Hi Laurajean,
Welcome to planDisney! Thank you for stopping by with a question.
Since I have a daughter with peanut, tree nut, soy, and shellfish allergies, I am happy to respond. Cast Members have been wonderful in dealing with her allergies. She loves the Walt Disney World Resort because they take such great care and she gets to dine at so many great locations.
We do follow a process to make sure all goes well. First, make
advanced dining reservations. Although there are allergy menus available, we find it easier to navigate her allergies when we make reservations and can note her allergies on that dining reservation. When we arrive at the restaurant, the Cast Member who serves us is then already aware of the allergies and, most often, those allergies are printed on a receipt for ease of reference. When we make dining reservations, we are typically eating at a table-service restaurant and one of the chefs will often come out to speak with our daughter about her allergies. The chef will review the menu and let her know what she can eat or what they can modify from the menu for her to eat.
Take a few minutes to review the information with
Special Dietary Requests. At this time, the
dining reservation window allows Guests to make dining reservations 60-days in advance. Keep an eye on the
operational updates to note any changes to that policy. If you forget to add the allergies to dining reservations (I have done this!), you can
contact a Cast Member by phone and request that they add those allergies to your dining reservations. You can also review the menus at each restaurant to see their allergy-friendly offerings. Be Our Guest Restaurant, for example, is one of our favorite restaurants. Take a look at their
lunch menu to see the allergy-friendly options (scroll down!). Snacks are a little more challenging. We typically bring some allergy-friendly snacks for our daughter and we pack those in our park bag or we find snacks that have labels so we can double-check the ingredients.
Laurajean, I hope this helps. Our experiences navigating the parks and resorts with our daughter's food allergies have been fantastic. Check out this Disney Parks Blog article,
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Receives Honors for Allergy-Friendly Fare for additional details on their award-winning service. I trust that you will get those dining reservations made, make a note of the allergy, and email the Special Dietary Request Team if you have additional questions!
Magic and memories,
Donyell