It was finally time to head out for our 4:15 Pym's Kitchen reservation.
The DLP parks are like DL, you simple walk a very short ways across an esplanade type area and you're inside the other park. Something I did think was odd is that you had to physically show your park ticket to a CM before you scanned in at the park. I'm not sure what they were looking for or what the quick glimpse confirmed.
My first impression of Studios is that it was a weird park. You enter, then walk across a large courtyard and then have to enter a giant warehouse type building. So far as I could see, there wasn't a way around going through the building (though maybe there is and I just didn't see it).
It's almost like they are making you walk through another Disney Village, as you walk by a big gift shop on the left and an interconnected CS restaurant on the right. I also cannot express my disappointment upon learning that Hep Cat was not an actual tiki bar. Much sadness was had on my part.
Our reservation was for 4:15 and we got in line around 4:10, after speed walking through a brisk into tour to WD Studios park. People in line kept getting turned away, so I assume only people with reservations were being seated. Which was kind of odd since there were a lot of empty tables throughout our entire dining experience.
After we checked in at 4:20 we were seated immediately and received a giant pretzel:
I appreciated the condiment holders:
Our waitress knew that we spoke English, but she let us know her English wasn't that good and that she preferred French. I had studied French in high school and college and kept it up with Duolingo these past few years, so I was pretty excited to see if I could communicate with her. And I actually did! Even more complex phrases like letting her know at one point that I didn't have the credit cards and that Brian would be back in a minute and I could give her the card to pay then.
I did try to speak to the pasta server in French, and he immediately recognized that I was an English speaker and switched to English. This was kind of a trend, I don't believe any CM did it out of disrespect for me and my use of their language or out of malice. I think they were all just trying to be helpful, which was nice. But I actually might have liked to have been challenged a bit and forced to use more of my French.
We also had a scary moment during dinner where a manager came up to us and somehow had two of our credit cards. I am not sure if they fell out of Brian's pocket or how they even know how to find us. Maybe they had a seating chart with guests names on them who had reservations? But I'm very glad we got those cards back. Could have been a disaster.
Anyway, here are a couple pictures of my plates of food.
I am still a bit confused on the pricing and whether non alcoholic drinks were included in the price of the buffet, but we paid 90 euros for the two of us. Brian had a coke and I had an orange Fanta without sugar, which I actually liked a lot and I had it several other times and I miss it.
I didn't take any pictures of the buffet area since I was still feeling a bit timid in new surroundings where people spoke another language. Don't ask me what that has to do with not taking buffet pictures, I think I just didn't want to stand out.
Brian and I both thought the food was pretty good, I love French style green beans and think they are a lot better than the US ones. French style green beans, to me, seem a lot skinner and smaller than their US counterpart. We used to be able to find frozen French green beans in Austin, TX but haven't found them since we moved.
The black and white dessert was both of our favorites. I think it was some sort of Oreo inspired dessert.
Long story short, I do remember a couple food items that were large and small, but not really that many. They did have little burger sliders in the shape of a giant burger. Overall, I thought the food was good. It did seem pricey, but it is Disney prices so 45 Euros each for a non-alcoholic drink and buffet really wasn't that bad, especially since we did not have to tip.
So far as atmosphere went (which is a big reason why I booked the restaurants I picked), I did like the small touches at the table like the beaker condiment holders and the large pretzel. But other than that, the atmosphere was kind of unremarkable, so I wouldn't eat there just for the atmosphere. We did, overall, enjoy the experience. Food was pretty good and atmosphere had small, good touches but was overall underwhelming.
We ended up only spending a little over an hour in there. It was buffet so we went at our own pace.
We did discover that the bathroom was shared with the CS restaurant, so I did grab a picture of the Iron Man Hulkbuster armor suit that was there:
By the time we got out of there it was almost 6 o'clock. We peeked around Avengers Campus a bit, but we wanted to go over to DLP to watch the nighttime show which was at 8 pm, so we headed out of Studios.
