Walt Disney World® Resort's latest restaurant, Roundup Rodeo BBQ, stakes its home in Toy Story Land at Disney's Hollywood Studios®. A heavily themed family affair, this is among Disney's more fun and exciting dining experiences.
Andy's Coming!
The theming of the land continues inside the restaurant, as guests have been shrunk down to the size of toys, where they're given the option to ride toy horses into the dining room. Larger-than-life, iconic characters stand above the dining room, where the space between is painted with colorful murals and bright tables.
Throughout the meal, well-known characters will perform and make announcements—like the famous, "Andy's Coming!"—and the servers (and often the guests) will react and interact.
The service was particularly spectacular, with an incredibly friendless host staff and a knowledgeable, warm and attentive server. Disney's restaurant service is often a highlight of dining on-site, and the service at this newest dining experience is a standout among greatness.
The Eats
The BBQ menu is expansive, and you'll get to try most of it. The $45-per-adult dinner starts with cheddar biscuits and pepper jelly, a combo we couldn't stop asking for more of (it is all-you-care-to-enjoy, after all). It's followed by a three-part salad selection, including a romaine and kale salad (the green goddess dressing made this our favorite), a tomato salad and a watermelon salad.
We were then provided a platter of meat and our choice of four sides for the table. Like other restaurants of its kind, we could order more of any item we wanted, though the initial portion is so plentiful, we didn't feel the need to once our table of four ate through the first round. All of the meat was incredibly tender and well-prepared, though the fall-off-bone ribs and fire-grilled pork sausage were favorites around the table.
Three BBQ sauces—a classic, sweet and spicy—sat on the table for unlimited use. Table consensus labeled them unanimously solid, and we often found ourselves dipping in for more of each.
Each table gets to choose four of the eight available sides. We had the fried pickles, grilled street corn, tater tots with cheese sauce and goddess dressing and the mac and cheese. The mac and cheese is likely a great option for pickier eaters, as it serves as a dressed-up version of the one commonly found around Walt Disney World Resort family-style restaurants. We couldn't get enough of the green goddess dressing on anything, so throwing it on fried potatoes was a surefire way to satisfy everyone. The fried pickles and corn were the standouts though, and are the ones we'll be ordering again on following visits.
Everyone gets their choice of desert, so the table ordered each of the miniature, chilled, pie-like options, where the peach and strawberry flavor and the blueberry-lemon cheesecake were devoured first.
The Verdict
And there will be following visits. Though Disney's Hollywood Studios has plenty of solid dining options, for a long time it lacked something interactive and fun outside of the great 50's Prime Time Cafe. With an abundance of options at a fair price point for the sheer amount of food, it's a restaurant we'll be happy to return to when we're looking for something fun.
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