Everything Pop Dining - May 2021
During our recent Disney World trip in May 2021, we stayed at Pop Century. During this time, there were still a lot of COVID protocols going on. [I am not sure when you are reading this as to the accuracy of how things are in the present, so keep that in mind.] With these changes, I wanted to refresh our experience at the food court here at Pop.
First off, mobile ordering was the norm at all quick service locations that we encountered. At Pop that was not any different. One big thing to note here is that they do enforce your order needing to be ready in order to go inside. The exception is if you have the refillable mugs. Mobile ordering was super easy, and we had little issues. We could not really ever time it just perfect to avoid waiting once we arrived outside. The one time we did, our food was cold.
There are a few differences in mobile ordering since my last post about it in 2019. One - you now have to select a window of time when placing your order. We never had any issues getting a time nearby at all the places we ate. However, I would recommend having a plan and looking ahead to make sure time slots aren’t filling up, especially during busier times. Two - you can place your order any time the day of since you are picking your time slot. While this is nice, say for lunch or dinner, at breakfast you have to wait until the restaurant is open. So if you are hoping to eat right as 7 when the food court opens, it won’t happen. It’ll likely be closer to 7:15 especially depending on what you order. Three - I found less limitations vs the old mobile ordering process. For instance, before I felt like getting things customized wasn’t always possible. And sometimes items that a restaurant sold was not always available mobile ordering (milk was a big one we found to be an issue in the past.
With COVID, the inside of the food court is entirely different. So going back to mobile ordering here is how things work.
Mobile order your food using the app and a designated time slot. [Exceptions - if you are paying with cash or need ordering assistance, they do have a register open for this. Just let the castmember at the entrance know. Another one is if you have refillable mugs. Just show the mugs to the castmember at the entrance, and they will wave you through.]
Once you order your food, click “I’m here” for them to prepare your order. We could never time this perfectly to avoid waiting in the lobby.
You will sort of see a countdown when your order is being prepared. You don’t really get a time reference, you just see it is happening, ha.
Once you have the purple screen that says your order is ready, head to the food court ENTRANCE. You will find this in the lobby of the hotel. Look for signs that point to mobile order vs shopping. This was on the right side for us during our stay.
Don’t put your phone away yet though. There will be one other castmember that you will need to show once you get inside of the gift shop before getting to go to the food court. It’s the person in the blue shirt in the picture below.
Now you will follow the signs to the pick up area.
Your purple screen should have a pick up number on it. Look for that number and your food. Sometimes we just grabbed our food and left as there was no castmember. Other times there was a castmember asking for our order number or name. If you have a cold item, such as an ice cream bar, you will notice a note on your tray. A castmember will get it for you once you arrive.
From there you can go find a table and/or get your drink. The drink station did have directional arrows, but this was half used on our trip since there was rarely multiple people up there.
The Food
I don’t have pictures of every single thing we ordered, but I will try to touch on most of it. We had breakfast twice during our trip. One morning we split the bounty platter. Another morning we got both a bounty platter and then an order of the Mickey Waffles. The morning we split the bounty platter, it was fairly cold due to us not timing it correctly with the “I’m here”. The bacon and sausage were both fine. My parents’ bacon was fairly fatty this morning though. I really loved eggs and waffles. The potatoes were just ok. It was all good the morning it was warm.
So while it isn’t food specific, we did opt to get refillable mugs this trip. It was $20 for each of us, but we used it quite a bit. We had, I think, 5-6 meals plus some snacks and evening drinks. My parents didn’t get one because they had drinks in their rooms that they brought to the food court.
Ok, back to food. So our first night we had the pizza. It was pretty good. Not quite my favorite resort pizza, but it was still better than most. It also came with a salad. I never did eat it, but we did save it in our room in case we got a desire for it. We also bought some green apples with caramel for Melody, but she never ate them. I ended up eating them one morning for breakfast. I also had the turkey sandwich another night for dinner. It was not my favorite by any means. It was edible, and I made due with it, but I would not order it again. It wasn’t fresh which was obvious, and I didn’t love the chunks of mozzarella. I think I was expecting slices or even melted.
Some of the snacks/desserts we had were the cinnamon roll (decent), apple danish (ok), Mickey bar (just the standard), tie-dye cheesecake (eh, would not get again, but I guess I can say I have had it), Mickey rice krispie treat (stale), and the cookies and cream cupcake (Brad loved).
So while the food was not stellar, it is a hotel food court. I don’t think it was really any worse than most Disney food courts (at least when it comes to a value and most moderate resorts [French Quarter doesn’t count]). I did love the lack of crowds when going to the food court this time around. That was one of the worst parts about our first stay at Pop. It was a battle to get a drink after a day at the park, not to mention the waits for food. At least now you don’t have to fight for a table or a place in line. I did get frustrated by the lack of some of the amenities due to COVID. So we could not get cream for our coffee unless it was from the little individual packs which I don’t love. We also had issues at the end of the night getting condiments. On our first night, I got a refill of unsweet tea. I wanted to get some sweet and low, but the staff already covered up the condiments (the food court was open another 10 minutes at least). He refused to uncover it for one sweet and low packet. At the end of a long travel day, that was super frustrating. I do think a lot of people did not like the idea of not being able to get inside the food court without an order or cup, but I really liked the lack of crowds. And there was still plenty of seating outside if you wanted to just sit somewhere without food or a drink. Overall, this was a better experience staying here than the first trip.
