Columbia Harbour House
Columbia Harbour House is a quick-service restaurant in Liberty Square at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, Florida. Set on the boundary between Liberty Square and Fantasyland, opposite Haunted Mansion, it is presented as a colonial New England harbour house and tavern serving seafood. It opened in the summer of 1972, several months after the park itself, and was the first major Magic Kingdom restaurant to open after opening day that remains in operation.
History
The building was developed from atmospheric sketches by Imagineer Dorothea Redmond. Early plans and souvenir maps listed the location under other names, most often the Nantucket Harbour House, with New Bedford and Montauk Point also appearing in planning documents. By opening it had become Columbia Harbour House, taking its name from the Columbia, the American ship that in 1787 became the first from the United States to circumnavigate the globe, and from the Sailing Ship Columbia at Disneyland. A matching vessel for Florida's Rivers of America was considered during planning but was not built; a second riverboat was chosen instead for its greater capacity and shade.
When it opened, the restaurant was among the largest counter-service locations in the park, with kitchens and serving areas on two floors. The upstairs serving area was later taken out of use and the kitchen arrangement was simplified before the mid-1980s, but the two-storey dining layout survived. Mobile ordering was added in 2017, as at other large Magic Kingdom quick-service restaurants.
Setting
The restaurant is intended to read as a waterfront inn of the Revolutionary era. The Liberty Square entrance uses the British spelling "Harbour", consistent with the period before American spelling conventions had fully separated from British usage. Nautical details run through the building, including ship models, maps, lanterns and dark wood panelling, and the wider northern edge of Liberty Square reinforces the same seaport idea with a sailing-ship weathervane and widow's walks on neighbouring buildings.
Rather than a single hall, the interior is divided into a series of smaller dining rooms, twelve in the usual count, spread over both floors. Each room is named for an American port or coastal place, among them Charleston, Cape Hatteras, Chesapeake Bay, Annapolis, Long Island, Cape Cod, Portsmouth, New London, Newport, Marblehead, Salem and Plymouth. The subdivision, low ceilings and separate rooms give a large restaurant a comparatively quiet character, and the upper floor in particular is often noticeably calmer than the ground floor. A second entrance on the Fantasyland side reflects the building's position as a transition between the Old World styling of Fantasyland and the early American seaport of Liberty Square.
A long-standing piece of Liberty Square design is also visible here: in keeping with the land's colonial setting, there are no public restrooms inside Liberty Square itself, the nearest facilities being placed just outside its boundaries in adjoining lands, including within this building's Fantasyland side.
Food and drink
The menu is centred on New England seafood. The best-known item is a chilled lobster roll served in a New England-style bun, accompanied over the years by fried and grilled fish, shrimp prepared in several forms, salmon, clam chowder and combination platters that mix fish, shrimp and chicken with hush puppies and fries. Chicken strips and salads provide the main alternatives for guests who do not eat seafood, and children's meals follow the same pattern in smaller portions.
The emphasis on fried fish and shellfish distinguishes Columbia Harbour House from most other Magic Kingdom counter-service restaurants, whose menus are built mainly around burgers, chicken and sandwiches, and it has kept a broadly consistent seafood identity through successive menu revisions.