Pinocchio Village Haus
Pinocchio Village Haus is a quick-service restaurant in Fantasyland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, Florida. Themed to Disney's 1940 animated film Pinocchio, it occupies a large building behind Cinderella Castle, beside It's a Small World, whose loading area can be seen from some of its tables. It opened with the park on October 1, 1971, and apart from changes of menu it has altered little since.
Design
Although Carlo Collodi's original story and the Disney film are set in Italy, the restaurant is built in a Germanic, Alpine idiom and uses the German word Haus in its name. That choice follows the film itself rather than the book: for Pinocchio, concept artist Gustaf Tenggren drew the puppet's village from studies of the Bavarian town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and Geppetto's workshop, clocks and toys were given the same northern European character. The restaurant, designed by Imagineer Ron Bowman, was laid out to reproduce the film's opening overhead view of the village, a view guests could once appreciate directly from the Skyway as it passed overhead between its opening in 1971 and its closure in 1999.
A single dining hall of the size required would have had no counterpart in a medieval village, so the building is disguised as a cluster of separate small houses grouped around a courtyard. Inside, the entrance area is treated as if it were outdoors, with a ceiling lit to suggest the sky and ordering counters presented as small shingled buildings with stained glass and flower boxes. Working German bakery ovens, finished in porcelain tile, form part of the interior. A bell tower completes the rooftop silhouette; the bell installed for it lost its intended tone when workmen cleaned off its rust and hammered out its dents during construction, and a recorded chime was used instead.
Dining rooms
The interior is divided into rooms themed to characters and episodes from the film, each decorated with murals and carved details. The largest is the Stromboli Room, named for the puppet-master villain. The best known is the Monstro Room, whose windows look directly into the neighbouring It's a Small World building, giving diners a view of guests boarding the boats below. Other rooms refer to Geppetto, the Blue Fairy and other figures from the story. In January 2022 a figure of Figaro, Geppetto's cat, was added reclining on an exterior balcony.
Food and drink
For most of its first three decades the Village Haus served a standard burger-and-fries counter-service menu that made no particular reference to its theme. In September 2005 the menu was changed to Italian food, bringing the cooking into line with the film's nominal setting, and in 2012 flatbread pizzas were added and became the centre of the offer. The menu has since been built around flatbreads, pasta, salads and Italian-style desserts, with children's meals following the same pattern. Mobile ordering was introduced in 2017.
Counterparts
Restaurants on the same theme have appeared in other Disney parks under related names. Disneyland in California had a Village Haus Restaurant in its Fantasyland from 1983, replaced in 2017 by the Red Rose Taverne. Disneyland Paris has Au Chalet de la Marionnette, and Shanghai Disneyland has Pinocchio Village Kitchen, each adapting the village-house idea to its own park.