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View Full Version : Kona Cafe review



TBY2225
10-08-2007, 01:41 PM
We ate dinner at Kona Café on Monday 9-24-07. We were on the dining plan and had ADR’s for 5:30pm. I made them early so we could go shopping in DTD after dinner and get the kids in bed by 9pm. I love the Poly hotel, so I wanted to get there a little early to look around. We arrived about 5:10 and had hoped to be seated a little early. We were given a pager and were not seated until 5:50. This was the longest we waited past our ADR’s so I guess it wasn’t too bad. I was just hoping for an earlier time! We had eaten at Kona last year, and it was the only restaurant we were returning to from the last trip. The atmosphere is ok, nothing special. I do think the tables are too close together, but it wasn’t too loud in spite of being very open to the rest of the Poly. We waited about 5 minutes for our waiter and he was very nice, but noticeably overworked – I think he had too many tables. He didn’t come around as much as I had hoped although he did make me a fresh pot of coffee. We started with the coffee for me, DH got diet coke and DD got lemonade. We ordered pot stickers and crab cakes for appetizers and they also brought some of the bread and macadamia nut butter. I thought the bread was just ok. I loved the crab cakes! They were small and I would have been mad to pay oop for them; but they tasted great and I could tell they were mostly crabmeat and not filling. DH liked the pot stickers as well. DD forgoes the appetizer and opted for fries instead with her meal. DS22mos was not having a good night, I think he was too tired, so it didn’t help that this was our longest wait for food of the trip. Our server checked with the kitchen a few times for our food only to come back with an apology. I am not sure what the problem was but I saw 4 tables that had been seated after us but received their food before us. Our main courses were; DH got the teriyaki steak, potatoes and broccoli; DD got the hamburger and fries; and I got the macadamia nut mahi-mahi. DH said his steak was pretty good but could not hold a candle to Le Cellier. He was a little disappointed that the steak didn’t have more of a teriyaki flavor. DD wasn’t very happy with the new kids menu. She had really liked the chicken tenders here last year, but she ate the burger and fries anyway. I had enjoyed the mahi-mahi so much last year that it played an important role in our decision to go back this year. It didn’t disappoint! It was as good if not better than I remembered! I love the risotto on the bottom and the fish was so tender and good! It is one of my favorite dishes in WDW. Since DS was acting out we decided to get dessert to go. I got the Kailua Torte, and DH got the cheesecake. We opted to not take DD’s ice cream and she didn’t really care. She had enough of ice cream at this point. We didn’t eat the desserts until later that night. I really wished I had gotten to eat the torte warm. It was ok, but not what I was hoping for! DH said the cheesecake was really good.

Because of the long wait for our entrees, we were here almost 2 hours. This is way to long with a 22mo old, especially a tired one. This is still one of my favorites for food, but I was not very happy with the rest of our experience this trip. We will definitely go back; I am hoping it was just an off night! While we waited to be seated, we noticed they were taking walk-ins quoting 35-45 minute waits. If we had paid OOP $ 102.79

Jared
10-08-2007, 02:11 PM
Sorry to hear you had bad service at one of my favorite restaurants. Unfortunately, I've read a few negative reviews of Kona Cafe on these boards lately.

I agree about the Kilauea torte--it must be eaten warm to enjoy.

Class starts in 10 minutes, but I'll check out another review when I come back in about two hours.

:tasty:

January-2007
10-12-2007, 08:18 PM
Thanks for sharing your experience.

PAYROLL PRINCESS
10-12-2007, 10:12 PM
We went there the end of Aug and the service was horrible. We had ADR's for 5pm. At 6pm my sister went up to see what was taking so long. They "lost" our reservation in the system. This was AFTER they had given us a pager!! Then they had to seat us at 2 separate tables. 4 kids at one and the other 6 of us at another. The kids had their dessert before we even got our appetizers. The manager had comp'd a round of drinks and came around to see how everything was. We complained about the slow service and she disappeared. We weren't trying to get anything else free, we just wanted to eat and get out of there. We were there over 3 hours total. The food was very good, but I don't know if I'll be in a hurry to go back again.

GAN
10-13-2007, 06:34 PM
Sorry to hear you had bad service at one of my favorite restaurants. Unfortunately, I've read a few negative reviews of Kona Cafe on these boards lately.

Well, I can almost guarantee that this is directly related to the manager(s) at Kona. I'm glad I saw this post because we were there the first week of October and had a negative experience as well -although not with the food. We were leaving for home that day and decided last minute to have a decent breakfast to close out our wonderful Food & Wine trip. When we got there we realized that we had packed our DDE card(20% off) with our luggage, we figured no big deal it's Disney they'll honor the discount without the card. NOT. The manager wasn't even willing to hear our explanation, he just said "can't do it." I've got to believe I'm in the system(somewhere) showing I've paid for the card -it may have taken an extra phone call on his part, but it could've been done. In fact, the night before we had dinner at Artist Point and racked up a $300 tab -we told them prior to ordering we had the card, when the check came our waitress had already applied the discount. Without even asking to see the card. I'm sorry, but I'm the type of person who doesn't believe in the old "can't do" philosophy. I deal with customer service issues all day in my job and those words aren't in my vocabulary. I was really shocked by the response of Kona's management.

tinksmom02
10-13-2007, 10:41 PM
We went there the end of Aug and the service was horrible. We had ADR's for 5pm. At 6pm my sister went up to see what was taking so long. They "lost" our reservation in the system. This was AFTER they had given us a pager!!

This is exactly what happened to us at Boma! The worst part was that no one offered so much as an apology. Sometimes all it takes to pacify a customer is a simply "I'm sorry." Even if it wasn't personally their fault, they are the ones that have the ability to make it better, and be the star in the customer's eyes.

disneymom2000
10-14-2007, 12:19 PM
Gosh, I'm really sorry to be hearing this. After talking to my friend who went there a year a half ago I was really excited to trying it out. She said they loved it so much they were planning to make this there only return restaurant on their next trip. She said she would check my opinion on it when I got back to see if she would change her ADR or not. I hope things go better for me.