Princess Dining at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall
If you have a princess lover in the family, what better way to celebrate than dining with them! Akershus Royal Banquet Hall is a Character Dining Experience featuring traditional Nordic food and some of your favorite Princesses. Let’s explore what this Epcot Restaurant has to offer.
You can find Akershus in the the Norway Pavilion in Epcot’s World Showcase. The theming is based off of the real like Akershus Fortress in Oslo, Norway and has lots of little touches of traditional Nordic architecture and decor.
This restaurant serves Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner and serves a family style meal with traditional Nordic food that isn’t as scary as it sounds! Breakfast pricing is $55 for Adults, and $35 for Children ages 3-9, while lunch & dinner is $67 per adult, and $43 for Children ages 3-9.
Reservations for this restaurant can be made 60 days in advance or 60 days from Check-in for guests staying at a Disney owned Resort.
Want to check out our full review on YouTube? You can watch it here:
The Food
As mentioned, the food is going to have traditional Nordic flair. If you have a super picky eater, then breakfast might be the best option, however, be aware that those are the hardest reservations to get.
We dined there for dinner and found the food to be not only delicious, but more picky eater friendly than we thought!
Dinner is served family style - that means that platters of food will be brought to your table to share and enjoy, and you can absolutely ask for more of a certain item if you wish.
To start out, you will get a Lingonberry Salad and Lefse. The salad was light and refreshing and really had more of a taste of a strawberry or raspberry vinaigrette with lots of yummy crunch!
Lefse is a traditional Nordic treat that is essentially a rolled up potato ‘tortilla’. It comes with a Cardamom Cinnamon Butter that you can spread on the inside and these are highly addicting! They aren’t too sweet and the warm and buttery flavors make this a mouth watering bread service.
You can also get Lefse at Kring’la Bakery, but that one is served chilled and you don’t get to choose how much butter is on your Lefse, so definitely eat up while you are at Akershus!
Your main platter comes with a TON of food options including meatballs, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, corndog nuggets, salmon, green beans, pickled cabbage, and chicken & dumplings.
If you’ve ever dined at Ikea, the food offerings are honestly super similar, just more elevated. The meatballs are full of flavor and pair really well with the mashed potatoes and lingonberry sauce.
The Salmon is cooked decently, although, because it is cooked in bulk, can have the tendency to be slightly overdone. The buttery flavor of the green beans give the salmon a nice taste and are great for those a little more health concious.
The mac & cheese and corndog nuggets are going to be a great pleaser for picky eaters or littles and if you’ve ever had Casey’s Corner corndog nuggets, these are basically the same thing! The mac & cheese is thick, but very creamy and flavorful too.
The pickled cabbage may be a little weird for you, but our server said that it is a Nordic version of sauerkraut that goes well with the salmon or meatballs.
My other favorite is the chicken & dumplings. These are shredded chicken with gnocchi dumplings and if you are a fan of chicken noodle soup, you will probably love this!
For dessert, we had a traditional chocolate mousse with rice pudding. The mousse reminded us of a dark chocolate 3 Muskateer and was rich, but not too sweet. The rice pudding had an excellent flavor, but I’ll be honest that if you are a texture person… this is not a great one.
You do get basic beverages included in the price like soda or tea, but there are also some specialty alcoholic beverages available for an additional price.
Overall, the food was MUCH better than we had anticipated and I think that if you try this one, you may be pleasantly surprised! Is it the best meal on property? No, definitely not, BUT the food is very good!
The Characters
There are a variety of princess that you may see at this meal. Not every single princess is guaranteed, but you will have some combination of characters coming around while you dine. Princesses you may see include: Ariel, Belle, Tiana, Jasmine, Aurora, and Snow White. We saw all of these except for Jasmine when we were there!
Characters will come to your table one by one and chat with you, take pictures, sign autographs and give hugs! I highly recommend having some fun questions ready to ask each princess to have some extra fun with your interaction. Of course, make sure that the questions are appropriate and involve their ‘story’ - for example, you can ask Ariel what Flounder is up to today or Belle what her favorite book is. You won’t want to ask Aurora what her favorite Star Wars movie is because she won’t know what you are talking about.
You will know that a new princess is coming out when their song starts to play throughout the restaurant. Keep in mind, each princess can only spend a few minutes at each table, so be courteous and have those cameras and autograph books ready. They will come to each table once, so I recommend using the restroom before or after your meal so that you don’t miss them when they come by. If for some reason you did miss a character, be sure to let your server know and they will let that princesses character attendant know.
We had alot of fun at this meal and it can be a great option if you weren’t able to snag Cinderella’s Royal Table, or are just looking for another princess meal!
