T-Rex Cafe in Downtown Disney World in Orlando, Florida

T-Rex Cafe is completely over-priced and worth every penny!!!

Do you remember how cool it was when the Rainforest Cafe first opened at the mall?  Or how awesome it was when you first saw Jurassic Park?  Well, imagine if the two were combined.  Yes, T-Rex Cafe!

On a Sunday night at approximately 5:30, there was about a half-hour wait to get a table.  Not too bad.  While you are waiting, you can conveniently spend money at the insanely large gift shop and Build-a-Dino Workshop (you got it, the same exact thing as Build-a-Bear Workshop but with Dinosaurs).  Or you can opt to play in the bone yard and unearth dinosaur bones.   My kids are experienced dinosaur excavators from our many trips to Cañon City, Colorado, so they jumped right in to strut their paleontological skills.

As we were walking to our table in the oceanic section of the restaurant, the hostess told us about the end-of-civilization-dramatization that was happening at that very moment above our heads in T-Rex Cafe.  Every 20 minutes the lights dim in the restaurant and meteors light up the ceiling to demonstrate how the dinosaurs were eliminated from our planet.  Bitchin’.  Here is a video of the dinosaur extinction exercise.

There were at least 20 animatronic dinosaurs gyrating and pulsating throughout the restaurant.  I was very impressed.  I posted more pictures of these empowering T-Rex Cafe beasts on my Picasa Site.  There is also a room that reminded me of the ice palace in Superman.  The room has a giant fossil embedded into the icy walls that change color every few minutes.  You have to walk through that room to get the bathrooms.  And get this — even the bathrooms have dinosaur fossils.  Total class.

We also ate food at T-Rex Cafe.  I had a Stegosaurus Steak & Cheese Sandwich for $13.99, which was quite good.  I have a theory, though, about food at restaurants like this.  I firmly believe that we psychologically embellish the taste of the food in outrageous theme restaurants to justify spending twice the amount of money that we would normally spend for a mediocre dinner.  That being stated, the sandwich was delicious and well worth 14 bucks.  Heck, I would have paid $20.00.  The kids had Cosmo’s Cheesy Macaroni and Jurassic Chicken Tidbits.  Mmmmmm…. Jurassic Chicken Tidbits.

Since this is my first restaurant review, I should make it official and throw down some stars.  The official Scott Stafford [dot] Com Rating for T-Rex Cafe is Five Stars (but I refuse to list out of how many stars…).