The Boathouse is a table-service restaurant located in Walt Disney World’s Disney Springs.  This restaurant offers seafood, steak, and quite a few other options.  The Boathouse is a signature restaurant, meaning that it counts as 2 credits on the Disney Dining Plan.  We recently tried The Boathouse for lunch and this review will cover that meal.

To say that Disney Springs dining options have been overhauled in the last few years would be an extreme understatement.  Very few restaurants from earlier this decade remain and the culinary scene has vastly improved, if not gotten a little crowded.  Leading that charge is The Boathouse which opened a little over a year ago.  The restaurant seems to be universally adored and is now a staple of Walt Disney World dining.

The Boathouse feels like it’s in the center of the revamped Disney Springs.  Sitting in the Marketplace, along the water, this restaurant has perhaps the best location of any Disney Springs restaurant.  The Boathouse offers indoor and outdoor seating and on this particular day we decided to sit outside.  This proved to be a somewhat unwise choice as it was fairly windy.  Still, the views were very nice.

The inside of the restaurant was very nice.  There is no out of the box theme or anything but the restaurant is warm and vibrant.  Walking in, there is a boat right in the middle of the main room.  There are nice wood floors and nautical decorations throughout the restaurant.  Outside dining offered views of the rest of Disney Springs, Saratoga Springs and many boats passing by.

If you’re looking for an upscale experience you can ride in these boat/cars called amphicars.  As you can imagine, the cost of this is over $100 for a short ride but it is fairly unique.  We got to see one launch and while it looked pretty goofy, I imagine it would be very fun.

The Boathouse has no shortage of entrée options, most of them being american seafood or steaks.  While the prices are fairly high, there are several entrees below $20.  That’s a pretty good deal for what Disney terms a ‘signature restaurant’.  You can see a menu here.

We were served complimentary bread.  These rolls were warm and fresh.  They were also somewhat sweet.  We were all quite hungry which may have impacted my judgement but these rolls stand out to me as some of the best bread service that we had on our trip.

My wife and I shared a caesar salad to start and it was a pretty good salad.  Nothing out of this world but I did enjoy it.  As was the case with everything else here, the salad was very fresh.

For our entrée, Melissa and I shared the Lobster Bake For Two.  This had over a pound of lobster, clams, andouille sausage, red potatoes, and corn on the cob all mixed in with a lobster broth.  The lobster was sweet and juicy, as lobster should be.  The clams were also good and came in the shell, as you can see above.  The sausage was somewhat forgettable.  It tasted good but didn’t have much spice and the taste blended in with everything else in the bake.  The corn on the cob and potatoes were decent additions to the dish but mainly because of the variety they added, otherwise there wasn’t anything great about them.

Overall, I thought the Lobster Bake was good and a pretty decent deal.  Coming in at $30 per person (there was more than enough for 2 people in this dish),  the Lobster Bake offers a more affordable way to enjoy lobster.  I thought the dish was delicious, although it’s not vaulting into my favorite dishes at Walt Disney World.

My friend Darin ordered the Filet Mignon Sliders.  This is one of the cheaper options on the menu at $14, which is a pretty fair value in my estimation.  He said the sliders were good but he did like the rest of our entrees better.  The Boathouse fires were fantastic, I loved the seasoning on them and they were cooked to perfection.

Darin’s wife Mackenzie ordered the clam strips and they were the winner on the table.  The clams were all a pretty good size and the batter on top of them was outstanding, full of flavor and not overly greasy.  They didn’t short you on the amount of clams given either.  While I really enjoyed the lobster bake, this dish may have eclipsed it in my mind.  This is also a decent value at $16.  Again, compared to other Disney restaurants, that is extremely affordable.

We supplemented all of these entrees with the macaroni and cheese.  Not to be repetitive but this was delicious.  It was surprisingly light with just the right amount of cheese.  As you can see, this is a pretty large bowl and the dish was $9.  While this isn’t technically an entrée it could certainly take the place of one if you want to go a cheaper route.

As a whole, I thought The Boathouse was a fantastic restaurant.  None of the entrées were my absolute favorite of the trip, but everything I tasted was excellent and fresh.  I was also impressed by the location and value relative to other Disney restaurants.  I look forward to trying different items at The Boathouse in the years to come, including dessert which we were just too full to try on this certain day.  I heartily recommend this place, as I think it has a dish for everyone as well as a price for everyone who isn’t on an extremely tight budget (a few entrees were just slightly higher priced than an average counter-service meal).  The Boathouse is a new staple of Walt Disney World dining.

– Andrew