Cafe Hyperion Review
Cafe Hyperion is a counter service restaurant at Disneyland Paris in Discoveryland that is a contender for the worst restaurant in Disneyland Paris. Perhaps the worst restaurant in Paris. Perhaps the worst restaurant in the World?! Worse yet, Cafe Hyperion is perhaps the most popular restaurant at Disneyland Paris, and that’s something that is really depressing. I don’t know if Cafe Hyperion has a slogan, but if not, I have a suggestion: “Cafe Hyperion: Where Unpleasant Dining Takes Flight!”
I think this slogan is really great, because it encompasses both the good and the bad of Cafe Hyperion. First, the good. The totally awesome airship Hyperion poking out from the edge of the hangar at the entrance to the restaurant. Next, the bad. Literally everything else about the restaurant.
Okay, perhaps that’s a little unfair. Cafe Hyperion has some flashes of detail and quality design, albeit on a more superficial level than other amazing restaurants at Disneyland Paris. Unquestionably the most interesting aspect of the restaurant to me is its front, which is a resurrected element of the Discovery Bay plans for Disneyland that never came to fruition.
Tony Baxter, the Imagineer who spearheaded the Discovery Bay plans also played a substantial role in the initial construction of Disneyland Paris, and you can definitely see aspects of the unbuilt Discovery Bay making a home in Discoveryland. The entrance to the restaurant was lifted from the entrance to the unbuilt attraction, “Island at the Top of the World.” (This really should just be a blog post about how awesome Discovery Bay would have been and why it should still be built, because I can sum up the food at Cafe Hyperion in one word: sucktacular.)
The backstory for this airship Hyperion differs from that of Discovery Bay, with the premise here being that the airship’s captain mysteriously vanished on the morning of its 50th scheduled flight, after a long career of world exploration. The murals around the ordering area depict this, and they are pretty cool. There are also a lot of steampunk touches in the restaurant, all of which are also nicely done.
So that’s the good of Cafe Hyperion. It could be argued that the airship is also “bad” given that it’s so beautiful and alluring that it draws unwitting guests into the restaurant, like a nefarious succubus ready to destroy all life that ventures into its lair…
There are three aspects of the Cafe Hyperion experience that are downright awful. First, the long lines you’ll encounter to order after being drawn inside. I considered eating here on 3 separate evenings before finally taking the plunge and waiting in line when it appeared shortest, and I still waited nearly 15 minutes before ordering. This was during the offseason.
The cause of these long lines isn’t that the food here is amazing or highly sought-after, it’s that during certain times of the year, only about one-quarter to one-third of all restaurants at Disneyland Paris are operating, and then all but 3 of those restaurants close by around 6 pm.
So, if you plan on dining in Disneyland Paris after 6 pm, your options are Casey’s Corner, Cafe Hyperion, or _________ (in my experience, this blank is either Lucky Nugget Saloon or Colonel Hathi’s Pizza Outpost–perhaps both if management is feeling super-generous). This is okay if you’re a senior citizen who enjoys dinner at 5 pm, but Europeans tend to eat late, which means that around 8 pm or so, the lines for Casey’s and Cafe Hyperion are fairly ridiculous.
My next qualm with Cafe Hyperion is the ambiance. The seating area in Cafe Hyperion used to be Videopolis, an area where stage shows and other live entertainment performed. I’ve heard that there’s still live entertainment there from time to time, but all I have ever seen when I’ve dropped in is TV shows that appear lifted from the Disney XD channel. This means that the open and cavernous seating area is also incredibly loud. During my meal, some CG Star Wars cartoon was playing. This cartoon actually wasn’t half bad, although I had no clue what was going on. At least it distracted me a bit from my awful meal.
Now, the meal itself. There are three options at Cafe Hyperion: chicken sandwich, cheeseburger, and Angus burger. The Angus burger is about 1 Euro more than the regular cheeseburger, so I splurged for that. After all, I know how judgmental Parisians are, and if I wanted people thinking I couldn’t afford the fancy burger, I would just take an ad out in “I’m Poor” magazine.
Well, that fancy Angus burger was…I don’t know if there are words for it. After biting into it, I wondered if maybe something was lost in translation and “Angus” burger was French for “old dead hyena that has been sitting on the side of the road for a few weeks before it’s cooked” burger. The burger was devoid of any semblance of flavor, dry as a bone, and even had a nasty texture. I think the cheese was actually a substance somewhere between rubber and plastic in terms of consistency. I can only imagine how bad the basic cheeseburger must have been if the ‘premium’ burger was this bad. I don’t even want to know what the “chicken” “burger” is made of…
In my past reviews disparaging burgers in the foreign parks, I’ve noticed that several commenters from other countries have disagreed with me. I’ve come to believe that American sensibilities about and expectations of burgers are totally different than Europeans (and others). The thing is…America can’t touch a huge portion of Europe’s culinary scene, but one thing at which we trounce every other country on the planet is burgers. America’s slogan is literally, “Land of the Free, Home of the Best Damn Burgers on the Planet.” While we may quibble amongst ourselves as to which restaurant serves the best burgers, the simple fact is that every single American on the planet has a superior opinion regarding burgers than every single non-American.
Now, you may read this as illogical Xenophobic angst, but that’s not the case. Americans know burgers better than all other countries. That’s just science. Cultural (burger) relativism is preposterous–I will claim moral burger-taste superiority over a European every day of the week. A European claiming superior taste in burgers is like an American proclaiming superior taste in coffee.
“We have this great little coffee shop called Starbucks, ever tried it?” “Foolish American, we have artisan espresso that is hand-pressed from the finest beans, individually inspected and flown in daily from a remote mountaintop in Argentina that is only accessibly by a rare breed of mule and then hyperbolically compressed with special minerals and stuff before preparation.” Yeah, it’s kind of like that. European tastes are refined in so many other categories of food, just let us have burgers. We need this.
Sorry for the tangent…the moral of the story is that Cafe Hyperion is awful, and no Americans should even contemplate eating there. (The above is mostly in jest–I suspect most Europeans won’t like it either.)
Cafe Hyperion is in my top 5 worst Disney restaurants in the world, and is a contender for number 1. The coolest part of the restaurant can be seen without ever entering the restaurant, and you should keep it that way. All of the points Cafe Hyperion scores in this review are due to the airship, the murals inside, and the steampunk design flourishes. With that said, due to that awesome exterior and some of the interior theming, I do consider Cafe Hyperion one of the Top Themed Restaurants at Disneyland Paris, but they are pretty much all well-themed. So there’s that, I guess.
NOTE: Despite the impression my reviews of Disneyland Paris restaurants thus far might give, I don’t hate every restaurant there. I actually–largely–had good experiences on my recent visit. I’ll cover another positive meal in my next review. Additionally, I’ve heard from multiple (American) sources that the burger at Cowboy Cookout is actually good.
For the basics of planning a visit to Disneyland Paris, check out our Disneyland Paris Trip Planning Guide. Want to see more photos or read about Disneyland Paris in agonizing detail? Check out our Disneyland Paris Trip Report! Have you dined at Cafe Hyperion? Will you admit to actually liking the burgers here? What about other Disneyland Paris restaurants? If you haven’t been to Disneyland Paris, does this restaurant look interesting to you? Your comments are half the fun, so please share any questions or feedback about dining in Disneyland Paris that you have in the comments!
I’m an American who lives in Paris and an annual pass-holder. I’m thinking you must have just hit the café on a bad day, as it’s where I often stop (though never during the more crowded times) to get warm (the restrooms are amongst the few in the park that have sinks with hot water) and grab a bite. During the holidays, the stage show is a sort of Hollywood Golden Era big band deal that’s quite cute. The band’s pretty good, too.
The rest of the year the stage’s main purpose is for the Jedi Training Academy, but you’d have to check the schedule to find out when it’s running. It hasn’t been operational for a while now because they’re upgrading it, but it’s cute when it’s going on. I sincerely hope that the woman who was running the training will be back when the show’s back. She wasn’t dressed as Leia, but she embodied Carrie Fisher’s spirit like no cast member I’ve seen. I saw the show shortly after Fisher’s death and this woman’s mannerisms warmed my heart.
The food is the sort of mediocre burger joint fare you’d expect from a theme park fast food restaurant, but it’s nowhere near as awful as you make it out to be. Granted, I’ve never sprung for the burger you ordered, but the Jedi burger I do get always looks better than the photo you’ve shared here. The bacon on it is not bad (and I don’t usually eat pork) and the meat is always flavorful (in the sort of faux-charcoal way you expect a fast food burger to taste) and not at all dry. The sauce is pretty decent, too. The fries aren’t half bad and the cupcake is basically sugar and chocolate, but also enjoyable in an I’m-spending-the-day-eating-junk-food-in-a-theme-park sort of way.
Granted, I also thoroughly enjoyed everything that was on offer at Blue Lagoon. And before you write me off as just not having a refined palate, I have friends who own gorgeous restaurants in Paris proper, with cuisine that is critically acclaimed and hours-long waits that people happily endure to eat there. Again, you might have just hit the restaurant on a bad night. I was dining with people of multiple nationalities, who’ve experienced fine dining all over the world and we all enjoyed both the food and atmosphere and considered as the highlight of the day. I haven’t been back or tasted the new menu since the restaurant changed during the attraction’s renovation, but it’s now a character dining experience with Jack Sparrow wandering amongst the tables. I don’t know if the English guy who played him at the passholders-only soft open of the revamped Pirates attraction does the restaurant gig or not, but if he does, his skills alone are worth the price of the meal. He was greeting guests after they rode the new version of the ride, (they had the whole area of Adventureland roped off for us) and he MADE the experience. It was like being in the presence of Johnny Depp without being subjected to his unpleasantness.
I think most non-French visitors to the park just don’t grasp French culture. Yes, Paris is famous for its cafés and restaurants, but a lot of the real magic happens at family dinners at home. In fact, when the parks first open, French people were so upset that they couldn’t bring their own picnics into the parks that they changed the guidelines and allowed people to bring food. (Technically, they’re only supposed to eat on the grounds outside of the parks, but nobody really enforces that rule.) No French person is going to Disneyland for fine dining because they don’t need to. They probably eat better fare at home (and the kids eat high quality, multi-course meals in the cafeteria) and have Parisian restaurants at their disposal on the rare occasions they dine out. In the US people dine out a lot more frequently than they do here, and even a “fine dining” experience at Disney is going to be viewed as glorified fast food by your average Parisian, regardless of the quality level. It will just never have any of the intimacy that an actual Parisian restaurant has. (And frankly, if you’ve mostly followed tourist recommendations for restaurants in Paris proper, you probably haven’t experienced that either.) Disney should probably do it for the tourists, but most French people will never see the appeal of an extended, table-service dining experience in a theme park. It will never compete with your average Parisian’s favorite quartier bistro or a charming restaurant with only 6-12 tables. I think Disney’s best bet, dining-wise is to keep the cheap, fast food fare that most French guests will expect and be willing to pay for, and offer a few nicer places like Captain Jack’s Restaurant des Pirates, l’Auberge de Cendrillon, and the Bistrot Chez Rémy. Though a couple of middle-of-the-road places wouldn’t go amiss. I think a variation on the Be Our Guest restaurant would do well somewhere in Fantasyland given the French connection to the story (I still question why they didn’t make Sleeping Beauty’s castle the Beast’s castle) and they should do something with all of that unused space where Pizza Planet used to be, but it’s unlikely to ever rival dining at American parks simply because most French people would hardly consider dinner at a theme park as a dining experience to begin with.
I’m starting to sound like a broken record as well on here. The food in DLP is awful. The hotels are just for sleeping. I just hate it that its the closest to get a Disney experience for us Europeans. I prefer saving up just to fly to Orlando for the real deal.
And also broken record: if you go to DLP, eat at the Disney Village! Only place with some proper stuff instead of the microwaved cardboard stomach flu inducing drap you get in the park.
This is basically the theme of DLP. Half the effort and quality at a top price. I have visited a few times and it just gets worse and worse to the point that my last i vouched to never go again unless they make some HUGE improvements. I have since never visited and would rather pay the extra to visit the US parks, which from the UK is not much more expensive with cheaper flights now and good deals on tickets. Its so disappointing as i can get a train right to the park from only a hour away.
We stayed in the Disneyland Hotel and the only decent meal we had was the buffet in innovations (i think it was called) at a whopping 100 Euro each NOT including drinks at 7 Euro a drink. The remainder of out foods where mediocre to poor and the prices where eye watering with the biggest disappointment been the room service in the hotel. We resorted to stocking up on Crisps/Chips and chocolate from the train station to keep us going.
I haven’t been to DLP for a number of years, but I remember wondering why the food wasn’t better since we were in France. We rode the railroad and envied the family that pulled out cheese, a cheeseboard, and a knife to “cut the cheese” and share with crackers, etc. No one blinked an eye or said anything about having a knife on the moving train.
Completely agree with your review and comments. We are frequent visitors to DLP and ate there during the Halloween/Thanksgiving season when they served their “special menus.” I use quotation marks because I think that’s French for “re-purposing all the discarded food we found in the dumpsters around the parks last night.” It was far and away the worst meal we have ever had in a theme park. And, to add insult to injury, we waited 30 minutes in line just to order because everything else was closed. Wishful thinking that when they’ve finished refurbing the outside they refurb the kitchens too! Thanks as always for your great review!
Unfortunately everything you said is right. I think it was my worste experience too. I ate there once, perhaps 10 years ago, and never tried again. Loooooong lines (15 minutes, you are lucky), pooooor food (and I’m french !), and it is so depressing to eat there….
Well, for now I prefer Hakuna matata, Cookout BBQ or Fuete Del Oro.
Probably you don’t need another reason for avoiding the restaurant, but here it is: the show. At the moment there is nothing worth to wait for, but soon they’ll start live shows again and it will happen again. People order food and stay sit forever at the table where they can see the stage waiting for the show. This means that not only your food is awful, but you’ll have to eat it cold (because you couldn’t find a table for 20 minutes) or cold while standing (because you couldn’t find one at all).
It happend to me a few years ago and I asked for the restaurant manager to complain. It was my first and last time I asked my money back in a restaurant in all my life.
Hi,
I never ate there (though we are frequent Disneyland Paris visitors) but I wanted to mention that they are refurbishing the place as we speak. Maybe you should give it another chance when it reopens. Maybe I should give it a chance then aswell 😉
They will make some Star Wars Jedi academy on the stage there. Realy looking forward to 2017 when all the major refurbishments will be done.
I agree this is the worst restaurant in DLP,
but last year I had some great dinners as well!
The Ratatouille restaurant really surprised us , both in theming and the quality of the food,
also Colonel Hati’s pizza outpost, mostly has much shorter lines and a really beautiful atmosphere on the outside terras where it feels like sitting in the jungle.
Besides that I had great food at the Disneyland hotel Inventions buffet (expensive, but good)
and Cafe Mickey.
I think this is the restaurant that led my dad to utter the oft-repeated phrase of “Let’s get out of this hell-hole”.
Haha, thanks for this review. Totally agree. In our experience, they seem to ALWAYS be playing those star wars cartoons, too.
All I can say is that any review that references Arrested Development has my respect.
Thank you for the heads up… Will be going to Disneyland Paris in June and I need all the advice I can get! Will definitely stay away!
Xenophobic at least beats Xenomorphic.
One of my worst meals at any theme park (my wife calls it one of the worst ever) was eating burgers at the fast food place near the entrance to the Disney Studios Paris. The burger looked a lot like your photo, and they messed up our simple orders in several ways. Plus, it was really pricey!
I wouldn’t recommend Restaurant en Coulisse to anyone. They always seem to mess up orders. They couldn’t even get our order of only Popsicles right.
My husband and I had maybe the worst meal of our lives at Fuente del Oro. I don’t know what we were thinking eating “Tex-Mex” in France when we already had read that DLP food was questionable, but we were there on Halloween during the party and hardly anything was open. I ordered the chicken fajitas which were passable, if devoid of flavor, but the rice was just bad. My husband ordered the chili with tortilla chips. I have no idea what kind of meat was supposedly in the chili, and even the chips were weird. We were only there for one day and had lunch at Pizza Planet (mostly for the novelty of the atmosphere and because we heard it was rarely open), which reminded me a lot of Cici’s Pizza here in the States. Which is to say, not great but at least it marginally resembled pizza.
We are frequent visitors to DLP since it opened and is close for us. Over the years the food quality got down a lot. Which is sad. I totally agree with your judgement! The most downgrade happened at the Blue Lagoon which had fantastic meals but last year it was just horrible. Sad about that. Especially because it is in France and I think they should know much better!
It’s just science!
Your 3.5 stars are rather generous. I ate there last summer. My god was it just awful. The only redeeming quality, there was a french children’s choir singing what seemed to be Christmas carols, though I’m sure I’m wrong what with it being summer and my french being only marginally passable.
I should elaborate on my score a bit: the airship alone earned the restaurant 4.5 stars out of 10. Then food earned it -1 out of 10, because if someone told me I had to eat there again, I would bribe them to get out of it.
Everyone knows it’s a time-honored French tradition to have children’s choirs sing Christmas carols in the summer. I can’t believe you didn’t know that.