seaworld dining plan available?

[disneymom]

Last time we heard that seaworld would be doing an all you can eat dining plan? Does anyone know if its available yet and what it includes for what price?

[Wendy]

It seems that it does exist. According to the Orlando Sentinel,

SeaWorld Orlando and other Busch Entertainment Corp. theme parks are introducing dining plans that allow patrons to eat all day for one price.

Introduced with little fanfare this month, Busch's "All-Day Dining Deal allows visitors to SeaWorld, Busch Gardens and Aquatica to purchase wristbands that provide a full day of unlimited visits to the parks' cafeteria-style restaurants. The wristbands cost $25.95 (including tax) for adults or $11.95 for children ages 9 and younger.

Busch is touting the plan's flexibility, allowing visitors to chose an entrée, side dish or dessert and soft drink or bottled Aquafina water each trip through the line. The offer is not good for the baby back ribs entrée, where that is offered.

The participating restaurants at SeaWorld they are

Voyager, Spice Mill, Hospitality House Deli, Mama's Kitchen Healthy Alternatives, Mango Joe's, Smoky Creek and Seafire Inn.

Sounds like a good deal to me

[Britchick]

whats to stop someone buying a wrist band- going through the line- having there meal then getting someone elses from a different place? not saying it's right but i'm sure it will be done

[Johnie]

They have a similar deal with Universal/IOA. From what I could tell there, nothing was in place to stop people from sharing.

[grahamgscott]

If you are planning a trip to Sea World you may be thinking about the All Day Meal Deal. We purchased this for a recent trip to Sea World Orlando. We purchased the All Day Dining Plan online from Sea World directly. They were running a special of $5.00 off, so we go the dining plan for $24.95 each.

I did a search before purchasing to see what exactly this plan includes and found conflicting information out there. SO I am writing this so people considering the plan can make an informed decision.

First, I must state that the food is AWFUL. The quality of the meals is generally very poor. That said, I think the all day dining is still a deal – you have to eat – UNLESS you get a multi- day pass and plan to return on multiple days. In this case, you should eat outside the park and bring water and juices in a backpack into the park. Even if you buy this at a gas station quick mart, you will pay less then you would in the park -- $2.69 for a bottle of water. Or – even better, bring a water bottle that you will with water yourself. Water fountains are hard to find in Sea World – they are not like Disney with water many water fountains throughout the park.

So, when should you get the all-day dining deal? When you are there all –day and the park has longer hours. When we went, the park was open 9 am – 6 pm. To tap into the full value, you end up spending a lot of time eating and not a lot of time checking out things.

Start with breakfast. YES YOU CAN GET BREAKFAST with the dining plan. The Seafire restaurant offers this and serves starting 15 minutes before the park opens. So, get to the park at least ½ hour before it opens to leave time for parking and going through the turnstiles and stopping at the information booth (I had to wait in line at the information booth for 10 minutes before we could get our dining pass). Breakfast at the Seafire was definitely our best meal. It is hard to screw up breakfast. They offer coffee, scrambled eggs, hash browns, fresh fruit, juice, milk cereal, sausage, biscuit gravy and pastries.

After we ate, we grabbed a couple of bottles of water and juice to take with us.

A couple of shows and rides later we stopped at the pizza restaurant and had some more water and fountain sodas and some grapes. It was nice to stop and have some fruit.

We had lunch at the Spice Mill. I was looking forward to the veggie burger. It was good – not mushy like a lot of veggie burgers can be. It turns out that is because the food was overcooked. My companions each had a burger – ate about half and said it was the toughest burger they ever ate. All the burgers are served on these huge buns. I took the top of my bun off and ate my veggie burger like a slice of pizza. All three of us had french fries and had only a couple of bites because these were cold and greasy – just nasty. They have salads there which looked fresh and we probably should have gone this route instead of cooked food.

We stopped in the afternoon for more water and juice and my Mom also had a coffee and some cookies.

Finally we ate at Mango Joes -- the wristband says that you need to order at the restaurant ½ hour before the park closes – se we showed up at 5:15. 10 minutes later, an employee came to our table and told us we needed to leave our tables in 5 minutes because he needed to “clean up.” We did our best to ignore him but by 5:35 we got up and left. The food at Mango Joes was even worse for my carnivore companions. They said the fajita meat looked like it had been sitting out for hours so one person ordered chicken fingers and the other had a hot dog. Both came with fries. Everything was cold and the fries again were greasy. I was told that the chicken fingers were like rubber. I argued with the counterperson to get a plain salad – he at first said they had none – only available with chicken but I insisted and one. My meal was great: a bowl of lettuce with a tomato, black olives, cheese, sour cream and beans/corn (I think it might have been the “condiments” for the fajita) plus some tri-colored corn chips and salsa, Quite tasty – again – uncooked. We split a gingerbread cheesecake for dessert (Seasonal food) which was pretty good, with some coffee and then got a couple of eggnogs (seasonal food) which we took with us.

To recap here are my suggestions for you:

• Get the meal deal when you are going to be there all day – longer park hours are better because you have more time to eat, ride and watch shows – shorter park hours make this option hard.
• Arrive ½ hour before the park opens and eat breakfast in the park
• Take advantage of the dining pass to eat lots of fruits and veggies as snacks (stop and get a pickle or grapes or a small salad.
• Avoid cooked burgers and other items – looking more for the colder, deli items; again go for those fruits and veggies. Throw the bread tops away and eat the sandwiches like a pizza.
• Vegetarian food seemed better than the carnivore options – maybe because they are fresher due to lower demand?
• Drink lots of water and juices and milk – skip the sodas. Not only are they not as good for you but they are the worst value for your money. I’ve been to the parks in FL a lot and I must say this was the first time I ever finished the day and was NOT dehydrated. It was nice to get my fill of water.

And a couple of suggestions for Sea World:

• Concern yourself with quality. It is shameful to spend a lot of money on junky food.
• Have more veggie and fruit options – carrot sticks, apples, bananas – all the time.
• Teach your employees what good customer service is – people should never be told to leave a table so that a person can clean up.
• Have a check out line especially for people with the dining plan – you don’t need a cash register – just someone to make sure people are taking the appropriate food selections each time they go through the line.

[grahamgscott]

PS - You can see photos of what we ate on flickr -- just look for user gscottgraham or search sea world all day dining

[Isafari]

I know this is an old post, but we do have a little info on this HERE