SeaWorld Orlando All-Day Dining Plan: Cost, tips, & full-day review
Are you thinking about trying the SeaWorld Orlando All-Day Dining Plan? We break down how it works and costs with a full-day dining review.
SeaWorld Orlando offers guests an array of thrilling rides, unique animal encounters, and incredible shows. Visiting SeaWorld Olrando can be an all-day adventure, so guests need to stay fueled for the potentially long day of fun. The SeaWorld Orlando All-Day Dining Plan allows guests to dine throughout their visit by pre-paying for meals.
However, there are questions to answer. Is it worth the cost? How does it work? This guide will describe our most recent day using the SeaWorld Olrando All-Day Dining Plan and walk you through our visit. (Also visiting Busch Gardens Tampa Bay? We wrote a review of that park’s All-Day Dining Plan, too.)
What is the SeaWorld Orlando All-Day Dining Plan?
The SeaWorld Orlando All-Day Dining Plan works as a pre-paid meal deal, allowing guests to enjoy food and beverages at participating restaurants throughout the park. Instead of purchasing individual meals, guests pay a one-time fee and receive meals and snacks every 90 minutes during their theme park visit.
How does it work?
Guests looking to use the All-Day Dining Plan at SeaWorld Orlando can purchase it in advance online (the recommended method) or at the park. When first using the plan, guests receive a wristband to access their meals. An ambassador (the name for SeaWorld employees) will scan the wristband each time the guests want to dine. When purchasing online, guests may receive a wristband or a code to scan for meal redemption.
The SeaWorld All-Day Dining Plan permits guests to get:
- an entrée,
- a side or dessert,
- and a non-alcoholic beverage
once every 90 minutes at participating restaurants.
The “side” aspect of the plan can be confusing. Many entrées already come with a side (like fries with a burger), which usually do not count as the “side” included in the Dining Plan credit. In such cases, guests are entitled to an additional side or a dessert. However, guests should always check with ambassadors for clarification.
Guests should be aware that the plan is intended for individual use. Sharing is not allowed. The wristband forces the same guest to always order and pick up the food, which limits the possibility of sharing.
Cost
The SeaWorld Orlando All-Day Dining Plan costs $59.99 for adults and $29.99 for children ages three to nine. While this sounds expensive, meals at SeaWorld typically cost around $20 or more without a beverage (one of our meals we ate with our plan would have ordinarily cost $35), making the Dining Plan an excellent deal if you use it enough.
SeaWorld Orlando offers promotions throughout the year for discounted All-Day Dining Plans. These promotions vary from a slight discount to half-off. For our latest visit, we paid half-price for the dining plan. Also, sometimes SeaWorld runs promotions for pass members that entitle them to heavily discounted All-Day Dining Plans.
Eligible restaurants
Several restaurants at SeaWorld Orlando participate in the All-Day Dining Plan, giving guests various choices. These include:
- Voyager’s Smokehouse, a BBQ place
- Expedition Café, a food court offering pizza, chicken tenders, and Asian cuisine
- Captain Pete’s Island Hot Dogs
- Seafire Grill, a chicken-based menu
- Lakeside Grill, a Tex-Mex menu
- Altitude Burger
- Panini Shore Café, serving paninis and cheesesteaks
- Waterway Grill, with American cuisine
Most restaurants open at 11 a.m. However, according to SeaWorld ambassadors, Captain Pete’s Island Hot Dogs and Expedition Café open at 10:30 a.m. Those earlier times can be helpful to start your 90-minute window to dine again, maximizing the plan’s value.
The strange variable in our planning related to concerns about Seafire Grill, a chicken quick-service restaurant. The ambassadors there stated that it opened at the park opening at 9 a.m. Nevertheless, we have often visited SeaWorld, where Seafire Grill did not open until 11:00 a.m. On our most recent visit, it did not open at 9 a.m. for guests.
Also, when we visited two days before our planned day to do All-Day Dining, Lakeside Grill did not open. Would this change our strategy to maximize our All-Day Dining?
All-Day Dining: Our day at SeaWorld Orlando
We decided to visit SeaWorld Orlando on a Saturday. The park’s operating hours were from 9 a.m. – 10 p.m., which meant plenty of time for rides, relaxation, and, of course, food. Visiting on a weekend also meant we expected high crowds, and SeaWorld Orlando lacks an excellent reputation for speedy queues at the dining locations.
Expedition Café
We decided to start the day at Expedition Café near Penguin Trek. This place presents a small food court-style setup. The standard choices, such as pizza, are available here. We went with the Asian options. These looked very similar to the ones at Dragon Fire Pub at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay.
To our surprise, Expedition Café opened around 10:15 a.m., allowing a little more all-day dining time. We got the “Pick Two” option, which came with honey chicken and beef with broccoli. We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of this quick-service meal. In our opinion, this fell below a comparable meat at a place like Panda Express. However, it qualified as some of the best Asian quick-service food we have tasted in a theme park. By the way, we have eaten a lot of Asian quick-service.
For our side, we got egg rolls. We did not expect much from these. However, we were wrong! These were the best part of the meal. Everything was fresh and crispy. Of course, a colleague told me this might be the freshest anything would be all day. Spoiler: They were correct!
After this meal, we rode Penguin Trek. The wait was about 40 minutes on this weekend around 11 a.m.
Voyager’s Smokehouse
Based on our location and when we exited Penguin Trek, we decided to walk back toward the front of the park to eat at Voyager’s Smokehouse, which specializes in barbecue.
We ordered the ribs and cheesecake. We ordered our meal at 11:54 a.m., so we got two meals before noon, increasing the value of our SeaWorld All-Day Dining Plan.
We are not usually fans of the ribs at theme parks owned by SeaWorld’s parent company, United Parks & Resorts. The flavor was just okay. We advise caution when wearing a white shirt and eating these ribs. The rib meat comes off the bone easily. However, we tasted a far less robust flavor than expected.
The fries looked like they had seasoning on them, like the ones at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. However, we did not taste much. Despite that, the strawberry cheesecake tasted like legitimate cheesecake. Though it was not incredibly high quality, it made a good dessert at this point in our day.
Waterside Grill
After this meal, we rode Mako, which many would consider a poor choice. The wait was under 20 minutes. Afterward, we went to the SeaWorld Orlando Pass Members Lounge to relax and eat our next meal. Since the lounge is near Waterside Grill, we made that location our next dining choice. We ordered at exactly 1:24 p.m., 90 minutes after our previous meal.
At Waterside Grill, near the Infinity Falls attraction, we ordered the Churrasco Steak. This comes with rice and beans. Based on that, we got an Oreo cupcake for our side/dessert.
The steak portion was small and lacked a powerful flavor. Still, the rice and beans were filling.
The Oreo cupcake had a mini-Oreo on top. It had a decent cookies and cream flavor. However, if we were to rank desserts, the cheesecake we ate earlier tasted better.
Before venturing to our next All-Day Dining Plan meal, we rode Kraken. After a shorter wait than expected for Kraken, we went to Dockside Pizza.
Dockside Pizza
Dockside Pizza stands as one of the more updated quick-service dining locations at SeaWorld Orlando. Nevertheless, the menu offers what you would expect: pizza! In contrast to our experiences at Oasis Pizza at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, the pizza at SeaWorld’s Dockside Pizza came from a warmer. This did not lower the quality. Nevertheless, the pizza at SeaWorld costs more than at Busch Gardens. Also, remember the 5% surcharge on every purchase at SeaWorld Orlando. Fortunately, we were doing the SeaWorld All-Day Dining Plan, so our pizza did not cost almost $20.
We ordered the three-meat pizza and a side of chicken Caesar salad. As usual, we received a 20-ounce soft drink with our meals. For perspective, this meal would have cost about $35 without applicable discounts. All meals looked like a great deal since we bought our All-Day Dining Plan during a Black Friday special ($29.99). These are details to consider if you plan to utilize SeaWorld’s All-Day Dining Plan.
The pizza qualifies as a decent theme park pizza, better than average. The meatball was a nice touch with this pizza, but did not add much flavor.
The salad provided a good portion size. Of course, at this point in the day, we needed something with obvious nutrition on our theme park adventure.
After this meal, we went to view the Sesame Street Parade. At this point, the weekend crowd level started to affect our day.
Altitude Burgers
Since we were trying to avoid dining at the same place more than once, we joined the queue at Altitude Burgers near the Ice Breaker attraction.
Altitude Burgers serves as the standard quick-service burger place that all theme parks must have. This marked the first time in our day that we experienced a long queue. This messed up the potential value of our dining plan a little.
We ordered the Altitude Burger with fries, a side of onion rings, and our fountain beverage. This burger with fries ordinarily costs over $22. The menu description reads, “1 lb. fresh beef, bacon, cheddar cheese, onion ring, served with mozzarella sticks.”
All burgers at Altitude Burgers are pre-made with burger patty and cheese waiting for guests to indicate which burger topping they want. This place struggled to keep up with demand on our most recent visit. It ran out of fries while we were in this queue.
The Altitude Burger’s mozzarella stick and the small onion ring on the burger added nothing in terms of flavor. Still, this meal did present a good portion size.
Despite that, everything was greasy and salty, but the onion rings somehow stayed crunchy.
After completing that meal, we did some shopping since SeaWorld Orlando pass members received $10 in SeaWorld Bucks this month.
Back to Voyager’s Smokehouse
Since Lakeside Grill failed to open during our visit, we ended up meeting friends who wanted to dine at Voyager’s Smokehouse. That meant giving this place another chance.
We arrived before our next dining window, which started at 6:12 p.m. Guests should know that their time starts and ends when they scan their code or wristband. They can enter the line before but cannot officially “pay” until their time window.
This time, we ordered the Smoked Chicken. It was a great portion size compared to the ribs we ate earlier and had decent flavor. It comes with fries. We also got a side salad and a fountain beverage. At least on this day, we would choose the chicken entrée over the ribs.
The rest of our day
SeaWorld Orlando closed at 10 p.m. the evening of our visit. We knew that meant we had two more dining windows. Nevertheless, one of those dining times would be after 9 p.m., making Seafire Grill, near the front of the park, the best choice then. To play it safe, in case that location closed early, we visited it around 7:45 p.m. to try the Chicken Tender Tower.
Before describing the entrée, we should inform guests that Seafire Grill has an indoor dining area. In this area, country music plays (loudly), and the lighting is also low. We had never dined inside at Seafire Grill before, which caught us off guard.
Our Chicken Tender Tower gave us four average chicken tenders over fries, with cheese and bacon on top. We wisely chose a side of mac and cheese to pair with this.
Overall, this made a decent meal. The mac and cheese worked well, especially after we added the excess bacon and cheese from the chicken tenders. This theme park meal looks like loaded fries with chicken tenders added. Sadly, the components do not work well enough together. The cheese and bacon fall to the bottom of the bowl. We appreciate it as more than just chicken tenders and fries. Still, it would not be a priority for us.
After this, we rode Manta, followed by a ride on Kraken again. Once our 9:15 p.m. dining window opened, we returned to Seafire Grill for the grilled chicken sandwich. Also, we got a cookie as our side/dessert since we thought it would be a good snack to save for later.
The sandwich tasted like a typical theme park chicken sandwich. The grilled chicken portion was smaller than expected, and the bun was below average at this point in the day. Everything else was average. However, this sandwich comes with cheese, which is not always true with chicken sandwiches.
Is the SeaWorld Orlando All-Day Dining Plan worth It?
Our experience involved riding roller coasters, shopping, seeing the parade, and eating seven meals. For us, it felt worth it! Still, whether the SeaWorld All-Day Dining Plan is worth it depends on your eating habits and park schedule. It makes sense for guests who spend most of the day in the theme park and eat three meals or more. In addition, the plan makes even more sense if you acquire the dining plan at a discount.
The SeaWorld Orlando All-Day Dining Plan can be an excellent value for guests who plan to eat multiple meals throughout their visit. It offers convenience and potential savings with various dining options, unlimited meals every 90 minutes, and included beverages. However, it may not be the best choice for light eaters, those with short visits, or guests who prefer more dining flexibility. By considering personal eating habits, park schedule, and budget, guests can determine whether the All-Day Dining Plan makes a good fit for their SeaWorld Orlando adventure.
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