Dining in the Prehistoric Age: A Review of T-Rex Cafe
For my son’s birthday, we went to T-Rex Cafe at Disney Springs. Touristy, I know, but he is obsessed with dinosaurs at-the-moment. We have never been before, even when we came to Orlando as tourists, because the lines outside are always super long. I mean like 45 minutes to an hour wait and ain’t nobody got time for that with hungry kids in tow. But in turns out, you can make a reservation! How wonderful is that. Five minutes after we arrived, we were shown to a table.
The Setting
Since the name of the restaurant is T-Rex, you would assume that the restaurant focuses on dinosaurs and you would be mostly right. The restaurant features replicas of dinosaurs as well as animatronic dinosaurs that come “alive”. The restaurant also features a wooly mammoth and a giant octopus with tentacles that move.
The restaurant is separated into different rooms. There is an ice age room, a meteor shower room, and an underwater room. You are allowed to walk around the restaurant and look at the different rooms and all the animals; they are all extremely lifelike (well I assume they are having never seen a real dinosaur up close). My son was really excited to see a Wooly Mammoth and a pteranodon; he recognized the latter from Dinosaur Train on PBS.
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One of the main highlights is the meteor shower that takes place every 20 minutes That’s when meteors stream across the sky, I mean ceiling of the restaurant, and all the animals go crazy. The restaurant does get dark at this point and there is thunder in the background. I will be honest, and say that some kids will love this and others won’t, but it’s not aged based. My 3-year old loved it, my 8-year old not so much. You know your kids best, so you’ll know whether it is an experience they will enjoy.
Food
While the setting is important, it is a restaurant, so we did go there to eat. The food was definitely nothing to write home about. It wasn’t bad; it wasn’t good. It was simply average. They do have a lot of options though including burgers, meatloaf, steak and shrimp. We had a variety of dishes at our table and nobody complained, but nobody raved either.
Where T-Rex definitely shines is the beverages. They have a ton of beverages, from beer and wine, to blended drinks. They even have specialty drinks for the kids. You can also order ICEEs for them in a specialty cup with a little dinosaur animal at the bottom. We got those for the kids, and they had a blast playing with their dinosaur toys during dinner.
If you are celebrating a special occasion, definitely order the Chocolate Extinction for dessert. We got one for the table. It comes with a beaker with smoke coming out of it in the middle. (it’s dry ice, so totally safe for the kiddos). My kids were totally fascinated and had fun playing with the “smoke”. The chocolate cake with caramel in it was pretty good too.
Go or No
I would definitely recommend checking out the T-Rex restaurant. It was a pretty fun experience. If you plan to go, make sure you make a reservation and order something simple like a burger and fries and you will have a great time.