Disney Land when you're in Disney Village, but it's a brilliant way to stretch out the Disney vibe without paying for an extra day of access) it's a great place to have lunch. My 10 year old had seen reviews of it online and had never expected to actually get to go, so he was over the moon and it exceeded his expectations.
The thoughts and views expressed in this blog post are the author’s own and not that of Activibees.com or it's operators.
