S.S. Columbia Dining Room Review
The S.S. Columbia Dining Room is located onboard the eponymous ocean-liner in the American Waterfront port of call at Tokyo DisneySea. It’s considered one of the flagship (that’s awful pun #2,573 on this blog, for those keeping score at home!) restaurants at Tokyo DisneySea, along with Magellan’s. Certainly, they’re the two most expensive restaurants in the park. Prior to our first trip to Tokyo Disney Resort, we decided to do a few table service meals at restaurants that were highly regarded, and the S.S. Columbia Dining Room fit the bill.
Price-wise, the S.S. Columbia is not that bad, which is pretty consistent with other Tokyo Disney Resort in-park table service restaurants, even the ostensibly “fancier” ones. Although the S.S. Columbia Dining Room is frequently cited as one of the most expensive at Tokyo Disney Resort, the bill for all four of us ended up being only $192, and we had appetizers, entrees, and desserts.
Remember, there’s no tipping in Japan, so that’s $192 total. Just try to have four full meals at Le Cellier for less than $200. Unless a couple of you are only getting salads, it’s not going to happen. In fact, I suspect two people would have a difficult time escaping Le Cellier for less than $200 after tax and tip.
Thematically, the S.S. Columbia Dining Room is styled with an elegant Art Nouveau look. It definitely has strong elements of Art Nouveau, but overall it felt to me less like a luxury ocean-liner (like the Disney Dream cruise ship) and more of a cross between the Grand Floridian and Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom due to the color palette used throughout.
Sarah liked the style of S.S. Columbia Dining Room more than I did, and other people seem to like it, so if you’re planning a trip, you might want to read more about this restaurant before writing it off. At the very least, having dinner aboard an ocean-liner is a cool experience in itself (I kept looking around for Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio during our meal), although I think the Teddy Roosevelt Lounge is the much better option for that.
I’m not suggesting that it’s not a faithful representation of Art Nouveau (it is), but the particular depiction of the style just didn’t work for me in the S.S. Columbia Dining Room.
That’s entirely a personal thing, though. Many others love the Art Nouveau style of the S.S. Columbia Dining Room.
To be sure, it’s a very elegant restaurant, which is reinforced not only by the elegant place-settings, upholstery, and decor, but also by the fact that there’s a pianist playing (see the far wall of the photo above).
Maybe my opinion of the restaurant would be higher if we were seated next to the piano.
I think almost all of us ordered the Chef’s Special Sets that were available for the 30th Anniversary. Each of these consisted of bread, an appetizer, entree, dessert, and coffee or tea.
These are mostly just normal menu items combined as a set, so don’t worry if you’re not visiting during the anniversary celebration.
Here’s the bread we got to start. Notice the hard shape on it? The bread itself was only okay, but scored serious ‘kawaii’ points.
For my appetizer, I ordered what was essentially a smoked fish salad. Pretty good stuff.
Some sort of salad-thing. Not sure who ordered this.
Another sort of salad. Really helpful review, right?
I had the S.S. Columbia “Selected” Sirloin Steak with mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables. My steak was flavorful and perfectly cooked, but I prefer thicker steaks. In hindsight, I probably would have been better off ordering seafood since that seemed to be their specialty.
This is a shrimp entree–I’m not really sure of the name. This struck me as being really small.
Here’s the Baked Lobster Tail with Sauteed Sea Scallops in Butter Sauce that Sarah had. She’s a big fan of lobster tail, and really liked this entree even though it, too, was on the small side.
Our friend Henry had the Roast Beef and Baked Lobster Tail for his entree. There were varying tiers of special sets, and he got the highest/most expensive one.
I can understand why it was more expensive, as this entree seemed like the best of both words, like a large portion of roast beef and a full lobster tail. If we go back, this is what I’d order.
Both desserts were essentially samplers with small portions. This one was primarily gelato and fruit.
The other option had mango cheesecake, some gelato, and I don’t recall what else. This was definitely the more sizable of the two dessert samplers.
Overall, I can’t say I’d eat at the S.S. Columbia Dining Room again unless we were Tokyo Disney Resort locals and wanted to give it a second chance. The meal by no means was bad, but the ambiance just fell flat for me. The meal was good and the service was great, but we found our meals to be good and service to be great virtually everywhere we dined at Tokyo Disney Resort, so that isn’t exactly high praise, comparatively speaking. Since most other restaurants also had exceptional thematic design, being unimpressed by the design was a big blow to the restaurant for me.
If you’re thinking of visiting Japan for the first time and are overwhelmed with planning, definitely check out our Tokyo Disney Resort Planning Guide. It covers much more than the parks, from getting there to WiFi to currency and much, much more. For more photos and an idea of what we did day-by-day during our first visit, read our Tokyo Disney Resort Trip Report.
Your Thoughts
Have you dined in the S.S. Columbia Dining Room? What did you think of it? What do you think of the Art Nouveau style? If you haven’t been to Tokyo DisneySea, is this a restaurant that interests you? Any questions? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
I finally gave this a try (your review was a big part of me not trying it for as long as I have!), and I think your review is spot on. The interior reminds me a lot of what they’ve recently done with Plaza Inn at HKDL. Once inside the restaurant, it’s easy to forget that you’re even on a ship – except for the first two pages of the menu, which played this up wonderfully and had some nice details about the SS Columbia (this was actually my favourite bit about the restaurant!).
The food was good (and the portions bigger than average, another plus!), but there are so many other places with more character at similar price points. I can just tell this is going to be unmemorable to me in a few years’ time. Like you, I think getting a good table is critical. Maybe a seat very near the piano, or a window table with a view of the decks and the ocean beyond, would have left more of an impression. Problem is, there are vastly more “meh” tables than great ones, so a reservation here is rolling the dice with 10% odds.
Just ate there today and wanted to agree that the seafood is the best choice. I ordered the fish of the day (Y2160) and it was the best meal I’ve had at any Disney property. For comparison, my husband got the chicken (Y1940) and it was just okay. Most people ordered the combo sets since the portions were small.
I like how they bridge American Waterfront with Lost River Delta thematically in the dining room mural. Using the backstory of the Columbia travelling to Central America for the grand opening of the Panama Canal is pretty clever. This was one of the many details we just loved to find at Tokyo DisneySea.
I have never noticed that, thanks for pointing it out! There are lots of little thematic bridges like that throughout the park–I really like them.
Great review – it seemed to confirm what I had been suspecting regarding Columbia. My partner and I really only ending up having enough time to do one nice sit down meal (and we needed some heartier food as well, since we were walking about 16 miles/day), so we ended up only doing Magellan’s (which we did our first night). I’m happy we chose that since, while teh Columbia looks pretty, you’re right in that it doesn’t wow as much as you would hope (it looks a little generically pretty). Of course, I’m a Renaissance scholar, so I may be biased towards Magellan’s anyway….
I am going to TDR with my 6yo in a few weeks and this child is obsessed, I mean OBSESSED with the Titanic and these kinds of ships in general. In fact he even tries to dress like the fancy folks from the movie. Anyway, we don’t eat meat or seafood so it appears there is little for us to order here or at the Roosevelt Lounge, but I would really love for him to experience one of these. Do you think they’d raise an eyebrow if we just stopped in for a drink and dessert? And based on your experience, which of the two would be more of an authentic “old fashioned luxury ship” experience? I thought the Roosevelt Lounge looked wonderful but maybe the dining room has more of a “shippy” feel? haha.
Thank you! Your blog has been invaluable in my planning and has me so excited for our upcoming trip!!
We went to the Roosevelt Lounge, maybe 2 years ago, and it was wonderful. The atmosphere was amazing and the decor was beautiful. It looks almost the opposite of the dining room, The food was good and we luckily enough had a view of fireworks from our table. As soon as they saw we were American they found a waiter that spoke wonderful English and he made great recommendations. I don’t think they would have any issues with you just getting a quick dessert and stopping in.
SS Columbia Dining Room feels more like an ocean-liner restaurant, Teddy Roosevelt Lounge feels like a place TR would’ve hung out. You can do a lot on the ship without dining, though. You can wander around its deck and do Turtle Talk.
FWIW, you might want to put together some sort of dining plan for Tokyo before you get there. Only a couple of restaurants accommodate vegetarians.
Every time you post about DisneySea, my husband and I end up researching trips to Japan. I think I’d give the restaurant a chance just based on the decor. Thanks again for another great post!
After looking at almost all of the menus available at the Tokyo Disney Resort, and being an extremely picky eater, that steak and mashed potatoes looks like it’s going to be a must do for me. Thanks for the review
Have you found a site that has current menus? I’d love a link to that, if so. It would help us with planning, too!
I just go to the official Tokyo Disney Resort website on Chrome and almost all of the restaurants and carts have menus with prices
http://www.tokyodisneyresort.jp/restaurant/lists/park:tdl/
Thanks. I didn’t realize the .jp (no en) had menus. I’ve been on it a number of times for other things. I didn’t see them on the EN site, and it just never dawned on my to look at the JP site for menus. Thanks for the heads up, that’s really helpful!
Another fantastic review!
I have to say this restaurant looks incredibly beautiful! I am a fan of Art Nouveau so maybe that helps…
Honestly everything in Tokyo looks incredibly well themed and the ship itself is really neat especially when you think ITS IN A THEME PARK…
The Seafood dishes look excellent so that is definitely what I would order…
I’ve said it but I would love to see a list of your favorite World Wide restaurants as well as Bars / Lounges `~ I always enjoy your top 10 lists!
Looking forward to your next post~
Chuck
I have a few top 10 lists like that, but I’m waiting to try a few more places before doing that one. Stay tuned! 🙂