Connections Eatery & Cafe is a counter-service restaurant in Epcot’s World Celebration. The café portion of the restaurant is a Starbucks and the two portions share seating. Connections Eatery does take part in the Disney Dining Plan as a counter-service credit but doesn’t currently accept any other discounts. In this post, we’ll review the restaurant’s atmosphere, cuisine and value!

Epcot’s central spine makeover has resulted in some interesting design choices. Future World dissolved into World Nature, World Celebration and World Discovery with the central spine of the park fitting into Celebration. There are some beautiful touches there, including the glorious entrance to the park and some wonderful lighting effects. On the flip side, there are some really strange manmade trees and sitting spaces.

Even if I don’t like all of those design choices, there’s no disputing that the outdoor sections of the refurb has been bold. Unfortunately, that makes the inside of Connections Eatery & Café disappointing. There are a few unique touches but the restaurant reminded me of a high end college cafeteria.

To be fair, that means the restaurant does a few things well from an atmosphere perspective. The area is spacious and has ample seating without feeling overly crowded. I used the term ‘high end’ because Connections does look nice, there’s natural light during the day thanks to the large windows and there’s also some very modern design. If you can’t shake awful school cafeteria experiences, maybe think of this as how you’d picture the cafeteria at a company like Google. It’s bright, modern and a roomy space.

The restaurants is nice enough, it’s just lacking in character. There’s a large mural in the restaurant called Global Gathering that depicts people around the world gathering over food. I like the mural and the color it adds to Connections. The other two pops of personality are a partially open kitchen to watch the (pastry) chefs at work and some of the flooring showcases Walt’s vision for the “Florida Project.” The latter is a cool idea but is hard to notice unless you’re specifically looking for it.

All that to say, there are attempts to break from the modern and sleek cafeteria feel but Connections Cafe & Eatery doesn’t quite get there. There are certainly worse places to relax and, honestly, this is a good spot if you have a big group. But that’s because of the ample seating and open space, not because Connections can escape feeling a little blah. The ordering bay doesn’t help as it certainly fits the cafeteria vibe.

Moving on to the menu, Connections Eatery largely serves American food. Most items fall in the $10-$15 range whether it’s pizza, sandwiches or salads. We stuck to the sandwich portion of the menu so I won’t comment on the others outside of saying that the pizza slices were large. I also saw some of the salads in the open kitchen and immediately regretted not getting one of those. They look good!

This is the French Bistro Burger consisting of Gourmet Beef Blend, Caramelized Onions, Bacon, Brie, Mushrooms and Dijon Mayonnaise on a Toasted Brioche Bun. I liked most of the ingredients but my biggest beef with the burger was, well, the beef. I’ll be here all week! I liked the Brie and Dijon Mayonnaise, although there was a little more globbed on than I bargained for. More than anything, I just found the patty to be on the bland side and the mushrooms didn’t add enough to make up for it. It’s fine, just nothing more. At $14.29, you can find a much better value and burger throughout Walt Disney World.

I did like the Hand-breaded Chicken Sandwich a little bit more. The fried chicken was juicy albeit slightly over breaded. Would you rather something be over breaded by hand or hand-breaded by over? Come for the dining review and stay for the nonsensical jokes! The zesty sauce and house-made pickles were the star of this sandwich. I thought this was pretty good overall, slightly better than your typical fast food chicken sandwich. I’d pick this over the burger, especially with this being 2 dollars cheaper, but wouldn’t rush to go get either of them.

Guests can choose between French Fries or Cole Slaw as the side. The fries were standard Disney World fries, meaning they were fine. I’d pick the Cole Slaw here as it had a creamy dressy with some pepper to top it off. It wasn’t super special but I liked it pretty well.

The best item we had at Connections was the specialty dessert, the Black Forest Baumkuchen. If you’re unfamiliar, a Baumkuchen is a German cake (also very popular in Japan) generally made on a spit. The cake’s layers are formed by being browned while rotating before another layer is poured on top. The layers had a texture similar to a crepe, light and sweet. The black forest flavors were a nice touch, as the cake really benefited from toppings. For being a counter-service dessert, I thought this was really delicate and unique. I would go back for this and at $6 this was a decent value.

Our whole experience at Connections was pretty average. The atmosphere was bland but not bad. The entrees were forgettable but decent enough. The only standout of the experience was the dessert which I would recommend to most people except Epcot is full of incredible desserts already! There’s nothing really wrong with Connections Cafe & Eatery, there’s just nothing about it that excels either.

Overall Rating – 6.5/10

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