yachtsman restaurant disney world

Yachtsman Steakhouse is Disney’s Best Kept Dining Secret, And Here’s Why (FULL REVIEW)

One of the best-kept dining secrets at Walt Disney World is Yachtsman Steakhouse at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort.

In fact, this is one of my personal favorite places to dine when I want a nice dinner at Disney. 

The beautiful steakhouse is located down a quiet corridor near the pool at the hotel and is worth trying to snag a reservation for. 

If you’re thinking about dining at one of the best restaurants at Walt Disney World keep reading to learn everything you need to know, how to snag the best tables, and of course my suggestions about what to order. 

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE READ MY  DISCLOSURE  FOR MORE INFO.  Which means if you click on certain links, I may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you.

What is Yachtsman Steakhouse at Walt Disney World? 

Yachtsman Steakhouse is a signature dining restaurant located at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort. The restaurant is only open for dinner and is known for its incredible steaks , sides, and desserts. 

And believe me, you DON’T want to skip this Disney dining spot on your vacation!

What is the Vibe like inside Yachtsman Steakhouse?

Since the restaurant is only open for dinner the vibe is very adult. This is a great date night spot for couples , or a treat yourself type mean for solo travelers. 

You’ll feel as if you’re whisked away on a nautical escapade through the great North East of America.

The interior is quite cozy and far away from what you’d expect at a Walt Disney World restaurant.

ORDER NOW to secure your Walt Disney World theme park ticket! GET MY TICKETS.

How Do I get a reservation at Yachtsman Steakhouse? 

The easiest way to get a reservation for Yachtsman Steakhouse is through the My Disney Experience app. 

You can also make reservations on the Walt Disney World website or by calling the reservation center at Walt Disney World.

A word of warning though, the latter of the two options is not the most efficient and phone calls to Disney have been taking upwards of two hours just to talk to someone. 

If you do see a reservation for the restaurant you should go ahead and book it even if it’s not at your intended dining time, because it’s always easier to modify an existing reservation versus make a new one. 

If you decide you don’t want to dine at Yachtsman Steakhouse after you’ve reserved a table, you can cancel without penalty up to 24 hours before your reservation. 

Morimoto Asia in Disney Springs: Is it the BEST Sushi in Orlando?

What if I Can’t get a reservation for Yachtsman Steakhouse? 

There are a few options if you can’t get a reservation for Yachtsman Steakhouse before your trip to Walt Disney World.

The first is to get to the restaurant right when it opens at 5:00 p.m. and see if you can be seated.

Another option is to eat in the nearby lounge, Crews Cup , which is currently serving the exact same menu as Yachtsman Steakhouse. 

7 Best Lounges at Disney World To Unwind and Relax (2023)

Crews Cup Lounge 

The Crews Cup Lounge is located right next door to Yachtsman Steakhouse. Its vibe is very relaxed with tables, booths, and bar seating.

This lounge used to have its own unique menu , but post-pandemic the original menu has not returned and the lounge is serving the Yachtsman Steakhouse menu. 

If you are able to snag a table inside the Crews Cup Lounge, try to get the table near the window looking into the dry-aging room at Yachtsman Steakhouse.

Through the window, you can see the steaks being expertly cut by the restaurant’s butcher for service as guests order. 

Topolino’s Terrace at Disney’s Riviera Resort is the Hardest Reservation to Get For a Reason (FULL REVIEW)

What’s on the Menu at Yachtsman Steakhouse? 

Yachtsman Steakhouse only serves dinner and everything on the menu is a la carte, meaning every item you order is a certain price. 

Meals start out with a bread basket filled with savory pull-apart onion rolls and cherry multigrain sourdough rolls.

Bread Service

The bread is served with the restaurant’s signature roasted garlic and salted butter.

Yes, that means you can literally smear pieces of roasted garlic and slather butter all over these delightful breads.

When it comes to starters, I really enjoy the French Onion Soup , which is perfectly rich with plenty of onions, sourdough croutons, and topped with melted gruyère cheese. You definitely have to try the Beef Carpaccio as well.

Also the famous Caesar Salad is perfect here!

Entrees and Dessert at the Yachtsman Steakhouse

Entrees obviously mean having a steak , and no matter which one you choose it comes with a sauce or butter, and your choice of side. I always order the 14-ounce roasted prime rib with horseradish cream.

Each entree comes with your choice of accompaniment, with either mashed potatoes, potato-leek gratin, or house-made French fries. I typically choose the gratin or the fries. 

When dinner is done, do not leave the restaurant without trying one of the delicious desserts.

The signature dessert at the restaurant is the Yachtsman’s Chocolate Cake, which is made with dark chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, mixed berry curd, peanut butter crunch, and mousse, and serves two.

This is one thing I love to get even if I’m dining alone so I can take the leftovers back to my Disney hotel room and munch on them the next night too. 

Why The BOATHOUSE Orlando is One of Disney’s BEST Restaurants

What to Know Before You Go to This Disney World Restaurant

You likely have a few more questions about the Yachtsman Steakhouse , so I want to be sure to answer those as well. 

Does Yachtsman Steakhouse take any discounts? 

Yes, you’ll be happy to know that Annual Passholders can get 10 percent off of their bill here. 

Does Yachtsman Steakhouse have a dress code? 

Yes, it’s requested that men wear khakis, slacks, or dress shirts with a collared shirt, and women should wear capri pants, skirts, dresses, or dress shorts.

Jeans can be worn if they are in good condition for men and women. 

Ready to plan your theme park trip? Watch the best vacation planning tips on YouTube. Get started here!

My Final Thoughts and Review of Yachtsman Steakhouse

Yachtsman Steakhouse is a lovely option for dining at Walt Disney World, whether you’re traveling alone or going out with friends, or on a date night. 

Here are a few tips to ensure your experience at Yachtsman Steakhouse is the best that it can be. 

• Security at the front of the Yacht Club can be very strict about who they let into the parking lot at the hotel.
• If you don’t have a confirmed dining reservation at the Yachtsman Steakhouse , your better option for dining here will be to take a ride share or take the Disney Skyliner . This is best if you’re staying at one of the resorts that the transportation service goes to and from. 
• I f you’re at EPCOT and want a break from the park and think Yachtsman Steakhouse sounds like a nice place, you’ll want to walk to the back of the park to the International Gateway to get to the Yacht Club and to the restaurant. 

Final Score and Review for Yachtsman Steakhouse at Disney

• Ambiance:  9
• Food:  10
• Prices:  7.5
• Drinks:  10
• Service:  10

I give this restaurant a 9.3 out of 10 on the ThemeParkHipster dining scale and I know you will definitely enjoy it too!

I hope this guide helps you narrow down the places you want to eat at when visiting Walt Disney World.

What’s your favorite place to eat at Walt Disney World? Let us know in the comments section below.

Until next time, Happy Park Hopping Hipster! 

About the Author

Megan is a theme park expert and frequent traveler to magical places. She covers all things Disney and Universal and runs marathons for fun.

She thinks you can tell a lot about someone by the name of their signature lipstick, and hers is NARS Dragon Girl.

(Original Article Date: June 6, 2022/Updated by Editor on May 18, 2024)

Share this article!

2024 Disney World Monorail Route Ultimate Guide: The Best Way to Get Around!

Rafiki’s planet watch: animal kingdom’s best kept secret at disney, leave a comment cancel reply.

The Essential Guide to Walt Disney World’s Yachtsman Steakhouse

in Walt Disney World

Looking for a great place to enjoy the perfect elegant date night on your next trip to Walt Disney World ? If so, you won’t want to miss dining at Yachtsman Steakhouse, located inside Disney’s Yacht Club Resort!

From great steaks to fresh seafood to savory side dishes, Yachtman’s Steakhouse is the perfect dining option for those looking for fine and signature dining.

Disney’s official website describes the table service restaurant as:

Savor premium steaks, fresh seafood and more at this New England-style steakhouse. Within the airy dining room’s knotty-pine beams and nautical touches, mouthwatering cuisine awaits!

High-quality, grain-fed beef is aged in-house and prepared on an oak-fired grill in the open kitchen. Feel your appetite begin to build while you watch butchers hand cut steaks to perfection in the dry-aging room. Then, give into anticipation as you delight in beef entrées like the 12-oz Prime New York Strip Steak with peppercorn-brandy sauce. Favorite sides include the Truffle Macaroni & Cheese, while the innovative kids menu pleases even the pickiest of eaters. Be sure to save room for a decadent dessert like our S’mores Sundae or Banana Bread Pudding.

Where is the Yachtsman Steakhouse located?

Yachtsman Steakhouse, which features high-grade steaks, fresh seafood, free-range chicken and more, is located at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort at Walt Disney World . 

Disney’s Yacht Club is located inside the EPCOT area, near Disney’s Boardwalk and Disney’s Beach Club. In case you aren’t familiar, Disney describes this resort as:

Delight in the formal grace of a grand New England-style yacht club at this lakeside hotel. Relax in the inviting elegance of a plush lobby replete with nautical touches, explore the whimsical Stormalong Bay and rent a variety of watercraft from Bayside Marina. Sharing many amenities with its pastel-toned sister, Disney’s Beach Club Resort, Disney’s Yacht Club Resort is walking distance to Epcot and a convenient boat ride to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

How to get to the Yachtsman Steakhouse

If you are staying on property, there are a few different transportation options you can take in order to get to Yachtsman Steakhouse.

If you are staying at any of the EPCOT resorts — including Disney’s Yacht Club, Disney’s Beach Club , Disney’s Boardwalk , Walt Disney World Swan Hotel, or Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel — you can either walk to Disney’s Yacht Club by following the path around the lake, or you can opt to take the friendship boat. This also goes for if you are visiting the EPCOT theme park for the day, you can either walk over to Disney’s Yacht Club or take the friendship boat. Be sure to use the park exit near World Showcase and not the main entrance.

If you are staying at any of the other Walt Disney World hotels on property, you can either take a complimentary bus to one of the theme parks (or to Disney Springs) and catch a bus to Disney’s Yacht Club from there.

If you are visiting Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the day and want to get to Yachtsman Steakhouse from the theme park, you can take the friendship boats directly to Disney’s Yacht Club by utilizing the launch outside of the park entrance.

If you are visiting one of the other theme parks, either Magic Kingdom or Disney’s Animal Kingdom, you can take a bus directly to Disney’s Yacht Club.

And lastly, if you opted, you could also use the Lyft app to call for a car to take you directly there, however, this is not complimentary, and depending on where you are located on the Disney World property, it can cost you upwards of a few dollars. For more information on using Lyft at Disney World, visit our website here.

Theming of the Yachtsman Steakhouse

Yachtsman Steakhouse is a fine dining restaurant, featuring signature American cuisine, including steak and seafood. The atmosphere is elegant with “knotty-pine beams” and “nautical touches” in the dining room.

How is the Yachtsman Steakhouse’s dining room decorated?

The dining room invites Guests in with its simple and rustic yet elegant atmosphere. Yachtsman Steakhouse is not decorated “over the top” and instead has simple lanterns that light up the room, wooden chairs that aim for that rustic feel, and beautiful wall decor, inviting couples for a perfect date night.

However, just because this is a fine dining restaurant does not mean children are not welcome. In fact, the Yachtsman Steakhouse has an entire kids menu — making this restaurant great for families, couples, and kids of all ages.

What is the dress code for the Yachtsman Steakhouse?

Guests are expected to follow the dress code requirements for Signature dining. The official Disney World website reads:

Guests are asked to adhere to the minimum dress code requirements at this Signature Dining experience. Dressier attire is also welcome. Please explore the minimum dress code requirements: Men must wear khakis, slacks or dress shorts and collared shirts. Jeans may be worn if in good condition. Sport coats are optional. Women must wear Capri pants, skirts, dresses or dress shorts. Jeans may be worn if in good condition. Not permitted are tank tops, flip-flops, swimsuits, swimsuit cover-ups, hats for gentlemen, cut-offs, torn clothing and t-shirts with offensive language and/or graphics.

Food at the Yachtsman Steakhouse

The food offered at Yachtsman Steakhouse is nothing like you’ve ever tasted before! This menu offers a variety of elegant and delicious American style dishes.

The prices listed here are subject to change. Be sure to check the menu on the  official Walt Disney World website for the most up-to-date pricing before arriving at Yachtsman Steakhouse.

First Course

• French Onion Soup — Sourdough Crouton, Gruyère Cheese, Onion Broth — $14.00
• Charcuterie or Cheese Board — $22.00
• Steakhouse Wedge Salad — Point Reyes Blue, Buttermilk Ranch, Honey-Miso Bacon. Plant-based Steakhouse Wedge Salad available — $15.00
• Caesar Salad — House-made Pancetta, Brioche Crouton — $15.00
• Badger Flame Beet Salad — Baby Greens, Goat Crème Fraîche, White Truffle Vinaigrette, Pepita Soil — $16.00
• Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail — Old Bay-poached, Lemon, House-made Cocktail Sauce — $21.00
• Lobster Bisque — Lobster Biscuits, Crème Fraîche, Espelette Oil — $16.00
• Ahi Tuna Tartare — Poke Vinaigrette, White Gazpacho, Wasabi Tobiko — $18.00

Chef’s Signature Offerings

• 28-oz Prime Porterhouse for Two — Signature Steak 21-Day Dry-Aged, Bone Marrow, Green Onion Brioche, Garlic Butter, choice of Two Steakhouse Sides — $135.00
• Chilled Captain’s Tower (not eligible on the Disney Dining Plan) — Jumbo Shrimp, Mussels, Oyster Shooters, Scallop Ceviche, Charred Octopus Salad — $38.00
• Chilled Admiral’s Tower for Two (not eligible on the Disney Dining Plan) — Maine Lobster, Snow Crab, Tuna Tartare, Jumbo Shrimp, Mussels, Jumbo Lump Crab Salad, Oyster Shooters, Scallop Ceviche, Charred Octopus Salad — $135.00

Butcher’s Cuts (served with one accompaniment selection)

• 8-oz Black Angus Filet Mignon — Cognac-Truffle Butter and served with one (1) Accompaniment Selection. Upgrade to a 16-oz Bone-In Filet Mignon +30 — $52.00
• 14-oz Roasted Prime Rib — Horseradish Cream and Au Jus served with one (1) Accompaniment Selection — $52.00
• 16-oz Rib-Eye Steak, Prime — Blue Heaven Shallot Butter and served with one (1) Accompaniment Selection — $57.00
• 12-oz New York Strip Steak, Prime — Peppercorn-Brandy Sauce and served with one (1) Accompaniment Selection — $53.00

Accompaniment Selections

• Mashed Potatoes
• Potato-Leek Gratin
• Sweet Potato Casserole
• House-made French Fries

Butcher’s Cuts Enhancements (not eligible on the Disney Dining Plan)

• Bone Marrow — Seasonal Jam, Toasted Green Onion Brioche — $9.00
• Oscar-style — Asparagus, Jumbo Lump Crab Cake, Béarnaise — $18.00
• Half Maine Lobster — Citrus Butter-poached — $28.00
• Thick-cut Steakhouse Bacon — Wild Oak Honey-Miso Glaze — $12.00

Land and Sea Entrées

• 7-oz Cervena Elk — Parsnip Purée, Blueberry Gastrique, Royal Trumpet Mushrooms, Pumpernickel Soil — $49.00
• Georges Bank Scallops — Herb-Truffle Spätzle, Corn Purée, Oyster Mushrooms, Lime Caviar — $45.00
• Whole Maine Lobster — Charleston Ice Cream, Blue Crab, Peas, Oyster Mushrooms, Citrus Beurre Blanc — $60.00
• Chicken and Dumplings — Sweet Potato Gnocchi, Red Eye Gravy, Rainbow Chard Greens, Pineapple Quince Chutney, Baby Turnips — $36.00
• Customized Plant-based Entrée — $34.00

Enhancements

• Broiled Half Maine Lobster — $28.00

Steakhouse Sides (not eligible on the Disney Dining Plan)

• Truffle Macaroni & Cheese — $12.00
• Creamed Spinach — $10.00
• Loaded Hasselback Potato — $13.00
• House-made Truffle Fries — $9.00
• Braised Mushrooms — $10.00
• Chocolate Lava Cake — Valrhona Chocolate, Coconut Ice Cream, Raspberry-Chambord Sauce, Gingersnap Crumbs — $12.00
• Banana Bread Pudding — Caramelized Bananas, Candied Pecans, Butter Pecan Ice Cream, Caramel-Rum Sauce — $12.00
• Carrot Cake (No Sugar Added) — Cheesecake Icing, Caramel Ice Cream, Walnuts — $11.00
• S’more Sundae — Salted Caramel, Chocolate, and Peanut Butter Gelatos, Graham Cracker Crumbs, Chocolate Chunks, Toasted Marshmallow — $11.00
• Seasonal Sorbet Trio — Coconut Tuile and Sparkling Wine — $9.00
• Crème Brûlée — Vanilla Custard and Mixed Berries — $11.00

Kids’ Appetizers (à la carte)

• Mixed Green Salad — $5.00
• Edamame with Citrus Butter — $5.00

Kids’ Create-Your-Own Entrées (choose one)

• Oak-grilled Chicken Breast — Served with choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice — $10.00
• Oak-grilled New York Strip — Served with choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice — $13.00
• Baked Fish of the Day — Served with choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice — $13.00
• Orecchiette Marinara — Served with Plant-based Sausage and choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice — $10.00
• Macaroni & Cheese — Served with choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice — $9.00

Kids’ Create-Your-Own Selections (choose two)

• Seasonal Vegetable
• Farro Wheat
• Mini-baked Potatoes
• Fresh Fruit Salad
• Frozen Yogurt and Berry Push Pop
• Mickey’s Art Palette
• Chocolate Pudding

What is the most popular meal at the Yachtsman Steakhouse?

With so many dishes to choose from it can be a bit overwhelming. Well, to give you an idea of what is popular here at Yachtsman Steakhouse, we made a list for you!

If you are looking to dive into a premium beef entree, Guests tend to order the 12-oz Prime New York Strip Steak with peppercorn-brandy sauce or the 14-oz Roasted Prime Rib with Horseradish Cream. In regards to the favorite savory side dish, Guests absolutely love the Truffle Macaroni & Cheese .

Looking for a fresh seafood dish? We highly recommend the Whole Main Lobster!

But be sure to save room for a decadent dessert because Guests rave about the S’mores Sundae and Banana Bread Pudding.

Wonderful World of Wine at Yachtsman Steakhouse

What goes perfectly with steak or seafood at a fine dining restaurant? Why, a glass of wine, of course! The Yachtsman Steakhouse is also known for its wide selection of fine wine, which Disney describes as :

Wine-lovers, rejoice! Sip and swirl your way through some of the world’s most renowned wine-growing regions—no passport required. The Yachtsman Steakhouse invites Guests to explore the wonderful world of wine every second Wednesday of the month. Sample the liquid legacies of some of the finest appellations and vineyards throughout California, Italy, France, Chile, Australia and more—and learn about their flavor profiles, winemaking techniques, and soil and climate conditions. This engaging class also includes a small tasting plate paired to go with the selected wine offerings. The cost is $45 per person and the wine tasting begins at 3 PM on the second Wednesday of each month. Guests interested in attending can call (407) 824-1391. All Attendees must be 21 or over with valid ID; no discounts accepted.

How do you make a reservation for the Yachtsman Steakhouse?

To make a reservation, you can book online at the  official Walt Disney World website or by calling (407) 939-3463. Guests under 18 years of age must have parent or guardian permission to call.

Advance reservations are highly recommended . All Guests may make advance reservations for dining and other experiences up to 60 days in advance. In addition, Walt Disney World Resort Guests staying at a hotel on property can make reservations up to 60 days in advance plus the length of their stay, up to 10 days!

What kind of Disney dining plans are accepted at Yachtsman Steakhouse?

If you are on the Disney Dining Plan, Yachtsman Steakhouse typically uses two table service credits. Every year, the credits are subject to change for the Disney Dining Plan so it is always good to check with the official Walt Disney World website  before visiting for the most up-to-date information.

Discounts available at Yachtsman Steakhouse

If yo u are an Annual Passholder, you can receive 10% off at this dining location.  Disney’s official website states :

10% discount applies to the non-discounted price of food and non-alcoholic beverages (excluding applicable tax and gratuity) during all available meal periods. Special events and dining packages excluded unless otherwise noted.  Valid for the Passholder and up to three Guests. Please view  Passholder Discounts  for additional details.

Want to Visit Yachtsman Steakhouse on Your Next Disney World Trip?

If you need help planning your next Walt Disney World vacation to visit Yachtsman Steakhouse at Disney Springs, the Authorized Planners at Academy Travel have you covered! Academy Travel has earned the highest designation that Disney can bestow upon a travel agency, EarMarked Diamond.

As long as you book your trip with an Authorized Disney Vacation Planner you can rest assured that you will be working with an agency that Disney has vetted and is willing to associate their brand with that agency due to the knowledge and service level you will find at that particular agency.

Ready to find out what your dream vacation will cost?  Click here to get a free no-obligation quote .

Wandering In Disney

A disney theme parks blog.

Yachtsman Steakhouse Review

Yachtsman Steakhouse is a table-service restaurant in Walt Disney World’s Yacht Club Resort. Termed as a signature restaurant, Yachtsman Steakhouse would require two credits on the Disney Dining Plan (when applicable) and has higher prices than the usual sit down spot at WDW although they do offer Annual Pass and DVC discounts. The restaurant specializes in, you guessed it, steaks and is one of the few true steakhouses on property. In this post, we’ll review the restaurant’s atmosphere, food and value.

While I’ve had the pleasure to eat at many and most of Walt Disney World’s restaurants, Yachtsman Steakhouse seemingly was the one that I kept missing one way or another. There was always another restaurant to try or money to save and then the restaurant had a long closure due to COVID before opening late this summer. With the opportunity to finally catch the white whale, this yachtsman took advantage. I’m so sorry, that will be my last nautical/yachting/Moby-Dick joke of this post.

As much as I love red meat and consider myself a good carnivore, I’m not as drawn to steakhouses as some other restaurants. I don’t think they offer as much room for imagination in their offerings and I usually like seafood just as much as most steak. A steakhouse really has to wow me for me to feel like it’s worth the price, especially relative to other fancy restaurants. Thankfully, Yachtsman Steakhouse went above and beyond my expectations.

The restaurant makes no bones about who they’re appealing to. Immediately upon entry, guests are met by the dry-aging room also known as (by me) the meat room! The room is tucked away to the left of the kitchen and seating area. It’s an impressive room filled with incredible cuts of meat.

Inside of the actual restaurant, the restaurant is themed similarly to the rest of the Yacht Club. There’s some New England style architecture and heavy nautical theming. Warm wood tones abound along with a deep turquoise giving Yachtsman Steakhouse a masculine yet inviting feel.

There are several dining rooms throughout the restaurant, all of them are pretty light and airy. I wouldn’t say the restaurant is overly decorated or trying hard for a modern aesthetic, instead Yachtsman Steakhouse knows what it is and does that well. My favorite feature of the restaurant are the beautiful windows and ceiling on the far right of the dining room. Many of the windows in that area arch out giving the look of a captain’s quarters. I like these small, understated touches that make the dining room somewhat unique.

Let’s move on the menu , where the atmosphere of the restaurant takes its cues. There’s a few different offerings on the menu but everything revolves around the steak. Writing this while hungry was an absolute mistake.

Being a signature restaurant, Yachtsman Steakhouse offers a great bread service. The onion pull apart roll is perfectly flaky and delicious. It’s served warm and matches wonderfully with the roasted garlic or Himalayan salt butter that comes with the bread service.

There’s also multigrain cherry rolls, and I liked these almost as much even if they are supposedly healthy! The cherry gave them a nice pop of flavor.

Moving on to the entrees, I ordered the 16-oz Rib-Eye Steak which comes with Blue Cheese-Shallot Butter and is served with one accompaniment selection. The Rib-Eye was cooked a perfect medium rare and was exceptionally tender. The flavor of the meat alone was delicious and the Blue Cheese-Shallot Butter added to the rich and creaminess. This was huge and extremely rich. I had next to no chance of finishing this in one sitting but it was exceptional!

We also tried the 8-oz Filet Mignon which is served with Cognac-Truffle Butter and served with one accompaniment selection. This wasn’t as gigantic as the Rib-Eye but it was just as delicious, if not more so. The meat was even more tender, to the point where I’m not sure that you needed a steak knife to cut it. I preferred the Truffle Butter to the Blue Cheese Butter, although it was even more rich. Everything about this dish melted in your mouth.

Yachtsman Steakhouse was all an exercise in how much someone could eat and that included the sides. The mashed potatoes were delicious and, I say this in praise, you could really taste the butter in them. They were very smooth and paired well with the meat.

While I liked the mashed potatoes, the potato-leek gratin blew it out of the water. What’s better than buttery potatoes? Buttery potatoes with cheese on top of them. Yes, it was another dish in the line of heavy foods but I would be happy to eat a bowl of this anytime.

Each of the steaks came with one accompaniment and the option we didn’t have was the french fries. We have had those at the next door Crew’s Cup Lounge and they are outstanding, as well.

There were several sides that you can add to your meal and we decided to go with the Roasted Seasonal Mushrooms. While I didn’t think the mushrooms quite lived up to everything else on the menu, they were fresh and delicious. They paired well with each of the steaks and I’d be interested in trying any of the other sides there.

In the name of research, dessert seemed like a necessity 😉 We ordered the Yachtsman’s Chocolate Cake and it was a good decision. Here’s what it looks like when it is cut open!

The layers are made up of Dark Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate Decadence Cake, Mixed Berry Curd, Peanut Butter Crunch and Mousse. Needless to say, this was very rich, delicious, and too much food. The menu does say it serves two and that is certainly accurate! The Mixed Berry Curd offset some of the richness of the chocolate. While maybe a little much for me, this was one of the most impressive desserts I’ve had anywhere.

I haven’t mentioned the prices here because they’re all very high and I thought I’d get the praise out of the way. All of the steaks are between the $50-$60 range with the sides under $15 and the cake at $19. While it’s a lot, I didn’t think this was out of line with real world steakhouses. The quality of the food certainly matches up to that. I do think there are more creative restaurants at Disney World where you can spend about the same amount but whether you should choose them over Yachtsman Steakhouse depends on how much you like steak.

Overall, Yachtsman Steakhouse is one of the best restaurants in Walt Disney World. While it may not be inventive or modern in its design, it’s a restaurant that has exceptional food and fits in well within the theme constraints. The only negative is the steep price although I’d consider it fair. For meat eaters, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Overall Rating – 9.5/10

Have you been to Yachtsman Steakhouse? Let us know your thoughts or any questions you might have in the comments below! Planning a trip to Walt Disney World? Check out our  Disney World Trip Planning Guide  to help you out. If you enjoy what you’re reading here on Wandering in Disney, you can subscribe to the blog via WordPress or email. All of those links are on the right side of this page. Thank you for reading, we really appreciate it!

Share this post with your friends!

Categories: Restaurant Reviews

Tagged as: Disney World , Disney World Dining , Walt Disney World , Yacht Club dining , Yacht Club Resort , Yachtsman Steakhouse review

3 replies »

• Pingback: Walt Disney World 50th Anniversary Trip Report – Part 1 – Wandering In Disney
• Pingback: Our Favorite Restaurants in Epcot – Wandering In Disney
• Pingback: Walt Disney World's Best Dining Value - STK Lunch Review - Wandering In Disney

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Subscribe to blog via email.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

Top Posts & Pages

• Tokyo DisneySea Attraction Rankings
• Tokyo Disneyland Attraction Rankings
• The Best and Worst Months to Visit Tokyo Disney Resort
• Disney's Five-Year (Construction) Plan
• Tokyo DisneySea 1-Day Itinerary
• Using Priority Pass at Tokyo Disneyland
• Tokyo Disneyland 1-Day Itinerary
• Disney California Adventure Attraction Rankings
• Where to Stay at Tokyo Disney Resort
• Tokyo Disney Resort Trip Planning Guide

Like Our Facebook Page

Discover more from Wandering In Disney

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

Join Our Mailing List

• Date Calculator
• Annual Events
• Vacation Planning
• Vacation Packages
• Money Saving Tips
• Disney Genie
• Magic Kingdom
• Disney’s Hollywood Studios
• Disney’s Animal Kingdom
• Blizzard Beach
• Typhoon Lagoon
• Disney Springs
• Restaurants
• Dining Packages
• Dining Tips
• Resort Guides
• Resort Tips
• Planning Tips
• Ship Guides
• Things to Do
• Cruise destinations
• Dining Options
• Disneyland Park
• Disney California Adventure
• Downtown Disney
• Universal Studios
• Islands of Adventure
• Epic Universe
• Volcano Bay
• Theme Parks

Yachtsman Steakhouse Menu

At Yachtsman Steakhouse, salute your inner steak lover at this crisp and gleaming restaurant that serves top-notch steaks and seafood.

Yachtsman Steakhouse is located in Disney’s Yacht Club  Resort.  Find more Walt Disney World dining locations on our  Walt Disney World menus  page.

Restaurant Info: Steakhouse, Dinner, $$$

Find out how you can save money on dining at Walt Disney World by using one of Disney’s Dining Plans .

Dinner Menu   Kids’ Dinner Menu

Yachtsman Steakhouse Dinner Menu

Menu Date: 2023

First Course

Caesar Salad  – $15.00 Marinated White Anchovies and Croutons

Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail  – $21.00 Poached, House-made Cocktail Sauce, Lemon

Steakhouse Wedge Salad  – $15.00 Candied Bacon, Farmhouse Eggs, Radish and Smokey Blue Cheese Vinaigrette

Lobster Bisque  – $17.00 Lobster Biscuits, Crème Fraîche and Espelette Oil

French Onion Soup  – $14.00 Sourdough Crouton, Gruyère Cheese and Onion Broth

Beef Carpaccio*  – $16.00 Truffle Aïoli, Parmesan, Fried Capers and Smoked Sea Salt

Butcher’s Cuts

Butcher’s Cuts accompanied by Fingerling Potatoes, Blistered Tomatoes, and Confit Shallots

8-oz Filet Mignon*  – $53.00

14-oz Roasted Prime Rib*  – $50.00

12-oz New York Strip Steak, Prime*  – $55.00

16-oz Rib-Eye Steak, Prime*  – $57.00

Butcher’s Cut Enhancements

Oscar-style  – $25.00 Crab, Asparagus and Béarnaise

Half Maine Lobster Thermidor  – $32.00 Creamy Cognac sauce, Aged Parmesan, Fines Herbs

Steakhouse Sauces

House Steak Sauce  – $3.00

Bearnaise  – $3.00

Peppercorn  – $3.00

Blue Cheese- $3.00

Land and Sea Entrèes

Red Wine Braised Short Rib – $52.00 Mashed Potatoes, Sauteed Root Spinach, Roasted Parisan Carrots, Stone Fruit Compote

Seared Ora King Salmon – $42.00 Parsnip Puree, Roasted Baby Carrots, Port Reduction

Seafood Cioppino  – $50.00 Shrimp, Scallops, Clams, Mussels, Lucid Absinthe and Fregola Sarda

Coq au Vin-Braised Chicken  – $38.00 House-made Fettucine, Mushrooms, Cipollini Onions, and Pancetta

Trumpet Mushroom “Scallop” – $38.00 Power Grain Pilaf, Braised Kabocha Squash, Yuzu Spinach Emulsion

Steakhouse Sides

Truffle Macaroni & Cheese – $14.00

Creamed Spinach – $10.00

Mashed Potatoes  – $8.00

Hot Honey Bourbon Brussels Sprouts  – $12.00 Chili-candied Walnuts

Roasted Seasonal Mushrooms – $10.00

House-made Truffle Fries – $10.00

Loaded Baked Potato  – $10.00 Vermont Cheddar Butter, Bacon, Chives, and Sour Cream

Chocolate Cake  – $16.00 Chocolate Biscuit, 65% Dark Chocolate Ganache, Chocolate Buttercream, and Raspberry

Strawberry Shortcake  – $14.00 Almond Financier, Vanilla Chantilly, Lemon Confit, Basil, Strawberries

Carrot Cake  – $14.00 Carrot Cake, “Cream Cheese” Icing, Candied Blueberries, Lemon, and Carrot Gelee

Brûlée Cheesecake  – $14.00 Citrus Cheesecake, Blonde Chocolate Ganache, Blood Orange Curd, Milk Chocolate Mousse, and Pomegranate Gelee

Orange Blossom Pilsner  – Orlando, FL – $9.75

Funky Buddha Floridian Hefeweizen – Oakland Park, FL – $9.75

Cigar City Brewing Jai Alai Pale Ale – Tampa, FL  $9.75

Scotches (Single Malt)

Assorted – $17.00 – $250.00

After Dinner Flights – $17.50 – $41.00

Coffee Drinks

Irish Coffee  – $13.50 Jameson Irish Whiskey

Starboard Coffee  – $14.50 Tia Maria, Drambuie, Grand Marnier and Brandy

Jamaican Coffee  – $13.50 Myers’s Original Dark Rum and Tia Maria

Keoke Coffee  – $13.50 Kahlúa, Brandy and Dark Crème de Cacao

Pressed Pot Coffee  – $9.00 Freshly Brewed Joffrey’s Coffee™ Yachtsman Custom Blend

Yachtsman Steakhouse Kids’ Dinner Menu

Appetizers (à la carte).

Chicken Noodle Soup – $4.00

Mixed Green Salad – $5.00

Kids’ Create-Your-Own Entrées (chose one)

Grilled Chicken Breast  – $13.00 Served with choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice 

Oak-grilled Steak  – $17.00 Served with choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice

Baked Fish of the Day  – $16.00 Served with choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice

Pasta with Marinara – $12.00Served with choice of two (2) Selections and choice of Small Lowfat Milk, Small Dasani® Water, or Small Minute Maid® Apple Juice

Kids’ Create-Your-Own Selections (choose two)

Steamed Seasonal Vegetable

Mashed Potatoes

Fresh Fruit

Brown Basmati Rice

Frozen Yogurt and Berry Push Pop

Mickey Puzzle

Macaroni & Cheese

Kids’ Specialty Drink

Specialty Character Drink  – $6.50 Minute Maid® Zero Sugar Lemonade with flavors of Cotton Candy served in a souvenir Character Cup

Kids’ menu items for children ages 9 and younger. Look for the Disney Check icon on printed menus to find options that meet Disney’s nutrition guidelines.

** Yachtsman Steakhouse Menu and Prices are Subject to Change Without Notice **

Privacy Overview

TouringPlans

GUIDE ME THROUGH—

Questions? Our community can help!

Forums Thoughtful, engaging talk

Chat Quick answers while in the parks

Subscribe now to create a customized Touring Plan for everything you want to do.

• Crowd Calendar

Disney Springs

• Transportation

• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Early Theme Park Entry
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Extended Evening Hours
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Front-of-Line Service: Lightning Lane
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Character Greetings
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Rider Switch for Small Children
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Special Needs Guests (DAS)
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Live Entertainment & Show Schedules
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Refurbishment Schedule
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Lines Mobile App
• Attractions, Parades, & Fireworks
• Height Requirements
• Touring Plans
• Attractions & Fireworks
• Neighborhoods
• Attractions
• Cheapest Disney Tickets
• Park Reservations

• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Basics
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Build-Your-Own Plans
• Magic Kingdom
• Disney's Hollywood Studios
• Disney's Animal Kingdom
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Ratings for All WDW Restaurants
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Overview
• Magic Kingdom Restaurants
• EPCOT Restaurants
• Hollywood Studios Restaurants
• Animal Kingdom Restaurants
• Disney Springs Restaurants
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Hotel Restaurants
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Reservations
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Tipping (Gratuities)
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Menu Search
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Disney Dining Plan
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Benefits
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Room Finder
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Compare Hotels
• Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge (Jambo House)
• Disney's Beach Club Resort
• Disney's BoardWalk Inn
• Disney's Contemporary Resort
• Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
• Disney's Polynesian Village Resort
• Disney's Wilderness Lodge

Disney's Yacht Club Resort

• The Cabins at Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort
• Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort
• Disney's Coronado Springs Resort
• Disney's Port Orleans Resort - French Quarter
• Disney's Port Orleans Resort - Riverside
• Disney's All-Star Movies Resort
• Disney's All-Star Music Resort
• Disney's All-Star Sports Resort
• Disney's Art of Animation Resort
• Disney's Pop Century Resort
• Bay Lake Tower at Disney's Contemporary Resort
• Boulder Ridge Villas at Disney's Wilderness Lodge
• Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney's Wilderness Lodge
• Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas - Jambo House
• Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas - Kidani Village
• Disney's Beach Club Villas
• Disney's BoardWalk Villas
• Disney's Old Key West Resort
• Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows
• Disney's Riviera Resort
• Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa
• Treehouse Villas at Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort
• The Villas at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
• The Campsites at Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort

• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Early Park Admission
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Tickets
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Front-of-Line Service: Universal Express Pass
• Halloween Horror Nights
• Rock the Universe
• Gradventure
• Special Needs
• Kids and Babies

• Universal Studios Florida
• Universal's Islands of Adventure
• Universal Epic Universe
• Universal Studios Florida Restaurants
• Islands of Adventure Restaurants
• Volcano Bay Restaurants
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> CityWalk Restaurants
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Hotel Basics
• Hard Rock Hotel
• Loews Portofino Bay Hotel
• Loews Royal Pacific Resort
• Loews Sapphire Falls Resort
• Universal Helios Grand Hotel
• Universal Stella Nova Resort
• Universal Terra Luna Resort
• Universal's Aventura Hotel
• Universal's Cabana Bay Beach Resort
• Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites
• Universal's Endless Summer Resort – Surfside Inn and Suites
• Downtown Disney

• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Early Entry
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="block text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Rider Switch
• Lunar New Year
• Food & Wine Festival
• Disneyland Park
• Disney California Adventure Park
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Ratings for All DLR Restaurants
• Disneyland Restaurants
• California Adventure Restaurants
• Downtown Disney Restaurants
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Disneyland Hotel
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Disney's Grand Californian Resort & Spa
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> Pixar Place Hotel
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> The Villas at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa
• sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo mouseover->sidemenu#activeChildLayerTwo" class="text-black text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-start gap-2 pt-[20px] leading-18"> The Villas at Disneyland Hotel
• sidemenu#activeChild" class="text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-between pt-3 md:pt-14 leading-30"> Planning Your Cruise
• sidemenu#activeChild" class="text-base font-eucliarSemiBold flex items-center justify-between pt-3 md:pt-14 leading-30"> Tips for During Your Cruise

• common-navbar#activeTab">At a Glance common-navbar#activeTab"> -->
• common-navbar#activeTab">Menus & Prices common-navbar#activeTab"> -->
• common-navbar#activeTab">FAQ common-navbar#activeTab"> -->
• common-navbar#activeTab">Photos common-navbar#activeTab"> -->
• common-navbar#activeTab">More common-navbar#activeTab"> -->

• common-navbar#activeTab">At a Glance
• common-navbar#activeTab">Menus & Prices
• common-navbar#activeTab">FAQ
• common-navbar#activeTab">Photos
• common-navbar#activeTab">More

Yachtsman Steakhouse

Ranked #57 of 97 Table Service Options at Walt Disney World Located in Disney's Yacht Club Resort

Last updated: May 10, 2024

At a Glance

Dinner: Adult $12-65

• Dinner: Daily, 5:30 - 10:30p.m.

Full service

2 TS credits

• WDW Passholder: 10%

Dressy casual

Menus & Prices

Frequently Asked Questions

tabs#change" class="xs:text-18 md:text-30 font-light text-tp-black-300 xs:leading-7 md:leading-46 cursor-pointer"> What should you know?

tabs#change" class="xs:text-18 md:text-30 font-light text-tp-black-300 xs:leading-7 md:leading-46 cursor-pointer"> What’s it like inside?

tabs#change" class="xs:text-18 md:text-30 font-light text-tp-black-300 xs:leading-7 md:leading-46 cursor-pointer"> What are the specialties?

tabs#change" class="xs:text-18 md:text-30 font-light text-tp-black-300 xs:leading-7 md:leading-46 cursor-pointer"> Any discounts?

What should you know?

Open for dinner only, Yachtsman Steakhouse serves up steak, seafood, and sides. This is a signature restaurant that tries to create an atmosphere, so expect high prices and to adhere to a minimal dress code.

What’s it like inside?

Wooden beams, white linens, and a view of the Yacht Club’s sandy lagoon make Yachtsman feel light and airy rather than dark and masculine like the typical steakhouse. Beef is the star, of course, but there are other options on the menu.

What are the specialties?

Bread service with roasted, sweet garlic.

Any discounts?

Yachtsman Steakhouse offers the following discounts:

Other Dining Options You might enjoy the following alternatives to Yachtsman Steakhouse:

Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill

Swan Reserve

Rosa Mexicano

Topolino's Terrace - Flavors of the Riviera

Ale & Compass Restaurant

Disney Dish with Jim Hill Podcast

Learn more about the latest doings at Disney with Len Testa of TouringPlans & Jim Hill of JimHillMedia.com

Learn more about the latest doings at Disney with TouringPlan's Len Testa & Jim Hill of JimHillMedia.com

Copyright ©2024 TouringPlans.com. All rights reserved.

Yachtsman Steakhouse Dining Review

By: Author Patty Granger

Posted on Last updated: August 6, 2023

Yachtsman Steakhouse is a signature restaurant at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort. This spot specializes in steak and it serves up what we think are the best steaks on Disney World property. Inside you will find a richly themed coastal New England restaurant much like the theming in the rest of the Yacht Club Resort. It’s a great setting for a nice romantic meal. Let’s take a look at our full Yachtsman Steakhouse dining review.

Yachtsman Steakhouse Quick Breakdown

• Service: Table-Service
• Type of Food:  Steak, Chicken, Allergy Options
• Price:  $$$$
• Location:  Yacht Club
• Disney Dining Plan:  Yes, 2 Credits
• Discounts: Tables in Wonderland, Annual Passholder
• Features: Reservations, Alcohol
• Good For: Steak, Special Occasions
• Menu:  Official Disney Dinner Menu

A Tour Around Yachtsman Steakhouse

The entrance of this restaurant is marked in a beautiful golden sign. Not this restaurant is tucked into the back of the Yacht Club Resort. You have to go past all of Ale and Compass first so if you feel lost don’t worry it really is that far of a walk off the lobby of the hotel.

When you enter be sure to look to the left to take a look at the trimming station. This is where they cut the steaks for the evening. If you have to wait for your table, it’s fun to watch the head butcher prep all the steaks don’t miss out if you see him working in the meat room.

All of Yachtsman Steakhouse steaks are aged in this room for a minimum of seven days. The Kansas City steak is actually aged even longer at twenty-one days! I think this aging process is why you get the best steaks here out of all the places on Disney property.

We like the nice open space here that overlooks the Stormalong Bay Pool area. Unlike other Disney spots, we found the tables weren’t crammed in and there was plenty of space to breathe. As you can see Disney also uses Christmas time as an opportunity to add decorations to Yachtsman Steakhouse. The garlands and wreaths are NOT up year round.

When seated definitely take in your surroundings and don’t forget to look up! Here is a look at the details in the ceiling at Yachtsman Steakhouse.

This is a look at the back room. It was a great quiet place to be seated away from everyone else. If you have a later reservation the restaurant does tend to fill up and get on the louder side. Being nestled away in the corner helped with noise a lot.

This menu is from a couple of years ago. While paper menus are still available on request Disney has moved to reading the dining menu via your phone. They will place a QR code at your table when seated. Then you can scan the code with your phone’s camera and access the menu.

Yachtsman Steakhouse Dishes

The following are a few of the dishes we have tried from their menu. Keep in mind that beef is the heart and sole of the menu here. I think steak is where they shine and you will have the best meal experience.

Complimentary Dinner Rolls

Yachtsman offers something really special with their bread service, in addition to standard sourdough rolls, you’ll also find onion rolls. Be careful, the onion rolls are addictive! To accompany the bread, you’ll receive salted butter and a ramekin of roasted garlic!

French Onion Soup

Pretty standard French onion soup, large cup. The only disappointment here was the bread was quite burned and actually some it wouldn’t even soften in the hot soup.

Lobster Bisque

If you are a lobster fan this is your appetizer here. I was shocked at the amount of lobster chunks that were in this soup. The cheese crouton covered up the pile they placed in the back. It was nice and creamy and when you broke the crouton in it was a perfect pairing.

Caesar Salad

This twist on the Caesar Salad was a win in my family. The salami was a perfect touch and well-loved. Plus you can’t go wrong with that cheese crouton am I right?

Strip Steak

Here is a look at the Strip Steak paired with the potato gratin side. The potatoes are super cheesy and creamy it was a great pairing with the steak. The crispy onions on top of the steak were a perfect accompaniment.

The flavor was amazing in this prime rib. Do you also get it for the crunchy amazingly seasoned outside part? Hmmm, maybe that’s just me! This was the dish I got and loved it.

8-oz Filet Mignon

I was really impressed with how the filet just melted away in my mouth. The quality here is really the best I have had on Disney property, even beating out my favorite place to eat, California Grill. I feel like the amazing oak-grilled flavor that comes through may have played a big role in this.

12-oz New York Strip Steak, Prime

If you love strip steak you will want to order this from Yachtsmen Steakhouse. It’s a hit every time. We like to pair it with potatoes au gratin. 

Lobster with squid-ink pasta

Here is a look at the Lobster with squid-ink pasta. Honestly, this one just didn’t win with my taste buds. The lobster on this occasion with a little chewy and the sauce didn’t pair as well I hoped.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

On our second trip back here I decided to go wild and crazy and get the chicken dish at the steakhouse. I was of course not disappointed with Yachtsman’s unique spin on Chicken Cordon Bleu. It’s officially titled, Chicken Cordon Bleu All-Natural Bell & Evans. I was expecting ham and cheese but instead, it was a honey-roasted chicken, with the best part lobster mushrooms! Under that pile of chicken, there was some fancy rice that was new to me. In hindsight, I wish I just went with the amazing mashed potatoes they serve up here.

Truffle Mac and Cheese

Oh my, truffle mac and cheese! If you are a mac and cheese fan you have got to try this one. Also, those crunchy onion strings on everything really was the perfect topper to the meal.

Creme Brulee

Somehow my husband managed to save room for dessert, I don’t know how he did it. After our meal, we decided to do the full Epcot World Showcase loop to walk off all the cheese bread. I was still stuffed after that! Anyhow back to dessert, if you know my husband no surprise he had his eye on the Creme Brulee here. The vanilla custard and fresh berries got two thumbs up. We thought the size was good for the price, not shown in the zoom-in shot above but the dish is a decent size.

This was a look at the creme brulee from when we went in 2021. The toppings this go-around were, Pickled Local Blueberries, Orange, and Candied Meyer Lemon. Again this was a winner and we would definitely get this dessert again.

Strawberry Shortcake

This dessert was giant! The strawberry shortcake came accompanied with Macerated Florida Strawberries, Vanilla Bean Shortcake, Chantilly Cream, and Strawberry Gelato. If you opt for this dish it’s the perfect sharing size. Everything was so fresh and the lemon flavor on the bottom added a refreshing summer taste.

Dress Code for Yachtsman Steakhouse

When dining at Yachtsman Steakhouse you are asked to adhere to the minimum dress code requirements at this Signature Dining experience. Dressier attire is also welcome. Please explore the minimum dress code requirements:

Men must wear khakis, slacks or dress shorts and collared shirts. Jeans may be worn if in good condition. Sport coats are optional.

Women must wear Capri pants, skirts, dresses, or dress shorts. Jeans may be worn if in good condition.

Not permitted are tank tops, flip-flops, swimsuits, swimsuit cover-ups, hats for gentlemen, cut-offs, torn clothing, and t-shirts with offensive language and/or graphics.

Yachtsman Steakhouse Recommendation

Overall our Yachtsman Steakhouse dining review is the steak can’t be beaten here. The filet just melts in your mouth, the strip steak was full of flavor as was the prime rib. It is important to note the pricing here was expensive so this one, at least for us, will be saved for celebrating those special occasions. We were shocked to find that the portions on the side were very large here. At other signature spots on Disney property, it’s normally a much smaller pairing with the main course. Had I known I would have skipped the soup and just waited for the main course.

I really have to say the service here is another thing that sets this restaurant apart from the rest. All the waiters are well-trained and not new. My husband even commented that he didn’t ever see our waiter but whenever we needed anything she was suddenly there with whatever we needed. We got refills before we realized and even extra onion rolls when we got low!

If you are interested in booking a reservation for Yachtsman Steakhouse you can do so through My Disney Experience. We find reservations are rather easy to make here last-minute. If you have eaten at Yachtsman Steakhouse be sure to share your own review in the comment section below!

Want more dining tips? Check out our  Best Disney World Restaurants recommendations along with  Worst Disney Dining Sit Down Restaurants . If you are visiting with young ones read our Best Places to Eat with Kids at Disney World.

I have been visiting the parks annually since my parents first brought me at just a year old. Recently I was able to fulfill my life long dream of being a Florida local and moved from the wintery Northeast to the sunshine and fun of central Florida. Now I am hoping to share my Disney knowledge with you so you can have the best vacation possible!

Wednesday 5th of February 2020

I am glad that you had a great visit; mine was not. For me, your comment that the server was nowhere to be seen, but then suddenly your every need was fulfilled was only similar to my experience in that the servers were nowhere to be seen.

9 Things You Need to Know About Yachtsman Steakhouse

Yachtsman Steakhouse is one of the most popular steak locations at Walt Disney World.  It is a great restaurant for dates and special occasions, especially for the steak snobs out there that want the utmost quality in their steak and preparation.  Here are nine things that you definitely need to know about dining at Yachtsman Steakhouse:

9 – The location and where to find the restaurant.

The restaurant is located at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort.  The restaurant overlooks the water and beach area of the resort.  The resort is accessible via bus from one of the theme parks or by boat service from Hollywood Studios or the World Showcase entrance of Epcot.

8 – The atmosphere and views are beautiful.

I absolutely love the inside of the restaurant.  It is a very high-end New England-decorated restaurant with high ceilings.  There is an area of windows that overlook the water and beach area of the resort that almost leave you feeling like you really are dining at a fine restaurant in New England.  I also feel like the restaurant is a little more spacious than some of the other restaurants, which is nice for creating a more intimate feel.

7 – The restaurant is a Disney Signature dining experience.

The Yachtsman Steakhouse is in the Disney Signature Dining collection, which means that the location is staffed with some of the finest culinary talent.  This also means that the restaurant is on the pricey side, too.  Most steaks are in the mid-$50 range. This doesn’t include drinks, appetizers, accompaniments, and desserts.  If you are on the Disney Dining Plan, the restaurant will cost two table service entitlements per person, but it is well worth it.

6 – The menu and theme for the restaurant are right out of New England.

The New England and nautical feel is prevalent right when you walk into the restaurant.  The menu is also a perfect New England steak house menu with high-quality beef cuts, lobster, and other seafood options available to accompany the meal.  You will absolutely love this extensive menu.

5 – There is a dress code.

Reviewing and understanding the dress code before heading out for your reservation is important.  According to Disney’s website, men are expected to wear khakis, slacks, jeans, or dress shorts with a collared shirt.  Women are expected to wear capri pants, skirts, dresses, jeans, or dress shorts.  The restaurant also does not permit tank tops, swimsuits, swimsuit cover-ups, hats for gentlemen, cut-offs, torn clothing, and offensive t-shirts.

4 – You need to make a reservation as far in advance as possible.

Advanced Dining Reservations can be made 60 days in advance of the vacation.  It is definitely a good idea to make your dining reservations as early as you can so that you can get into the restaurant and get the desired time for dining that will work within your plans. This restaurant is extremely popular, and you can book up in advance.

3 – The beef that is used and prepared is high quality.

The beef that is used at the restaurant is grass-fed beef.  It is aged in-house to perfection and then cooked in an open kitchen.  The oak-fired grill is in an open kitchen type of area where guests can get views of the chefs hard at work preparing the amazing cuts of meat.  It will make your mouth water just thinking about it.

2 – The location is only open for dinner service.

There are currently no breakfast or lunch services available at the restaurant.  Dinner is the only service, so if you want to enjoy this location, you will need to plan to dine there for dinner one evening.

1 – Come hungry and save room for dessert.

There are so many delicious menu items that you will want to try everything.  We cannot help but get a shrimp cocktail and then our entrees.  I have to have the Truffle Macaroni & Cheese as a side since it is one of my favorites.  Then you definitely don’t want to skip dessert, either.  The chocolate cake is to die for and a great mix of sweet and salty to end the evening.  We always try to skip lunch before we go. That way, we have plenty of room to enjoy the delicious dinner.

For a no obligation, FREE Quote on a Disney vacation package, please contact our travel partner Magical Vacation Planner at 407-442-0227 (407-442-0215 for Spanish). You can also request a FREE quote online by Clicking HERE.

Home » Walt Disney World

Yachtsman Steakhouse Full Review

By Author Ziggy Oskwarek

Posted on Last updated: July 24, 2019

Yachtsman Steakhouse offers a variety of amazing food including some great seafood dishes, but they really specialize in…you guessed it… Red Meat , big juicy slabs of it!  In fact many put it in the conversation for best steak on property .  Being a Signature Restaurant means you won’t find a cheap meal here, but I’ve always found the quality to equal the price.  Also a certain “business casual” dress code is required so I wouldn’t come in a tank top and flip-flops. 😉

Yachtsman’s often gets a bit overlooked because of having to travel to the Yacht Club to eat there and is also viewed as being a bit “stuffy.”  But is that the case?  How does it compare with other Steak heavyweights such as Le Cellier, Shula’s and Jiko?

It’s been a few years so I wanted to do a Yachtsman Steakhouse Full Review.  I’m hoping that the good experiences we’ve had there in the past continue over this time….let’s find out!

Atmosphere:

To get to Yachtsman you’ll need to find your way to the Yacht Club Resort and make your way out to the back by the pool.  You can either take transportation to Epcot, Hollywood Studios or one of the other Epcot Resorts like the Boardwalk Resort, Beach Club or Swan and Dolphin.  To make it easy I would recommend doing either Epcot or Hollywood Studios the same day and then just either walk over to the Yacht Club Resort or take a Boat from the park.

If your coming from along the waterside of the resort then eventually you will run into the Back Entrance of the Yacht Club here:

The first thing you see when you walk in is the Meat Dry Aging Room where the butchers cut and prepare the steaks:

All the meat at the Yachtsman Steakhouse is cut in-house , you you know you’re getting a fresh quality steak, not something that’s been prepackaged.

Here’s the butcher going to work:

Look at that concentration, even with the camera in his face he didn’t look up once! 😉  Here’s a shot of the meat once he’s done cutting it:

Those are some good-looking steaks!!

If you look to the left into the Bar , you’ll start to get more of a feel for the decor.  Pine wood beams line the high ceiling, along with beautiful chandeliers:

A cool feature that’s a part of many upscale Disney restaurants is the Open-Kitchen:

Turn right and you’ll find the entrance to the Main Dining Hall:

Some people complain about the decor, they even find it stuffy or snobbish.  Personally I love the natural wood and soft tones you find throughout.  It’s supposed to be reminiscent of a sea-faring New England town, and that’s exactly what it delivers.  You’re not going to be blown away by the decor, like in a place like Moritmoto’s, but that’s ok because that’s not the focal point here, it’s the food.

The Main Dining Room is a large and open space.  Again more rich colors from the wood:

The lighting in here is excellent, especially when the sun is still out due to the large windows overlooking the Pool at Stormalong Bay.  That’s refreshing as at some steakhouses you practically have to bring a flashlight with you in order to see:

This room is gorgeous and has a great view of outside:

One of the tables in the main dining room:

This is the back dining room and probably the most intimate room at Yachtsman.  If you are looking for more quiet and privacy ask for here:

Or you can ask for one of the booths which are lovely:

Notice the gorgeous, clean light fixtures on the beams:

More typical sea-faring gear lines the walls like this Ship’s Wheel:

Some lovely paintings line the wall….of yachts of course:

Ok, we’re done looking around and we’re ready for the food!

As I already mentioned we came here for Steak, and lots of it, as that’s obviously the specialty of the house.  All the beef is high-quality and grain-fed which is cut and aged in-house and prepared on an oak-fired grill in the open kitchen.  That results in some of the tastiest steak anywhere in Walt Disney World.  If your wallet is feeling full and you want a dining experience you’ll never forget, then go for the 32 oz Porterhouse for Two or the 100% Japanese Wagyu Beef Strip Loin , they cost $119 and $125 respectively, but they will change your life!

Besides steak Yachtsman offers some other delicious options including F resh Seafood like Lobster, Salmon and Shrimp.   Expect to find typical Steakhouse appetizers and sides like Soups and Salads, Mushrooms, Creamed Spinach and Truffle Mac and Cheese.

Like many Disney restaurants, the menu tends to have some staples you can find year-round and then some options that are seasonal, so if you don’t find exactly the same things we had during our visit you can probably find something similar or even better when you go!

Look at these beauties…freshly cut and dry-aged.  It’s going to be so hard to choose….

That 21 Day Dry-aged Kansas City Strip looks amazing:

To start off our meal the right way we ordered a bottle of Robert Mondavi Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 , ok really 2 bottles but who’s counting?  The wine itself was excellent, balanced with a great structure and perfect for…steak!

They first brought us out our complimentary Bread Basket , this thing was amazing!

The first and yummiest bread was the Onion Brioche-style rolls that were out of this world!  They were pull-apart and had a light, airy texture inside that was incredible!  Look at that inside which I had slathered with butter:

Besides that there were also more traditional Sourdough Rolls that were also delicious:

The Butter Plate here was something special because not only did it have fresh butter with Coarse Sea Salt on top, but each plate also had a humongous Roasted Garlic Clove as well!  It was soooo good and my wife was soooo mad at me for eating it! 😉

Next we had a Caesar Salad ($12) with Romaine Lettuce, Parmigiano Reggiano, Coppa Secca and Focaccia Crouton.  Really is there any other type of salad to be had??

I’m a self-proclaimed expert on Caesar Salads and have eaten my share, but this thing was no joke!  It was a very big portion, even enough to share if you’re into that sort of thing.  The lettuce was really fresh and crisp and the Parmigiano was sliced super thin so you could really taste the sharpness of the flavors.  The dressing is what usually makes the Caesar salad and this one was awesome!!  It’s made in house and wasn’t goopy or sweet.

Next was the French Onion Soup ($12) which had a Sourdough Crouton and was covered in Gruyere Cheese:

This is perfection right here…

Stringy cheese makes me  :))))))))

Since it was nearly impossible to stand within 10 feet of us now after 2 courses a piece with either garlic or onion in them we decided to change it up. We went with the Lobster Bisque ($13) which is made with fresh Maine Lobster, Creme Fraiche, fine herbs and lemon:

We also tried the Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail ($19) which had a bit of Old Bay sprinkled on and came with lemon and a homemade cocktail sauce:

Get ready to get your carnivore on, because we’ve made our choices of Entrees and they are sent off to the kitchen to be cooked over that Oak-fired Grill:

First up was the 12oz New York Strip Steak ($49) with a Peppercorn Brandy Sauce and Potato Gratin:

You can see how nice that inside is:

Next was the 10oz Black Angus Filet Mignon ($54) with Mashed Potatoes and a Cabernet Wine Sauce:

Lastly was they one I was really anticipating, the 16oz Prime Rib Eye Steak ($54) covered in Blue Cheese Butter and served with a Brioche and Bone Marrow :

This thing is what dreams are made of!  The very first bite my wife said it’s the best steak she’s ever had:

Being rib-eye this thing was bursting with flavor, then covered in blue cheese butter it made everything so rich and juicy and brought it to even another level of amazingness.  It was a giant piece of meat that we ended up splitting between the two of us:

It was just the right tenderness and melted right in your mouth, especially in the middle.  Just overall awesome and one of the best steaks I’ve ever had!

It was accompanied with Bone Marrow and a Brioche .  Now maybe the idea of sucking marrow from a cow’s bone doesn’t exactly get your appetite going, but once you try it, it will!  The Italian name is Osso Buco and it’s a traditional dish from Milan and my wife goes absolutely crazy for it.  Being the expert she said it compared well to others she’s had before and was very succulent inside.

Lastly we got an order of Truffle Macaroni and Cheese ($12) , because obviously till that point we were really having a light meal!  It was made from Orecchiette Pasta (which means “little ears”), Reypenaer cheese and of course truffles:

There were also a bit of crisped stringy onions on top which added a nice texture.  The pasta was creamy and cheesy but you really have to like truffles to like this mac and cheese, the flavor is very strong.  My brother-in-law was crazy about it, he thought it was really unreal.  I personally thought the taste was a bit too strong, so it depends on tastes.

Of course even though at this point I was so stuffed that I needed to be rolled out of the restaurant, I wouldn’t leave you without at least a taste of Dessert.  I was the only one brave enough to confront it!  I got the Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake ($10) with Lemon Curd and Blueberry Crumble:

Lastly, one thing I haven’t touched on was the service.  The service here was some of the best I’ve ever had at any restaurant ANYWHERE .  We had 2 waiters assigned to our table all night as one was in training and the other was observing but helping him.  At first I thought we were in trouble because of having a waiter-in-training, but he blew us away!  He knew everything, literally everything about the menu and every recommendation he made to us turned out to be true.  I wish I remembered his name because I would highly recommend him to you.  This is what signature dining service should be like!

Overall we had a wonderful experience at the Yachtsman Steakhouse, it was even better than the last time we came.  The atmosphere won’t blow you away, but it’s warm, clean, it isn’t loud and is a nice place if you are looking for a quiet romantic meal.  The food was of excellent quality, the appetizers like Caesar Salad, French Onion Soup and the Lobster Bisque were all outstanding .  The Steaks themselves were unbelievable and do live up to the reputation as being one of the best 2 or 3 steakhouses on property.  Where exactly?  I’ll have to think about it and make a list soon, but Yachtsman is right up there.

I found the prices to be expensive, but in-line with other Disney Signature Restaurants.  If you are a carnivore like me then you will appreciate it and Yachtsman has to be on your list of must-try restaurants in Walt Disney World.  It’s a must do for sure if you are staying at one of the Epcot Resorts as it’s within walking distance from them, and it makes a great date-night location without the kids or for a special occasion.  Try it, you won’t be disappointed!

Yachtsman Steakhouse is a Dinner only restaurant and is open from roughly 5:00pm – 9:30pm Daily .  The Disney Dining Plan is also accepted, it is a 2 Disney Dining Credit Signature Restaurant.   Reservations can be made via the Disney World website or by calling (407) WDW-DINE .

Click here for the Yachtsman Steakhouse Menu.

I love to write Restaurant Reviews of Walt Disney World and I hope you found this one to be informative and helpful.  If you liked this review then please visit my Disney Dining Reviews Page where I have many other Restaurant Reviews . I’m happy sharing with you what I love doing best…eating! ?  I try to bring you the most thorough and unbiased reviews about the food and restaurants at Walt Disney World, so that as you are planning your vacation, you know the “can’t be missed” places, and where you shouldn’t waste your time.  Hope you enjoyed this one and will enjoy many others in the future!!

Your Thoughts:

I want to know what you think about my Yachtsman Steakhouse Full Review and if it’s in line with your experiences there.  What’s your favorite thing at Yachtsman Steakhouse?  Where does it rank among the list of Best Steaks in Walt Disney World?  Let us know in the comments section below!

If you enjoyed this article, as always I appreciate it if you’d share it with others via social media.  I work hard at making this website into a useful resource for you and your family to plan your visit to Walt Disney World, and I hope it can help you! Thanks 🙂

My name is Ziggy and I love Disney, everything Disney! I grew up on Disney and it has and continues to be a huge part of my life. I started young when my parents took me to Disney World when I was 18 months old. Little did they know that would be the first of an uncountable number of trips we would take. I have so many amazing memories going to Disney with my family and friends and it has been interwoven into my DNA.

Thursday 10th of October 2019

I just had that same Caesar's Salad and a prime rib end-cut that was bigger than my head just two weeks ago. I've been going there since opening in 1990 and I couldn't have written a more detailed and accurate assessment of the Yachtsmen than you did. Love that place.

Accommodations

Theme parks, disney cruise line – what you need to know, cruise line ships, disney private islands, recent walt disney world, recent disneyland, disney world reviews, other park reviews, recent reviews, allears style, newsletter home, recent disney and florida attractions news blog.

• FIRST LOOK at a New Disney LEGO Set Coming in October
• Disney Just Dropped a POPULAR New ‘Inside Out 2’ Souvenir!
• Amazon Just Slashed the Prices On 5 Disney World Essentials
• It's Official. This Is Our NEW Favorite Dole Whip HACK in Disney World!
• A Popular Character Is Now in the Mexico Pavilion at EPCOT for a VERY Limited Time!
• ( view all posts )

REVIEW: You’re Skipping This Underrated Disney World Hotel Restaurant — But You Shouldn’t Be

Quincy is on a mission to eat at EVERY SINGLE Disney World restaurant on property, and the whole team is determined to make sure she accomplishes her goal.

However, no one is more determined than Emma herself, and next on the list was to head over to Disney’s Yacht Club Resort to have a fancy dinner at Yachtsman Steakhouse . But is this restaurant worth taking you out of EPCOT AND paying up to $60 per adult? We found out!

Yachtsman Steakhouse opened with Disney’s Yacht Club Resort in 1990 and has been delighting guests with signature dining ever since. The restaurant boasts giving guests a “slice of New England ” with the dining rooms “knotty-pine beams and nautical touches.” It’s the only restaurant on property that has an on-stage butcher’s room, and all of their steaks are aged in house!

This is fancier dining, so guests are expected to dress in “ Theme Park Casual ,” which essentially means no swimsuits or flip flops and must be clean and neat. Advance Dining Reservations are highly recommended for this spot , so be sure to hop on 60 days in advance of your trip to snag your reservation. If you aren’t able to grab one however, keep checking back, as it’s possible one could open up closer to your trip.

The feel of this restaurant is that of a cozy, upscale style . While many other Disney World signature restaurants feel flashy, this one feels like you’re hanging with your grandad. 

It was classic and old-fashioned , and certainly a different feeling than what you’ll get at other Disney World steakhouses, like Steakhouse 71 or Narcoossee’s. This restaurant also has dimmer lighting than what some people would prefer, so keep that in mind when planning your reservations if you’re sensitive to a lack of light while eating.

But what did this laid-back atmosphere match the food? Without further ado, here are our thoughts!

Food & Drinks

Like the atmosphere, this restaurant specializes in New England-style dining options, and of course, steak !

A complimentary bread service comes with every single meal, and let us just say — this is one of our favorite complimentary bread services we’ve had in Disney World , which is really curious since it’s not very flashy.

These are regular yeast rolls and flaky onion rolls, which pull apart like Pillsbury biscuits, and we loved that ( the onion rolls were our preferred rolls of the two ). They’re served with salted butter and a fantastic garlic confit. Not only did the garlic confit taste delicious, but it also didn’t leave us with garlic-y breath, which was extremely impressive and shows just how high of quality it really is.

We also grabbed the Lobster Bisque , which was heavenly — so much so that it’s our reporter’s favorite soup they’ve ever had in Disney World ! It was incredibly creamy and buttery with just the right amount of lobster flavor without tasting too fishy . However, our server warned us that eating a whole bowl would be too rich and we wouldn’t want to eat dinner, so we split it. It was certainly the right call — we do agree that this is VERY rich …but we still would have eaten the whole bowl because it was fantastic.

Our first entree was the 7-oz Filet Mignon which came with mashed potatoes and Bordelaise Sauce (which is how it comes if you order it as is). We really loved the steak and ate it at a speed that was probably a little embarrassing . It was perfectly cooked at medium rare, the way we ordered it, and it was a wonderful cut.

The mashed potatoes it came with were so creamy and tasted like they added extra cream or sour cream to achieve that goal — it really impressed us !

We also decided to order the Sauce Flight to try all the different sauces this restaurant offers. It consists of:

• House Steak Sauce
• Blue Cheese

Quincy’s favorite was the Béarnaise while Emma’s was the Peppercorn . The Bordelaise had a great tangy flavor, but we’re sad to say that the House Steak Sauce and the Blue Cheese were both really lacking in flavor — so much so that even though Emma doesn’t like blue cheese normally due to the flavor, she didn’t mind the sauce. If you have more than one steak at the table, we say it’s worth the price so you can try all the different pairings , but if you’ve only got one steak like we did, we don’t think it’s worth it.

We also grabbed two of the steakhouse sides — the Truffle Mac & Cheese and the Hot Honey-Bourbon Brussels Sprouts — which you can also get as your steak side included in the base price. The Truffle Mac & Cheese was creamy, delicious, and had just the right amount of truffle flavor not to be overwhelming , which we’ve encountered at other restaurants. We also loved the noodle shape because we felt it carried the cheese without getting any weird pockets.

The Hot Honey-Bourbon Brussels Sprouts however were just okay . There are much better brussel sprouts elsewhere in Disney World, such as at The Polite Pig in Disney Springs, but while these were well-cooked and seasoned well, they just didn’t stand out to us . We did enjoy the additional crunch from the walnuts, but again, we don’t necessarily think you’ll be wowed by these.

Our second entree was the Chilean Sea Bass which we unfortunately were not impressed by . It’s our reporter’s favorite thing to get when they go on Disney Cruises, but this one just did not hit the mark. It was cooked well and had that meatier texture that you expect from this dish — the texture, in fact, was perfect, but it was very oversalted and we noticed it the more and more we ate it. 

Additionally, the sides the sea bass came with were nothing to write home about — the rice, while it had a nice tomato flavor, was forgettable , and the best thing on the plate was the crab meat…which was just high quality crab meat . If you’re heading to this steakhouse, stay true to the name and get a steak!

Magic or Tragic?

So overall, do we recommend this meal to you? Well, that depends. If you’re looking for the following, it may be a great fit for you if :

• Want a great steak in Disney World
• You’re staying at Yacht Club or close by
• You want a nice, quality meal without all the pomp and circumstance

However, we would not recommend this restaurant to you if :

• You’re looking to save money — while this isn’t the most expensive table service meal out there, it certainly isn’t cheap
• You want signature dining that really FEELS signature 
• You’re using the Disney Dining Plan — this meal counts as two table service credits and we really don’t think it’s worth that

Overall, we don’t think that it’s necessarily worth swinging by the Yacht Club for, as there are many better restaurants in the EPCOT area , but if you’re staying at the hotel and are looking for an upscale experience without it being TOO over the top, it may be right for you!

As always, be sure to stay tuned to AllEars for all the latest Disney World news and reviews!

MASSIVE REVIEW: We Tried EVERY Booth at the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival

Join the allears.net newsletter  to stay on top of all the breaking disney news you'll also get access to allears tips, reviews, trivia, and more click here to subscribe.

What do you think of Yachtsman Steakhouse? Tell us in the comments!

Trending Now

If you are planning to fly Allegiant Airlines to Disney World, we have three unspoken...

Miss Maelstrom in EPCOT? I get it, but did you know about this secret that...

It really is about time for Disney to implement a couple of new rules for...

Disney has confirmed WHERE the new Villains Land in Magic Kingdom will be built!

Booking a dinner dining reservation on a Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party night? Here's why you...

For a limited time, you can catch a special appearance during Mariachi Cobre's performances at...

Yes, the shoes you wear to Disney World matter.

Let's talk about the Flying Fish Restaurant and how for some people, the meal wasn't...

This NEW Disney Haunted Mansion souvenir is gonna be popular!

Target just dropped a new Haunted Mansion-inspired makeup collection and we're obsessed!

A new Disney Visa Cardmember perk is now available at Disneyland Resort!

LEGO has a brand-new, entirely unique Disney set up for pre-order NOW.

A new wait times champion was crowned at Walt Disney World this week.

We FINALLY know where all these Halloween Horror Nights haunted houses and scare zones are...

Costco just changed the game for our Disney World hotel stays!

We're sharing our new favorite Dole Whip HACK in Disney World!

Getting food or some coffee at Orlando International Airport before you try to catch your...

New Disney Hallmark ornaments are HERE and we could not be more obsessed!

We just got a sneak peek of the new holiday Starbucks tumbler for 2024, AND...

Disney World is FULL of secret facts, and some of them will totally blow your...

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

2 Replies to “REVIEW: You’re Skipping This Underrated Disney World Hotel Restaurant — But You Shouldn’t Be”

Best steakhouse on property. Just the opinion of a regular traveler to WDW who likes their table service dinner or two or three during their trip.

One of the things we enjoy when we go to WDW is to take an evening and go to a new restaurant. Going to places to eat at different resorts also gives you the opportunity to check out the resorts to see if it is a place you would enjoy staying at on a future trip. A few years ago we did exactly that at the Yacht Club and ate at the Yachtsman. The service from the podium to the servers was exceptional and the food was great. Now it is a top place to go for us.

Follow us on Social!

Shop the Disney Store | AllEars® Merchandise | Shop Amazon | Press Room | Contact Us

Read more About us or Advertise with us . We respect your right to privacy. Please take a moment to review our privacy policy and terms of use .

Copyright ©1996-2024 AllEarsNet, LLC, All Rights Reserved. AllEars.Net, AllEars® Newsletter and any other properties owned by AllEarsNet, LLC are not affiliated with, authorized or endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with, The Walt Disney Company, Disney Enterprises, Inc., or any of their affiliates. All Disney artwork, copyrights, trademarks, service marks, and trade names are proprietary to Disney Enterprises, Inc. or, its subsidiary, affiliated and related companies. For official Disney information, visit http://www.disneyworld.com

Adult Things to Do on Disney's BoardWalk (2024)

T here are plenty of adult things to do on Disney’s Boardwalk (or the “Epcot Boardwalk” as some call it, though its official name is Disney’s BoardWalk, with a capital “W”).

From bars to dinner, dessert, games, performers for children of all ages, and some 18+ venues, adults will love checking out this hidden gem at Walt Disney World in Florida.

And yes, the BoardWalk is free to visit!

Disclosure: This post has affiliate links, meaning we may earn a small commission if you click the link and proceed with a purchase at no cost to you. We recommend experiences, hotels, products, and services we use and support. As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Overview of Things to Do On Disney’s Boardwalk for Adults

We’ll go through the following Disney’s BoardWalk locations and entertainment in this post:

• Bar hopping (which includes a lot of the BoardWalk hotels)
• BoardWalk entertainment
• Getting dinner on the BoardWalk
• Indulge in a snack
• Getting dessert
• Shopping on the BoardWalk
• BoardWalk transportation
• Practical information (like parking and restrooms)
• Disney’s BoardWalk FAQ Answered
• Where else to go for adult entertainment after the BoardWalk

Bar Hop on Disney’s BoardWalk

There are great bars on the BoardWalk. There are several inside hotels, like inside Disney’s BoardWalk Inn. There’s also a stationary carousel bar at the BoardWalk Inn pool that’s very photo-worthy.

Additionally, there’s AbracadaBar (a personal favorite) that connects to the Italian restaurant on the BoardWalk, named Trattoria al Forno. Across from the entrance to AbracadaBar is Joe’s Marvelous Margarita stand.

As if these options aren’t enough, there are several great restaurants and bars at the Swan, Dolphin and Swan Reserve.

We loved the bar at Swan Reserve . You take the elevator up one floor to the bar area after you enter through the ground-floor doors. We also really liked the bar at Todd English’s Bluezoo at the Swan hotel.

Disney’s BoardWalk Entertainment

Watch the boardwalk performers.

There are nighttime performers on the boardwalk who are extremely talented and very entertaining to watch. For example, you may encounter a man who juggles and jump ropes or a team of acrobats who perform hula-hooping feats!

No matter the age of the viewers, including adults, these performers are mesmerizing.

Go to Jellyrolls

This is one of our favorite places in Walt Disney World! It’s a dueling pianos bar at the end of the BoardWalk, past the BoardWalk Inn but just before Atlantic Dance Hall. It’s one of the best things to do at Walt Disney World besides the parks , and it’s an especially great indoor activity in Orlando , should the weather be rainy or far too hot to be outside.

Reservations are not required or accepted. There is a cover charge of $18 to enter, and you may have to show ID to prove you’re 21 or older. You can pay the cover charge with a credit card.

Then you sit at a table, have drinks (alcoholic or non-alcoholic), eat popcorn if you want, which is free, and sing along to songs that the audience requests.

It’s mostly songs from decades of musical history, including from singers like Billy Joel, Lady Gaga, Queen…you name it, they’ll sing it. Once in a while, they’ll perform a Disney song upon request, but most songs performed are certainly non-Disney.

Bring singles to tip the performers (optional but appreciated). If you want to take a break from your table to see the Epcot fireworks at 9:00 pm, simply let your waiter or waitress know you’re doing so, and they’ll save your table.

Just get your hand stamped to re-enter Jellyrolls when the fireworks are done.

Jellyrolls Hours of Operation

They are open nights; doors open at 7:00 pm, and the show starts at 8:00 pm. The musicians perform until well past midnight. It’s shocking how fast time passes at Jellyrolls! We’ve often stayed from the show’s start time until closing.

Traveling to the BoardWalk by Car for Jellyrolls

If you are traveling to the BoardWalk to go to Jellyrolls by car, simply tell the security guards you’re going there and they should direct you to free parking.

Dance at Atlantic Dance Hall

If you love dancing, then Atlantic Dance hall is where you want to be, as adults looking for things to do on Disney’s BoardWalk. They are open in the evenings and are 21 and over. You can dance until the morning hours of the next day!

Play Carnival Games

Winning your partner a prize from the Carnival Games on the BoardWalk would be so romantic! The games open up in the late afternoon. Shoot hoops, water guns, and more. This is a pay-to-play activity on the BoardWalk.

Epcot Fireworks

You don’t have to be inside Epcot to see the fireworks. You can see them from the BoardWalk. As adults looking for things to do on the BoardWalk, we always note the time we go into Jellyrolls so we can take a break outside to see the fireworks. (The staff inside is great about this.)

And ever since the Epcot fireworks show was updated to “Luminous The Symphony of Us at Epcot” there are way more fireworks to enjoy in the sky than there used to be!

Walk Around the BoardWalk

One of the most pleasant things to do on the BoardWalk is simply taking a walk. You’ll notice mile markers for runners and walkers if you want to count it as exercise!

You can walk around the “circle” of the BoardWalk. If you start at the entrance from BoardWalk Inn, where you walk down steps to get to the BoardWalk to the right of the hotel, you can walk a full circle on pedestrian walkways from the length of the BoardWalk.

You’ll head over to where the Yacht and Beach Club Hotels are, past the International Gateway entrance to Epcot, where you’ll see the SkyLiner and back around to where you began the walk.

The views around the circle are different as you walk so be sure to bring your camera, at least for one lap!

Food Things to Do on Disney’s BoardWalk

Get dinner on the boardwalk.

There are several sit-down restaurants to choose from for a meal on Disney’s BoardWalk.

Dine at Flying Fish, Trattoria al Forno, or Big River Grille. Alternatively, if you walk around to the other side of the BoardWalk which is technically the Yacht and Beach Club hotels, there are additional restaurants inside the two hotels.

This includes Yachtsman Steakhouse, Ale & Compass, Cape May Cafe, and Beaches & Cream Soda Shop.

The Swan, Dolphin, and Swan Reserve hotels also have additional restaurants. These include Kimonos for Japanese food, Shula’s Steakhouse, and Il Mulino for Italian food. Amare is a Mediterranean-inspired option at Swan Reserve.

If you want something low-key for dinner, there is pizza on the BoardWalk from a to-go window near Trattoria al Forno. You can also get a Margherita pizza, meat and cheese plate, or French fries inside AbarcadaBar.

Get a BoardWalk Snack

If you’re not hungry for a meal (or don’t have time) but want something to nosh on, get a snack. There are several places to do grab snacks, including the BoardWalk Deli, BoardWalk Ice Cream, Carousel Coffee, or the Blue Ribbon Corn Dogs stand.

Indulge in Dessert on the BoardWalk

If you haven’t already had dessert where you ate dinner, indulge in some sweets on the BoardWalk.

Head to BoardWalk Ice Cream for quick-service ice cream near Trattoria al Forno. For sit-down ice cream, try the famous “Beaches & Cream Soda Shop” at the Yacht and Beach Club. They have table service so you can order ice cream sundaes, milkshakes, and such.

One of the newer places to hit the BoardWalk is The Cake Bake Shop Restaurant by Gwendolyn Rogers, which will hopefully open in 2024. No official date has been announced.

It replaced ESPN Club, at the side of the BoardWalk closest to Epcot’s World Showcase entrance. It will serve cookies, brownies, cakes, French macarons , pies, cheesecakes, and more.

Disney Shopping on the Boardwalk

We wouldn’t say that the BoardWalk is a great shopping destination if you want Disney items. There is a gallery on the BoardWalk with original art pieces if you’re shopping for Disney art for your home.

Other than that, you’ll find the shops that are technically hotel s tores. They have Disney apparel, candy, some wine, and other assorted Disney World souvenirs. If you want to really shop for Disney items outside of the theme parks yet still on Disney World property, we suggest heading to Disney Springs.

Disney Shopping Beyond the BoardWalk

If you’re looking for items that you can’t find on the Boardwalk, you can likely get them online (that’s if you’re unable to shop elsewhere on the Boardwalk before you leave).

Getting to the BoardWalk (Transportation)

You can get to the BoardWalk in one of five ways: walk, drive, take the Skyliner, take a boat, or use Disney World buses to arrive.

Visiting the BoardWalk from Epcot and BoardWalk Resorts

If you exit Epcot at the World Showcase entrance, you’ll be steps away from the BoardWalk. There’s only one direction to walk as you exit from that area so you can’t get lost.

The World Showcase entrance is near the UK Pavilion and France. The closest ride at Epcot from this entrance is Ratatouille: The Adventure, in France.

If you’re staying at any of the following hotels, you can walk to the BoardWalk too, either because they’re on the BoardWalk or yards away: Swan Reserve , Swan and Dolphin, BoardWalk Inn, Disney’s Yacht Club Resort, Disney’s Beach Club Resort.

If you don’t feel like walking from the resorts or you are mobility challenged, opt for a boat ride to the BoardWalk instead with one of the free boats that travel between the Swan, Dolphin, BoardWalk Inn and Villas, Yacht and Beach Clubs, and Epcot.

BoardWalk Access from Hollywood Studios

You can walk to the BoardWalk from Hollywood Studios (it’s kind of a long walk, but you can do it along a designated pathway). You can also take a boat, bus, or Disney’s Skyliner .

Take the bus to the BoardWalk Inn and Villas and walk to the BoardWalk from the bus drop off.

You can also take the Skyliner to the Boardwalk from Art of Animation hotel.

Getting to the BoardWalk from the Magic Kingdom or Animal Kingdom

The easiest way to get to Disney’s BoardWalk from either of these parks is to take a bus. Just look for a bus going to the BoardWalk Inn or BoardWalk Villas; you can easily get to the BoardWalk from there. Alternatively, you can take a bus to the Yacht or Beach Club, then take the 5-10 minute walk to the BoardWalk.

Taking a Car to the BoardWalk

If you are driving to Disney’s BoardWalk, you can park your vehicle there. Just let security know where you’re going, and it should be free to park. It may be harder to park during peak times at Walt Disney World when the lots may fill up with hotel guests.

If you cannot park at the BoardWalk Inn lot and need a solution, head to the Swan Reserve , where there is a paid lot. Upon entering the lot, you simply get a ticket from the automated machine and pay when you leave.

Once you’re parked at the Swan Reserve, Disney’s BoardWalk is a 10-15 minute walk along pathways that guide you to its location.

You can also call for a Minnie Van, Walt Disney World’s version of Lyft.

If you want to rent a car while you’re in Orlando, be sure to check Discover Cars for the best prices and easy-to-navigate website.

Don’t Postone Renting a Car!

Disney’s BoardWalk Practical Information

We tackled self-parking above, but you may want to know other practical information.

For example, what time does the BoardWalk open or do they have restrooms?

The BoardWalk never really closes because it’s a pedestrian area of Walt Disney World. But the WDW website lists its hours as 6:30 am to 10:00 pm. Yet some bars there are open later.

The shops and gallery have their own opening hours as do the BoardWalk games. As do the restaurants and bars. For example, Abracadabar opens at 4:00 pm and closes at midnight. Big River Grille & Brewing Works is open from 11:00 am to 10:00pm as another example.

Restrooms are plentiful at the BoardWalk, both in restaurants and hotels. For example, plenty of restrooms are available inside Disney’s BoardWalk hotel. There are also restrooms near the BoardWalk pool by the mini-arcade at the hotel.

There are also plenty of places to sit along the BoardWalk, between benches and Adirondack chairs. One of the best things to do on Disney’s BoardWalk, in our opinion, is sit and talk, and enjoy the Florida sunshine. (And, let’s face it – people watch, of course!)

Disney’s BoardWalk FAQs Answered

Can you see fireworks from the boardwalk.

You can see Epcot’s fireworks but not the whole show, like the water jets — only the fireworks that reach high in the sky. If you stay at the Swan Reserve , however, you can see the fireworks from the top floor of the hotel and they stream the music into the room too.

Epcot fireworks are at 9:00 pm and last 17 minutes.

Are Disney Springs and Disney’s BoardWalk the same thing?

No, they are not. They’re located in two different areas and have very different things to do. The BoardWalk is more so a casual, hidden gem. Far less people go there. Disney Springs is frequented by thousands of people a day, has a tons of shopping, and far more restaurants.

Disney Springs is where Cirque du Soleil is, where the World of Disney shop is, where Rainforest Cafe and Lego store are, and more.

Is Disney’s BoardWalk the Old Downtown Disney?

No, it is not. Downtown Disney is now Disney Springs. Disney’s BoardWalk has been it’s own destination and attraction for decades, even while Downtown Disney existed where Disney Springs is now located.

What does it cost to visit Disney’s BoardWalk?

If you’re wondering what the admission ticket is to Disney’s BoardWalk, it’s free to visit.

Any cost depends on what you do. For example, if you simply sit on the benches and watch the BoardWalk performers at night, it’s free. But if you eat at a restaurant and then go to Jellyrolls afterward, you have to pay for your meal and drinks and then pay the Jellyrolls cover charge.

What time are the performers on the BoardWalk?

The performers – like jugglers and acrobatic performers – are there at night. They are not there during the day. They usually sporadically perform around 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, every day.

We’ve seen them in front of Abracadabar and in front of the area by the art gallery.

Do you have to be a Disney hotel guest to visit the BoardWalk?

No, you do not. You don’t have to be a Disney hotel guest, nor do you have to have tickets to the parks, nor do you have to be staying at Walt Disney World to visit the BoardWalk.

We often go for the afternoon or evening when with friends from downtown Orlando .

Can you walk to Disney’s BoardWalk from any Disney theme park?

The entrance to Epcot’s World Showcase is within walking distance. It’s right between the England and France pavilions.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios is a much further walk away. Though it’s possible to walk via a designated pathway, it takes a considerable amount of time compared to the distance between the BoardWalk and Epcot.

The walk to Hollywood Studios is approximately 25-30 minutes, whereas the walk between Epcot and the BoardWalk is 5-10 minutes.

Is Disney’s BoardWalk pet-friendly?

No, it is not, though Service Animals are allowed. The same rules apply to the BoardWalk as in Disney’s theme parks.

Adult Things to Do Near the BoardWalk at Disney World (Besides the Parks)

Miniature golf at fantasia gardens.

If you feel a little competitive, walk to the Swan Reserve from the BoardWalk to play miniature golf at Fantasia Gardens. It’s next to the hotel, and it’s only a 5-15 minute walk, depending on where you’re walking from on the BoardWalk.

There are two sides to the miniature golf course: a fun side with characters and colorful scenes from the movie “Fantasia,” called Fantasia Gardens, and a more difficult Par 3 course, called Fantasia Fairways. (The Fairways side is actually really hard!)

There’s often a wait to play, so if you have a long wait, head to the Swan Reserve to grab a drink until you can play.

Cirque du Soleil at Disney Springs

One of the most romantic things to do at Walt Disney World is going to a Cirque du Soleil show at Disney Springs . It’s an incredible performance with acrobatics, musicians, and singers. We recommend purchasing tickets in advance.

Things to Do in Florida, Beyond Walt Disney World

If you will be in Florida for a while, head to Florida’s Space Coast , which is only an hour’s drive east. This is where Disney Cruise Line has its own terminal on the Space Coast at Port Canaveral.

Another idea is to head south to Miami, where you can explore the famous (and colorful) Wynwood neighborhood , with murals galore! Or head to Little Havana for a fun time.

From there, you can keep driving south to Key Largo , which is hours closer than Key West.

Heading to Orlando? Read this next:

• 12 Fun Adult Things to Do in Orlando
• Where to Stay in Orlando: Luxury Hotels, Moderate, + More
• Ultimate List of Romantic Things to Do at Disney World (More than 60 Ideas)

The post Adult Things to Do on Disney’s BoardWalk (2024) appeared first on Sometimes Home: Couples Travel .

• Share full article

The Palace Coup at the Magic Kingdom

The inside story of how Bob Iger undermined and outmaneuvered Bob Chapek, his chosen successor, and returned to power at Disney.

Credit... Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Supported by

By James B. Stewart and Brooks Barnes

• Sept. 8, 2024

At 5 p.m. on Feb. 25, 2020, Bob Chapek and Bob Iger settled into matching directors’ chairs on the Disney studio lot for a series of live media interviews. The company had just shocked pretty much everybody by announcing that the little-known Mr. Chapek would be replacing the wildly popular Mr. Iger as chief executive.

The bald and stocky Mr. Chapek and the graying but still debonair Mr. Iger struck an immediate contrast, even though both were dressed in navy suits and open-collar white shirts and both were named Bob. To avoid confusion, some referred to them as “Bob One” and “Bob Two,” or “Big Bob” and “Little Bob” (even though Mr. Chapek was taller and heavier). And then there was “Handsome Bob” and “Boring Bob.”

In an interview with Julia Boorstin of CNBC, Mr. Chapek fawned over his predecessor. “I obviously have huge shoes to fill,” he said with wide eyes, hailing Mr. Iger’s “magic” running Disney. Mr. Iger’s 15-year tenure as chief executive had been so successful that he had considered running for president as a Democrat. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him just before she died.

Mr. Iger said he and Mr. Chapek had worked together “extremely well,” but in the next breath qualified that praise: “Actually, our senior management team has worked together quite well.”

Mr. Chapek listened in vain for something more effusive, more personal.

As the questions — and the attention — shifted entirely to Mr. Chapek, Mr. Iger’s usually relaxed demeanor stiffened. His gaze shifted down, away from Mr. Chapek, and he looked increasingly uncomfortable. He crossed his arms.

Mr. Chapek was intimately familiar with Mr. Iger’s body language and expressions. “This is not good,” he thought.

He was right about that. But little did he realize that he and Mr. Iger were about to face off in an epic corporate power struggle with few rivals in business history.

When Mr. Iger stepped down as chief executive — abruptly, just weeks before the coronavirus pandemic plunged Disney into the worst crisis in its history — the company’s board agreed that he could stay on as “creative director” and executive chairman of the board for another two years.

That agreement nearly fell apart over the issue of whom, exactly, Mr. Chapek would answer to: Mr. Iger or the board. A last-minute compromise, reached without a board vote, had Mr. Chapek reporting to both. That proved a recipe for conflict — as Mr. Chapek soon began to realize.

Just weeks into his tenure as chief executive, Mr. Chapek expressed frustration. “I can’t survive another two years of this,” Mr. Chapek told Arthur Bochner , his chief of staff. Mr. Iger is “not going to leave. He’ll be here until he dies.”

Mr. Bochner worried that Mr. Chapek would quit. Mr. Chapek was ultimately deprived of even that option. The board fired him just before Thanksgiving in 2022.

As he had feared, his successor was Mr. Iger.

The New York Times has pieced together what happened inside Disney during those fateful months by talking to scores of people directly involved. Many of them talked extensively for the first time about what transpired, some only on the condition of anonymity because of their nondisclosure agreements with Disney. In each instance in which a past conversation is reconstructed in this article, the spoken words have been confirmed by multiple people with knowledge of the conversations.

Those conversations reveal how Disney’s board and executive ranks were consumed by conflict and drama just as the company was facing historic upheaval in the entertainment industry. When the pandemic hit, right as Mr. Chapek took over, the company had to temporarily close its highly profitable theme parks. In spring 2022, the streaming bubble burst, causing investors to flee all media stocks, including Disney’s.

But inside Disney, much of the focus was on trying to manage the tensions between Mr. Iger and Mr. Chapek.

Those problems have renewed importance now, as Disney embarks on yet another quest to find someone to succeed Mr. Iger, whose contract ends on Dec. 31, 2026.

The ‘Snake Pit’

For a company that bills its theme parks as the “Happiest Place on Earth,” Disney’s corporate headquarters have long been anything but — a hotbed of intrigue and power struggles. Mr. Chapek’s former chief of staff told people the company’s sixth-floor executive suite was a “snake pit.”

Mr. Iger ascended almost two decades ago, after a power struggle between Michael Eisner, a long-serving chief executive, and Roy E. Disney, Walt Disney’s nephew and a Disney board member. By that time, Mr. Eisner had already elevated and then dispatched two handpicked successors, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who became a co-founder of DreamWorks, and Michael Ovitz, once the most powerful agent in Hollywood.

Mr. Iger, who started his career as a weatherman on a cable channel in upstate New York, had vowed to never follow in Mr. Eisner’s footsteps. To friends, he mocked Mr. Eisner’s fears about leaving Disney — that his calls to power brokers would go unreturned, and that he wouldn’t be able to get reservations at top restaurants. He told Mr. Chapek and others that he would never stay more than 10 years.

Mr. Iger seemed well on his way to honoring that pledge. Once, while Mr. Chapek was running Disney’s consumer products division, Mr. Iger paid a rare unscheduled visit to Mr. Chapek at his office several miles from corporate headquarters. Mr. Iger asked whether Mr. Chapek thought Jay Rasulo or Tom Staggs, two top lieutenants, should succeed him as chief executive.

“Do you want my honest answer?” Mr. Chapek replied. “Neither.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Mr. Iger said, according to Mr. Chapek, and then proceeded to list their respective faults.

It was Mr. Chapek’s first inkling that he might be Mr. Iger’s actual choice as successor.

But his hopes were dashed when, in February 2015, Mr. Iger named Mr. Staggs, then the theme park chairman, as chief operating officer and presumptive heir. Around the same time, the board extended Mr. Iger’s contract two years, to 2018, with the expectation that Mr. Iger would spend much of that time grooming Mr. Staggs as his successor.

But Mr. Iger soured on him. He complained that Shanghai Disneyland, Mr. Staggs’s project, was behind schedule and over budget. Mr. Iger pushed out Mr. Staggs in April 2016.

Mr. Chapek was back in the running.

He had started at Disney in 1993 in the VHS tape department, eventually rising to oversee all movie distribution. In 2011, he took over Disney’s consumer products division, which soon became flush with “Frozen” merchandise sales. By 2015, Mr. Chapek had been promoted to run theme parks, overseeing at least $24 billion in capital investments , including new “Star Wars,” “Avengers” and “Toy Story” rides.

Mr. Chapek was the consummate company man, loyal to Mr. Iger to the point of obsequiousness. Alone among Disney senior managers, he routinely called Mr. Iger “Boss” rather than “Bob,” which Mr. Iger found endearing.

At the same time, Mr. Chapek lacked Mr. Iger’s charisma and wasn’t a natural communicator; even Mr. Chapek acknowledged that he had low “E.Q.,” or emotional intelligence. Mr. Iger urged him to work on his bedside manner.

Mr. Iger told Mr. Chapek to schedule a series of one-on-one meetings with Disney’s directors to build a rapport and lay out his vision for the company’s future. But in late 2017, Disney reached a deal to buy the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox. Mr. Iger received a big bonus for consummating the deal — stock awards of up to $142 million at the then-current share price — and the board extended his contract for a sixth time . He would now retire at the end of 2021.

Mr. Chapek canceled his plans to meet directors.

Is There Life After Disney?

A Disney chief executive is an instant celebrity. He (they’ve all been men) presides over what are perceived as some of the most powerful and glamorous businesses in the world: the Marvel, Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm and 20th Century movie studios; the ABC broadcast network and news division; cable channels like ESPN, FX and National Geographic. Its 12 theme parks attracted a combined 142 million visitors in 2023. And even by chief executive standards, the pay is enormous. Forbes estimates Mr. Iger’s net worth at over $700 million.

With a yacht, corporate jet, power and influence, Mr. Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, a former television anchor and the current dean of the University of Southern California’s journalism school, hobnobbed with a rarefied crowd: Barack and Michelle Obama, Jeff Bezos, Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Oprah Winfrey, to name just a few.

Once in the job, Mr. Iger wondered, as did Mr. Eisner before him: If stripped of his power and multimillion-dollar compensation at Disney, would his allure diminish? For several years, the license plate holder on Mr. Iger’s silver Porsche posed the question, “Is there life after Disney?”

There were aspects of the job that Mr. Iger didn’t especially enjoy, like earnings presentations and being grilled by Wall Street analysts. He had grown tired of budget meetings.

He often complained to Mr. Chapek (and board members) about his compensation. It was a frequent source of tension between him and Susan Arnold, who sat on the compensation committee for many years. Mr. Iger pointed repeatedly to Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, who was paid more than him even though CBS was much smaller and less complex. In 2017, Mr. Moonves made $69.3 million , Mr. Iger $36.3 million, barely half that. One Disney director called it “Moonves envy.” In 2018, shareholders rejected Mr. Iger’s compensation in a nonbinding vote; Disney won approval in 2019 only after Mr. Iger agreed to a smaller package .

Mr. Iger also pondered a conversation he’d had with Steve Jobs shortly before the Apple co-founder died in 2011. Mr. Jobs had urged Mr. Iger not to stay so long at Disney that he ended up depriving himself of some of the great things life had to offer.

When the company’s board met in December 2019, Mr. Iger broached the idea of stepping back — but not leaving entirely. “Why don’t we accelerate the process?” Mr. Iger suggested. Mr. Chapek was his choice to succeed him. Mr. Iger told the board that Mr. Chapek knew the brand well, respected it and would do no harm. He also said Mr. Chapek had great integrity.

One of Disney’s directors, Mark Parker, had recently decided to step down as chief executive of Nike and become executive chairman. Mr. Iger pitched doing the same thing. That model would allow him to stay at Disney for the remainder of his contract doing what he liked best, overseeing the company’s creative endeavors. Mr. Chapek would become the C.E.O. and handle everything else. A crucial element was that all the division leaders would report to Mr. Chapek, but Mr. Chapek would report to Mr. Iger, leaving Mr. Iger ultimately in charge. There was an obvious financial incentive as well: Mr. Iger still had more than $100 million in unvested stock options and his leadership could help protect its value.

Safra Catz, the chief executive of Oracle and a Disney board member, pushed back. Why make Mr. Chapek chief executive rather than chief operating officer?

Mr. Iger said he didn’t want a rerun of the situation with Mr. Staggs, in which people thought Mr. Staggs was merely auditioning for the top job and they could outmaneuver him by going to Mr. Iger.

But in a rare show of resistance, the board was unpersuaded. It agreed to consider the issue over the holidays.

By the time board members met in late January 2020, in Los Angeles, they had come around. Mr. Iger told Mr. Chapek the good news immediately afterward, saying an announcement would be made in just three weeks on Feb. 25.

Why the rush? Zenia Mucha , Disney’s chief communications officer and a close adviser to Mr. Iger, counseled delay; she disagreed with the entire plan, including the selection of Mr. Chapek. But Mr. Iger was adamant.

By mid-February, the coronavirus was spreading widely, and the pressure it could put on the company was becoming clear. Mr. Iger had received a detailed briefing in New York from the ABC News team covering the story. Disney’s theme parks in Shanghai and Hong Kong had already closed.

David Jefferson, a Disney spokesman, said the pandemic had nothing to do with the timing of the leadership change. Board members agree but, when pressed, offer no explanation for the haste other than that was what Mr. Iger wanted.

‘Don’t Step on His Toes’

When Mr. Chapek shared the good news of his promotion with his wife, Cindy, she was skeptical. “We’ve heard that before,” she told him. But the board’s lead independent director, Ms. Arnold, flew from her home in Oregon to meet with Mr. Chapek in the Rotunda, as Disney’s executive dining room is known. There, she confirmed that he was the board’s unanimous choice to succeed Mr. Iger as C.E.O. “This is happening,” Ms. Arnold assured him.

Mr. Chapek was told there was no time for him to meet with other directors. While they had met with Mr. Chapek in his previous roles, the idea that there was no time or no need to interview him to assess his capacity to serve as chief executive, not to mention explore his vision for the future of a company in the midst of profound change, seems inexplicable.

Ms. Arnold recognized that the unusual arrangement, in which Mr. Iger would be staying on as executive chairman and chief creative officer, posed a potential for conflict. She urged Mr. Chapek to show him deference. “Give him a wide berth” on creative matters, she advised. “Don’t step on his toes.”

Notably, Mr. Chapek would not be joining Disney’s board, which was unusual, given that nearly all chief executives also serve as board members, in many instances as chair. But the board wanted a probation period for Mr. Chapek, and wanted to emphasize that he would be reporting to Mr. Iger. It would be awkward if Mr. Chapek were also a member of the board responsible for Mr. Iger’s oversight.

In the days before the announcement Mr. Iger told just a handful of top executives, among them Christine McCarthy, the chief financial officer. Like almost everyone who learned the news, she was taken aback. While pledging to help Mr. Chapek succeed, she pointed out some of his weaknesses: He knew next to nothing about the television business, he didn’t know anything about sports programming, he didn’t have many relationships with Hollywood talent, he hadn’t dealt with Wall Street.

Mr. Iger agreed that Mr. Chapek didn’t come across as especially creative. But Mr. Iger had faced the same criticism when he was named president of ABC Entertainment in 1989.

“I think he can do it,” Mr. Iger insisted. “And I’ll still be around.”

A Last-Minute Hitch

On Feb. 24, the eve of Mr. Chapek’s announcement, the succession plan nearly fell apart.

Alan Braverman, Disney’s long-serving general counsel, called Mr. Iger to say that under the company’s bylaws, the chief executive had to report to the board — not to Mr. Iger. For Mr. Iger, that was a nonstarter. He wanted to retain ultimate control.

It was Mr. Braverman and Ms. Mucha who came up with a hastily conceived compromise: Mr. Chapek would report to both the board and Mr. Iger.

That was OK with Mr. Iger since, from his perspective, Mr. Chapek still reported to him. Mr. Iger insisted that the announcement be made the next morning as scheduled — even though board members hadn’t discussed as a group, let alone approved, the new dual reporting arrangement.

No one told Mr. Chapek about the change to the reporting structure. But Mr. Chapek wasn’t very concerned about it, because Mr. Iger had always been such a strong supporter of his.

In another sign that Mr. Iger intended to maintain a visible presence, he decided to stay in the office that both he and Mr. Eisner had occupied as chief executives. Mr. Chapek was relegated to smaller quarters nearby. The arrangement only added to internal confusion about Mr. Chapek’s new status.

Some board members weren’t thrilled with the office decision or the dual reporting change. But, as it had in so many instances, the board went along with what Mr. Iger wanted.

Mr. Chapek and Mr. Iger faced the cameras as planned the next day. The company’s announcement said the change was “effective immediately.”

The sudden move shocked and baffled Hollywood. Paul McCartney, a close friend of Mr. Iger’s, called him to ask if he was sick.

Iger’s ‘Lap Dog’

About two weeks later, on March 11, Mr. Chapek was scheduled to make his formal debut as chief executive at Disney’s annual shareholder meeting. Mr. Chapek was nervous, all the more so because public speaking had never been his strength.

Before the meeting, Disney’s investor relations personnel assembled thick briefing binders covering every conceivable data point and question that might arise. Armed with these binders, Mr. Iger and Mr. Chapek settled into the front compartment of the Disney Gulfstream jet for the four-and-a-half-hour flight to Raleigh, N.C., the site of that year’s meeting, for what Mr. Chapek expected would be an extended preparation session.

Several passengers, including Mr. Chapek, recalled that Mr. Iger pulled out his iPad and started flipping through recent photographs, telling the stories behind them. There were photos of himself with Mr. McCartney and recent dinner guests in New York. Mr. Chapek said he tried to steer the discussion back to the annual meeting, but Mr. Iger interrupted: “Did you see my new yacht design?”

Flustered by Mr. Iger’s digressions, Mr. Chapek got up and moved to the plane’s rear compartment.

(Others on the flight said Mr. Chapek immediately went to the back of the plane and didn’t recall his having any iPad chitchat with Mr. Iger.)

Mr. Chapek’s extended absence was noted in the front cabin. “Does Bob want to get briefed or not?” Mr. Iger asked his fellow passengers, Ms. McCarthy, Ms. Mucha and Mr. Braverman. Finally, Mr. Iger stood up and went to find Mr. Chapek.

“Bob, do you want to sit with us so we can brief you?” Mr. Iger asked.

“Isn’t it all in here?” Mr. Chapek replied, holding up the binder. Mr. Iger said the book couldn’t convey the nuances. But Mr. Chapek said he’d review the book and let him know if he had any questions. He went back to his reading.

“He doesn’t want to be prepped. He says the book is enough,” an incredulous Mr. Iger told his fellow passengers when he returned to the front compartment. Mr. Iger suddenly felt as if he were at the wedding altar with the bride walking down the aisle. He realized he’d made a terrible mistake. But it was too late.

On the way back to California, Gov. Gavin Newsom called Mr. Iger before announcing that he would restrict public gatherings in California because of Covid. But he thought Disneyland might stay open. The governor didn’t want people to panic — and he feared they might if Disneyland closed.

Mr. Iger argued to Mr. Newsom that keeping the theme park open was a bad idea, given the health risks to both guests and employees. Mr. Newsom later publicly praised Mr. Iger’s advice and cooperation.

Mr. Chapek didn’t disagree with the decision to close the parks, but he was furious that Mr. Iger had excluded him. The decision had nothing to do with Mr. Iger’s creative mandate.

Disney’s executives worried about the shock that the park closures would have on the company’s cash flow. Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Chapek made the decision to quickly furlough, albeit with health benefits, more than 90,000 employees at the theme parks.

But Mr. Iger overruled them. He decided to wait until the government passed a Covid relief bill.

Two months earlier, when Mr. Chapek and Mr. Iger had appeared together on CNBC, Mr. Iger brushed aside a question about the potential for confusion over who was in charge. “Bob is going to be running the company,” Mr. Iger said. But now it seemed to Mr. Chapek that Mr. Iger was acting as though nothing had changed — Mr. Iger was still chief executive in all but name.

Mr. Chapek’s wife told him he was little more than Mr. Iger’s “lap dog.”

‘He’s Killing Me’

However marginalized Mr. Chapek felt, the two maintained at least a facade of cooperation. Because of Covid, no one went into the office, but Mr. Chapek spoke to Mr. Iger weekly by phone and sometimes went to see him at his home in Brentwood, an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood where they took walks wearing masks. Mr. Iger never went to see Mr. Chapek at his home in Westlake Village, a far-flung suburb. (A spokesman for Mr. Iger said he had never been invited.)

At Mr. Chapek’s request, the two held a series of employee town-hall meetings, where Mr. Iger was supposed to reinforce the message that Mr. Chapek was now in charge. “My goal is for Bob to be successful, and to the extent that I can help him do that, I will,” Mr. Iger said at the first town hall they held in February 2020. “I think it’s got to be a balance between giving him the freedom to make the decisions and do things the way he wants to do them because, you know, they will feel right to him. On the other hand, I’ve got a fair amount of experience doing a lot of these things. And, you know, it’s not quite about throwing him into a swimming pool when he’s never swum. So it’ll be a balance.”

But nearly everything Mr. Chapek did (or didn’t) do reinforced Mr. Iger’s sense that naming Mr. Chapek as his successor had been a huge mistake. Mr. Iger expressed his frustration with friends in Hollywood. Word spread, and someone contacted The New York Times’s media columnist at the time, Ben Smith, to say Mr. Iger was reasserting control. Mr. Smith called and spoke to Mr. Iger, too, who followed up with an email.

On Sunday, April 12, Mr. Chapek hosted a belated late-afternoon party for family and friends at his home to celebrate his promotion. A friend emailed him Mr. Smith’s column, which had just appeared online. Mr. Chapek stepped out of the party and read it.

“After a few weeks of letting Mr. Chapek take charge, Mr. Iger smoothly reasserted control,” Mr. Smith wrote . Mr. Chapek read with mounting disbelief.

Mr. Smith called Mr. Chapek “the new, nominal chief executive” and even speculated that the choice of Mr. Iger’s successor “may be open again.”

Mr. Smith quoted Mr. Iger as saying in an email that “a crisis of this magnitude, and its impact on Disney, would necessarily result in my actively helping Bob [Chapek] and the company contend with it, particularly since I ran the company for 15 years!”

Mr. Chapek immediately called Ms. Mucha, the communications executive. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. Trying to calm him, she argued the column wasn’t that bad.

“He’s killing me,” Mr. Chapek responded.

Mr. Chapek didn’t sleep that night. Early the next morning, he confronted Mr. Iger on the phone.

Mr. Iger denied that he had spoken to Mr. Smith, which only further enraged Mr. Chapek, who pointed out that Mr. Iger’s quote came directly from an email. Mr. Iger said he didn’t understand why Mr. Chapek was so upset. What was wrong with saying he was reasserting control in the midst of a crisis?

“You’ve cut my legs out from under me,” Mr. Chapek said. “I’ve never felt worse in my life.”

The conversation became heated, and both men raised their voices.

Mr. Iger told several people immediately afterward that he’d never been treated with more disrespect by anyone in his entire life.

As far as Mr. Iger was concerned, his relationship with Mr. Chapek was over.

‘This Too Shall Pass’

Starting at 6 a.m. on Monday, Jayne Parker, Disney’s chief human resources officer, called Disney directors to alert them to Mr. Chapek’s fury. She got one out of bed to take the call.

An enraged Mr. Chapek got on the phone with Ms. Arnold, the board’s lead independent director. This was the first time he’d broached the feud with a director. He hadn’t wanted to call attention to something that seemed petty compared with a global pandemic, but he felt this could no longer be ignored.

Mr. Chapek, who deemed some other board members fiercely loyal to Mr. Iger, felt he’d developed a good rapport with Ms. Arnold, who had spent most of her career in the Midwest at Procter & Gamble, eventually becoming its first woman president. Mr. Chapek, the son of a machinist from Hammond, Ind., had gotten his start in packaged goods, working in the pet-food division at Heinz and helping to market Kraft cheese.

Ms. Arnold also knew something about corporate succession: She’d been a leading candidate to become Procter & Gamble’s chief executive but took herself out of the running and left the company in 2009, partly because, as a prominent gay executive, she didn’t want her personal life to be publicly scrutinized, something that would most likely accompany the job.

Ms. Arnold was taken aback by the vehemence of Mr. Chapek’s reaction to the column. She thought he seemed paranoid that Mr. Iger was out to destroy him. She urged him to calm down and defer to Mr. Iger, as she had advised before.

“What will be left of my reputation?” Mr. Chapek pleaded.

“This too shall pass,” she responded. Mr. Iger would be gone in 20 months, and the C.E.O. prize would be Mr. Chapek’s alone.

Mr. Chapek all but begged to be named to the board as a show of confidence in him. Ms. Arnold conferred with several other directors. None was aware of the depth of the hostility that had developed between Mr. Iger and his designated successor. But they agreed it could damage his standing. The board now felt it had no choice but to name Mr. Chapek a director as a show of support.

Ms. Arnold called Mr. Iger and chastised him for the column. She told him it was the worst thing that could have happened to Mr. Chapek. She pointed out that, had Mr. Iger taken the board’s suggestion to initially name Mr. Chapek chief operating officer rather than chief executive, none of this would be happening. In any event, the sniping had to stop.

Mr. Iger was taken aback by both the tone and substance of Ms. Arnold’s call. She seemed to be siding with Mr. Chapek — even though he had been C.E.O. for less than two months and Mr. Iger was still ultimately in charge. She and other board members should be happy he was stepping back up during a crisis, Mr. Iger thought, especially when Mr. Chapek’s leadership had been so lackluster.

On April 15, three days after Mr. Smith’s column published, Mr. Chapek was named to Disney’s board .

In June, the board scheduled private sessions by video call with both men to address the conflict. Mr. Iger went first. He aired his complaints about Mr. Chapek’s leadership, including that he hadn’t sought Mr. Iger’s advice and counsel. Mr. Chapek had no standing in the creative community and hadn’t made any efforts to improve it. He’d skipped creative meetings that Mr. Iger had invited him to.

Mr. Chapek said he was sorry their differences had become a board issue. But he was incensed when Mr. Parker, the board member who had led Nike, questioned Mr. Chapek’s lack of contacts in the Hollywood creative community, since that was supposed to be Mr. Iger’s jurisdiction. He insisted that he hadn’t skipped meetings but rather that Mr. Iger had scheduled them without telling him. Mr. Chapek said Mr. Iger had ceded little authority, something Mr. Chapek said he had accepted without complaining. “I was just trying to be a good soldier,” Mr. Chapek said.

The board’s message to both men: The company was in crisis, and they needed to start acting like adults and work together.

Later, in an audit committee board session with Ms. McCarthy, Ms. Catz, the board member who had questioned Mr. Chapek’s readiness, asked if she thought Mr. Chapek was up to the job. Ms. McCarthy, the chief financial officer, didn’t immediately answer.

“I don’t like the fact that you’re hesitating,” Ms. Catz said.

“I’m giving you a qualified answer,” Ms. McCarthy said. “If he will start to listen. If he will listen. We’re all trying to help him, but he doesn’t listen.”

In the ensuing months, Mr. Iger seemed increasingly cranky about the board’s reaction to Mr. Smith’s column. “Why are you so hostile toward the board?” Mr. Chapek finally asked during one of their calls, which had continued despite the tensions.

Mr. Iger told him that he couldn’t handle the truth, and then proceeded to say that before the board had agreed to name Mr. Chapek chief executive, the directors had assured Mr. Iger that, if he didn’t think it was working out, he could fire Mr. Chapek and return as chief executive anytime he wanted. (Given the dual reporting structure, it is unclear whether Mr. Iger had that authority.)

Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for Mr. Chapek, confirmed that account. She said Mr. Chapek “was shocked and surprised when told by Mr. Iger that he believed he could have his job back if and when he wanted it.”

Immediately after the call, Mr. Chapek called Ms. Arnold. “What is he talking about?” he asked.

Ms. Arnold tried to make light of it. “Well, you know Bob,” Ms. Arnold answered. “He may think so, but just let it go.”

It wasn’t the answer Mr. Chapek was hoping for.

Mr. Jefferson, the Disney spokesman, said there was never any such understanding between Mr. Iger and the board. The claim that he could return at will was “not something Mr. Iger would have said,” Mr. Jefferson added.

For Mr. Chapek, it was a turning point. It wasn’t just paranoia: He was now convinced that Mr. Iger was trying to get rid of him and return as chief executive, and that the board might let him.

‘This Is His Company to Run’

As Covid shutdowns continued into the fall of 2020, it wasn’t just Disney’s theme parks that bore the brunt. Disney’s movie and television production had ground to a halt, just as consumers were staying home and turning to streaming services. Wall Street had been obsessed with subscriber gains, and Disney+ had delivered, surpassing 70 million, hitting its initial five-year goal after only nine months of operation. But it needed new content, which had all but dried up. Subscriber growth was slowing.

Mr. Chapek pleaded with his studio heads — Pete Docter of Pixar, Kevin Feige of Marvel, Jennifer Lee of Disney Animation — and encountered resistance: All of them wanted to hold back their best material for debuts in theaters with star-studded premieres. Mr. Chapek had no idea when, if ever, those days would return. In the meantime, Disney needed cash flow to meet interest payments on the enormous debt it had racked up under Mr. Iger to buy most of 21st Century Fox.

One of Mr. Chapek’s perceived strengths was corporate organization. He proposed remaking the company around a new division, Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, to give priority to streaming services ( Disney+ , Hulu and ESPN+) and to guarantee they received a steady flow of Disney’s best content. DMED, as it became known, would now have bottom-line responsibility for all the company’s entertainment, and would decide where films and programs would appear — in theaters, on television or, as was increasingly likely, on Disney+. It would be Mr. Chapek’s signature initiative as chief executive.

There was logic to Mr. Chapek’s plan. But its seemingly benign, business-school rationale belied a reality: To strip Disney’s creative heads of authority over spending, as well as where their movies and shows would be distributed, would be a huge loss of power and status. Moreover, Hollywood talent wanted guarantees of where projects would end up before committing to a deal. Although the division heads would still report to Mr. Chapek (and indirectly to Mr. Iger), it was a huge demotion. In many ways, their new boss would really be the head of DMED.

For that role, Mr. Chapek approached Alan Bergman, then the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, a figure both well known in Hollywood and respected by Disney’s creative teams. Mr. Bergman said he’d think about it and called Mr. Iger to ask what he should do. Mr. Iger said he should tell Mr. Chapek what he really thought, which was that DMED was a terrible idea. Mr. Bergman turned down the offer.

Exasperated, Mr. Chapek turned to a loyal former lieutenant at consumer products, Kareem Daniel . A 13-year Disney veteran, Mr. Daniel was nonetheless barely known outside the company and had little experience with movies or television. Overnight, he would be running a division with more than $50 billion in annual revenue and would be in the spotlight as Disney’s highest-ranking Black executive. Like Mr. Bergman, Mr. Daniel had his doubts about the wisdom of the proposed restructuring.

Mr. Chapek spent hours, both on the phone and in person at Mr. Iger’s house, selling Mr. Iger on the idea. Mr. Iger was unenthusiastic but didn’t object.

By early October, after a two-hour meeting at Mr. Iger’s house, Mr. Chapek thought he’d gotten Mr. Iger’s blessing. He was in his car heading back to Westlake Village when Mr. Bergman called him. “Iger just told me we’re not doing the reorganization,” Mr. Bergman said, according to Mr. Chapek. “He said he hates it.”

Mr. Chapek was dumbfounded. He’d left Mr. Iger just 10 minutes earlier. “No, it’s on. We’re doing it,” Mr. Chapek replied.

Mr. Chapek said he immediately called Mr. Iger, and asked if he’d said that to Mr. Bergman. “Yes, I hate it,” Mr. Iger confirmed.

“Why didn’t you say that to me?” Mr. Chapek asked.

Mr. Iger didn’t answer.

A more seasoned chief executive might well have paused at this juncture, given the lack of internal support. At least a dozen senior Disney executives had told Mr. Chapek that the reorganization was a bad idea. But the Disney board gave Mr. Chapek its strong backing for the creation of Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution after extended discussions in which Mr. Iger raised questions but said nothing to oppose it. Mr. Iger was on such thin ice with the board at that time that there was little he could say without appearing to undermine Mr. Chapek. “This is his company to run,” Mr. Iger said to directors at one point. The reorganization, and Mr. Daniel’s promotion, were announced on Oct. 12, 2020.

Mr. Chapek had finally accomplished something, and he was proud of it. As he later told a reporter at The Times, “It was singularly the best thing I could have done to transform this culture.”

In June 2021, the board gathered at Aulani, a Disney resort in Hawaii, for its first in-person meeting since the pandemic. Few companies had been as hard hit as Disney . For a time, revenue from its theme parks and movies had all but been wiped out. But it was on a rebound. Disney World had reopened . Disney+ subscriber growth had pushed Disney’s stock to near a record high.

Mr. Iger opened the board retreat with a paean to creativity, “the essence of who we are as a company.” He warned that data and algorithms would never supplant creativity and that “not everyone is born with the ability to be wildly creative, and not everyone is born with the ability to manage wildly creative, or sometimes wild and creative, people.” He didn’t mention any names, but directors said they knew whom he was talking about.

Mr. Iger asked Ms. Arnold if she wanted to run the executive session along with him, but she told him to leave and asked Mr. Chapek to stay. Mr. Iger was taken aback, but took a seat outside the room, expecting to be called back after Mr. Chapek finished.

“We know it’s been hard,” Ms. Arnold told Mr. Chapek once Mr. Iger was out of the room. She complimented the stock price and his operational leadership during the pandemic. Directors nodded in agreement.

When the session with Mr. Chapek ended, the meeting adjourned and directors left the room. No one thought to tell Mr. Iger, who was left outside to fume.

For the first time since his promotion to chief executive, Mr. Chapek let himself think that Mr. Iger had been vanquished.

But trouble soon arose.

That summer, Disney was locked in negotiations over the release of “Black Widow,” Marvel’s big new superhero film, with its star, Scarlett Johansson. Now that DMED was up and running, Mr. Chapek wanted to see a return on the $350 million cost of the movie.

On July 9, a few days into the annual gathering of media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, Disney released “Black Widow” in theaters and on Disney+, even though Ms. Johansson’s contract called for an exclusive theatrical release and her pay was pegged to the theatrical box office. Releasing it on Disney+ would obviously cut into ticket sales, costing her as much as $50 million, her agent contended. “She’s not happy,” her agent told Mr. Chapek when he ran into him at the conference. This was exactly the kind of problem Mr. Bergman had warned about when DMED was created.

“Black Widow” took in $80 million at the domestic box office during its first three days, sharply less than previous Marvel films had. A few weeks later, when Ms. Johansson sued Disney , the company took a hard line. In a statement approved by Mr. Iger, Disney called the suit “especially sad and distressing,” accused Ms. Johansson of a “callous disregard” for the impact of Covid on theatergoers and said she’d already been paid $20 million. Talent relations fell under Mr. Iger’s purview as creative head, but Mr. Chapek also contributed to the contents of the statement and signed off on it.

“Attacking Johansson so personally was a pretty spectacular unforced error,” wrote Kim Masters in The Hollywood Reporter. “And many observers are laying that at the feet of C.E.O. Bob Chapek. The person who isn’t getting the blame? Outgoing chairman Bob Iger.”

Mr. Chapek was stunned that he — and not Mr. Iger — was blamed for the debacle.

‘Fasten Your Seatbelts’

That fall, as his end-of-year retirement date approached, Mr. Iger said he didn’t want a farewell ceremony or party at Disney. The thought of Mr. Chapek hosting such an event was too galling. Instead, he and his wife decided to host their own party at their home in Brentwood. Mr. Iger chose a date when he knew Mr. Chapek would be in Orlando, Fla., for an event.

Mr. Chapek canceled the trip.

On Nov. 19, he arrived for the party at the same time as Thomas Schumacher, the longtime president of Disney’s Broadway division. Ms. Bay, Mr. Iger’s wife, was outside greeting guests as they arrived. “Tom Schumacher, it’s been too long,” she gushed. “I can’t believe you came all this way.” She embraced Mr. Schumacher. Mr. Chapek stood awkwardly by until she finally turned to him. “Hi, Bob. I see you all the time,” she said. She turned back to Mr. Schumacher.

A guest who witnessed the exchange recalled Bette Davis’s memorable line in “All About Eve”: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

About 80 guests were seated at three long tables outdoors behind the house. Mr. Iger was flanked by Mr. Spielberg and Ms. Lee of Disney Animation. Mr. Chapek was in the middle of the table farthest from Mr. Iger’s.

Mr. Iger began a speech recognizing people who’d helped and inspired him. In one of his first jobs at ABC, Mr. Iger had worked as an assistant to the acclaimed sportscaster Al Michaels, who was at the party. Mr. Iger mentioned that back in the day he and Mr. Michaels had covered dirt-track racing in Terre Haute, Ind., for “Wide World of Sports.” Mr. Iger looked toward Mr. Chapek and went off script: “That’s your area, isn’t it Bob?” he asked, referring to Terre Haute, in rural southwestern Indiana. “You’d know all about dirt tracks.”

Mr. Chapek’s hometown of Hammond is near Chicago. He seethed at what he felt was a put-down.

Mr. Iger pushed on, worked his way through his career thanking people and then paused when he reached the present. “I think I’ll just stop there,” he said. “Thank you all for coming.” There was no praise, and no further mention, of Mr. Chapek.

Mr. Chapek reddened as he felt every gaze turn on him. He stood up and stalked out.

‘It’s Going to Get Worse’

On Nov. 30, in ABC’s old board room at Disney’s West 66th Street offices in New York City, Mr. Iger presided over his last meeting as chairman. He’d given considerable thought to what he’d say, discussing it with his wife and making detailed notes. He could have reflected on his accomplishments and made a graceful exit, something that he’d considered and that some board members expected.

But he didn’t.

During an executive session without Mr. Chapek, Mr. Iger began by apologizing for not having had more interaction with board members since the meeting in Hawaii. Then he said, “There are things that I feel I must leave you with, that you must know because there are things that you need to watch.” He then unleashed a broadside.

Mr. Iger asserted that under Mr. Chapek, the collegial culture he’d built over 15 years was crumbling. Disney was a company that depended first and foremost on creativity, and Mr. Chapek’s DMED reorganization had damaged Disney’s creative engines. The company, he said, had become distracted by a deep rift — Mr. Chapek and his allies on one side, Disney’s creative executives and the Hollywood talent community on the other.

Mr. Iger didn’t go so far as to say the board should fire Mr. Chapek. Nor did he ask to replace him as chief executive or to remain as chairman.

Afterward, Mr. Iger seemed unusually subdued at the board’s farewell lunch for him. They showed a video tribute. Mr. Parker gave him a pair of custom Nike sneakers. Mr. Chapek gave him two gold coins embossed with Mickey Mouse to be placed under the mast of his new yacht, a good-luck custom to ward off pirates.

Mr. Chapek felt a chill. “It’s going to get worse,” Mr. Chapek told Ms. Arnold after lunch. He worried that, once he was gone, Mr. Iger would feel more emboldened to criticize Mr. Chapek.

In conversations with allies at the company, he started referring to Mr. Iger as an “assassin.”

A Mea Culpa

During Mr. Iger’s tenure, the studio had greenlighted a bevy of projects with progressive social and political themes. But Mr. Chapek worried the development slate had veered too far left on social issues. Disney was being pulled into partisan political debates more frequently, a worrisome situation for a brand that was supposed to stand for everyone.

Some board members agreed. Coming up through the pipeline was “Strange World,” Disney’s first animated film focusing on an openly gay teenager. Ms. Catz, a board member, was so opposed to the character that she told Mr. Chapek she’d have him fired if Disney released the film. He reported the threat to Ms. Arnold.

The film was too far along for Mr. Chapek to block it, but his fears about Disney’s becoming a cultural flashpoint soon materialized. In January 2022, the Parental Rights in Education bill was introduced in Florida. Opponents labeled the bill “Don’t Say Gay” because it prohibited classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for young students. The Human Rights Campaign, a prominent L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization, soon had more than 100 corporate signatories to a letter opposing anti-gay legislation in various statehouses. Media companies like Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, had signed on. But Disney, one of the largest employers in Florida, was conspicuously absent.

Mr. Chapek realized that staying silent might cause controversy. He called Ms. Arnold, who had succeeded Mr. Iger as chairman, to discuss his view that Disney had become too politicized. He mentioned the Florida bill and the pressure on Disney to publicly condemn it.

Ms. Arnold agreed that Disney should stay above the fray. But she said the company should sign the Human Rights Campaign letter. Since so many companies had already signed — including Nike, General Motors and Oracle, whose chief executives sat on Disney’s board — she didn’t envision Disney’s being singled out for criticism: There was safety in numbers. Mr. Chapek agreed.

On Feb. 1, at the board’s first meeting with Mr. Iger no longer at the company, Geoff Morrell, the new chief corporate affairs officer, gave a presentation arguing that Disney should stay out of divisive social and political issues, especially at the state and local levels, unless necessary. Disney should fight “the wars not the battles,” he said. He also said Disney’s employees, accustomed to Mr. Iger making public comments supporting progressive positions, would need to be “reconditioned.” The board agreed.

The Florida legislation soon vaulted to national attention. On Feb. 8, President Biden issued a statement on Twitter: “I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are.”

Disney remained silent and soon faced an internal revolt. Creative employees — many of them gay or staunchly supportive of gay colleagues and friends — were still seething over the DMED reorganization. And now this?

On Feb. 24, Mr. Iger put a match to kindling by reposting Mr. Biden’s comment and adding : “I’m with the President on this! If passed, this bill will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.”

A few days later, a Disney L.G.B.T.Q. employee group sent a letter to Mr. Chapek and other high-ranking executives demanding that Disney oppose the bill and denounce similar legislation pending in other states. Mr. Chapek met with the group the next week, describing the discussion as “meaningful, illuminating and at times deeply moving.”

In the midst of this, Disney’s board held an emergency meeting to discuss the mounting controversy. Mr. Chapek told the board that, in keeping with the company’s new policy, Disney had not signed the Human Rights Campaign petition. Ms. Arnold was taken aback. “I’m confused,” she said. “You told me Disney was going to sign it.”

The discussion moved on, but Ms. Arnold was visibly upset. Mr. Chapek sent her a text: “My bad. We decided not to sign. I got busy and forgot to tell you.”

Ms. Arnold was furious.

Despite the pressure from employees, Disney’s board agreed to stay the course. Mr. Chapek and his corporate affairs team drafted a statement defending Disney’s decision not to comment, which was circulated to Ms. Arnold and the rest of the board: “Corporate statements do very little to change outcomes or minds. Instead, they are often weaponized by one side or the other to further divide and inflame.”

The memo, distributed to employees and the news media on March 7, backfired in spectacular fashion. Letters and calls from prominent people criticizing Disney’s failure to speak out poured in to Mr. Chapek. Abigail Disney, granddaughter of the co-founder Roy O. Disney, said on Twitter that she was “deeply angered.” The Los Angeles Times called Disney’s policy “corporate cowardice.”

With pressure on Disney increasing, Ms. Arnold advised Mr. Chapek to reverse course and condemn the bill. “You’re losing the creative community,” she warned him. “You have to stand with your team.”

On March 9, Ms. Arnold’s first shareholder meeting as chair, Mr. Chapek extolled the company’s recent accomplishments in a taped video, then delivered a mea culpa . “I understand our political approach, no matter how well-intentioned, didn’t quite get the job done,” he said. He announced that Disney would sign the letter and give $5 million to the organization. The Human Rights Campaign promptly said it would take the money only after Disney demonstrated it was following through on its promises.

Two days later, Mr. Chapek went even further in another memo to employees: “You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights, and I let you down. I am sorry.” Taking direct aim at Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, he also halted political contributions in the state.

There were those at Disney, including Ms. Arnold, who thought Mr. Chapek had now gone too far in the other direction. The about-face and abject apology did little to assuage Disney’s outraged L.G.B.T.Q. community. And it gave Florida’s governor a national platform to mock the company as “Woke Disney.” “If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong guy,” Mr. DeSantis said. Florida moved to revoke Disney World’s special tax status and Disney and the state were soon battling it out in court .

Mr. Chapek thought it unfair that he was being blamed for a policy that had been endorsed by the board at every step. And he saw Mr. Iger’s “assassin” fingerprints all over the ensuing firestorm, starting with his tweet. His suspicions only hardened on March 31, when Mr. Iger appeared on CNN . Mr. Iger never mentioned Mr. Chapek by name, but he didn’t need to. “To me, it wasn’t about politics,” Mr. Iger said on the air. “It is about what is right and what is wrong, and that just seemed wrong.”

As the bad press continued, Mr. Chapek insisted that his contract as chief executive, set to expire on Feb. 28, 2023, be extended as a show of board support. Terms for a new three-year contract were agreed to by late March. But Ms. Arnold declined to make the agreement public, saying the time wasn’t right given the furor over the Florida legislation.

She was also trying to buy time. The board was having its first serious discussions about whether Mr. Chapek had been the wrong choice for the job. Two directors, Mr. Parker and Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive, were especially critical of Mr. Chapek. The board discussed the possibility that Mr. Parker of Nike could step in to replace Mr. Chapek on an interim basis while it conducted a search, but he declined. In side discussions, a couple directors explored the idea of an office of the chairman led by Ms. Arnold, but she shut down that suggestion, saying she was happily retired from the daily slog of corporate life. The possibility of asking Mr. Iger to come back wasn’t suggested.

Unnerving Calls

In most respects, Mr. Iger was pleasantly surprised by life after Disney. While a rumored appointment as ambassador to China or Britain never materialized, his calls were returned and restaurant reservations remained easy to come by. He spent time on his yacht, wrote a draft of a second book and acquired stakes in companies like Funko, a maker of pop culture collectibles, and Gopuff, the rapid-delivery start-up. He joined Josh Kushner’s firm Thrive Capital as a venture partner and gave more than 20 talks at corporations seeking his wisdom.

Mr. Iger insisted he’d put Disney behind him and vowed not to talk about Mr. Chapek unless others brought him up. Evidently, many did. Mr. Chapek fielded a steady drumbeat of unnerving calls from people who had met with Mr. Iger. They told Mr. Chapek that Mr. Iger had heaped criticism on him and wanted to talk about little else.

Mr. Chapek complained about Mr. Iger’s whisper campaign to Ms. Arnold and other board members, some of whom had independently heard about Mr. Iger’s trash talk. But now that Mr. Iger had officially retired, the board had no leverage on him. No board member ever reached out to him, according to Mr. Jefferson, the Disney spokesman.

Despite the board’s growing reservations about Mr. Chapek, and given the lack of any alternative, Ms. Arnold agreed to announce Mr. Chapek’s new contract, which allowed for a $20 million annual bonus, up from $15 million. On June 28, the board said: “Bob is the right leader at the right time for The Walt Disney Company, and the board has full confidence in him and his leadership team.”

‘We Have to Save Chapek’

Since becoming chief executive in 2020, Mr. Chapek’s sometimes rocky tenure had been buoyed by Disney’s strong share price. But since hitting a record high in March 2021, it had been falling, along with stocks of other entertainment companies grappling with the new economics of streaming and the decline of cable. In April 2022, Netflix reported it had lost subscribers for the first time in 10 years, panicking Wall Street. Netflix shares lost 35 percent in just one day. Seemingly overnight, investors went from caring only about subscriber numbers to focusing on earnings and losses. The streaming honeymoon was over.

By the time the board announced Mr. Chapek’s new contract, Disney shares had dropped almost 50 percent from their peak, so low that activist investors like Dan Loeb and Nelson Peltz were circling the company, seeking board seats and calling for management changes.

Mr. Peltz knew a good deal about Disney and Mr. Iger, thanks to his neighbor in Palm Beach, Isaac (“Ike”) Perlmutter, who had sold Marvel to Disney in 2009 and stayed on as Marvel’s chairman. The deal made Mr. Perlmutter one of Disney’s largest shareholders.

The irascible Mr. Perlmutter had clashed with Mr. Iger over the years. In 2015, Mr. Perlmutter tried to fire Mr. Feige, Marvel’s celebrated movie chief, amid a disagreement about budgets; Mr. Iger saved Mr. Feige and effectively demoted Mr. Perlmutter by stripping superhero movies from his oversight. In 2019, Mr. Iger further marginalized Mr. Perlmutter, taking away the television portion of his job and leaving him with only a tiny fief involving comics publishing and a few consumer products. Mr. Perlmutter had been glad to see Mr. Iger step down.

But Mr. Perlmutter had sources in the company who convinced him that Mr. Iger was plotting a return. Mr. Perlmutter warned Mr. Chapek, fanning Mr. Chapek’s own anxieties about Mr. Iger’s intentions.

With Mr. Perlmutter’s encouragement, Mr. Chapek met with Mr. Peltz in July at Disneyland Paris and the two men forged a rapport. Soon after, Mr. Perlmutter called several board members, including Ms. Catz, lobbying them to add Mr. Peltz to the board. If not, he warned, Mr. Iger “would be back at Disney,” as Disney later put it in a proxy filing.

In a call to Horacio Gutierrez, the company’s new general counsel, Mr. Perlmutter told him: “We have to save Chapek. We can’t allow Iger to come back.”

Mr. Chapek told Ms. Arnold that he thought inviting Mr. Peltz made sense. It would spare Disney a costly and distracting proxy fight. But Ms. Arnold said the board would never offer Mr. Peltz a seat, partly because of his friendship with Mr. Perlmutter. The board was wary of Mr. Perlmutter given the antagonism between him and Mr. Iger and also because of Mr. Perlmutter’s campaign against Mr. Feige, whom the board had come to view as a crucial employee.

‘I Am Telling the Truth’

To prepare for that fall’s earnings report, Mr. Chapek and Ms. McCarthy, the chief financial officer, met around Labor Day to preview the numbers. They discussed a looming shortfall between Wall Street’s forecasts and the actual results, but Mr. Chapek wasn’t especially concerned given strong streaming subscriber growth. He told Ms. McCarthy that Mr. Daniel, the DMED chief, had assured him that streaming was “killing it.”

But that changed a few weeks later when Ms. McCarthy led board members through a presentation of the expected results. The first slide disclosed that Disney’s earnings per share would be 27 cents below Wall Street’s estimates — far more than what she and Mr. Chapek previously discussed, and a result sure to shock Wall Street. Disney’s streaming business was still signing up subscribers at a fast pace. But soaring programming and marketing costs meant that streaming was now heading toward a $1.5 billion quarterly loss, up from $630 million a year earlier — just when investors had been promised there would be light at the end of the tunnel.

Board members started pelting Mr. Chapek with questions. How could the results be this bad?

Mr. Chapek felt blindsided. Ms. McCarthy had distributed projected earnings results nine days earlier to the board that prominently highlighted the 27-cent miss. But Mr. Chapek hadn’t read that board package — he had assumed the material in it reflected what he and Ms. McCarthy had discussed when they met.

Ms. McCarthy continued through the slide presentation as board members appeared to grow more agitated. About an hour into the meeting, Mr. Chapek was visibly annoyed. He stared at Ms. McCarthy, tapped his watch, then took it from his wrist and began swinging it back and forth like a pendulum, signaling Ms. McCarthy to finish up.

During the ensuing break, he confronted her.

According to Ms. McCarthy’s recollection, he accused her of upsetting the board. “I am telling the truth,” she replied. “I never lie, and I’m not starting now. The numbers are the numbers.”

Mr. Chapek said he didn’t attack her, and simply asked why she’d blindsided him. He said she didn’t offer any explanation.

The board met in executive session with Mr. Chapek, and then Ms. McCarthy. Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Chapek had attacked her during the break for being truthful. Ms. Catz again asked if Mr. Chapek was up to the job.

This time, Ms. McCarthy answered, “He can’t do it.”

Ms. Catz and others told Ms. McCarthy she had to hold the place together.

Afterward, an angry Ms. Arnold called Mr. Chapek.

“How could you attack Christine?” she demanded.

“She’d never told me the numbers!” Mr. Chapek exclaimed.

Petting a Hippo

Worried that Mr. Chapek was in denial about the gravity of the shortfall, Mr. Gutierrez, the general counsel, called for meetings during an October management retreat in Orlando. Mr. Gutierrez invited the senior leadership team, saying he wanted to ensure a common understanding of the situation and plan for what would surely be a difficult earnings call.

Mr. Chapek didn’t attend Mr. Gutierrez’s meetings. Instead, during one, Mr. Chapek greeted park visitors and petted a hippo at Disney’s Animal Kingdom resort. (Mr. Chapek’s spokeswoman said he went to every meeting he was told about, adding that the hippo encounter was part of an effort, encouraged by the board, to come across as more personable.)

Pressed by Mr. Gutierrez that a crisis was looming, Mr. Chapek offered him a meeting at 6:30 a.m. on Friday. Mr. Gutierrez declined, saying that several participants were scheduled to leave Orlando that morning.

The week before the earnings call, Kristina Schake, who had replaced Mr. Morrell as communications chief, tried to warn Mr. Chapek that the quarterly results would prompt a cascade of negative news articles. He chided her as an “Eeyore,” a reference to the gloomy donkey from the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise.

Mr. Chapek unveiled the earnings as scheduled on Nov. 8. They fell short of estimates by 26 cents a share, only a penny better than the forecast. In his upbeat presentation to analysts, Mr. Chapek avoided mentioning the $1.5 billion in streaming losses, instead saying only that the red ink had hit a “peak.” He spent more time extolling the post-Covid comeback of the theme parks.

On CNBC, Jim Cramer called the results “one of the most disappointing quarters I’ve ever seen at a major company.”

Disney stock dropped 13 percent over the next 24 hours.

With the stock seemingly in free fall, creative personnel revolting and Mr. Chapek no longer on speaking terms with Ms. McCarthy, the chief financial officer, Mr. Gutierrez called Ms. Arnold.

Mr. Chapek didn’t have the credibility or leadership skills to continue as C.E.O., Mr. Gutierrez told her. The only person who could solve the problems was Mr. Iger.

“You aren’t the first” to suggest that, she replied.

Alarm Bells

A few days later, Mr. Iger went for separate walks with Mr. Bergman, the movie chief, and Dana Walden, who oversaw television operations. Each vented their frustrations with Mr. Chapek and told Mr. Iger how bad things were.

“Don’t talk to me, because I can’t do anything about it,” Mr. Iger said. “Talk to the board.”

Each said they already had. They told him everyone had.

Ms. Walden asked Mr. Iger if he’d consider coming back. “I might,” he said. “But they’ll never ask me.”

“Would you call Susan Arnold?” Ms. Walden asked.

Mr. Iger was still on bad terms with Ms. Arnold, partly because of the column by Mr. Smith, and hadn’t spoken to her since he left. “If she wants to talk to me, she knows how to reach me,” he said.

That weekend, Mr. Chapek was in Palm Beach, Fla., to meet again with Mr. Peltz, even though Mr. Jefferson, the Disney spokesman, maintained that board members had instructed Mr. Chapek in August not to meet alone with any activist investors.

Mr. Chapek “never received any such admonition,” Ms. Davis, the spokeswoman for Mr. Chapek, said. Mr. Chapek deemed communicating with activists and other large investors to be an essential part of his duties as chief executive. He “faithfully followed the board’s direction on all matters,” she said.

Mr. Chapek went to Mr. Peltz’s oceanfront mansion, where the investor and one of his sons made their case for change at Disney. The meeting lasted about two hours. Afterward, Mr. Chapek met Mr. Perlmutter of Marvel and briefed him on the meeting.

Mr. Chapek didn’t tell anyone on the board about the trip, but Mr. Iger nonetheless found out about it soon after it happened. (There appear to have been few secrets within Disney’s upper ranks.) Mr. Iger assumed Mr. Chapek had been in Palm Beach solely to see Mr. Perlmutter.

On Nov. 17, the Disney board held a special meeting to discuss the Peltz situation. Mr. Chapek was in Disney’s New York offices and participated by video. He mentioned that he’d had conversations with Mr. Peltz, but not that they’d met in person a couple days earlier. The board reaffirmed its decision to rebuff Mr. Peltz.

Soon after the meeting ended, Ms. Arnold called Mr. Chapek, ordering him to have no further contact with Mr. Peltz, even if other Disney executives were with him. Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Gutierrez would be the only “designated points of contact” with the investor, as Disney said in one of its proxy filings.

The order set off alarm bells for Mr. Chapek. He’d met earlier with Mr. Loeb, who had dropped his campaign to shake up Disney. The board had praised Mr. Chapek for that. Now, he was barred not only from meeting alone with Mr. Peltz but also from communicating with him at all. He sensed a growing lack of trust.

There were two Disney premieres in New York that week, the Searchlight film “The Menu” and the FX series “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” Mr. Chapek, preoccupied by the mounting pressures on both him and the company, didn’t show up. Ms. McCarthy stood in for him.

That Friday, Ms. Walden called Mr. Iger and canceled a walk they had planned for that afternoon. Ms. Walden said Ms. Arnold would be calling him instead. Mr. Iger reported this to his wife.

“They’re not asking you back,” she said.

Mr. Iger agreed, but wondered, “What if they do?”

Ms. Bay said he’d have to accept. “If they’re asking you to come back, they must be desperate. And second, you love the company and the people, you kind of owe it to them.”

Ms. Arnold called as scheduled at 3 p.m. After brief pleasantries, she said she wanted to apologize for their rupture. That was important to Mr. Iger. Without an apology, he wouldn’t consider a return. He accepted it and said they should move on.

“Would you come back?” she asked.

He accepted without hesitating, with three conditions: He wanted it to be announced immediately, no later than Monday, because it was too big a secret for him to keep. It had to be for a limited period — they decided on two years. And he wanted to serve without pay, because he didn’t want anyone to think he was doing it for money.

Ms. Arnold said she’d have to get back to him on that.

The call lasted all of 15 minutes.

Ms. Arnold told Mr. Gutierrez to convene a virtual meeting of the board’s independent directors for Sunday without telling Mr. Chapek. During the meeting, Ms. Arnold asked for Mr. Gutierrez’s assessment. He said that Mr. Chapek had lost the support of the senior leadership team and that there was a serious risk of losing some key creative talent. He’d become dysfunctional. He’d missed important meetings in Orlando preceding the disastrous November earnings call. In a moment of crisis, rather than charting a way forward, he was in denial. He seemed depressed.

The board voted unanimously to terminate Mr. Chapek and instructed Ms. Arnold and Mr. Gutierrez to call him.

That night, Elton John was giving a concert at Dodger Stadium that was being livestreamed on Disney+. Mr. Chapek planned to attend, but was still at home in Westlake Village when the call came.

Ms. Arnold got straight to the point: “Effective immediately, you’re out.” He wasn’t even offered the face-saving gesture of resigning.

Despite his anxieties, Mr. Chapek was unprepared for something this sudden. “Why?” he asked.

“We lost confidence.”

Iger’s Last Extension?

Four hours later, the news broke about who would be replacing him. Mr. Chapek wasn’t surprised.

Mr. Iger moved swiftly to dismantle Mr. Chapek’s legacy and stifle any internal opposition. DMED was abolished within days of his return, its functions returned to the creative executives. Mr. Iger ousted Mr. Daniel . Mr. Perlmutter lost his job four months later. Next, Mr. Iger demanded Ms. McCarthy’s resignation. Ms. Arnold left the board in March 2023, when her one-year extension as board chair came to an end. Ms. Catz left the board this July.

Mr. Iger returned to a company beleaguered on nearly every front. He soon faced a debilitating strike by Hollywood writers and actors, then a bitter proxy fight waged by Mr. Peltz. “Wish,” a high-profile Disney animated film released in late 2023, became the fifth big-budget Disney film to bomb at the box office that year.

Disney shares rose immediately after Mr. Iger’s return, but soon turned down again. After Mr. Peltz lost the proxy contest in April 2024, Mr. Perlmutter sold all of his 25.6 million shares, saying he had no confidence in Mr. Iger and Disney management. Disney shares this week were trading at less than $90, down 55 percent from March 2021.

Predictably, the board rebuffed Mr. Iger’s suggestion that he work for nothing. A securities filing revealed he earned $31.6 million last year.

Mr. Chapek departed with over $20 million in severance payments (after earning just over $24 million for 2022), but his reputation was in shreds.

After he was fired, Mr. Chapek hired Bryan Freedman, a lawyer in Los Angeles known for handling high-profile media departures. Mr. Freedman told The Times he had advised Mr. Chapek that he had “a very strong legal claim against Bob Iger for illegally interfering with his ability to do his job.” But Mr. Chapek told him that his children and grandchildren were a “Disney family” and he couldn’t bring himself to file a lawsuit that might hurt the company, Mr. Freedman said.

Disney responded with a statement saying that Mr. Chapek was fired by the board because “he was no longer the right person to serve as C.E.O. during an increasingly complex period of industry transformation.”

Muzzled by a severance agreement, Mr. Chapek has stayed in the background in the face of what he considers unflattering, unfair and, in some cases, inaccurate accounts of his leadership. Though he joined the board of a medical technology firm , few opportunities have come his way.

From the outset, as Disney’s C.E.O., Mr. Chapek faced daunting challenges beyond his control: the onset of a global pandemic, upheaval in an industry being transformed by streaming and the overt hostility of a much admired and still-powerful predecessor.

At the same time, he certainly contributed to his own demise. Soon after he was named chief executive, he stopped ingratiating himself with Mr. Iger. And, by the end, nearly his entire executive team had turned against him, even people he’d hired and promoted. So did the board — not just Ms. Catz, skeptical of him from the outset, but also Ms. Arnold, once his strongest defender.

Mr. Chapek, his spokeswoman said, “remains deeply proud” of navigating Disney through the “unprecedented terrain” of the Covid crisis, “all while working to transform Disney into a media company poised for future success. Mr. Chapek is confident that, absent his predecessor and ultimate successor’s campaign against him, this collective vision would have been realized under his leadership.”

Current Disney executives say Mr. Iger has restored morale and brought needed stability to the management ranks. Marvel and Pixar had big summer hits in “ Deadpool & Wolverine ” and “ Inside Out 2 ,” both started while Mr. Iger was still creative head. Though Disney stock remains in the doldrums, the streaming combination of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ eked out a profit in the quarter ending June 29, three months ahead of projections. Mr. Iger was greeted by fans with delirious applause when he appeared onstage at this summer’s D23 fan gathering in Anaheim, Calif. Mr. Iger was so moved that he had to fight back tears before speaking.

In the annals of corporate governance, there are surely few failures that rival the Disney board’s handling of Mr. Iger’s transition. The influential shareholder advisory service ISS called it a “failed succession” and cited “major missteps” by the board. Among the more startling were the board’s failure to formally interview Mr. Chapek for the job, its failure to fully consider the unworkable reporting structure in which Mr. Chapek reported to both the board and Mr. Iger, and its failure to curb the debilitating conflict that erupted between the two men.

Few feuds among top executives have ever reached the level of intensity and bitterness of the one between Mr. Iger and his handpicked successor. Mr. Iger has called hiring Mr. Chapek for the top job the worst mistake of his career. Still, the question lingers: How could Mr. Iger have so misjudged Mr. Chapek after working with him for nearly 30 years? “I’ve tried hard to conduct my own post-mortem, just so that we as a company don’t do it again,” Mr. Iger said at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit last year, but declined to disclose any conclusions.

Disney said Mr. Iger had nothing further to add.

Last summer, Disney’s board extended Mr. Iger’s contract yet again, until late 2026. Mr. Iger is adamant that this will be the last extension.

James B. Stewart has been a reporter and business columnist for The Times since 2011, focusing on the human drama of the business world and the struggle for corporate power. More about James B. Stewart

Brooks Barnes covers all things Hollywood. He joined The New York Times in 2007 and previously worked at The Wall Street Journal. More about Brooks Barnes

Inside the Media Industry

FX:  The network has been a darling among critics for years, but it hit a new high at the Emmys , with “Shogun” winning best drama and “The Bear” picking up several awards as well.

Warner Bros.:  “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has made roughly $190 million in its first 10 days, giving the studio a needed hit after a summer of misfires .

DirecTV:  While the cable TV business is declining quickly, satellite TV is decaying even faster . ​The unforgiving economic reality has been thrown into sharp relief by a bitter dispute  between DirecTV and Disney.

The Spectator Magazine:  Paul Marshall, a multimillionaire founder and investor in upstart conservative media outlets, has bought the right-wing British magazine  in a deal worth about $131 million.

Disney:  Here’s the inside story of how Bob Iger undermined and outmaneuvered Bob Chapek , his chosen successor, and returned to power at Disney.

Advertisement

the disney food blog

food IS a theme park

Read the Latest Posts

Looking for something?

Get the dfb newsletter.

STAY CONNECTED

Homecomin’, San Angel Inn, and 12 More Restaurants CHANGED in Disney World This Week

By Robin Burks 1 Comment

Well, we have certainly talked a LOT about food in Disney World this week. Well, we ALWAYS talk about food, but this week, we attended the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival , and ate, well, a LOT of food .

One of our favorite festival eats!

Yes, we visited every single booth at the festival and got reviews up for every single one. But we’re never NOT done talking about food in Disney World, so let’s talk about restaurants…or more specifically, restaurant changes. We take a look at Disney World restaurant menus every week and keep you updated on changes, so let’s see what updates we have for THIS week.

La Cantina de San Angel

The entrees have changed at La Cantina de San Angel:

• REMOVED: Arroz con Pollo Bowl
• Tacos de Barbacoa changed from $16 to $16.50
• Tacos de Pollo changed from $15.25 to $15.75
• Tacos de Camarón changed from $14.75 to $16
• Taco Trio changed from $15.50 to $16
• Empanadas con Queso changed from $14 to $14.75
• Nachos  option to add guacamole changed from $2 to $3  and price changed from $14.75 to $15.50
• Guacamole with Totopos changed from $11 to $12
• ADDED: Arroz Bowl with Marinated Grilled Chicken  — Rice bowl topped with grilled chicken, corn, spicy tomato salsa, pickled onions, queso fresco, and cilantro for $15
• ADDED: Arroz Bowl with Barbacoa Beef or Shrimp  — Rice bowl topped with barbacoa beef, corn, spicy tomato salsa, pickled onions, queso fresco, and cilantro or Rice bowl topped with Mexican corn breaded shrimp, corn, shredded cabbage, salsa verde, and a mango relish for $15.75

Guacamole with Totopos

Alcoholic beverages also changed:

• “Top Shelf” Clásica on the Rocks description changed from “Centinela Reposado Tequila, Orange Liqueur, Fresh Lime Juice, Agave, Black Ant Salt rim” to “Centinela Reposado Tequila, Alma Finca Orange Liqueur, Fresh Lime Juice, Agave, Dried Chile Salt rim” and price changed from $18 to $18.50
• Frozen Mango Margarita changed from $13.50 to $14.25
• Frozen Lime Margarita changed from $13.50 to $14.25
• Hercules Draft Beer changed from $12 to $13
• Seasonal Mexican Craft changed from $12.50 to $13.50
• Dos Equis Lager Draft Beer changed from $11 to $12

REVIEW: We Tried Our FAVORITE New DOLE Whip Combo in Disney World

Choza de margarita.

We also saw cocktail changes at Choza de Margarita:

• Top Shelf Clásica changed from $18 to $18.50
• El Diablo changed from $17 to $18
• The Cucumber changed from $17 to $18

Here’s how Frozen Margaritas changed:

• Classic Lime changed from $13.50 to $14.25
• Mango Loco changed from $13.50 to $14.25
• Strawberry changed from $14 to $14.75
• Fiesta changed from $14.50 to $15

Cerveza was also updated:

• Hercules Lágermaiz changed from $12 to $13
• Dos Equis Lager changed from $11 to $12
• Michelada changed from $13 to $14

The food menu also saw some updates:

• Tacos de Cochinita changed from $12.25 to $12.75
• Empanada de Barbacoa changed from $13 to $13.50
• Pastor Quesadilla changed from $12.50 to $13.25
• Tostada de Pollo changed from $11 to $11.50

REVIEW: This NEW EPCOT Snack Left Us DIVIDED

La hacienda de san angel.

Here’s how Starters have changed:

• Totopos changed from $8.25 to $9
• Tlayuda description changed from “Oaxacan tostada, shaved Ribeye, chipotle black beans, Ranchera salsa, queso fresco, spring onions and cilantro” to “Oaxacan tostada, guacamole, salsa macha, marinated tuna, jicama, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and chipotle aioli”
• REMOVED: Sope de Cochinita  and  Crema de Elote
• Ensalada Hacienda description changed from “Chopped Romaine with jicama, queso fresco and cilantro-lime vinaigrette” to “Arugula, watermelon, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and queso fresco with a lime oregano vinaigrette” and price changed from $13 to $14
• ADDED: Tlacoyo con Carnitas  — Fried masa topped with beans, pork carnitas, salsa verde, cotija cheese and pickled onions for  $15

Here’s how the Entrees menu was updated:

• REMOVED: Chile Relleno , Cochinita Pibil , and Tacos de Carnitas de Pato
• ADDED: Tacos de Langosta  — Fried lobster in flour tortillas, shredded cabbage, chipotle aioli, salsa verde and mango relish. Served with rice for  $38
• ADDED: Enchiladas de Chorizo — Corn tortillas filled with plant-based chorizo, atop beans, covered with Ranchera salsa, Monterey Jack cheese, crema Mexicana, cotija cheese, and crispy onions. Served with plantains with crema Mexicana and cotija cheese for $30
• ADDED: Tacos al Pastor  — Marinated and seared pork topped with grilled pineapple, onions, and cilantro. Served with plantains with crema Mexicana and cotija cheese. Sides of guacamole, rice, and corn tortillas for $34

Chile Relleno

Here’s how the Margaritas menu changed:

• La Cava Avocado changed from $17.50 to $18.50
• El Diablo changed from $17.50 to $18
• Clásica changed from $16 to $17

REVIEW: Queso, Tacos, and Amazing Service? Our REVIEW of La Hacienda de San Angel in EPCOT

San Angel Inn

These menu changes seem to be happening all over the Mexico Pavilion. At San Angel Inn, we’ve got some changes with Appetizers:

• REMOVED: Tamal de Rajas and Costillas de Puerco
• Tostadas de Pollo description changed from “Crispy Corn Tortillas topped with Beans, Chipotle Chicken, Cilantro, Queso Fresco and Crema Mexicana” to “Crispy corn tortillas topped with beans, chilled shredded chicken, romaine lettuce, salsa verde, pico de gallo, and queso fresco”
• ADDED: Chilaquiles Con Pato  — Tortilla chips tossed in Ranchera salsa, topped with crispy duck carnitas, cotija cheese, crema Mexicana, and onions for  $15
• ADDED: Quesadilla del Mercado  — Handmade corn masa tortilla filled with Monterey Jack cheese, chorizo, and potatoes for  $16

Here’s how Entrees changed:

• Camarones a la Diabla changed from $31 to $32
• Enchiladas de Pollo changed from $29.50 to $31
• Baja Tacos de Pescado changed from $31 to $32

Come Eat $30 Tacos in EPCOT With Us and See If They’re Worth It

Disney’s boardwalk inn, flying fish.

The Organic Chicken with Peas has been changed to just  Organic Chicken .

Flying Fish Cafe

It’s served with Butternut Squash Agnolotti, Chestnuts, and Maple-Brown Butter Jus for $39.

The 5 BEST Things To Get at Flying Fish Restaurant in Disney World

Disney’s coronado springs resort.

The  Mexican Mocha Lava Cake has been removed from the dessert menu.

It’s been replaced by  Mexican Chocoflan Cake for  $14.

We Tried the NEW MENU at a Disney World Mexican Restaurant. Is It a Hit or a Miss?

Disney’s polynesian village resort.

Breakfast Sides have changed: Bacon, Pork Sausage, Ham, or Spiced Ham has been removed, while Bacon or Pork Sausage  was added for  $5.50.

Under Kids’ Create-Your-Own Entrées, Mickey-shaped Pancakes changed from $9.25 to $9.50.

Specialty Beverages also changed: Liliko’i Mimosa changed from $14.50 to $15 . Under Non-Alcoholic Specialty Beverages, Stitch Smoothie changed from $6.49 to $6.75.

Under Lunch, the Allergy-Friendly Kona Stir-fry with Chicken changed from $24.50 to $28.

Under Sides for lunch and dinner, Grilled Asparagus changed from $8 to $8.50.

REVIEW: Is This Disney World Hotel Restaurant Worth Leaving the Parks for Lunch?

Disney’s yacht club resort.

Yachtsman Steakhouse

Under Sides, the  Paprika Fries have been replaced with  Truffle Fries .

The fries are  $10.50.

REVIEW: Is The CHEESIEST Soup in Disney World Hiding at This Forgotten Restaurant?

Disney’s grand floridian resort & spa.

Narcoossee’s

A new cocktail has been added to the menu and it sounds divine:  Pumpkin Butter Cocktail .

It’s made with Los Siete Misterios mezcal, Amaro Nonino, house-made pumpkin butter, vanilla, and a torched spiced marshmallow for  $17.

REVIEW: This Disney World Hotel Restaurant Is Close to Perfection. Yes, Really.

Disney’s saratoga springs resort.

The Artist’s Palette

Apple Cobbler Danish has been removed from the bakery menu.

That’s the only change here.

REVIEW: We Found Table-Service Quality on a Fast Food Budget at This Disney World Hotel

Disney’s all-star music resort.

Intermission Food Court

The menu here has changed: Ham and Cheese Sandwich has been removed.

Greek Salad with Roasted Red Pepper Hummus has also been removed from the menu.

REVIEW: I Abandoned My Disney World Park Day and Went Straight to the All-Star Music Hotel. Here’s Why.

Disney’s art of animation resort.

Landscape of Flavors

The Greek Salad with Roasted Red Pepper Hummus  has been removed from the menu.

That’s the only update here.

The Deterioration of Landscape of Flavors Food Court From Awesome To Awful

Disney springs, d-luxe burger.

The Citrus Burger has been added to the menu.

Citrus Burger

It’s made with a pressed signature blend patty, citrus-braised pork belly, grapefruit paloma aioli, pickled and fried fennel, and lettuce for  $14.49.

REVIEW: We Tried 14 (!!) Brand New Disney World Snacks

Homecomin’

The lunch and dinner menus have changed. Here’s how Starters got updated:

• Thigh High Chicken Biscuits changed from $19 to $20
• Bunch of Puppies changed from $14 to $15
• Jasper Board description changed from “An array of Southern charcuterie. Shaved honey ham, smoked sausage, country ham, pimento cheese, chicken salad, tomato-bacon jam, B&B pickles, candied pecans, crostini, and house made crackers” to “An array of Southern charcuterie. Shaved honey ham, smoked sausage, country ham, pimento cheese, tomato-bacon jam, B&B pickles, candied pecans, crostini, and crackers
• REMOVED: Fried Chicken Tenders

Jasper Board

Salads and Such also changed:

• Addie Mae’s Chicken & Dumpling Soup changed from $15 to  $16
• ADDED: 1981 Salad  — Honey ham, roasted artichoke, tomato, Swiss cheese, and Spanish olives with chopped romaine, and spring lettuce mix with a sauce made with Worcestershire, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and vinegar for  $20

Under Buns and Such, the following items were updated:

• REMOVED: Britton’s Chicken Salad Sandwich
• Catfish Sandwich changed from $19 to $20
• ADDED: Meatloaf Sandwich  — House-made meatloaf topped with melted white cheddar, chunky ketchup, lettuce, and B&B pickles on a ciabatta bun for  $20

Main Plates also changed:

• REMOVED: Braised Short Ribs, Baby Back Ribs, Chopped Pork Barbecue, and Tampa-style Cuban Sandwich
• Skillet-fried Chicken Paillard changed from $29 to $30
• Country Fried Steak   changed from $30 to $32 
• Kitchen Plate changed from $22 to $24
• ADDED: Meatloaf Main Plate  — House-made meatloaf served with creamy mashed potatoes, Southern green beans, and a cheddar drop biscuit for  $30
• ADDED: Smothered Chicken — Chef Art’s famous fried chicken thigh atop creamy mashed potatoes and sauteed broccolini, smothered in house-made onion gravy and topped with crispy bacon for  $32

Country Fried Steak

Here’s how Sides changed:

• Momma’s Mac and Cheese changed from $9 to $10
• REMOVED: Sweet Potato Mash Skillet

Shine On Tap was also changed: all drinks changed from $15 to  $16.  The Cold Cans menu also changed: Rotating Craft removed  Hidden Springs Orange Crush, Golden Road Brewing Mango Cart, and Hidden Springs ZFG . It now features:

• Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat, Eureka, CA | Wheat Ale Fruited
• Stone Delicious Hazy, Escondido, CA | Hazy IPA
• Crooked Can Florida Sunshine, Orlando, FL | Pilsen Malt Lager

Here’s how Craft Cocktails got updated:

Let’s start with the changes on the brunch menu at Homecomin’. First, the Rise n’ Shine cocktails have changed:

• REMOVED: The Local , Memphis Belle, Cranberry Gin Fizz, Apple Pie A La Mode, and The Hummingbird
• ADDED: Dragon Fruit Mojito  — Siesta Key silver rum with prickly pear puree, purple dragon fruit, fresh mint, and lime for  $17
• The Honeybee  — Tom Cat gin, honey syrup, and fresh squeezed lemon topped with house-made honey foam for  $16
• ADDED: Cowboy Colada  — Old Forester rye with pineapple, Coco Lopez, and maraschino cherry juice for  $16

I Ate Lunch With Homecomin’ Chef Art Smith in Disney World…and He Had Some Secrets to Share!

Disney World menus are constantly changing, and if you want to keep up with them, you can check the Disney World website or My Disney Experience app. However, we’ll let you know when menus change, so you can just keep checking with us!

Disney dining changes are a lot to keep up with! We’ve done all the research for you in writing our DFB Guide to Walt Disney World Dining ! We’ve got details on EVERY dining location at Walt Disney World inside our eBook – and it’s easy to download to your tablet or smartphone to take with you on your next trip.

OL’ RELIABLES — The 3 Disney World Restaurants AJ Recommends Every Time

Join the dfb newsletter to get all the breaking news right in your inbox click here to subscribe, we know disney. you can, too..

Oh boy, planning a Disney trip can be quite the adventure, and we totally get it! But fear not, dear friends, we compiled EVERYTHING you need (and the things to avoid!) to plan the ULTIMATE Disney vacation.

Whether you're a rookie or a seasoned pro, our insider tips and tricks will have you exploring the parks like never before. So come along with us, and get planning your most magical vacation ever!

GET YOUR GUIDE NOW

What’s your favorite restaurant in Disney World? Let us know what you love about it in the comments!

TRENDING NOW

We were quite surprised to see such a large area covered by construction walls and...

Get deluxe Disney World hotel perks without deluxe Disney World hotel prices.

Lougefly Mania is real. How do we know? Cause we totally have it! Yup, a...

This special D23 event sounds like a BLAST.

Disney Visa Cardmembers get access to special Disney perks and these two perks are so...

We've got a warning about riding TRON Lightcycle / Run in Disney World!

We had hope for a while, especially earlier this year, but now we're really starting...

There are a few different Disney Springs resort options, but a new hotel has just...

We tried out the NEW menu at La Hacienda de San Angel in EPCOT! Come...

Let's talk about how much it really costs to go on a Disney World vacation...

New characters from "Inside Out 2" are now available for this popular Disney souvenir!

Disney souvenir alert at T.J. Maxx!

We recently noticed something black, toothless, and winged pop up in Epic Universe that is...

Disney typically leads the way when it comes to being inclusive of all food allergies,...

Two classic Halloween movies are coming back to theaters!

Value Resorts may only have one dining option, but trust us, their food courts make...

Sometimes we really luck up and can tell you about some of the more unique...

There's a rare Pixar character in EPCOT right now -- see where you can find...

Three BIG changes could be in store for Disney World in 2025.

Disney+ subscribers need to be taking advantage of these perks!

September 1, 2024 at 8:15 pm

Wow! Higher prices! That’s exciting. Good job, Disney. Maybe this will help you avoid a hostile take over.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER EBOOKS

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED