Animal Kingdom's Yak & Yeti Local Foods Cafes

Continuing my day at Disney's Animal Kingdom, I had lunch at the Yak & Yeti Local Foods Cafes. This is a fast food attachment to the full service Yak & Yeti restaurant with outdoor seating.

I was considering eating at the actual full service Yak & Yeti, but after looking at their menu, I changed my mind. It seemed they had pretty standard dishes that you could get at any Chinese Restaurant, but charged about $30 per dish. The Local Foods Cafes also featured some pretty standard Chinese dishes, along with some burgers, all for much less money. If I wanted to spend top dollar on Chinese food, I don't think a Landry restaurant in a theme park is the best choice.

I ordered the Shrimp Lo Mein. It had plenty of shrimp served over noodles with a somewhat limited selection of vegetables. It definitely could have used more variety when it came to the vegetables in the dish, but it was still pretty tasty. It was a whole lot of food too. Much more than what it looked like.

I also split an order of Pork Egg Rolls. This had to be one of the greasiest egg rolls I've ever eaten. The hot oil was dripping off of the roll when I picked it up! I don't know what happened here, but it wasn't a good thing!

Moving away from the food/restaurant pictures for the rest of this post, I'll say a few things about the new stuff in Animal Kingdom to please the obsessive Disney fans who cause a big spike in this blog's traffic whenever something Disney related is posted.

First new thing was the whole carnival themed area that was added to Dinoland. I didn't quite understand the purpose of the whole area, except as a cheap theme to tie in some carnival rides. What do dinosaurs have to do with carnivals or roadside attractions? I went on the Primeval Whirl roller coaster while in this section of the park. Kind of a stupid ride, but it is what it is. I love roller coasters, but wild mouse coasters really do nothing for me.


Moving on to Dinosaur. Last time I rode this, I'm pretty sure it was called Countdown to Extinction. Very cool ride, but stupid storyline. As someone who has spent way too much time in Natural History museums, the Carnotaurus on this ride really bothers me. This ride portrays the carnotaurus as a large animal, equivalent to a tyrannosaur, when in reality they were much smaller dinosaurs. Even smaller than the iguadon that you are trying to rescue in the ride. I would have expected better scientific accuracy from a ride partly narrated by Bill Nye the Science Guy...


Last, I have to mention Expedition Everest. This ride was one of the highlights of the day. As far a themed roller coasters go, this is definitely one of the best, right up there with Thunder Mountain. Roller coasters always seem so much better when they build a fake mountain around the track. It had it's nice surprises and was really smooth. Only disappointment was that the robotic yeti wasn't working. Still, Expedition Everest is a really fun ride!