Beaches and Cream Soda Shop has finally reopened at Disney’s Beach Club Resort. The restaurant just underwent a major refurbishment and is now about two and a half times the size it used to be, which is great for making reservations.
They still have the ice cream only window, which is now an actual window and not a weird door that you enter purgatory in the restaurant to wait for your treat. For ice cream here you can get Tofutti (soy), So Delicious (coconut), and Rice Dream (rice) vegan ice creams here.
We went to try their new food options since they added a handful of plant based options with the refurbishment and menu update. We were pretty excited to try these options as what came out about it from Disney Parks Blog beforehand absolutely grabbed our attention.
Once seated we alerted our server of our sons allergy and being vegan. A coordinator came over to speak with us to figure out an option for our son. The kids menu only had one vegetarian option, which was mac and cheese, meaning we had no vegan kids option. We ended up asking for some of the Plant Based Chili and a side of fruit for him. We also ordered the Plant Based Chili & Cheese Tots and the Plant-Based Burger.
When our food came out we were surprised to see that the vegan variation of the Chili & Cheese Tots looks nothing like the non vegan version. We had thought the one that Disney Parks Blog was sharing was the vegan version with melted cheese sauce and a ton of sour cream. That was not the case for the actual vegan option, which comes with unmelted shredded Daiya cheese and a drizzle of vegan sour cream.
The tots were incredibly underwhelming. I would rather have the ones at Woody’s Lunch Box over these. The chili is bean based, which I enjoy when eating it in soup, but not when its on things (like fries or tots). It also had corn and black olives, which you can’t really taste but I also don’t believe belong in chili. I was hoping the chili would be more like a coney sauce (or TVP/crumbles based), but perhaps that’s because I’m from Ohio and we love our chili.
The tots themselves just tasted like bagged frozen tots that have more of a hash brown consistency. They were pretty crispy (the ones not in the chili) which I appreciated. I couldn’t even taste the cheese or sour cream.
The Plant-Based Burger comes with a Caramelized-Balsamic Onion Jam and vegan mayo on a multi grain bun. The bun was great and very flavorful, it was a nice change from the standard vegan brioche that you find all over Disney World.
The burger itself was a Beyond Burger, it tasted like it was the new version of the beef. The onion jam was pretty good, it was similar to the one at The Wave. In the realm of burgers, it wasn’t my favorite in Disney, but it was my favorite part of this meal. The burger normally comes with a side of fries, but we opted for a side of fruit instead.
We thought we would get a smaller kids version of the chili for Finn, but instead we were given the regular portion of the Plant-Based Bowl of Chili. On the menu it says it is topped with Almond Milk Cheese, but it was definitely just the same Daiya as the tots. The bowl of chili was pretty good and you could actually taste a bit of a kick in it (which I didn’t notice on the tots). The serving is pretty large too.
For dessert we decided to try the new vegan option instead of a fancy sundae. Our server had mentioned that the previous day she had several customers mention they didn’t enjoy the Cookie Fries, but we tried them anyway.
When they finally showed up they were cold. And not just room temperature, but like, just came out of a fridge cold. My first bite I didn’t like it. But the more we ate them the more we enjoyed them. Corey and I agreed that the vegan marshmallow sauce (which you can get on ice cream) was the best. There was also a chocolate sauce and strawberry.
The Cookie Fries were clearly baked based on the shape/pan marks. If these were warm we would have liked them a lot more. They were also pretty hard, which I wasn’t really expecting. The texture of the cookies was kind of weird, like they had too much flour or something to make them “dusty”. Honestly it’s really hard to explain. If we go back again for food we’ll probably get a sundae instead.
As a whole we were both pretty underwhelmed with the entire meal. The new space is nice and it’s not nearly as loud as it once was. But for food I feel like they missed the mark. We probably won’t be back anytime soon for food.
Disney, please just give us a melted cheese sauce somewhere.
Price $$$
Review from December 2019.
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