Crown Colony House at Busch Gardens Tampa

I was at Busch Gardens Tampa and ate lunch at a restaurant called Crown Colony House. This restaurant is located in the Egypt section of the park and overlooks the animals in the Edge of Africa section. The Crown Colony House is a cafeteria style fast food restaurant.

I noticed this sign while waiting in line for food. I found this a bit amusing. Busch Gardens is really trying their best to make deep fried food sound healthy. With ZERO grams of trans fat, low saturated fat, Omega 3 fatty acids, and a good source of monounsaturated fat, how could deep fried food be bad for you? Let's eat it every day!

Since the oil used in deep frying has all of those pros with apparently no cons, why not indulge? I had their combo with came with deep fried chicken tenders, deep fried french fries, and a slice of pepperoni pizza (not deep fried but not good for you regardless).

This was typical theme park food. The pizza was mass produced. The chicken was mediocre, as were the fries. At least I was getting lots of my Omega 3 fatty acids though! I always heard fish was a good source of Omega 3s. Why bother when you can get the same stuff from deep fried foods? Thanks for the education Busch Gardens!

Kings Dominion Food in Doswell, VA

On my way home from a road trip up and down the east coast, I stopped and did a theme park day at Kings Dominion in Doswell, VA. It was a fun day with lots and lots of mediocre roller coasters and a few that I really enjoyed. Kings Dominion definitely wasn't up to Florida theme park standards, but it was still a good day. While there, I did sample some of Kings Dominion's theme park food...

Kings Dominion mostly had fast food chains for their dining offerings. I chose not to visit any of the chains and ate at a restaurant called Border Cafe.

This Mexican themed restaurant worked by everyone filling out papers with what they wanted by checking off boxes. I ordered a burrito with chicken, black beans, spicy cheddar, spicy corn salsa, lettuce, onions, jalapenos, black olives, and sour cream.

The burrito was served with a side of tortilla chips.

I can't say this was very good theme park food. I guess I'm spoiled by the food in the Orlando parks, but this was pretty bad. The tortilla wrapping up the burrito was very stale tasting. Not only that, it was dry and crunchy as opposed to the moist and soft that it should have been. The rice also had a similar problem, being crunchy as opposed to moist. As for the items that I checked off when ordering, salsa was completely missing from the burrito. For the cheese, the burrito was filled with cheese sauce, although I cheddar sauce wasn't checked.

Perhaps I would have been better off going to one of the chains in King's Dominion after my burrito at Border Cafe. Later in the day, it was time for a snack so I got dessert from another one of the park's non-chain restaurants called Jukebox Diner.

This place was themed like a 50's diner and served mostly burgers. I ordered a strawberry milkshake here. I was actually a bit impressed with the milkshakes here. A milkshake like this outside of a lower end theme park wouldn't be that impressive, but I was surprised given the location. They actually made these to order as opposed to using the somewhat pre-made milkshakes that I've seen elsewhere. The shake was filled with lots and lots of strawberries and was topped with a mountain of whipped cream.

Kings Dominion had some good roller coasters and I don't think anyone's going to that park for their food. It's definitely not Epcot...

Seashore Sweets' in Disney's Boardwalk Hotel

Yesterday was National Peanut Butter Cookie Day. I couldn't find how or why June 12 was assigned to peanut butter cookies, or why it is only national rather than international, but the holiday is a good reason to eat a cookie. I happened to be at Disney's Boardwalk Hotel and decided to find a peanut butter cookie to celebrate.

We tried the Boardwalk Bakery first. They had a nice cookie selection, but peanut butter was nowhere to be found. Not that easily defeated, we moved a few stores down to Seashore Sweets'. On the top shelf of their pastry case, they had a giant Mickey Mouse shaped peanut butter cookie. It was horribly expensive for a cookie at $5.49, but this was in a Disney hotel and it was a cookie holiday, so the cookie was purchased.

The cookie was huge, but it was also a bit disappointing. It was horribly dry in the part not covered in chocolate. The person who I shared it with described the cookie as being similar to eating a dog biscuit. Not sure how many dog biscuits she has eaten to know this, but I was expecting better from a Disney bakery. Our local supermarket chain has better peanut butter cookies.

Regardless of this cookie being really dry, it still served served the purpose of celebrating National Peanut Butter Cookie Day. I highly doubt I'd get one of these cookies again, but I hope the rest of the baked goods from Seashore Sweets' are better...

Food Quest in Downtown Disney

DisneyQuest is a virtual theme park in Downtown Disney. Back when they opened, Disney had big plans to expand this concept to cities all around the world. After one more failed attempt in Chicago, this is the one and only DisneyQuest.

The last time I was at DisneyQuest, they had a fast food version of the Cheesecake Factory that took up multiple counters, each serving a different foods. On this visit, the Cheesecake Factory was gone and was replaced with a Disney run snack bar. They only had one counter and the menu was pretty limited with stereotypical theme park food.

I wasn't feeling burgers or personal pizzas, so I went with the Chicken Caesar Wrap with fries. I've had similar wraps before elsewhere at Disney (Blizzard Beach). The wrap here was okay, but it definitely wasn't Epcot food. The chicken didn't have much flavor, but I suppose that's what the caesar dressing was for. Overall the food was pretty average. Disney can do better than the food served at Food Quest...

Some of the desserts, which I unfortunately didn't try, did look good though...

 

This doesn't have to do with the food, but I got a weird vibe from almost everyone working at DisneyQuest. Rather than the overly happy, stereotypical Disney Cast Member, most of the employees here were giving off the vibe that they hated their jobs. They seemed way more like Wal-Mart employees than Disney employees. Here's a food related example: It was taking a while to get the food. When ours was finally ready, there was someone else asking what happened to his order. The employee behind the counter looked at his receipt and responded with 'We must have lost your food.' He then walked away and went to take someone else's order instead of helping the complaining park guest. Very atypical of what I've seen at Disney in the past...