One Disney expert shares why the underrated Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is a favorite dining spot in Disney World.
Deep in the heart of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, where the blazing Florida sun is ready to bake the noodles of all who dare venture onto Commissary Row, there is an oasis of perpetual twilight, cool breezes, and the unmistakable, yet delicate, aroma of… cheeseburgers and fries? What kind of attraction is this? The kind that is actually a restaurant that went so crazy with the theming that it’s practically a ride. Pull up a vintage convertible, my friend, and let us marvel at the glory that is the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant.
Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Transports You to the 1950s
The Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant is like a fever dream – a wonderfully bizarre vision of a lunch (and dinner) spot that is so much more. Where else can you find a massive open restaurant space, filled with the delicate pastel colors of two dozen replica 1950s roadsters serving as booths, spiritually accurate down to the whitewall tires? The entire seated assembly sits facing the movie screen, which is as full of 1950s-era American delights as the menu is. Together, through the miracle of Drive-In Movie technology, we travel together to a simpler time, where casual misuse of atomic power can cause an alien zombie attack at any moment. There are also fries.
More Than Good Food
Yes, the menu is replete with multiple varieties of burger goodness, and I don’t want to pretend that they aren’t delicious. Within the hallowed halls of Dad’s Guide to WDW, I am on record with my vote for Sci-Fi Dine-In’s own classic American burger as the best cheeseburger at Disney World, but the fact remains that the real delight here is not just the food.
Photo by Marisa Alvarado
Disney’s Hollywood Studios is full of attractions that my Whole Family of Supers takes very seriously. We appear before any ropes are dropped and spend the morning powering through our favorite franchises made flesh. By the time we’re ready for lunch, we are deep in the heat of the day. Inescapable. Except…
Well, except that the noonday sun never comes to the Sci-Fi Dine-In Restaurant. There we are always in a beautiful, cool evening, and our eyeballs are always being treated to the finest of drive-in entertainments. Trailers for movies so bad they are an insult to bad movies; “Horror of Party Beach – An invasion of ghoulish atomic beasts who live on human blood”; “The Giant Gila Monster” a film so poorly researched that the tiny lizard stomping on toy cars and model bridges isn’t even an actual Gila Monster, giant or otherwise; and the Citizen Kane of bad movies, “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, perhaps the worst movie ever made, famed in song, story and the film “Ed Wood”.
A Convertible Full of Memories
If that sounds less-than family friendly, I offer the memory of my son when he was six or seven eating French Fries with both hands and howling with laughter at the trailers like DeNiro in Cape Fear, and his little sister beside him, laughing just as hard because in those days she thought the sun rose and set upon her big brother.
In fact, they managed on their own up front quite well until the giant spider attack in Missile to the Moon, or perhaps Cat-Women on the Moon, which required a quick re-seating of Mama Bear. Maybe not the greatest example… but through all of the trailers, and newsreels promising “News of the Future”, and anthropomorphised snacks singing siren songs to lure us to a snack counter that doesn’t exist, there always was laughter and imagination and fun and family.
Photo by Judd Helms
Disney World loves what’s new, and Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater hasn’t changed much over the years, but that’s part of what makes it my favorite. It’s made with love, and that’s why, for us, it may be the best restaurant in Walt Disney World, even if it isn’t the fanciest. Pull up a booth and find out for yourself!
