Dining with a Toddler in Downtown Disney: T-Rex Cafe

As the name T-Rex Cafe says, this place is all about dinosaurs! If you think this place will automatically be a hit with your toddler just because they like dinosaurs, you might want to think again and do a little bit more research before dining here. My toddler loved it. I've seen other toddlers (and even slightly older kids) run screaming in terror from the entrance and refuse to even get anywhere near the actual restaurant. If your kid is not scared off by the large, growling dinosaur that sits directly behind the check-in podium and separates the restaurant from the retail store, you will probably be okay dining here. (My kiddo was a little scared of it when we walked in around her first birthday so we did not attempt to dine but at two she laughs at the dinosaur and growls right along with him.)

Keep in mind however, that the restaurant also gets a little dark at time and has a "show" that involves a loud meteor shower so if your kid does not like loud noises and darkness, this might not be the best restaurant choice for you.
T-Rex Cafe is located in the middle section of Downtown Disney, past where the LEGO store is but not quite to where the old Pleasure Island Section was. If you are arriving on a Disney bus it is closest to the middle bus stops. If you drive I recommend parking somewhere between the Marketplace Section (where the World of Disney and LEGO Store are) and Planet Hollywood (the restaurant inside the large blue ball with stars on it).
We dined at T-Rex on a Monday evening around 7 pm. If you think that would be a slow time for this restaurant, guess again. There was a line to give your name for a table with about 10-15 people waiting in front of us in it. Long enough, but I have seen it MUCH longer many of the times I have been in Downtown Disney so I was not scared away by it. When we got to the front of the line we were told it would be about 20-30 minutes so we decided to wait. (Note: There was a small, easily missed sign on the podium stating "bar seating available immediately, no wait. Had I seen it when we were first checking in and not when we went back after our name was called I probably would've taken them up on it. The bar area is kid friendly and the only drawback is that you are seated nearby where everybody is checking in for their table vs being totally immersed in the dinosaur restaurant, but there is no guarantee you will get a fabulous table even if you wait in line.)

The wait for a table ended up being about 35 minutes. While you wait you can explore the retail store, which includes a Build-A-Dinosaur area in the back very similar to the Build-A-Bear store in your local mall only it is all dinosaurs vs a variety of bears and other animals.

There are also a few computers scattered throughout the store with educational information about dinosaurs, but they were above my toddler's reach.

If you do not want to spend any money the dinosaur dig sand pit is a much better option, especially if you have toddlers with you. (Note: You can visit this sand pit without dining at T-Rex Cafe. It is one of my daughter's favorite spots in Downtown Disney.)

The sand pit/dinosaur dig is a little area located off the very front section of the retail store. It is fairly small, shaded, and fully enclosed so it is easy to keep tabs on a wandering toddler. No seating available for adults but many just sit on the ledges around the perimeter. There are usually numerous paintbrushes available to help children "excavate" the dinosaur bones but sometimes they are kept in a basket at the entrance vs just being scattered throughout the sand pit so if you don't see any right away ask an employee or look near the sand pit's entrance for them.

This sand pit alone is enough to keep my daughter occupied for twenty to thirty minutes. There is a hand washing station on the side of the sand pit so do not worry about little hands getting dirty before dinnertime.

If you have slightly older children you might want to consider purchasing a packet for them to pan for gems with or a geode for them to smash open. The packets to pan for gems cost $5.00 (at least at the time I published this) and the geodes are $4.99 and up.

Once you purchase a gem panning packet they take you to an area off on the side of the sand pit and help you do the panning.

If you choose a geode instead there is a device to smash your geode right next to the display where you buy your rock and again, an employee will come and help your child with the actual process. My two year old really enjoyed watching both of these things and wanted to try them herself but we were only there to eat on this particular night.
The actual time it took for our name to get called was 35 minutes so the wait time was pretty accurate. Once they call your party, "The ________ family expedition," you go to a second counter behind the one where you gave your name for a table to check-in. They call multiple parties for their "expedition" at once so we had another short wait. I found this area to be very disorganized. Seaters come to this area looking for their assigned "expedition." They are therefore pulling people out of the line from behind you and in front of you so it is basically just a holding area vs a line. Our seater was in training so it took her a good five minutes to get us and they kept calling for our party's "expedition" over the loudspeaker and even made a last call and asked us to raise our hands if we were in the area when in reality we had been standing in the holding area waiting the whole time. Our seater then had difficulty locating our table and led us all through the busy, crowded restaurant before she backtracked to find our table.

The restaurant itself is divided up into several different sections. There is a room with lots of foliage and moving dinosaurs, a volcano/fire room where you can see lots of fire along the wall that the kitchen is behind, an underwater themed room where there is a fish tank and lots of pretty jellyfish and stuff hanging from the ceiling but no animatronic dinosaurs (this room is alongside the bar, which has the same theming), and an ice cave which changes color from red to blue every few minutes. (Note: Each room does have an actual name but i don't remember what they are.) We were seated in the underwater themed room and my daughter enjoyed looking at the fish tank, however, you can not get a close up view without disturbing other diners if the restaurant is full because it is surrounded by tables. It is also not a floor to ceiling fish tank like the ones in the rainforest cafe and the fish are above a toddler's eye level so I had to pick her up for a close-up view. We were led to a table with no high chairs or booster seats and the server seemed a bit surprised and put-off when I asked for one for the two year old but there was no way she could've reached the table from a regular seat. She said they did not have booster seats and brought us a high chair (not sure if this is always the case or just because it was busy, although there were plenty of empty tables in the restaurant and i did not see any children sitting in a booster seat).
After our waitress left us with menus and the high chair she disappeared for a LONG  time. My toddler was getting very restless and I was getting ready to go look for her when about ten minutes later she finally came back. The children's menu comes as a "prehistoric playbook" coloring/activity booklet with 2 or 3 basic colored crayons but it was definitely not enough to keep a toddler occupied.

The children's food choices are on the back page and consist of your typical kid's fare like (dinosaur shaped) chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, and pizza but also choices like 1/4 rotisserie chicken, lasagna, and pork ribs. They are $6.99-$7.99 but a kid-sized drink will cost an extra $1.99 and desserts are $2.99. You can also get a drink in a souvenir bone cup for $4.99.

Although the kid's meals are quite pricey I have eaten here before with older children and they are pretty generous portions so you could easily get one meal for two toddlers or children who are not big eaters to split. The meals come with a side of carrot sticks, potato chips, baked beans, cinnamon apples, fruit gelatin, mashed potatoes, or a banana but the top right corner also says "waffle fries available" (no idea if there is an extra charge). I knew my toddler wouldn't eat more than one chicken nugget and a fry or two and we already have a whole large bag of dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets I purchased at the grocery store for less than $5.99 in our freezer at home so I opted to just have her share my meal. I ordered a chicken sandwich for myself and my husband ordered a cheeseburger so I knew she would have plenty to eat.
Even though we didn't order anything really special and I asked our waitress to please try to hurry the order due to the restless toddler it took about 40 minutes for our food to arrive. I know this because I was following the restless toddler around the restaurant trying to keep her occupied and we got to experience the "meteor shower" that takes place twice while we were wandering. During the meteor shower the restaurant darkens, the ice cave room changes color, and rather loud "meteors" come crashing across the ceiling while all the dinosaurs roar loudly. My toddler loved it but I saw several other little ones cowering and covering their ears. A screaming toddler definitely would not stand out above the noise! Although it can be seen from anywhere, the meteor shower is probably best experienced in the ice room. i do not know, however, if I would want to be seated in there because I think the constantly changing color of the walls would be very distracting for a toddler trying to eat and possibly even headache inducing to me after staring at them for a while.

While we waited we also visited the bathroom. It was clean and had plenty of stalls, however, the diaper changing table was in a rather odd spot. It is right in the room with the bathroom stalls and seemed to block the entrance to some of the stalls when it was in use. Luckily the bathroom was not crowded so it wasn't really a problem.
We walked around the restaurant several times before our dinner arrived. My toddler really enjoyed all of the different moving dinosaurs and the fish tank, however, the tables are rather crowded together and the paths between them are narrow so I had to constantly move her out of the path of servers. One of the booths is actually inside a (non animatronic) dinosaur's tail and she particularly enjoyed that area because there was a baby dinosaur next to it she could climb on.

After walking around the restaurant several times our food had still not arrived and she was getting very restless and kept trying to get back out to the sand pit area.
Once our food finally arrived it was good but nothing to write home about. (You can see the menu here: http://www.trexcafe.com/pdf/MenuOrlando.pdf . )

I had the paleozoic chicken sandwich, which is my usual standby when I eat here. It used to be served in more of a doughy pizza bread, which I thought was delicious, but this time the bread was more like a hard pita.

The waitress was nice enough to bring us a plastic plate to put my toddler's food on. She happily munched on french fries and pieces of chicken and bread while the rest of us ate. Although I think they have toned down the noise level quite a bit since the restaurant first opened, it is still pretty loud and nobody even noticed the toddler once she declared she was done and started getting restless even though the table next to us was practically on top of us. Luckily it had taken so long for our food to arrive we were all starving, so it did not take long for the adults in our party to finish their meals. Because the restaurant is rather noisy it is also not the place to sit and have a good adult conversation while you enjoy your meal. We opted to skip dessert and go to nearby Ghiradelli for ice cream instead (since we didn't know how much more waiting it would be for our dessert to arrive!). I have, however, had dessert here before and the portions are HUGE so I recommend splitting it amongst three or four people if you decide to order one.
Overall, T-Rex Cafe is a unique restaurant and not a bad choice if you are dining with toddlers (as long as they are not afraid of the dark and loud, roaring dinosaurs and meteor shower!). I do, however, recommend going for lunch instead of dinner since it is usually a lot less busy at that time and skipping it altogether if there is a good sized lined to check in for a table since it will probably be a while before you actually get to eat. It is definitely better for slightly older kids that can sit longer than it is for toddlers. While we will continue enjoying the dinosaur dig/sand pit outside the retail store, I think we will wait until my two year old is a lot older before we dine here again!