Cape May Cafe is a table-service buffet at Disney World’s Beach Club Resort. The dinner offerings center around seafood, including a steam boil. That menu and decor fits in with the greater nautical Beach Club theme. Grab your sailor cap and gorge on seafood! Cape May Cafe does take part in the Disney Dining Plan and offers an Annual Pass and Disney VISA discount, as well. In this post, we’ll review the restaurant’s food, atmosphere and value!

Cape May Cafe has been on our list of restaurants to try at Walt Disney World for a long time. I love seafood, especially shrimp boils and a buffet full of it really intrigued me. We did keep putting it off though, as our love for seafood was usually outweighed by our uneasiness when it comes to WDW buffets. After being pleasantly surprised by a few other buffets in the last year, it was time to try out this one.

Walking into Beach Club Resort, Cape May Cafe feels like a continuation of the lobby but separated just enough. The room is largely open and resides next to an enclosed walkway that connects the neighboring Yacht Club. That’s especially fitting because the decorations inside of Cape May have a yacht club feel. There’s some croquet sets lining the pillars of the wall. I’m not sure why croquet fits a place named after northeastern beach town but it didn’t seem out of place. A quick perusal of the croquet Wikipedia page sheds no light on the situation but, again, the decor fit in just fine. I’ve already spent more time thinking about this than 99% of humans who have ever stepped into Cape May Cafe so let’s move on.

The rest of the restaurant is nice enough. There’s blue carpet around mixed with pink and orange pastels. Everything is pretty easy on the eyes but not memorable. Alongside some booths there are murals of children, seemingly from the early 1900’s, playing at the beach. Those children are dressed in their Sunday best… At the beach… You know, I started this review thinking almost nothing of Cape May Cafe’s atmosphere and now I have quite a few questions about some minute details throughout the restaurant. Why is everyone, including the kids, dressed up so fancily at this beach?

I’ll quickly say, before I’m sidetracked by more photos, that Cape May Cafe has a decent atmosphere. The blue floor works well with the white wood and pastel touches throughout the restaurant. A coastal vibe is given off, even if there are some questions about what exactly is happening in this beach town where croquet is the sport of choice and children show up to the beach in suits and dresses. With the openness of the restaurant, it could easily feel like the hotel lobby. Cape May Cafe avoids that pitfall for the most part, even if it doesn’t feel completely immersive.

The food is seafood-centric but there’s a good variety at the buffet. All of the seating surrounds a square center of the restaurant, where chefs work away adding food. Here’s a look at the menu, which does a pretty good job at covering all that’s offered. The biggest difference that I can tell is there are more salads and sides offered than what are listed on the menu.

Speaking of those salads and sides, they were fine. The seafood salad is the standout but was a little over dressed and there were much better seafood options elsewhere. It’s always nice to have some vegetables while at WDW though, and we had a few options there. As always, the mashed potatoes at Disney World buffets were fantastic. We’re once again reminded that the more butter put into something, the more delicious it is!

We may start with salads but the selling point of Cape May Cafe’s offerings is the New England Traditional Steam Boil. This included clams, mussels, shrimp, corn, and red potatoes. I was excited about this coming in but was frankly underwhelmed. The Steam Boil lacked flavor and could have used a sauce or butter. Some of the seafood came off rubbery and overdone. I wouldn’t say that this was bad but it didn’t meet expectations, especially compared to some of the other surprisingly good seafood at Walt Disney World.

There was also quite a bit of fried seafood offered. This included cod, shrimp and clam strips. These were all decent but nothing exceptional. As usual at WDW, the shrimp were probably the best of the options. But the breading was unremarkable.

The carving station was pretty good, offering prime rib and turkey. I liked the turkey more than I expected too, as I’m not usually a big fan. This was moist and had good flavor. The prime rib was average relative to all other prime rib. The rest of the meat buffet options were okay.

The best part of Cape May Cafe’s food was the desserts. All of them were bite size, which I prefer at buffets so that I can try more options. If that’s not your thing, then just grab 10 bite sized desserts of the same kind, ignore anyone’s judgmental eyes and it will be plenty! Cape May Cafe’s Signature Bonbons were fantastic and I’d happily eat 7 of them right now if someone would kindly deliver them to Anaheim. The blueberry donut looking item above was also very good and was probably Melissa’s favorite. We liked all of the options we tried!

Unfortunately, the excellent desserts couldn’t make up for the subpar main courses. In general, I like the seafood offered at WDW but Cape May Cafe’s underwhelmed me. With a $49 price tag, I didn’t think this was an especially good value. After trying several WDW buffets recently (Biergarten and Hollywood & Vine), we were hoping for a pleasant surprise here. Cape May Cafe didn’t measure up to those though and is just an average option overall.

Overall Rating – 6.5/10

Have you eaten at Cape May Cafe? Let us know your thoughts or any questions you might have in the comments below. Planning a trip to Walt Disney World? Check out our Disney World Trip Planning Guide to help you out. Looking for discount tickets? Check out this site! If you enjoy what you are reading here on Wandering in Disney please share this post with your friends, as well as like our social media pages. You can also subscribe to the blog via WordPress or email. All of those links are on the right side of this page. Thank you for reading, we really appreciate it!