Akershus Royal Banquet Hall
Akershus Royal Banquet Hall is a table-service character dining restaurant in the Norway Pavilion of World Showcase at EPCOT in Walt Disney World. Set in a recreation of a medieval Norwegian castle, it hosts Storybook Dining with the Disney Princesses at breakfast, lunch and dinner. It opened in 1988 as Restaurant Akershus, serving a traditional Norwegian buffet, and was renamed when princess character dining took over the restaurant in 2005.
History
The Norway Pavilion was the last full pavilion added to World Showcase, and its restaurant opened with the pavilion's soft opening on May 6, 1988, as Restaurant Akershus.[1] In its original form it was a showcase for Norwegian food, serving a koldtbord — a buffet of hot and cold Norwegian dishes — with no characters. It remained essentially unchanged for fourteen years.
The transformation began on July 28, 2002, when the restaurant introduced a Princess Storybook character breakfast, a change that coincided with the end of the Norwegian government's sponsorship of the pavilion.[2] The princesses proved so popular that character dining was extended to lunch and dinner on April 10, 2005, and in August 2005 the restaurant was renamed Akershus Royal Banquet Hall to reflect its new royal character. It thereafter became the principal alternative to Cinderella's Royal Table at Magic Kingdom for dining with the princesses. The restaurant closed in 2020 and reopened on November 4, 2022, with Storybook Dining restored and service converted to a family-style format.
Setting
The building is modelled on Akershus Castle and Fortress in Oslo, the medieval fortress on Oslo harbour first built in the late 13th century to guard the capital and serve as a royal residence. The EPCOT version reproduces the fortress's stone walls and towers as the pavilion's landmark, anchoring its cobbled village square. Inside, the restaurant is arranged as a series of banqueting rooms in heavy medieval style: stone archways, vaulted and beamed ceilings, timber furniture and wall hangings, lit to feel like a castle hall. The rooms retain, in large part, their appearance from 1988 — the princesses were layered into a convincingly Norwegian castle rather than the castle being rebuilt around them.
Cuisine
The original koldtbord introduced many American guests to Norwegian food, with cured and smoked fish, cheeses, salads, meatballs and hot dishes served buffet style. Norwegian influence remains in the present menu even as it has broadened for its character-dining audience: meals are now served family style and typically combine a Norwegian-inspired selection — which has included salmon, meatballs, red cabbage and mashed rutabaga-style root vegetables — with broadly familiar dishes, and breakfast brings pastries, eggs and waffles alongside Norwegian touches. Desserts have included rice cream with strawberry sauce, a traditional Norwegian festive dish. The food is generally described as American and Norwegian in influence, with the Norwegian elements distinguishing it from other character meals.
Character dining
Storybook Dining is the restaurant's defining experience. A rotating cast of Disney Princesses visits each table during the meal for photographs and autographs; the princesses most commonly appearing have included Belle, Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Ariel, Jasmine, Mulan and Tiana, though the line-up varies and no specific princess is guaranteed. A host princess traditionally greets guests in an entry area for a posed photograph before seating. Because the princesses come to the table, families can meet several of them in the course of a single meal, and demand for reservations — particularly for breakfast — has been consistently high since the format began in 2002.