Thanks to Beth Chaney of the blog 990 Square for this fun visit to Walt’s, An American Restaurant on Main Street USA in Disneyland Paris! Take it away, Beth!
Outside Walt's Disneyland Paris
Before we left for France, I had one dream in my head for our visit to Disneyland Paris — to eat at Walt’s on Main Street and enjoy a glass of French wine!
I was worried that this wouldn’t work out because I had a really hard time figuring out the Disneyland Paris dining reservation system (it seemed to be it was only available to onsite guests), but apparently someone sent a little pixie dust my way and we were lucky enough to score a late lunch walk up seating!
Atmosphere
Walt’s is located right on Main Street USA, halfway between the park entrance and the castle. The entryway to the restaurant is located right off Main Street USA and is themed in the classic Victorian Main Street USA style, with references to Walt’s life.
Walt's Lobby
There is an old fashioned piano, a fancy elevator, and and entrance to a shop called Lillian’s in honor of Walt’s wife.
Walt's Stairway
As you head to the dining room on the second floor, you go up a staircase that documents historic moments in Walt’s life and in the building of the Walt Disney Company and Disneyland. I really enjoyed stopping to look at each of these pictures showing how the company was created.
Walt's Memories
At the top of the stairs you’ll find the main Walt’s dining rooms. I say rooms because Walt’s is split up into a series of rooms, each representing a different “land” of the Disneyland park.
The restaurant was fairly quiet the day we were there, so all of the land-rooms were not open. We were seated in the Adventureland room.
Adventureland Room
All of the rooms are very lushly decorated, with plenty of details to help you remember which land you’re in. The Adventureland room has a mini pirate ship, for example!
Pirate Ship
All of the rooms in Walt’s have windows that look out on Main Street USA, making it a great place to quietly enjoy the festive Main Street atmosphere without being part of the hustle and bustle.
Eats
Although Walt’s is described as “An American Restaurant,” we thought that overall Walt’s menu was “American inspired” with a lot of French flair.
Menu -- click image for larger version
Walt’s has both a la carte menus and prix fixe menus. Prix fixe menus are very popular and common in Europe, and Walt’s actually had two available the day we were there — one with dessert and one without. We chose the menu without dessert (27.50 euros).
Walt's!
We began our meal with a beverage — I had a glass of French Chardonnay and my husband ordered a large 1664 beer. In Europe you order beers in either large or small sizes. It was nice to enjoy our drinks as we gazed out over Main Street.
We also enjoyed some warm house made bread, which was delicious.
Bread
One of the advantages of ordering prix fixe is that the food typically comes quickly. Since I was pretty hungry, this was a good thing! In typical French fashion, both of our first course dishes were beautifully styled on the plate.
I ordered the goat cheese tart, which was almost like a goat cheese au gratin. Thinly sliced potatoes were layered with creamy goat cheese. This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting (I thought it would be more of an actual tart) but it was deliciously creamy, almost like a really good mac and cheese sauce. The dish was served with some greens, which were crisp with a light dressing.
Goat Cheese Tart
My husband ordered the crab tartare, which was our favorite of the two appetizers. The tartare was so light and flavorful, it melted on the tongue. Amazing.
The crackers it was served with were interesting — lightly sweet in a way that really complemented the tartare. The Asian style vegetables were a nice complement, but really we just wanted more of the tartare!!
Crab Tartare
For our main courses, I ordered the salmon and my husband had the chicken. Again, the food was beautifully styled and presented. Luckily for me, we thought I had the winning entree.
The chicken was served with a light morel cream sauce. The sauce was good and morels are always delicious, but although tasty, we thought the chicken could have been a bit juicier. Or maybe we were just still wishing we had more tartare.
Chicken Dish
The salmon was delicious. It felt and tasted like a classic French preparation, with the salmon sauteed and cooked in butter and served over a bed of wilted greens done in more butter. Perfection in my book.
There was an odd fruit chip-like thing served on top of the salmon. It was lightly sweet and crispy and I found it was a nice compliment to the flavor of the greens.
The dish was completed with some pickled cold vegetables. I thought the cold vegetables were odd, but pickled items are much more common in Europe than they are in the US, so this could be a typical complement.
Salmon
Overall
We LOVED Walt’s. It felt like it was as good as any of the Disney World restaurants we are accustomed to, and it was probably one of our best meals in France.
For a Disney Parks lover, you just can’t beat having a seat where you can gaze out over Main Street while you dine. For diners like us who enjoy adult beverages, the experience is just a little bit sweeter with a crisp glass of French wine. Although the restaurant advertises itself as “American”, be prepared for upscale French food and service.
On our way out of the restaurant, I stopped to tell the host how much we liked the restaurant, and how it reminded us of our favorites at Walt Disney World! They seemed very flattered by the compliment.
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Do the waiters/waitresses and hosts speak English fluently?
The host of the restaurant spoke very good English, but our waitress didn’t. We ended up using some of our limited french and good old fashioned point and gesture.
Lovely to see a Paris review. We got to experience Walt’s back in July and loved the restaurant. The setting was beautiful and the food was great. Our server spoke enough english to order comfortably.
A note on reservations. We booked with on arrival at Disneyland Paris for the following evening and managed to get a table at a time we wanted. Very different system to WDW but in some ways nice that you don’t have to plan so far out.
The review had me at the word “Walt’s”. I grew up watching Walt Disney introducing his show every week. He even looked like one of my uncles. We loved Uncle Walt. This is a beautiful restaurant with an intriguing menu. I would love to try it.
I really like the idea of trying to communicate with a non english speaking waiter. That would make it memorable.
Walt’s looks amazing. I’m glad to see a review of the restaurant, as it was being renovated when we went in June. To answer Savorique’s question, some of the CMs are fluent, whereas others aren’t. In my experience, if the CM assisting us couldn’t understand what we were saying, another CM in the same location was able to help out.
The price actually wasn’t what I was expecting. I think we were on a bit of a budget trip last time, so put the idea of an in-park table service restaurant out of our heads.
We had a simply horrible experience at Disneyland Paris earlier this year – I have never voluntarily left a Disney Park in my life, and we ended up leaving at 2pm, having done everything we wanted to do! It is honestly Disney in name only – the service was abhorrent, the food terrible, and the weird “Walt Disney is French! The French invented animation! The French invented special effects” really sucked any remaining joy out of it. 🙁
It’s so heart-wrenching as a serious francophile and Disney fan to be so let down by the place, but I guess it’s like trying to combine a Dole Whip and a frozen pickle – just because you love two things does not mean that they go together!
Becca, I’m sorry to hear you didn’t like DLP. We thought it was enchanting. Very different from WDW, but still a lovely Disney treat.
I LOVE the idea that the French Disney educate guests as to the French origins of popular products – I bet it was Disney’s idea to shout out some love to the French. I actually plan on doing the same thing with my kids. I think it’s delightful that Disney named the Beauty and the Beast character “Lumiere.” I love PUNS and references. I’m thinking of having an outline of Ben Franklin in profile (remember those from grade school?) near our light switches at home – now, that is truly thinking out of the box. Flying a kite, hoping to get hit by lightning ….
Cleo, that does sound like a lovely idea, but the reality is that they say “animation originated in Lascaux caves” and “special effects were invented by a French person”.
The cave paintings at Lascaux are a brilliant example of the earliest known paintings and drawings, but to claim that they’re the origins of animation is stretching it a bit.
Special effects are such a broad field that to try and claim that they were invented by one individual is odd, especially when the specific method they refer to was actually discovered by a Swede forty years before the man they mention.
France is awesome – I am a huge Francophile, and I love their food, landscape, language, music and films more than anyone I know. I just found it peculiar that Disney would stretch (and even defy!) the truth in that way.
Hi Beth, love your review of Walt’s. I have had the same meals as you quite a few times.
Walt’s is one of our favourite restaurants in DLP along with Blue Lagoon and a few others.
Anyone can make dining reservations on 0033 160 30 40 50 but only from about a month in advance – not 6 months like WDW!
We usually make ours about a week before we go, once I can see the parks programmes online and plan our days there around show & parade times. Annoying to book dinner then find it clashes with a parade.
You do get a great overhead view of parades from Walt’s if you can get a table by a window overlooking Main Street. Gives a different perspective of the floats, but you can’t hear the music as Walt’s is soundproofed.
I have been going to DLP regularly since it opened in 1992, and also WDW 5 times. Hoping to visit Ananheim soon.
Not sure what Becca means about people saying Disney is French – I have never heard anyone mention this there, and I speak to a lot of Cast Members. Disney Art Of Animation in the Studios Park is a lovely tribute to Walt and shows how they create new Characters for animation films. Can’t really understand how someone can leave by 2pm unless they really hate theme parks or Disney. Just the fantastic Cinemagique attraction lasts 45 mins.
Blue Lagoon is a lovely atmospheric restaurant inside Pirates OTC ride, and well worth a visit if you like caribbean fish/ seafood dishes, although they have other things as well.
The Yacht Club ( Newport Bay hotel ) and Manhattan restaurant ( Hotel New York ) are also very good.
Inventions buffet in the Disneyland Hotel is excellent, as described in Erin’s fantastic review on here.