August 26, 2016It’s a great time to be a fan of themed entertainment with salvos of corporate cash aimed squarely at building out our wildest dreams and fantasies in Orlando. AND we lucky denizens of Twitter get to dissect everything in disgustingly excruciating detail. I don’t blame y’all; naturally, we compare and contrast. I like it. It’s fun. You can’t hurt a corporation’s feelings. GO NUTS.
It’s the DisTwitter™ reaction to Toothsome Chocolate Emporium & Savory Feast Kitchen, however, that is somehow actually grinding my gears. YES, THIS IS A STEAMPUNK REFERENCE. SEE ALSO: FAMILY GUY.
Toothsome is an ambitious project. The menu is varied and aims for a large swath of theme park goers. You can score brunch, a $46 steak, macarons, or even, heavens yes, those robber baron milkshakes. $13 a pop makes even a Rockefeller blush (but, then again, maybe they didn’t charge enough based on those oft decried 20-minute wait times). Does it do these things well? It remains to be seen, but we’ll probably need more than an arsenal of opening night hot takes to find out.
Yes, Toothsome is a Wonka rip off. It even ripped off that guy from Ohio that had a dream of a chocolate factory once. I still want to experience it: Toothsome looks fantastically whimsical. The stellar steampunk design and creative food presentation allows it to serve as an awesome, needed welcome mat for Islands of Adventure. This is what we should expect out of theme park dining, right? Certainly, the verdict is still out on service, consistancy and food quality. Yet even the staunchest Universal detractor must admit that the theming is compelling and it’s a wonderful upgrade from NBA City.
WARNING: INCOMING HOT TAKE
NBA City Closed in July 2015. Toothsome opened in August 2016. Roughly an 11-month total table service transformation. Let’s talk about a much less ambitious effort on an 11-month refurbishment: Pizza Planet.
Things finally started to come together for fans of Disney Hollywood Studios (DHS) late last year. Toy Story Land is coming! Yes! Well, we have to do something about that misplaced Pizza Planet! Alright! It’s going down for refurbishment! BIG THINGS ARE COMING. It almost looked as if we had a bright new direction for DHS. But things languished, as they always seem to do at our sad little movie park. Any change was still widely welcomed: Pizza Planet was the worst quick service at Walt Disney World. The food was bad and the theme fell way short of the visuals we were treated to in Toy Story. Pizza Planet always seemed like an afterthought shoehorned into a vacant corner of DHS.
As opposed to the months of build up for Toothsome, DHS fans faced months of deafening silence. Then, out of the blue, it happened: PizzeRizzo landed like the thud of a big wad of pizza dough. I actually think Disney took my comment card about Pizza Planet a little too seriously when I said “Rats could make better pizza.”
The thing I like about PizzeRizzo; it helps further define a Muppet themed land.
So how does PizzeRizzo go so wrong, even before opening? I had horrifying thoughts: What if the pizza doesn’t change at all? I have nightmares of Disney College Program members showing up every day for work making pizza the Pizza Planet Way for no one, so that the secrets of making the worst pizza imaginable are not lost to the ages. Maybe that’s why this up fit has taken so long, building around an active kitchen of terribleness and all. Pizza reoccupying this space would have been my last choice, given the spectre of terrible pizza still lurking within the walls and the serviceable Mama Melrose’s just up the street.
Does the reinstallation of a pizza joint foreclose an actual Pizza Planet in Toy Story Land? The ever shrinking concept art makes one think that particular dream is dead. Further, this expert-level trolling is unimaginable for those who want the addition of a certain rat chef to EPCOT, yet are saddled with a third rate Muppet rat. Seriously, how many awesome characters did they have to go through to get to Rizzo? And why did we just ignore the poor Swedish Chef? Disney would at least have a built in excuse for the food being poor with Mr. Herpity Derpity at the helm.
The PizzeRizzo concept lacks creativity in a park that sorely needs it. I ain’t mad at ya, DisTwitter™: keep those hot takes coming. But I say this out of my unrequited love for Disney Hollywood Studios: wouldn’t we have wanted a Muppet restaurant to be half as ambitious as Toothsome Chocolate Emporium & Savory Feast Kitchen?
