This review reflects our experience from January 2016.
One of the classic Disney attractions just got a restaurant themed after it! Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. Skipper Canteen, which is quite the mouthful, has officially opened in Adventureland at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Here you will meet jungle skippers and have a meal at their headquarters. Typical to the attraction the Jungle Cruise you will find that your servers and hosts will be full of witty jokes and keep you on your toes while on your journey.
Skipper Canteen has several themed rooms that are all unique in their own way. There is the main room that is considered the Mess Hall, Falls Family Parlor which features fine china with beautiful light fixtures and the S.E.A. Room that features a wall of butterflies and much more. As of January 2016, this restaurant is not taking Advanced Dining Reservations and is walk up only. Our wait was about 2 minutes on a Friday evening in January.
Once seated we informed our server that we were vegan. She pulled out her cheat sheet and told us what was vegan according to that. We asked about the bread and she told us it was vegan, but it comes with a honey dipping sauce. Additionally we asked about the Falls Family Falafel because we had heard the white bean dip wasn’t vegan, she went and checked and told us the sauce has yogurt in it but we could order it without.
Our complimentary bread came out and we dug in. The bread was really dry and pretty dense. None of us really loved it, it didn’t add anything to the meal.
The falafel was pretty tasty, not too dry and had a bunch of flavor on the inside. The falafel was really crispy on the outside and was heavy on cilantro on the inside. It needed the tomato-cucumber salad with it to help with the dryness though.
The Rice Noodle Bowl with Tofu is completely vegan on the menu, they use a vegetable base for the pho broth. The bowl was really small, the broth didn’t taste like anything and it seemed like the tofu wasn’t pressed. I tried to get the juice of the lime out of it but it didn’t help. I found out after eating here that I could have gotten some Sriracha sauce for it, it would have helped a little bit. The vegetables in it were peppers, onion and mushrooms. I was extremely unimpressed with this dish, the tofu tasted like a wet sponge.
The rest of the table ordered the Curried Vegetable Crew Stew. The first comment made was ‘where is the squash bowl?’ The picture on the menu it shows a much greater portion of food and the vegetables are in a squash bowl. The general consensus was that the only good part of this plate was the curried cauliflower. The collards were not up to par with the ones at Tusker House and the lentils were bland.
As a whole none of us really enjoyed this meal. We were all pretty disappointed in the lack of flavor that we were expecting with a menu that is supposed to be African/Indian inspired. It seems like they have made the food more bland to help please the non-adventurous eaters. We have heard that if you ask for it to be made with more flavor they will do it, we just wish we had known that before eating here.
Would we go back?
No, the food was bland and a bit over priced for what we got.
Price?
$$
Corey & Melissa
We ate here this week and the Curry Stew is completely different now. It came in a bowl with rice on the side and a naan bread. Full of flavor and tied as my favorite meal during our week at the parks.
omg, that’s the smallest Pho bowl i’ve ever seen. And i’ve eating probably 1000x different places of pho in my life. Probably the most expensive too
I agree with Cyndi about the curry dish – everything about mine was fantastic. The collards were perfectly cooked and full of flavor, there was just enough squash, lentils were great. My server had steered me away from the noodle bowl and I’m glad she did. This was one of the best meals I had at WDW last week.
I went there on a Thursday afternoon – judging from Instagram, the day before y’all! I really enjoyed the curried vegetables. The cauliflower was the best part, but the lentils were quite tasty too. They weren’t bland for me, but would have benefitted from a little more salt. The collards were nice and lemony when I ate them. We also ordered the falafels and found them delicious – just a bit too dry. I wish the bean sauce was vegan, it would be an awesome addition.
I definitely would like to go back, and hopefully they tweak things a little by then. After this review, I’m glad I didn’t get the noodle bowl. It sounds like it needs a little help.