REVIEW: Enchanted Garden on the Disney Dream Cruise Ship

If you’re a big Disney Park fan, you probably know a decent amount about the popular restaurants in the parks, like Cinderella’s Royal Table in Magic Kingdom, 50s Prime Time Cafe in Hollywood Studios, or Le Cellier in EPCOT.

But, how much do you know about the restaurants on the Disney cruise ships? If you’re planning a trip on a Disney cruise soon, it’s important to know about your dining options! This could help you determine which ship you want to take a trip on or what to expect before you board. So, we’re going to break down one of the restaurants on the Disney Dream: Enchanted Garden!

Atmosphere

Enchanted Garden is one of the table service restaurants you’ll eat at on the Disney Dream that’s a part of your rotational dining.

This restaurant is designed to look like an Arboretum in Versailles, complete with white trellises and fountains.

The lighting also changes from day to night, which is a cool touch!

The atmosphere is decent in here — we liked it better than the Royal Palace restaurant, but not as much as Animator’s Palate.

At your table, you’ll get a number assigned to your party.

Overall, it’s a pretty space!

Now, let’s talk about the menu.

Menu

We visited Enchanted Garden for dinner, but they also serve breakfast and lunch here, which is a buffet style. Dinner is table service and they specialize in market-fresh ingredients. There are cocktails like the Golden Leafs, which has rum and pomegranate, as well as a bread service to kick off your meal.

For appetizers, you can get things like the cucumber garden roll, North Atlantic lobster roll, and more. There are also a variety of soups and salads, like the heirloom tomato soup, spinach and raspberry salad, and a romaine wedge salad.

For the main course, you can choose between options like sea scallops, sea bass, roasted chicken, and more. There are vegetarian options available as well like pearl-barley cakes or glazed portobello mushrooms.

For dessert, you can indulge in things like the chocolate garden torte or the orange almond cake. There’s also their signature dessert, the southern style pecan tart. Now, let’s get into trying out the food!

Eats

We started off with the bread service here, which is similar to the bread service at the other two rotational restaurants on the Disney Dream — Royal Palace and Animators Palate. We got a variety of rolls that were pretty standard and were served at room temperature. We really wish the bread would’ve been warm!

Accompanying the bread was a chickpea garlic spread and some butter. The spread was similar to a hummus, but it weirdly tasted like tuna to us? We’re not sure why that was, but it wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t anything we’d write home about. Each rotational dining spot has a special spread that comes with the bread, and this was our least favorite of the three.

For appetizers, we got the ahi tuna and avocado tower and the cucumber garden roll. The tuna tower was recommended by our server and was pretty tasty, but it was a bit bland. The tuna is raw and the avocado tasted super fresh, but the flavors together tasted bland unless you got some of the wasabi dressing. If we got this again, we would ask for more of that dressing!

The cucumber garden roll was also a little on the bland side, which was a let down. It mostly tasted like cucumber (shocking, we know), and raw veggies. There were carrots and bell peppers stuffed inside the cucumber and they were super fresh and crunchy. But, the shoyu and lemon dressing didn’t add a ton of flavor. We think there could’ve been more going on here!

Next, we got some soup — the asparagus soup and the heirloom tomato soup. The asparagus soup was really good and had a ton of asparagus flavor. You gotta like asparagus to enjoy this one! The consistency was nice and we think anyone who loves veggies would like this options.

The heirloom tomato soup was tasty and it was made even tastier by the croutons in it, which added a lot to the soup as a whole. It tasted like a pretty basic tomato soup with a lot more of that acidic flavor and a little bit of sweetness from the tomato. The croutons and the sour cream added a lot more character and made this more unique than your average tomato soup!

For our entrees, we got the sea bass and the slow roasted prime rib. We were really looking forward to the sea bass, because the sea bass on the Disney Wish was one of our favorite things we ate, so we had high hopes for this version. However, we were slightly disappointed. It just didn’t have a ton of flavor! But, the fish was cooked well and was super flaky — it fell right apart. The fennel and dill chive wine sauce just wasn’t adding enough flavor for us, even though we’re fans of those flavors.

Overall, it was just pretty light on flavor and light in general. The fava bean and pea risotto was okay, but the texture could’ve been better for a risotto (we think the fava beans contributed to the texture). We were looking for some more creaminess!

As for the prime rib, we got a very large portion! It was cooked to order and was good, but it wasn’t one of the most amazing steaks we’ve ever had. It wasn’t super exciting, but the vegetables it was served with were nice. We also got a double baked potato with it which was a nice change of pace compared to the usual mashed potatoes you usually find with meat like this. It also had some horseradish with it. We think this is definitely a crowd pleaser!

Finally, for dessert, we got the sticky date pudding. This was one of our favorite desserts on the ship! It was super duper sweet and very sticky. The unique flavor of the dates made it more than just your average sweet dessert and the texture of the pudding was similar to a bread pudding. The cold vanilla ice cream was a welcome pairing and the creaminess helped cut the sticky sweetness of the pudding.

We would most definitely get this again, and it was honestly our favorite part of this meal! You can’t go wrong with a warm cake-y dessert and some cold vanilla ice cream.

Nosh or Not

Enjoy a meal at the Enchanted Garden if:

• You want something a bit fancier than your standard buffet options
• You want a spot that has a little something for the whole family and isn’t too adventurous
• You’re only going to do one of the “adults only” up-charge dining experiences. Don’t skip Enchanted Garden — we would recommend skipping Royal Palace instead.

Skip this spot if:

• You want to do more than one of the “adults only” up-charge dining experiences and skip two of your rotational dining options. We would skip Enchanted Garden and stick with Animator’s Palate if you’re only doing one of the rotational meals.
• You would rather have a spot with more exciting and adventurous flavors
• You want to save your stomach room for some more unique dining choices

Overall

Overall, Enchanted Garden is a decent meal in a pretty space. It probably won’t be the best meal you ever have, but it also probably won’t be the worst, either. We would put this dining spot right in the middle between Royal Palace and Animator’s Palate, with Royal Palace being last and Animator’s Palate being first. So, if you’re going to skip only one of your rotational dining options, we’d recommend skipping Royal Palace. But, if you’re skipping more than one and only eating at one of the rotational dining spots, we’d stick with Animator’s Palate and skip Enchanted Garden.

For more on Disney Cruise Line, check out our full review of The Royal Palace Restaurant and Pink on the Disney Dream Cruise Ship, as well as what to expect on a Halloween-themed Disney Cruise.

Stay tuned to DFB for more Disney restaurant news and reviews!

An Overview of EVERY Disney Cruise Line Restaurant

Have you ever been on the Disney Dream? Tell us in the comments!

Disclosure: In nearly all circumstances, Disney Food Blog writers and photographers pay full price for their own travel, hotel, food, beverage, and event tickets. We do this because it’s important to us as journalists to ensure not only that we give you unbiased opinions, but also that you can trust us to do so since we’re paying our own way. On rare occasions, when we are invited by a company to attend a preview as media, and when we choose to accept that invitation, we will always make you, our readers, aware of that situation. Today, we were invited by Disney World to attend their media preview of the Disney Dream. Note that when we attend events as media we are 1) Not required to review that event/food on any of our channels, and 2) Not required to review that event/food favorably. You can always count on DFB to give you a 100% unbiased and honest review of any event that we attend, food that we eat, or beverage that we drink. You can see more in our Disclosure Policy. Thank you for reading. — AJ

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