Disney Vaction: The Happiest Nut-Free Place on Earth!

The following is a guest post by my friend and blog reader, Angie. She recently visited allergy-friendly Disney World. I asked her to share her wonderful experience with you...

Angie's son, Spencer, eating "safe" ice cream at Disney World

This past summer, my husband and I decided to take our boys to Disney World. I had major concerns about vacationing with our three year old, who has a peanut allergy. I just couldn’t imagine finding safe restaurants to eat all our meals at. Then there was the airplane to worry about. Could we find a safe flight to and from Disney World?

After a lot of research and several phone calls, we got our flight booked and reservations made to Disney World. We decided to fly with Air Tran because they didn’t serve peanuts on the plane, but there was the potential for another passenger to carry on a snack with peanuts in it.

We had no complications on the way to Disney World, but coming home I noticed a passenger a few seats in front of us with a bag of Nutter Butter cookies. My husband explained our son’s allergy and politely asked her if she’d not eat them on the plane. Upon hearing this discussion, a flight attendant promised to announce over the intercom that there was a peanut allergy on board, but she never followed through. Otherwise, we were very pleased with our flight.

We arrived at our Disney Resort late in the afternoon, so one of the first things we did was eat dinner. We did use the dining plan and made all our dinner reservations before we left home. I felt very uneasy about my PA child eating out safely during our stay, but as I soon found out, there was no reason to worry; the restaurants were so accommodating!

When we went to a restaurant to eat, we let them know before we were even seated that our son had a peanut allergy. Before we were served anything, the chef came to our table and talked to us at every restaurant! He/she let us know what was on the menu that was unsafe and let us know the extra precautions that would be taken in the kitchen to ensure our son’s safety.

On our second day in Disney, we decided to eat lunch at Casey’s Corner. We were walking by right at opening time and when they opened their doors the employees came out singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame and then started passing out bags of Cracker Jacks.

My husband and I looked at each other like maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, but we were assured that there were no other peanuts in the restaurant (besides the sealed bags of Cracker Jacks). We ordered our lunches which included hot dogs, fries, drinks and a dessert. The desserts they had in the restaurant were unsafe (cross-contamination issue), so an employee actually ran across the street to a bake shop and brought us sealed packages of peanut free brownies (French Meadow Bakery brand)!

Places we ate while staying in Disneyworld:

Liberty Tree Tavern

Casey’s Corner

The Garden Grill

The Contempo Café in the Contemporary Resort

The Coral Reef

The Whispering Canyon Café in the Wilderness Lodge

The Café in the All-Star Movies Resort

Our trip to Disneyworld was truly magical and amazing. Our PA child was able to enjoy Mickey Mouse waffles for breakfast, a popsicle to cool him off in the Magic Kingdom and even built his own ice cream sundae for dessert one night! Disney really gets food allergies! My husband talks about our next vacation being just a beach vacation, but my vote is for Disney World again!

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What Angie says is what I have heard from many other food allergic families. My sister in law took her two tree nut allergic children three years ago and her stories echoed Angie's. Maybe its true what they say: "Disney is the best place on earth!"