Tomorrowland Terrace
Tomorrowland Terrace, formally listed as the Tomorrowland Terrace Restaurant, is a quick-service restaurant and event space at the entrance to Tomorrowland in Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, Florida. It stands on the walkway between Main Street, U.S.A. and Tomorrowland, beside The Plaza Restaurant, with terraced outdoor seating facing Cinderella Castle. The site opened in 1973 as the Plaza Pavilion, became the Tomorrowland Terrace Noodle Station in 2005, and adopted its present name in 2011. It now operates only seasonally as a restaurant and is best known as the venue for the park's fireworks dessert parties.
The name requires care, because it has been used for two different Magic Kingdom locations. The original Tomorrowland Terrace, an opening-day restaurant of 1971 inside Tomorrowland itself, closed in 1994 and is now Cosmic Ray's Starlight Café. The present Terrace inherited the name only in 2005, a decade later and on a different site.
History
The Plaza Pavilion opened in 1973, two years after the park, filling a gap on the hub at the point where Main Street turns toward Tomorrowland. It was a conventional quick-service location of its period, serving hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza and soft drinks to guests moving between the two lands, from a building whose open, tiered terraces took advantage of the view across the hub to the castle.
In 2005 the Pavilion was renamed the Tomorrowland Terrace Noodle Station, and its menu was recast around Asian dishes, including noodle bowls with chicken, shrimp or vegetables and tofu, stir-fries and Asian salads, although plainer American items continued at lunch. The new name deliberately revived the Tomorrowland Terrace identity that had been vacant since 1994. In November 2011 the noodle concept was dropped, the location was given a refreshed appearance and a broader American menu, and it was renamed the Tomorrowland Terrace Restaurant.
From that point its role steadily narrowed. Regular opening became seasonal, limited to the busiest periods when the park needs additional counter-service capacity, and on many days no public lunch or dinner service is offered at all. In some recent seasonal openings its daytime menu has simply duplicated the seafood menu of Columbia Harbour House rather than maintaining a separate offer.
Setting
The restaurant has no enclosed dining room in the usual sense. Its seating is arranged on three covered, tiered terraces stepping down toward the hub, which keeps most tables under a roof while leaving them open to the air and to the view. That arrangement, originally a pleasant place to eat within sight of the castle, is what later made the site valuable after dark: the terraces face the nightly fireworks over Cinderella Castle with an unobstructed, seated vantage point that few other locations in the park can offer.
Dessert parties
The Terrace's principal modern function is as the home of the Magic Kingdom fireworks dessert parties, separately ticketed evening events held on its upper terraces. In their various forms, including the long-running Fireworks Dessert Party and its successor Seats and Sweets and pre- and post-party formats, guests are served a buffet of desserts, cheeses and drinks, including beer and wine for adults, before or after watching the fireworks, either seated on the terrace itself or from a reserved standing area in the Plaza Garden nearby. Versions of the party are also offered on the nights of the park's Halloween and Christmas ticketed events. Because the parties occupy the terraces in the evening, they are the reason the location is familiar to many guests who have never eaten a regular meal there.