Tiana’s Place Restaurant Review
Tiana’s Place is a table service restaurant themed to Princess and the Frog featuring meet & greet characters and a live band aboard Disney Cruise Line. We’ve dined at Tiana’s Place aboard the Wonder a few times, and will share food photos, atmosphere & entertainment impressions, and food thoughts. (Updated April 19, 2021.)
Before we get started with the review, a quick update based on some thoughts we’ve had during the closure and phased reopening of both Walt Disney World and Disneyland. First, in case you missed it, Disney announced that that Splash Mountain will be rethemed to the Princess and the Frog at Walt Disney World and Disneyland.
At Disneyland, that presents a great opportunity for Tiana’s Place to finally happen. It might sound like heresy, but if the Country Bears are never going to return (and honestly, they aren’t) we wouldn’t mind seeing Tiana’s Place replace Hungry Bear Restaurant. At Walt Disney World, there’s an even better spot for Tiana’s Place, and it’s nowhere near Magic Kingdom…
Walt Disney World’s perfect location for Tiana’s Place is hiding in plain sight. Many fans have probably never heard of Bonfamille’s Café in the lobby of Port Orleans French Quarter. That’s because it’s a defunct table service restaurant, which was closed following the post-9/11 tourism dip.
With Port Orleans French Quarter still closed and no reopening date set in 2021, now would be the perfect time for Imagineering to go in and revitalize that unused space. It could be reimagined into Tiana’s Place, taking a Topolino’s Terrace-like approach with a character breakfast and more sophisticated dinner. This would be a big draw for French Quarter, and would undoubtedly help with bookings.
This would make even more sense now that Reflections — A Disney Lakeside Lodge has reportedly been cancelled, and construction crews have removed supplies from the site.
That’s significant because Reflections was intended to be the home of a waterfront Princess and the Frog dining experience. This restaurant was to be located “along the bayou of Bay Lake” and feature a modern interior. Concept art was shown for this at the last D23 Expo, and the restaurant took literally no visual cues from the movie. We’re actually pretty happy that project isn’t moving forward, and we hope this opens the door for Tiana’s Place where it makes infinitely more sense, at Port Orleans French Quarter!
Let’s move on from our armchair Imagineering to the actual substance of this review. If you’re not familiar with Disney Cruise Line restaurants, one thing to note is that all of the rotational dining has a utilitarian vibe. This isn’t to say the restaurants are not well-themed, it’s just that they are cavernous, single-room restaurants. They all feature a lot of wide open space in the middle and are designed to serve a lot of people each night.
Tiana’s Place is no different. It’s open and expansive, but to the extent that it can be, it has a sense of intimacy and charm. Right from the entrance, you’re greeted by brick, lacy iron scrollwork, and beads emblematic of New Orleans’ French Quarter.
There, you’re also greeted by the restaurant’s marquee–a large “Tiana’s Place” that you could easily envision atop the restaurant’s exterior…if this weren’t on a cruise ship.
In this same area, there are also several smaller details easily lost as guests race inside for their seating, trying to finish in time for the evening’s entertainment.
Here, you’ll also find a nod to New Orleans Square, framed paintings, photos, newspaper clippings, and personal belongings of the characters. We won’t spoil them, but there are a ton of fun easter eggs from the Princess and the Frog so be sure to spend some time in the lobby and area around the podium.
I don’t think this level of detail exists in any other rotational restaurant on any Disney Cruise Line ship. These are really nice touches, and establish a ‘homey’ sensibility from the outset.
This first impression is crucial, as the interior is relatively low-key. Even then, anyone who has stayed at either Port Orleans Resort should notice the same sort of Southern charm in the flourishes.
From the ornate light fixtures to the chairs to the fanciful paneling along the walls. It all goes to subtly reinforce a Southern sensibility.
This could be accomplished better in a smaller, multi-room restaurant, but it works very well even in the rotational dining Disney Cruise Line setting.
Moreover, since this is part meal, part dinner show, perhaps the expansive single room is the right approach, irrespective of the operational needs of DCL.
Speaking of the entertainment, that’s unquestionably the highlight of Tiana’s Place. The Crawfish Crooners are the house band, and they perform on a dedicated stage at the rear of Tiana’s Place. They perform two sets over the course of each dinner seating, amounting to around an hour total.
The Crawfish Crooners were joined on stage by a walk-around Tiana performer, who performed a few familiar songs during each meal. While the Crawfish Crooners are talented musicians on their own, Tiana was a show-stealer during both of our meals. She had exceptional stage presence, and commanded the attention of every guest while she was on-stage.
When Tiana was not performing, she was mingling around the tables, welcoming guests to her restaurant. We watched her for a bit and noticed that this wasn’t a typical character meal, as Tiana was more about the interactions. She wasn’t stopping for photos unless guests explicitly requested a photo.
Also present as a more traditional ‘smile and pose’ character is Louis the trumpet playing alligator from the Princess & the Frog. The differing approaches of the two characters struck a nice balance, and kept the energy of the restaurant high.
Our second meal at Tiana’s Place had even more energy than the first, as that was when we did the Mardi Gras Parade, which included dancing around the restaurant. It was an absolute hoot–probably the most convivial meal we’ve had aboard any Disney Cruise Line ship.
Okay, that’s a lot on the atmosphere of the restaurant…what about the food? To be entirely honest, I’m not entirely sure how useful our informative this review will be in that regard. As this was the Alaskan cruise, we had special ‘regional inspiration’ menu items each night, and we tried to focus on those.
With that said, the standard menu items we tried were fairly hit or miss. One fairly consistent criticism we had of the menu that the dishes were consistently mild. When we think of creole cuisine, mild is not typically the word that comes to mind.
Now, we understand that this needs to be a crowd-pleasing restaurant, but this surpassed even World Showcase in terms of making these dishes inoffensive to the simplest palates. In so doing, they made the food lackluster to all palates. In fact, our first meal at Tiana’s Place was our least favorite food-wise of the entire cruise. The second meal was better, but still not up to Disney Cruise Line standards.
I’d like to think this was a “two-off” or the result of inconsistencies in the kitchen, but choosing to omit spices seems like a pretty deliberate thing, and we found this to be the case with several different dishes. We still enjoyed our meals, but the choice to skew so far towards bland was a bummer. Include safe options if the goal is to not alienate guests–don’t dumb down cajun cooking.
In any case, here are some food photos of what we ordered:
Overall, Tiana’s Place was an exceptional dinner experience thanks to the live band, Princess Tiana, and Mardi Gras fun. It has a great energy that works perfectly in this venue, and we really enjoyed both of our meals here for that reason. Our food was hit or miss and generally on the mild side, but we’d still rate Tiana’s Place as the second-best of Disney Cruise Line’s rotational dining options thanks to the superb entertainment and ambiance.
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Your Thoughts
Have you dined at Tiana’s Place? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment of the atmosphere and cuisine? Did you know it was Palace and not Place at the end of the film? Are you interested in eating here? 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 think Tom Sawyers Island would be a perfect place for Tianas place. There is a restaurant on there already that is only open for a very short time. Plus its right across from splash mountain.
POFQ is one of my favorite resorts. I love the theming of New Orleans. Nice pool bar. Price point is pretty good considering how far and away better it is from the ‘value’ resorts. POR is also really nice, but more remote and spread out. I really like southern LA food too, and agree this would be a great place for this restaurant idea, even though I’d MUCH prefer they abandon this stupid ruination of Splash and instead build an expansion area themed to the bayou with an original attraction and …this restaurant!
I’m glad they ditched plans for Reflections. The renderings looked like junk, WAY off theme and not deserving of the location at all.
1. Pretty much agreed on food quality. DCL food as a whole is good… not great. The desserts are fantastic but you’re right the food is pretty one-note and could be better. Although, TP is my favorite of all the DCL restaurants (besides Palo).
2. Atmosphere is amazing! The dining room is beautiful and the music by the Crawfish Crooners (AKA The Brace Boys in real life) is incredible! It is loud but personally, I’d rather have loud music than 500 people all talking at one time. Overall a lot of fun!
Tiana is in my family’s top 3 princesses list. It took me until about halfway through “Almost There,” during my first screening of the film, to start fantasizing about a real Tiana’s Place on the Sassagoula River. I would brave any combination of bus/boat/monorail to visit a WDW Tiana’s, but I am relieved it’s not happening at Fort Wilderness. There was just no thematic integrity linking the film and the location, other than “water.” With Tiana’s royal rooms at POR, nothing could make more sense than bringing her restaurant into the French Quarter.
Since I LIVE in New Orleans, Tiana is one of my Favorite Characters. If Tianas place were to Happen at POFQ, I would SAVE UP to stay there Specifically for that.
I am sad the construction for that Lakeside lodge has been CANCELLED which I didn’t know about. I have many pics of me as a Toddler at River Country.
To truly enjoy Tiana’s Place on the Wonder, I suggest going for lunch. There is so much going on at dinner, which I love, but it is hard to just sit back and quietly take it all in. At lunch there is no show or rush. You can just sit and linger and enjoy. Hopefully, we will get to cruise again someday to experience this again.
Bonfamiles was our absolute favorite restaurant! The beignets were awesome! I agree with you that would be a perfect spot and would be a great alternative to the food court. We went once and said never again!
Say it isn’t so. Mild, bland creole cuisine? A place like that in New Orleans would be closed before the Grand Opening Day lunch crowd paid their checks.
I love the idea of Tiana’s Place in Port Orleans, which already houses my wife’s favorite Disney restaurant, Boatwrights. I hope if they do a TP restaurant they will include the entertainment.
As a fan of POFQ, I hope hey do NOT put in any type of character dinning there. Due to the resorts size, it gets fully booked as is and is already one of the last resorts to get any kind of room discounts. So, it does not need any more incentives for people to stay there and it would just cause a crowded area inside the small lobby area and take away from it’s quaintness.
a tiana’s shoehorned into the reflection lakeside lodge was an idea that NEVER made sense. they have a literal new orleans themed resort already… how does it not make sense to place it there? other than a purely “come to this new dvc resort to eat so we can feed you then sell you”.
we sailed the Wonder just before the renovations that brought tianas on board. i’m dying to get back on but since then our itineraries have taken us to other ships. hopefully someday.
I hate to say it, but my wife and I both disliked “Tiana’s Place.” We have been on the Disney Wonder twice (going again in 2021) and since our first time at Tiana’s we try to book at Palo for any night that we are supposed to eat at Tiana’s. The reason? The noise. The band and live show are so loud, we practically had to yell to hold a conversation with the other guests at the table. I agree, the band is talented, and the actress who played Tiana was great, but I can’t enjoy a meal, especially at the late dinner seating, with the din of a mess hall.
If this is the second best rotational dining what is the best rotational dining? Thanks and love reading your blog!
Oh my gosh! I can’t wait to dine here in September. Thank you so much for sharing. The beignets look amazing and the decor looks lively and inviting.
Was the gumbo “The Bees Knees” (popular expression from the film)
I wish Louis had a meet and greet in Florida or California. Port Orleans (FL) or New Orleans Sq (CA) would be perfect
Side note:
New Orleans cooking is traditionally Creole, not Cajun, but we do share a love for both traditions!
https://www.louisianatravel.com/articles/cajun-vs-creole-food-what-difference
If Disney really wanted to go with the name “Tiana’s Place” as opposed to “Tiana’s Palace” they should have pulled a little trick a la Kids Incorporated and burnt out the first ‘a’ on the marquee. Feels like a missed opportunity to me.
Kids Incorporated!! Loved that show!!! <3
Hi Tom,
To clarify the restaurat name, in the ‘dream sequence” the restaurant is called Tiana’s Place – the menu reproduces the same artwork as in the film. At the end of the film, it is called Tiana’s Palace. They didn’t any confusion among the guests who may think the “Palace” was a princess themed restaurant. (But check out Rapunzel’s Royal Palace on the Magic).
http://disney-hiddensecrets.tumblr.com/post/976973107/in-the-beginning-of-the-movie-tianas-dad-writes
Another note not mentioned here is that “palace” is a nod to one of New Orleans’ most famous/iconic restaurants: Commander’s Palace, which happens to be right across the street from Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 depicted in a key Princess and the Frog scene.
However, I think that reference would be lost on the typical DCL guest, and I agree that “palace” would have implied a princess-themed restaurant. Also, with the “palace” name they’d likely have had to make the theme/decor more “palatial” (and possibly more expensive) to meet guest expectations.
I’m amazingly torn about this. On the one hand, yay for a Tiana’s! And yay for representation of the underrepresented African-American princess!
But honestly, they literally have a PORT ORLEANS RESORT. I mean, how on the nose can you get. Frankly, I assumed that the fact that they had a Port Orleans Resort, was the incentive to set Princess and the Frog in New Orleans in the first place!
Given all that, I’m frankly amazed that Tiana’s doesn’t have restaurant there. Presumably they will ‘someday’, but honestly, the longer they go without doing it, the less likely it is to have as much draw as the distance between when the movie was released falls further and further away.