Please welcome back guest author Sarah Gurung with a review of breakfast at the Intermission Food Court at the All-Star Music Resort!
As a longtime reader of the Disney Food Blog, I am excited to continue contributing to the site. My family started visiting Disney World before the value resorts existed, but when they were built, All-Star Music was the first that we called “home.”
During this visit, I traveled with my mother and my one-year-old daughter as well as my sister and her two-year-old daughter.
In my “real” (non-Disney) life, I eat vegetarian. While on vacation, I considerably loosened my self-imposed food restrictions and ate what sounded good. I will add details about vegetarian options where appropriate, because many are delicious.
Atmosphere
Intermission Food Court is located in Melody Hall, the resort’s main building for check-in, concierge, check-out, shopping, and dining. The food court is open from 7 am to midnight (breakfast ends at 11am), and food is counter service or grab-and-go.
As one might expect, Intermission Food Court is a colorful and boisterous place. Upon entering, the food court counter and grab-and-go stations are to your left. The cashiers are straight ahead and serve as a buffer to the seating area. Beverage/utensil/topping bars are on the right.
The seating area extends the full length of the right side of the room and is abundant. Even during busy times, we had no trouble locating a table.
Seating is a mixture of both booths and tables (large and small to accommodate different size parties) and is a wash of peach, purple, and turquoise. The carpet is dark and dotted with resort-appropriate stars.
One long wall in the seating area features a mural of semi-recognizable singers and musicians in a variety of poses. Lighting is bright, and maneuvering around the space is relatively easy.
On rare occasions, I struggled a bit to navigate the tables while pushing a stroller; but generally speaking, it is spacious.
The beverage bar features the typical soft drink dispensers, condiment dispensers, and lemon and butter holders you expect.
Additionally, to the left of the beverage island is a small area with toasters and a microwave. Here, you also find the topping bar.
For breakfast, sugar-free syrup, honey, sugar packets, jams and jellies, and hot sauce are available. At lunch and dinner, packets of relish, large leaves of romaine lettuce, tomato slices, red onion slices, and pickles are provided to top burgers and sandwiches.
Eats
During our five-night stay, I had several opportunities to try dishes from breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The menus were virtually the same every day, with one exception: The Specialty counter (where you can find make-your-own-salad and chicken quesadillas daily) changed one item on its dinner menu nightly.
For more about lunch and dinner, check out my guest review on Lunch and Dinner at the Intermission Food Court!
For breakfast, guests will find a variety of eats including items at the Bakery, where you can get self-serve cookies, muffins, and other pastries.
In addition to the counter service stations, there is a grab-and-go area called the Market fresh fruit, yogurt, and other breakfast items to-go.
On our first morning at the resort, I opted for Pancakes with Fruit, accompanied by three chicken sausage links. (Meats can be substituted for home fries.)
The pancakes tasted like standard pancakes, my favorite breakfast food, but were a bit chewy due to sitting for some time under the heat lamps. The strawberry topping had lots of strawberry pieces and a syrupy sauce.
I was happy to find, along with pork sausage and bacon, that chicken sausage was an option. The casing is synthetic, so for those who do not eat pork, they are a good option.
The dominant flavor in the sausage is sage, and they are appropriately sausage-y. For myself, I would have preferred they be cooked a little longer as the casing was a bit chewy and lacked the snap I enjoy.
The next morning, I chose the Bounty Platter (note: on the menu it is listed as the All-Star Breakfast Platter): including scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, two French toast sticks, and a biscuit.
The scrambled eggs were clumpy but were a good foundation for the rest of the breakfast. The bacon was thin and floppy but had a great bacon taste.
I again chose the chicken sausage and found they were undercooked for me. (Meats on the Bounty can be replaced with more eggs or more home fries.)
The home fries were a big hit with my daughter, but I felt they lacked seasoning. The biscuit was a standard buffet-quality biscuit, but coated in strawberry jam from the topping bar I actually enjoyed it.
The French toast sticks were better than I expected as they appeared to be actual pieces of toast, dipped and cooked rather than frozen.
On day three, I saddled up to the Specialty counter and ordered a Croissant Sandwich: scrambled eggs, bacon, and cheese on a sliced croissant. (Can be ordered without bacon.)
The Croissant Sandwich was tasty. The eggs were a little less clumpy than on the Bounty Platter, but the bacon was identical. The cheese was, sadly, unmelted. Ultimately, it was a convenient and predictable breakfast, but it didn’t knock my socks off.
I was disappointed to discover that it was not accompanied by home fries, and I ended up supplementing my breakfast with a chocolate/chocolate chip muffin. I’m glad I did!
The muffin was delicious. I’m not typically a huge chocolate fan, but it struck my fancy that morning.
The muffin is taller than those I make at home, and when I cut into and took my first bite, I discovered that it had a consistency more akin to a cupcake than to a muffin. The chocolate chips were dotted throughout, and despite its appearance and ingredients, it was not overly sweet. I was pleasantly surprised.
Overall
Intermission Food Court is, in most ways, a standard Disney World food court. It features many of the familiar dishes we expect and enjoy, as well as the convenience that makes staying on-site such a joy for my family and me.
I was excited to discover some surprise hits during my stay, and our old standbys rarely let us down. Dare I say, my dining experience at All-Star Music Resort hit almost all the right notes. 😉 I hope it will for you, too.
Sarah Gurung is an unemployed high school English teacher but a fully-employed stay-at-home mom to one incredible daughter. She has been a Disney World fanatic since her first family trip in 1992 and loves exploring the world of food at the World.
What’s your favorite menu item at All-Star Music resort? Give us some recommendations!
When I go to WDW solo… I always stay at ASMu and LOVE it! The best part about the food court is there are power outlets near/between the windows. Each meal I would plug in my phone (always needs a charge!) and eat my meals… very handy! 🙂 The ‘carved roast turkey’ platter was awesome!
If you want something nice and fresh they pretty much make the waffles to order. People were getting annoyed that they had to wait, but we got a nice waffle and, seriously, it was only 2 minutes. I actually thought they could be cooked just a little longer to get more brown but I tend to like my food a little on the well done side.
I was not blown away with the bounty platter when I stayed at ASM this October. I’m pretty sure the suassage is pre-cooked and simply warmed up there. It should be warmed long enough to brown the casing. The bacon gets notably worse as the place gets more crowded. The strips are thrown on and taken off the grill in very short order and the grease piles up in the bin. I don’t think it’s cleaned out the entire breakfast shift.
The AS Resorts are where I usually stay, and the food is basically the same at all of them.
Finally, they do a herculean job keeping the place clean but around 8am it’s just not possible. Breakfast at the ASR’s is the big meal and vacationers are often rushing to get buses. That’s understandable, but the mess they leave isn’t. People leave their trays, throw their empty sugar packages all over the place, and kids are just generally kid-messy but the parents don’t clean up or make them clean up. I understand everyone wants to get in and out, but taking your tray to the trash takes no time because they have bins everywhere, and it takes 30 seconds to take a napkin and brush the pieces of egg off the table and onto the tray… or even the floor. The place is usually much cleaner at lunch and dinner.
We recently returned from our 12th stay at AS Music. We normally eat one or two meals per day there. The past three years, we have had the “free” QSDP so we have gotten to try things we might otherwise have given a pass (like desserts).
Our son had waffles with bacon every single morning. They do make the waffles fresh, so even though the bacon is a bit floppy, the waffles are great. I love the oatmeal, available for one snack credit, although I was disappointed that there was no brown sugar or raisins for topping this last trip. You can also get sausage gravy and biscuits for a single snack credit, hearty and filling with two biscuits and a ladle full of gravy. We did notice that when a young man was serving rather than a young woman, the amount of gravy was more generous!
My husband’s favorite item is the fruit and yogurt parfait. He even takes it as a dessert selection most nights.
For lunch/dinner, our family looks forward to the turkey and salmon dinners. The turkey is very moist and you get a nice serving. The veggie selections could use some improvement (hello, corn 5 nights out of 7?), but you get a nice little French roll in addition to the two sides (get mashed potatoes and green beans if available). Paying OOP, it is still cheaper than the Denny”s up the road for a similar meal.
I normally get the salmon at least twice per trip. I am also a big fan of the quesadilla; I order it without the chicken. I noticed that they were cooking fresh chicken breasts on the grill in quantity, so I wonder if Sarah just got a not so good batch. I also eat mostly vegetarian, but do indulge in the salmon where I can find it, since both the fish and the price are good.
I agree with Galloping that folks can be a bit selfish about the way they leave their tables. It only takes a few seconds to sweep the table with a napkin and dump the tray on your way out. That said, the dining room staff work very hard to keep things clean, assist those who need help with trays, and even go fetch that forgotten straw or fork for you. And I have enjoyed talking with many of them over the years about why they are at WDW–some of them have great stories to tell. My big peeve with Intermission is the noise level–that and the fact that, when they painted, they took down Steve Tyler’s picture, which is how my son knew where to sit. But we find it more than adequate for our mealtime needs at AS Music.