DW Lunch - Paddlefish (Disney Springs)

Onto lunch for DW. While we were slumming it at Hollywood Studios she was lording it at Paddlefish, the signature fish place in the steamboat at Disney Springs. This has always had a hit and miss reputation, for service especially going back to its older name of Fulton’s Crab House. DW was keen to come here when I suggested that it could be a way to use a spare credit we had and she was keen after the Boathouse to have more oysters. As she might put it...

I already know

She started with the default Jameson’s and Diet coke then ordered oysters as a starter. These aren’t available on Deluxe DDP but, well it’s DW so they were


She really liked these with the hot sauce but preferred the option at The Boathouse to select different oysters as it made for a more interesting starter, here it was just one type.

As a main course she ordered this beauty:


Crab legs served with potatoes and corn on the cob. Again this was a hit, top quality seafood action. Finally, dessert was ordered to go:

New York-style Cheesecake (Farm-fresh strawberry compote)

It’s somewhere in our much abused hotel fridge, haven’t tried it yet (might not as it probably tastes of steak by now) but she was happy with this too.

The bill came to $78


Compared to the other signatures that’s fairly reasonable if you scale up to 3 at $232 and she was very impressed with Paddlefish. Apparently the service was very good too.

Dinner at Yachtsman to follow

Except for the dark chocolate 🤢 that’s a good choice of Ghirardelli bars your wife picked up!

Top sushi effort by your daughter!

Your burger from Sci-Fi sounds like my perfect burger so that’s going back on the list. With fries though not that wheatberry salad, I’m not a weirdo

Yummy yachtsman ... top lobster bisque in there... hope you have a good one we are off to ‘Ohana... we are starving we went out with only magic bands today (my bid to travel light with phone only) to epcot and got there to find out the magic band system was (and still is) down ... I scraped about ten dollars from our pockets so we could get a nudel gratin to share from Germany before getting rained off... can’t wait to see what you make of Yachtsman ... I have paddlefish envy I would love that but Eva won’t go kids eh?

Your DWs choice of dark chocolate sounds like the kind of thing I would do... a guaranteed way of ensuring bars of chocolate that only I would touch, safe from children and husbands because they won’t eat the dark stuff. I believe your DW to be a genius!

Except for the dark chocolate it's what we asked her to get Oi about the wheatberry salad there was no way we were finishing even one portion of the chips so we were sharing those and I tried it in the interests of dining research


It was great, posting in a moment. Paddlefish they have a brunch that is less fishy, would that work? I got hit by the EPCOT thing too, no wallet with me either. It impacted on the German hot dog transaction for the t-shirt challenge Have a great rest of your holiday!



hmm maybe, she certainly thinks she is Not sure she likes toffee enough to eat it though but we'll see if it disappears!

I think Nine Dragons is unfairly bashed, there was nothing wrong with our meal there, it’s just not really to my tastes. I think the lunch is fantastic value.

I say Narcoosees with a short O. I’ve always wondered if I was saying it correctly because once a CM in Magic Kingdom asked where I was going for dinner and when I told her she looked at me like I had three heads. If I wasn’t so lazy I’d be jumping for joy that you loved the cheesecake, I think it’s the best dessert in Disney. Oh gosh now I am wondering why we aren’t going this year. I need to try the surf and turf.

I will let the sushi pass, due to the toil involved in making it. It sounds like maybe the real thing would have agreed with you more! Another thing that you could have tried as a snack credit if Food & Wine started earlier! Damn Disney and their inconsiderate timing.

My OH loves that Oreo shake at Sci-Fi, he talks about it all the time. I think they have the best burgers on-site so I am glad to see you enjoyed yours.

Paddlefish got a big thumbs up from me too! The picture of the crab’s legs has me ruing that we’re not doing Cape May for dinner this year.

Dinner - Yachtsman Steakhouse (Yacht Club Hotel)

Last night’s dinner in my everlasting quest to catch up with our eating! We were at Yachtsman Steakhouse in the hotel. We had a quick drink at one of the hotel’s many dire bars (Ale and Compass Lounge rather than Martha’s Vineyard/Graveyard), negronis and an apple juice for DW.


When we got there, the check in process for Yachtsman was like god’s waiting room, great if you like being bossed around by pensioners ‘Your table isn’t ready yet. Go and sit on that bench over there.’ Apart from the quality of the food this restaurant is how I imagine it would be to live in a care home. We were put in a little side room that lacked the light of the main seating area which has the large glass windows onto the lake etc.

As our DDP drinks DD and I both went for red wine. We would have liked to have ordered a bottle for the first time in the holiday, my suggestion because the service looked like it would be slow. Anyway this isn’t possible on the DDP without either having a bottle plus 2 glasses of wine (way too much for us with DD in tow) or giving up the DDP alcoholic drinks to a value of half the bottle of wine (not going to happen). So we stuck with the glasses and Disney missed out, dumb!



DD was advised to try a non alcoholic strawberry daiquiri, pictured above. She loved this and we might have to try to make this for her at home at some point. Bread came next and the onion brioche was just wonderful, DW and I fought over these and had to negotiate our claims over the one that went back in a take-out box! Our server meantime was lovely if a little fussy, DD passed on a starter leaving DW and I to order respectively:



The cheese tasting plate is for DW. This was equally as good as Narcoossee. I went for the French Onion soup with a request to greatly reduce the amount of bread and cheese in there. This worked well, I got lots of gorgeous soup without having to dredge it out of a swamp, in future I’m going to try and always have it this way.

As a main course I ordered the filet mignon after agreeing with DW that we would share between this and the prime rib, in the end this didn’t really happen. I wanted the special baked potato side but they were out so the server gave me a substitute regular jacket that was pretty hard and not great even with sour cream and butter provided My sauce also came on the side despite me not asking for this I think the DD and DW reputation has got around the hotel!

My steak looked unloved but tasted excellent

DD ordered a monstrous 16oz ribeye (Truffle Fries, Black Garlic Aïoli, Point Reyes Blue Cheese Butter) of which she only ate the steak. The truffle fries were ok if a little overdone, in my experience these are usually awful but these ones did taste heavily of truffle and they aren’t scrimping on the most expensive ingredients, always a good sign. The steak was good of course, I am a bit worried DD will get iron poisoning from all this beef!


Then finally here is the DD prime rib which she ordered with mash and the sauces on the side.


Prime rib such a tender piece of steak this didn’t disappoint albeit a lot of steak went back for the slider goblin (a character DD and I invented to explain the mysterious overnight disappearance of steak and bread rolls from the fridge in our room ). Onto desserts and while we probably shouldn’t have done, we did. DW was the most restrained, she asked for and received a single scoop of strawberry sorbet.


I took the server’s recommendation of the creme brulee (he claimed best brulee at WDW and he may well be right). This was lovely, the caramel much thicker than usual but very tasty cream


DD chose the Lexington Sundae (Salted Caramel and Buttered Popcorn Gelatos, Crumbled Brown Butter Cookies, Caramel, Whipped Cream, Toasted Honey Marshmallow). I would have gone for this if I hadn’t eaten my whole steak. OMG this is incredible, a must order if you have a sweet tooth and come here! She attempted to eat the whole thing, failing gallantly then crawling upstairs with the rest of us.


The bill came to $249


Superb meal, boring, fashioned restaurant environment IMHO. It has that golf club/marina formal atmosphere that I can't stand even if the service is very good (albeit not particularly fast). It would be better to sit near the windows but they are not very flexible when you check in so it’s probably luck of the draw.

We're definitely on the same page with that day Narcoossee cheesecake was my favourite Disney dessert so far although I probably enjoyed my Beaches and Cream sundae just as much that was a make your own so doesn't really count. I just tried some of the Paddlefish cheesecake and that was good too, there's a restaurant that gets bashed I do hate the way in the social media age that everything has to be amazing or terrible, reality is that most things are either okay or inconsistent!

The sushi passes and good to hear of your OH's excellent taste in milkshakes, has he tried a Byron Oreo shake with malt added? If not he needs to it might be his thing too

You description of Yachtsman made me laugh, so funny...

I would go just for the Lexington sundae it might save a couple of pensioners from a heart attack 😉

Lol you were served by the famous Ricardo, he's a Yachtsman legend - he was there the day it opened and celebrated 30 years as a CM this year. We usually have a chat with him when we visit.