| Location | Polynesian Village Resort |
| Type of Food | Polynesian, Buffet |
| Price Range | About $60 Per Person |
| Family Friendly | Yes |
| Reservations | Yes |
| Characters | Sometimes |
| Overall Rating | 4.5 Stars |
Madison’s Review
Ohana has become one of my favorite dining experiences at WDW. It is located on the second floor of Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort. You check in and have a seat by the large windows overlooking Bay Lake and the Magic Kingdom. We had a great time so we could see the fireworks while we waited for our buzzer to go off.
When it was our turn to be seated they took us through a line of totem poles while the hostess explained how the dinner worked. Once through the totem poles, she grabbed us a loaf of pineapple-coconut bread from the warmer (which was delicious) and continued to our table. Our table was right across from the fire pit, where the meat is cooked. It was nice and warm being near all that fire. Just as we are seated a game for the children is beginning so it got a little crowded around our table, but it was fun to watch.
The waiter comes over to take our drink orders and drops off the bowl of salad. The salad was a mixed greens salad with a Lilikoi dressing (which is a type of passion fruit). It was very good but not worth the stomach space to eat a lot of it. Next the waiter brought us pork dumplings with two dipping sauces. One was a peanut sauce and the other was a sweet-n-sour sauce. Honestly they didn’t do much for me. Most of the food was so good on its own it did not need sauce, however I have heard many people love the peanut sauce so you should give it a try. The pork dumplings weren’t anything special, but they were good. The waiter also dropped off honey-coriander chicken wings. I really enjoyed these, they were one of my favorites of the meal. The flavor was very good; you could really taste the honey.
Before we could even finish what was on the table, the waiter dropped off a plate of noddles and vegetables. I truly loved these noddles. They weren’t anything special or unique, they just tasted very good. They were tossed in a teriyaki sauce and that flavor really stood out. The vegetables were stir-fried and had that teriyaki flavor as well. At this point our table is completely full, so it is a good thing that the meat is delivered by skewers right onto your plate.
There were three types of meat: chicken, steak, and shrimp. The chicken was by far the best. It is a sweet-n-sour chicken cooked over an open fire. It was nice and tender and just tasted amazing. Everyone else seemed to really love it too because it was hard to get more of it. The steak was okay. It is a szechuan sirloin steak, also prepared over an open fire. It is cooked to medium (but seemed closer to medium-rare) but you can put in a special order to have it cooked differently. The piece I got was too pink for me and I barely ate it. It was also quite tough and just overall was not a good piece of steak. Lastly was the spicy grilled peel-n-eat shrimp. These shrimp were huge! I don’t think I have seen such big shrimp before. Too bad the taste wasn’t as impressive. Actually these just weren’t good. I had already had low expectations of the shrimp from a review I read online and these were worse than I had expected. Word of advice, just skip the shrimp.
The best is always saved for last. The dessert is almost reason in itself to go to Ohana. The main dessert is bread pudding a la mode with banana-caramel sauce. This was truly the best part of the meal. We have been to The Spirit of Aloha and this dessert is very similar and just as good. Also, because it was my birthday the waiter brought me a kids dessert with a candle in it. The kids dessert is a brownie with a marshmallow topping and M&M’s.
Overall, I highly recommend checking out Ohana once. The food is not the best food I have had at Disney but the experience (and dessert) makes it worth a trip there.
Steven’s Review
The Ohana restaurant is definitely a sight to see. There is a definitely a Hawaiian vibe as you enter the hotel. We were actually seated right in front of the pit (where the food was being prepared.) It was kind of cool and distracting to watch.
I wasn’t too fond of the salad but I’m mainly a Caesar guy. I think the majority of people would like it. The bread was good and very similar to the one at Spirit of Aloha. The noodles and vegetables depicted below were ok… I definitely liked the veggies more. The wings were pretty good but they aren’t your typical wings. The pork dumplings were a first for me and being the picky eater that I am I’ll admit I was hesitant. They were surprisingly pretty good but not my favorite.
My absolute favorite thing was actually the chicken. Cooked to perfection, the chicken has some kind of Hawaiian glaze to it that for me at least, made it irresistible. (The servers will come buy multiple times to offer you more of a particular item. I said yes to the chicken just about every time.) The steak that they serve isn’t well done but you can ask for it to cooked to order. So I did that and it came back unsatisfying. It really wasn’t worth the room in the stomach. The shrimp may be for all of you but it was NOT for me. I do not like to legs on my shrimp at all so I was totally turned away from them.
The dessert on the other hand….what a delight. Again very similar to the Spirit of Aloha… it’s like bread pudding and ice cream and Hawaii put together. It’s scrumptious and warm but cold all at the same time. Our waiter was very nice and in recognition of Madi’s birthday he brought her a cupcake with M&M’s.
Go check this place out it’s definitely worth the experience but I don’t think it’s my favorite place of all time.
Dining at Walt Disney World 