Tusker House has been one of our go-to restaurants for a few years now. In this post, I explore why I’ve long been a fan of this Animal Kingdom restaurant while also offering a bit of commentary on our recent disappointing experience. Read on to see what we think of Tusker House Restaurant!
Tusker House Restaurant Basics
Tusker House is a character meal buffet restaurant located inside Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Reservations are recommended, but a walk-up list is often available. I’ve never had trouble getting an advance dining reservation for Tusker House. I usually book a few weeks in advance, at most. When I do run into limited availability at restaurants, I use MouseDining.
We don’t use Disney Dining Plans. If you do, Tusker House requires one table service credit (and would be a good use of it, in our book). For dinner, Tusker House costs $64+tax and gratuity per adult and $42+tax and gratuity per child. Annual passholders (including us) get a 10% discount.
Tusker House is overshadowed by the more famous Tiffins restaurant at Animal Kingdom. I’ve actually never eaten at Tiffins. Many of the arguments I make in support of Tusker House in this post would apply to Tiffins, too.
Tusker House Restaurant - Perfect on Paper
My love for Tusker House ultimately comes from my love for efficient theme park touring. It just so happens that Tusker House is, on paper, a perfect part of a day at Animal Kingdom.
Let’s start with a contrast. I very rarely eat table service meals at Magic Kingdom. The reason is that there’s just so much to do at Magic Kingdom. A table service meal is at least an hour out of your day, and it’s at a fixed time. I prefer quick service, which is usually faster and always more flexible. The last thing I want is to snag a Lightning Lane for Space Mountain at the same time I’m supposed to be at Skipper Canteen, when I could just grab a quick bit at The Lunching Pad or Cosmic Ray’s.
But a Tusker House dinner—dinner, specifically—works very well when visiting Animal Kingdom. Animal Kingdom generally won’t take a full day to experience. Dinner reservation times often allow you to book close to the time the park closes (starting your meal, say, 30 minutes before close). Since there’s no major nighttime show at Animal Kingdom, a late dinner takes very little away from your day.
Tusker House is also a character meal. There’s a lot to quibble with when it comes to food and dining experiences at Disney World’s character meals, but I still think the chance to get a handful of fun, themed greetings in from the “comfort” of your dinner table is pretty valuable.
Tusker House also usually has pretty good reservation availability, including same-day and walk-up availability. While I always recommend booking in advance, just keep this in mind if you’re in the park with some spare time and looking for a dinner option.
As a final quick note, I enjoy the theming of the restaurant. But it really just fits in with the rest of the land. You could contrast this with, say, EPCOT’s Space 220, where the meal itself really is a destination.
Our Experiences at Tusker House Restaurant
As discussed above, my preference is to book Tusker House dinner, preferably near park closing time. Animal Kingdom had a relatively late close of 8PM on our last visit, and we weren’t looking to pack everything into that day, so I opted for a 5:55PM reservation.
Tusker House is located in Animal Kingdom between the main Harambe stage and Festival of the Lion King. The host podium is located near Dawa Bar.
We checked in via the Disney World app once we were close to the restaurant, and we were texted that our table was ready 2 minutes later.
Tusker House Food
We’ve only ever eaten dinner at Tusker House. I think breakfast can make sense, particularly if you have some combination of Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane purchases, but a late (relative to park hours) dinner is our preferred option.
You can see the dinner menu here. As vegetarian non-foodies we don’t have much to offer by way of specific food commentary.
Generally, I love the food at Tusker House. Since I mostly eat quick service theme park food (or hotel food court food), I love Tusker House’s African-inspired options as a change of pace during trips. The meatless options aren’t particularly deep, but in an all-you-can-eat context, I’ve not left hungry. I particularly enjoyed the blueberry banana bread pudding (African-inspired?) at our last visit.
Tusker House Characters
The appeal of character meals is that you get to meet some of Disney World’s most popular characters without dealing with finding them and waiting in line. The official character lineup at Tusker House is “Donald Duck and his Disney friends”. Typically, this means Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Mickey, but you’d really only be right to consider Donald guaranteed.
Now, I’ve had plenty of character meals, and they don’t always go as you’d hope. There is an overall “assembly line” feel to the whole experience. The characters have to make it to every table, they do in a mostly specific order, and they only have so much time at each table.
Generally I’d not say any experiences have gone badly, but, for example, at our last Chef Mickey’s visit we were through the greetings so quickly that Zoe was a bit deflated, perhaps feeling like the whole thing was a blur of missed opportunity.
Our most recent visit to Tusker House was good, but with one major problem. We were seated just before 6PM, and we had met Goofy, Donald, and Daisy by 6:20. None of them seemed particularly rushed, and all took some time to interact with Zoe a fine amount.
The problem, as Donald might say, was that oh-too-popular Mickey Mouse. For whatever reason, Mickey missed our table during that round of visits. It’s possible he had already done our area by the time we arrived, so there’s no issue there. But then he maybe missed it again? Our waiter said he’d try and help at some point, but then Mickey took a break. We finally met him at 7:18PM.
I don’t want to belabor this issue. It obviously isn’t disastrous, but it shouldn’t take 78 minutes for a character to make it to a table at a character meal ($64 per adult worth remembering at this point, too). Fortunately for us, we had nowhere else to be. The extra ~18 minutes this meal required than it should have probably just cut into time we’d spend watching “Can’t Miss Magic” (or “the must-do”, as we still call it) before bed.
But if this were a lunch and you’d spent money on some Lightning Lanes timed around this meal, you might not be totally thrilled with that 58 minutes between characters, particularly when you’re waiting for Mickey Mouse.
It irks me more than it maybe should because, as I wrote above, Tusker House is pretty perfect on paper. There’s no reason to squander all the things that should be working for a restaurant because you can’t effectively manage the character visits.
Conclusions
You’d be right to infer that if I’d had the same experience in a different context, this review would not have led with how great I think the restaurant is. While it frustrates me that Tusker House didn’t deliver a perfect experience in this instance, it’s also still the case that there was no harm, no foul.
My underlying position remains unchanged. The combination of characters, good food, and an easy-to-tour Animal Kingdom makes Tusker House a meal worth considering.
The price—$64+tax and gratuity per adult and $42+tax and gratuity per child—is a bit much. It’s worth remembering that Animal Kingdom has at least two great quick service restaurants—Satu’li Canteen and Flame Tree Barbecue. Add into consideration Yak & Yeti (table service or quick service) and famed Tiffins, with entree’s starting at $36, and, as usually, you’re paying for the characters.
Mickey and Minnie have a separate greeting at Animal Kingdom, also in themed outfits. Back when that greeting had a Lightning Lane, the case for Tusker House was maybe a little more limited. But nowadays, the chance to meet four themed characters goes some way to justifying the cost. We’re big fans of Donald, so that helps, specifically.
It’s going to be a leisurely few years at Animal Kingdom. The 2027 debut of Pueblo Esperanza will bring the park closer to true “full day” status. But until then, at least, I think Tusker House makes a lot of sense as a part of a day at Animal Kingdom. Just bring your appetite, your camera, and maybe a little bit of patience.
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