This Foodie has a very guilty secret. I love cheeseburgers. I love all cheeseburgers, even awful Counter Service Disney cheeseburgers. Disney has made some major improvements and offered lots of specialty burgers in the last year or so. Some have already come and gone, like the Liberty Inn ham and Gouda burger. Sometimes, however, I don’t want pulled pork on my burger or to pay $17.00 for a kobe burger at Yak and Yeti. Sometimes I just want a regular old cheeseburger and fries. There are tons of places at Walt Disney World to get a regular old burger and fries: Cosmic Rays, Rosie’s All American, Pecos Bills and the list goes on and on. After all, the cheeseburger is the classic theme park meal.

I have a favorite when it comes to my Counter Service plain old cheeseburger fetish. Surprise! It’s at Animal Kingdom park and in the Dinoland area. Restaurantosaurus is my favorite place to get a cheeseburger.

There are lots of reasons that this is my favorite place in WDW to get a cheeseburger. Let’s start at the beginning: location. Animal Kingdom is my favorite park and so the day I visit there is usually the day I spend the most time touring attractions and am less inclined to sit down and spend an hour having a Table Service meal. Animal Kingdom also has the least number of sit down meal options. This makes Counter Service meals more popular. Location in the park itself also lends itself to being my meal of choice. Typically, I’m finished with Africa and Asia, at least the first round of rides, at around 11:00am. I head over to Dinoland and hop on Dinosaur. I’m usually pretty hungry once I get done with this fast paced morning. Restaurantosaurus is just opening up at this time–lunch starts at 11:30am. The line for food is minimal and my biggest pet peeve is waiting in line for food.

Theming is the next reason that I love Restaurantosaurus.  This Counter Service restaurant has a theme that is as well fleshed out as the queue for an E-Ticket ride. The restaurant is the bunkhouse for the Dino Research Institute that was cobbled together from lots of different buildings and even an old Airstream trailer. The inside of the restaurant is huge, and therefore has a ton of seating capacity, which is nice on busy days. The left side of the restaurant is themed to more of the educational research projects that the students have been working on as well as the kitchen and some bunking areas. On the right side of the restaurant you’ll find what appears to be the “living room” and the “rec room.” My favorite place to sit is actually in the Airstream trailer, which houses the jukebox. If you look inside the jukebox you’ll find the playlist for the background music playing in the restaurant. The music is just another great touch, all of the music is dinosaur, extinction, or end of the world themed. I just love listening to REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know it” while I eat my burger.

Let’s move on to the reason we’re all here: the food. I love the menu options at Restaurantosaurus because some time I might actually think about ordering something other than a cheeseburger. There’s of course my 1/3rdlb Angus Bacon Cheeseburger. However you could also order a Shrimp Po Boy, Chicken Nuggets, Veggie Subosaurus, or a Dig Site Salad. Here’s my favorite part. The veggie sub comes with sweet potato french fries. The Cast Members will gladly swap out the regular fries with the burger or po boy for the sweet potato variety. Restaurantosaurus also has one of the best fixin’s bars on property. Besides the usual lettuce, tomato, and pickles you can also get sauteéd mushrooms and onions. The salad dressing packets are also kept on the bar, so if you want to add blue cheese salad dressing to your burger, you can! (Not that I would EVER even think about doing that.) Finally this is one of the few Counter Service locations that offers refills on your beverage from beverage stations located on both sides of the restaurant!

There are just a few more things I want to add about this, my favorite cheeseburger location. First, if you need to charge your phone, camera, or iPad, this is a great place to do it. There are outlets literally all over the restaurant. Second, because the location is so large, there is never a problem finding a seat–as sometimes happens over at Pecos Bill’s or Cosmic Ray’s. Third, the bathroom here is enormous and always clean. Finally, if you have become somewhat stressed out during the course of your afternoon, you can get a Safari Amber beer, which is brewed just for Disney’s Animal Kingdom and is one of my favorite beers.

So yes, it’s just a cheeseburger, but it can be a mushroom, blue cheese burger with sweet potato fries if you want it to be! Happy Eating Everyone!