For years, restaurant critics and food bloggers have made it a top destination.
While a visit to a Disney park may leave one with the impression that things are almost back to normal, the key word here is almost.
From nightly shows like “Fantasmic!” and “World of Color” to various restaurants and character dining, a number of things are still closed due to the pandemic.
One restaurant that has been closed long after the rest of the parks opened their doors is the Victoria & Albert’s at Orlando’s Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. Opened in 1988, the fine-dining restaurant offers menu items like langoustines, quail and caviar with Alaskan king crab.
Executive Chef Chef Scott Hunnel has been running the restaurant since 2016 and, for years, restaurant critics and food bloggers have made it a top destination.
Victoria And Albert’s Is Back?
It racked up awards like the AAA Five Diamond Award and once took the place of the second-best restaurant in the United States, after Daniel Boulud’s Daniel in New York City.
It is, in fact, so fancy that kids under 10 were not allowed to dine there as of 2008.
Due to not only safety precautions but also the large number of waiting staff and high costs of getting an haute cuisine kitchen restarted, the Victoria & Albert has been closed throughout the pandemic.
This week, several blogs run by fans who track Disney’s every move started writing that the restaurant was finally going to reopen in the coming weeks.
“Enjoy your meal in the Dining Room, the Chef’s Table in the kitchen or the more private Queen Victoria Room — whichever your prefer, prepare for an extraordinary culinary adventure that hearkens back to a genteel era, when dining was a sophisticated ritual accentuated by service from seasoned maître d’hôtels and chefs in classic white toques,” reads the restaurant’s description.
How Has Disney Handled The Pandemic?
Like most theme parks around the world, the Walt Disney Company (DIS) – Get Walt Disney Company Report took a major blow during the protracted Covid-19 pandemic.
Disney World and Disneyland shut their doors in March 2020 and have been reopening gradually. Florida’s conservative leadership and lax laws meant that Disney World could reopen much earlier than Disneyland.
One way or the other, attendance at the 25 biggest parks in the country, which includes Disneyland, Disney World and Universal Studios, fell by 67% between 2019 and 2020, according to a report by the Themed Entertainment Association and AECOM.
With many tired of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, it did not take long for attendance at Disney parks to start climbing back to pre-pandemic — average spending at all the Disney parks also increased by 30% compared since 2019.
