Should You Eat at Hollywood Studios?

Friends keep asking me about something, and I figure I should finally spell out my rationale.

Personally, I’ve fallen out of love with dining at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Lately, I tend to exit the park and dine elsewhere for lunch, but the real question is whether you should do the same.

So, should you eat at Hollywood Studios? Here’s the deal…

What’s the Problem?

I’m currently working through the latest iteration of the best places to eat at Disney theme parks.

Soon, you’ll read my rankings about the best Quick Service and Table Service meals at the various restaurants.

Whenever I compile these lists, I wince when I get to Hollywood Studios.

While Disney theme park dining has rightfully earned its place as the gold standard in the industry, Hollywood Studios is a blemish.

The dining options here simply aren’t up to snuff with the other three Disney World parks, all of which are amazing.

Disney has tried to rectify this recently by adding Roundup Rodeo BBQ, an excellent Table Service restaurant.

I’ll also note that if I privatize the conversation to personal opinion, Hollywood Studios hosts my favorite eatery in the world.

I could happily eat at Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant once a week for the rest of my life.

Alas, reviews emphatically indicate that mine is the minority opinion, and that’s a recurring theme at this park.

People heavily criticize many of the dining options such as ABC Commissary, Backlot Express, and Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo.

To Disney’s credit, it’s closing two of the worst restaurants here, PizzeRizzo and Mama Melrose’s Ristorante Italiano.

Hopefully, when Monstropolis arrives, it’ll feature better restaurants than what we’ve had.

Still, at this point, only three Hollywood Studios restaurants possess glowing reviews.

In addition to Roundup Rodeo BBQ, the other two options are the highly expensive The Hollywood Brown Derby and the lovely Woody’s Lunch Box.

Not coincidentally, Disney is currently adding new seating at Woody’s Lunch Box.

Tourists have figured out that this place offers far and away the best combination of food and affordable prices.

You probably don’t want to eat every meal there, though. And that’s where the conversation starts…

The Opportunity Cost

In economics, opportunity cost is a term meaning that when you choose one thing, it comes at the expense of something else.

For example, when you buy a cheeseburger, the opportunity cost is that you don’t get pizza or a hot dog.

Sometimes, the opportunity cost of a decision is trivial. In other instances, it’s savage.

For example, let’s say that you could have bought stock in Apple in the 1980s or Google in 2004, but you bought something else.

You’d regret that, wouldn’t you? Well, the same logic applies to dining at Hollywood Studios.

When you choose to eat here, you’re experiencing a bit of opportunity cost over what you didn’t have.

Should you be willing to leave this park, you could take the Disney Skyliner to several places, each of which has restaurants.

Three of them matter more than the rest, in my opinion. Those are Disney’s Riviera Resort, Disney’s BoardWalk, and EPCOT.

All three places offer substantially better dining options than what you’ll find at Hollywood Studios. So, the choice seems easy, right?

Well, it’s not because there’s a different kind of opportunity cost in play.

Should you leave Hollywood Studios for a while, you’re likely missing out on the opportunity to ride some stuff.

Currently, five or six attractions at the park require waits in the range of an hour.

By leaving the park, you’ll probably spend a couple of hours traveling elsewhere, dining, and then coming back.

In that time, you could ride a couple of things at Hollywood Studios instead, and virtually every attraction here is fantastic.

So, the opportunity cost one way is that you’ll eat better. The opportunity cost the other way is that you’ll ride more.

Since this is a tough choice, let’s discuss the best options at some other places.

Dining on the BoardWalk and at the Riviera

The Disney Skyliner station is right by the entrance to Hollywood Studios.

You can take this gondola and be at the Riviera in about ten minutes.

At this resort, you’ll discover several tremendous dining options, including one right by the hotel lobby.

Le Petit Café offers decadent quick bites such as pastries, and its alcohol menu is divine.

This isn’t the place to go when you’re starving, though. You’ll find a better option one floor below at Primo Piatto.

This has become one of my favorite lunch spots over the past five years.

For that matter, Primo Piatto is partially the reason why I wrote this. I frequently ditch Hollywood Studios to have lunch here.

Of course, you may prefer a fancier meal. If so, Topolino’s Terrace – Flavors of the Riviera is a dynamic spot.

This rooftop restaurant serves delicious European flavors, and its view will take your breath away.

Of course, there’s another place to eat Europe’s best foods, and that’s the World Showcase. We’ll get to that in the next section.

For now, let’s discuss the other Skyliner option, which is the BoardWalk. This trip takes 15-20 minutes.

The variance depends on how quickly you exit one gondola and board the other, which depends on crowds.

Once you reach the BoardWalk, you can eat anything from cake to corn dogs to pizza.

Realistically, The Cake Bake Shop is the best place to go, but Trattoria al Forno is spectacular as well.

So, as you can see, most of these places sound more appealing than the ones I just mentioned at Hollywood Studios.

And I haven’t even gotten to…

The World Showcase

Here’s the real reason you should consider leaving Hollywood Studios to eat elsewhere.

As I just showed, you can get to EPCOT in 15-20 minutes. So, in 25 minutes, you can be eating at the World Showcase.

If I could eat at the World Showcase right now, I would absolutely do it rather than grab something from the fridge.

The dining at EPCOT surpasses every other theme park on the planet to the point that narrowing the list of options proves difficult.

When you want pizza, you should visit Via Napoli Pizzeria e Ristorante, which serves the best slices at Disney.

Should you prefer haute cuisine, Chefs de France and Monsieur Paul represent the pinnacle of French dining.

Personally, I’m fond of San Angel Inn Restaurante, which serves Mexican food in one of my favorite settings at Disney World.

Meanwhile, my wife would get mad at me if I failed to mention her beloved Rose & Crown Dining Room, home to tasty Fish & Chips.

We’re also fans of Teppan Edo, which offers a charming teppanyaki dining experience.

In terms of consensus opinion, the TripAdvisor crew adores Biergarten Restaurant, which serves hearty German cuisine.

I could go on and on, and I mean that. But you should have gotten the point by now.

Should You Eat at Hollywood Studios?

The dining at EPCOT is so much better than anything you’ll find at Hollywood Studios it’s almost comical.

The lone exception is Woody’s Lunch Box, which would be on a par with the best of EPCOT, just…simpler.

So, I perceive that as your real choice. Would you rather eat at Woody’s Lunch Box, some place inferior to that, or go elsewhere?

Due to the opportunity cost attraction conversation, it’s not an easy choice.

As I indicated, we’ve stopped eating at Hollywood Studios most of the time, though. Primo Piatto works better for us.

When we’re Park Hopping, which we do a lot, everything at the World Showcase is better.

The one thing you should know when considering that option is that you will need Park Hopper tickets, though.

You cannot enter EPCOT just to eat. It requires valid park admission, which is another factor here.

Still, I’d strongly encourage you to try some options beyond the park at Hollywood Studios. Your stomach will thank you.

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Photo Credit: Steven Diaz, photographer