'Ohana
'Ohana is a table-service restaurant on the second floor of the Great Ceremonial House at Disney's Polynesian Village Resort in Walt Disney World. It serves an all-you-care-to-enjoy breakfast with characters and a family-style dinner, both built around food cooked over an open fire pit. It opened on April 12, 1995, replacing the Papeete Bay Verandah. Its name is the Hawaiian word for family, a meaning later popularised for Disney audiences by Lilo & Stitch (2002).
History
A restaurant has occupied the site since the Polynesian Village Resort opened with Walt Disney World on October 1, 1971. The original occupant, the Papeete Bay Verandah — named for Pape'ete, the capital of Tahiti — served buffet breakfasts and lunches, hosted a character breakfast called Minnie's Menehune Breakfast, and presented a Polynesian revue at dinner. It closed in September 1994 for a comprehensive redesign of the space.
'Ohana opened in its place on April 12, 1995. The new restaurant was organised around a large open fire pit, roughly 18 feet (5.5 m) long, on which meats are grilled in view of diners, and around family-style service in place of a buffet or individual plating. Servers were cast as "cousins", reinforcing the family framing of the name.
The restaurant closed with the resort in 2020 and reopened on July 9, 2021, initially without characters at breakfast and with some long-standing dishes absent; the character breakfast and most of the established menu were subsequently restored. Along with the rest of the resort, it stands on the Resort Monorail line, two stops from Magic Kingdom, which accounts for a large share of its diners coming from outside the hotel.
Setting
'Ohana occupies a large, open room on the upper floor of the Great Ceremonial House, the resort's main building. One side is largely glass, giving many tables a view across the Seven Seas Lagoon towards Cinderella Castle, and timed evening seatings can coincide with the Magic Kingdom fireworks. Inside, the decoration follows the resort's South Pacific theme: carved wood, tiki figures, woven materials and tropical planting, with the fire pit as the room's focal point at one end. Seating is at conventional tables rather than communal benches, so groups eat together but not with strangers.
Cuisine
Dinner is served family style in courses brought to the table. The meal has traditionally begun with coconut-pineapple bread and a mixed greens salad, followed by appetisers that have included pork dumplings, chicken wings and stir-fried noodles — the noodles in particular developed a following of their own and their temporary removal in 2021 drew public complaint before they returned. The main course consists of skewers and grilled items cooked on the fire pit, which have included shrimp, chicken with a guava glaze and grilled beef, served with roasted vegetables and broccolini. Dessert is a bread pudding served with a warm banana and caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream, which is among the most frequently cited dishes at Walt Disney World.
Breakfast is also served family style, in a large skillet or platter for the table. It combines an American breakfast — scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, sausage, biscuits and Mickey- and Stitch-shaped waffles — with Polynesian touches such as ham with pineapple and pineapple-coconut breakfast bread. The accompanying juice blend of passion fruit, orange and guava, commonly called POG juice, is served at several Walt Disney World character breakfasts.
Character dining
Characters appear only at breakfast, in the meal marketed as the Best Friends Breakfast featuring Lilo & Stitch. Lilo and Stitch visit tables together with Mickey Mouse and Pluto, dressed in Hawaiian shirts and leis. Dinner has no character appearances, although for many years it included coconut races and other games for children led by an entertainer between courses; those activities have been offered only intermittently in recent years.