Tangaroa Terrace

Reasonably priced (for the DLR) and tasty lunch spot. Sandwiches, salads and flatbread pizzas have been enjoyed by our group.

My husband and I were back at the Parks this past weekend for Dapper Day, and decided to do breakfast at Tangaroa Terrace again. The atmosphere alone is worth a visit. Since it is at the at the end of Downtown Disney away from the Parks, it is always a lot less busy and mostly frequented by hotel guests, so you’re not starting your day off by waiting in line forever. There is a wrap-​around outdoor patio lined with tiki torches and cute patio furniture for outdoor dining, as well as indoor seating if you so choose.
This time I chose the Breakfast Platter with the Portuguese sausage (which is essentially the same thing as linguica — a little spicy with lots of flavor, $ 7.49), and my hubby got the Breakfast Wrap ($ 7.99). The quality of the food seemed to be better than last time, hence the additional star.
Both plates were a massive amount of food — neither of us could finish. For the quality as well as the price, it was a great start to our day. We would definitely recommend.

Their waffles were AMAZING. Crispy on the outside and sort of cakey on the inside, easy to cut bc they’re so crispy yet not burnt! Wouldn’t eat here everyday bc of the value /​price, but not bad for once in a while. The muffins look great too– going to try them today! :) surprisingly more affordable than most Disney eateries.

It’s not the greatest food you’ll ever have but it’s a great alternative if you don’t want to drop $ 30+ on a character breakfast. Breakfast tends to be a quiet time in that area so it’s nice to sit outside by the tiki torches and enjoy a few peaceful moments before heading into the madness of the park.
I tried their loco moco which again was good but not great. Husband had their waffles and portuguese sausage. Waffles are the exact same that you would get at Goofy’s Kitchen and for a fraction of the price. I’m a bit of a coffee snob so I wasn’t a fan of their brew. Would have preferred to splurge on a starbucks in downtown disney.

Tangaroa Terrace is a counter-​service restaurant, so you order at a touch screen and then pay at the register. Your meal is brought to your table once it is ready.
There are not a lot of tables here, but you might be able to find a seat depending on what time you decide to show up. I could see it getting crowded at peak times. I would say we were all pleased with our food. I ordered off the kids’ menu, so my portion of salmon was not big, but I did not feel hungry when I finished. Other options include cheeseburgers, fish, salads, and flat bread pizzas. The cost is average for Disneyland prices.
Check it out if you’re in the area or in the mood for a quick bite.

What I love about Tangaroa Terrace is the ambience. If you sit outside for lunch or dinner, the tiki torches are lit up, you get a nice view of the Disneyland Hotel, and you can hear the live ukelele singers in the background. Additionally if you sit outside, you can order drinks from Trader Sam’s, which shares the same building as Tangaroa Terrace. The food is pretty good, nothing to write home about, though.
Pro tip: buy (and obviously eat) the Mickey ice cream bars here! It’s perfect and not frozen and rock-​hard like if you were to buy it in the parks.

The atmosphere is absolutely enchanting, especially at night! The combination of the mouth watering food, live Hawaiian music, lantern blowing in the trees and fire tiki torches… just amazing. I get the Tangoroa Terrace salad. Which is 100% vegan and 100% delicious. The salad is the perfect size and is dressed to perfection. The little crispy tofu bites are mouthwatering. Will come back again and again!

I thought the food was ok. I had the Hawaiian burger and fries. It hit the spot. The price was typical Disney, about 15 dollars for burger and a drink. I didn’t have any problems with seating, but I was eating lunch at 1030 in the morning. Very small seating area so during the busy times I would expect it might be hard to get a seat.

Tangaroa Terrace is always my go to location for a quick service location outside of the theme parks.
They offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They open as of 7am and close at 10pm. Their location is very convenient, right at the center of the Disneyland Hotel overlooking the pool area.
Breakfast: During breakfast they offer entrées at $ 6 to $ 7. They offer a breakfast platter, breakfast wrap, a loco moco, French toast, oatmeal, fruit, and they also offer the Mickey’s Waffles!
Lunch and Dinner: Their entrees vary between $ 9 to $ 12. They offer shrimp tacos, Ahi Poke, ¹⁄₃ lb Angus Hawaiian Cheeseburger, Angus Bacon Cheeseburger, Slow Roasted Kalua Style Pork Sandwich, Teriyaki Chicken Breast Sandwich, Salads, and flatbreads. They also offer grab and go options like yogurt, cereal, chips, fresh fruit, salads, and sandwiches. They have pastries like cinnamon bun, muffins, coconut cake, popsicles, and cookies.
Service is pretty good here. Give yourself enough time since they do take a while to prepare your food at times.

Surprised at all the poor or lukewarm reviews here — we thought our food was all delicious! We looked at the poolside menu (drinks and food delivered right to your lounge chair) but decided to go to the restaurant in person for lunch. There are slightly more choices there, and we ordered three adult meals and three kids meals, all of which were fine. The kids each got a heaping fruit cup with a great variety of really fresh cut up fruit. Their chicken nuggets were large pieces of breast meat that looked like it was made onsite, and their salmon was moist and very flavourful. They had many choices of beverages included. The adults shared a pork sandwich, ahi poke, and shrimp tacos. Everything was plated carefully and really, really good. I especially liked the ahi — the tuna was cut well and very fresh and the avocado was perfect. The three tacos were small but stuffed with grilled shrimp.
Although we didn’t indulge, the drinks menu was extremely tempting — all kinds of alcoholic, non-​alcoholic, and frozen choices, each of which looked terrific as they passed by us. And for the kids there was even soft frozen lemonade and Mickey ice cream treats.
Although it wasn’t inexpensive, it also wasn’t outrageously priced, and for what we got, in a resort location, I was completely satisfied. Thumbs up!

This is the thing about Tangaroa Terrace… is all the food s***? Probably.
However, let’s say you are super hungry because you ate part of a monte cristo you didn’t really like. It’s 10pm and the park just closed and all of the other restaurants and Downtown Disney are SUPER overcrowded (and equally overpriced and s***ty because, I mean, come on, this is the most expensive theme park in the world, what do you expect?)
Anyway, Tangaroa Terrace’s Asian Noodle Chicken Salad comes handy in situations like these. It really wasn’t a bad salad at all compared to how low my expectations were. It also did the job of filling me up with food on the Disneyland premises without having to wait in a super ridiculous long line. Additionally, there were cute Hawaiian men playing live music on guitar inside the restaurant for pretty much no one. I loved the ambiance, especially since I finally spotted some of those elusive Disneyland cats I’ve heard so much about outside the restaurant.
Worth a visit — I’d come back ;)

Whenever I come to Disneyland I make it a point to have Breakfast at Tangaroa Terrace at least once. I cannot get enough of the fabulous banana caramel sauce with the french toast! It’s a great place to fuel up for a long day at the parks and the décor is wonderful! There are old pictures of Walt all around and the Cast Members are so friendly. As far as Disney quick service goes (both in Anaheim and Orlando) this is certainly one of my top 5!

I remember when this place + Trader Sam’s used to be a Peter Pan themed establishment known as Hook’s Pointe. After some remodeling of the Disney hotel areas, Tangaroa Terrace — a quick service dining location — emerged. With my goal of hitting all the Disney dining locations at least once, I knew I had to give this place a try when I was staying overnight at the Disneyland Hotel.
Checking in on a Saturday evening at 7 pm for dinner, inside seating was packed… though we come to realize there wasn’t a lot of it to begin with. Room for about 3 tables of 4, 3 tables of 2, one table of 5 and one table of 7 was all there was. Outside seating seemed a big larger, with heat lamps on for those chilly evenings. We wanted to stay indoors because they had some theme appropriate entertainment — a duo singing and playing the guitar/​ukelele. They were playing right when you enter, so you can already see how compact the location is inside.
Onto the food. We set our sights on the following:
* Kālua-​style Pork Flatbread ($ 9.29) — no kidding, this flatbread and all its toppings were really flat. It’s cut into 8 square pieces. Honestly, I thought there would be more to this flatbread, especially given the price. While it was tasty, it seemed expensive for what we got. My work cafeteria makes flatbread almost double the size for half the cost and it tastes just as good.
* ¹⁄₃ lb Angus Hawaiian Cheeseburger with a side of sweet potato fries ($ 11.19) — burger was pretty good and included about 2 slices of thinly sliced and crisp bacon. A decent portion of sweet potato fries. Standard expectations for a burger at Disney.
* 22 oz fountain drink ($ 3.19) — I needed the sugar and refills were available here!
Your meal can be reduced with an AP discount, should you have an annual pass.
Overall, the food tastes good, but seems to fall short of the price they cost. However, the value you pay go towards the entertainment they have, which provides the type of atmosphere you’d expected from this little slice off of the tropical islands. Very relaxing and laidback. I don’t think they have the duo or other comparable entertainment playing every night, so you may want to check before eating here. If they weren’t here, I wouldn’t feel like I was getting enough value given what I was paying for.
Pretty centrally located among the three towers of the Disneyland Hotel and right in the middle of the pool area, splitting the D and E ticket pools from the pool with the monorail slides.
I’d come back just to listen to the live Hawaiian/​Polynesian music!

The food here doesn’t look like the pictures on the menu at all. What arrived was small, dry, and limp in comparison. This place should be utilized out of necessity/​convenience only in my opinion.
High price/​Low quality

Going here for dinner was a process of elimination after we took the monorail from Disneyland. We didn’t feel like going to any particular restaurants and wanted to avoid the crowds at Disney Downtown District.
Located by the Disney hotel swimming pool, this casual spot was mellow at night and a brief walking distance from the hustle and bustle of Disney Downtown. No waiting. After perusing the menu, I placed an order with a cashier and got a table number. Most of the indoor tables were taken, so we sat at the patio by the heat lamps.
After a full day of various Mouse House snacks, I just wanted a salad. The Tangaroa Terrace salad was ok. Kinda smallish bowl of mostly healthiness to graze on, yet effective. It’s a bed of lettuce, cabbage, kale, along with pineapple, grape tomatoes, and toasted macadamia nuts. The fried tofu was a nice texture, but I didn’t care much for them being marinated because it was a sharp flavor that overpowered the tropical vinaigrette salad dressing. For an upcharge, you can opt for shrimp instead of tofu.
Wifey liked her teriyaki chicken sammich. I also sampled a bite of the Kalua-​style pork flatbread that the table shared. I have not found a pulled/​shredded pork thin crust pizza that disappointed yet. This sounds odd, but a nice thing was being able to (re)fill my own drink from the self serve soda fountain. After dropping $ 3+ for a soda pop, I wanted to refill everyone’s cups and souvenir mugs just to break even for the day.
Another quick food option in the Disney resort.

My friend and I came here on a Friday night just strolling through downtown disney and ended up at this place because we were not just in the mood to eat anything at downtown disney. Plus everything was pretty packed. We just walked around the disney hotel areas and stumbled upon this place. Plus we were hungry so we just settled for this place since we haven’t been here.
We got in line and ordered what we wanted, paid, and then was given a number. Found our seats and the food was brought out to us.
My friend ordered the Asian Chicken Salad ($ 8.49). This salad was nothing to special. Just seems like a typical salad. I ordered the Angus ¹⁄₃ lb. hawaiian cheeseburger ($ 10.39) and this was good but not great. The fries were good though but then again I’m a huge french fry fan! The food is mediocre but that’s fine because I don’t expect anything amazing when it comes to overpriced disney food. Probably will not stop by again.
NOTE:
–Annual pass discount
–order first, pay, sit

The torches look very cool at night. Reminds me of the torches at Haliewa Joes in Kaneohe, Oahu. Now I know where the Enchanted Tiki Bar is, thanks to Maggie C. :-)
Tangaroa is an important figure in Polynesian mythology. He was the son of Ranginui (the sky father) and Papatūānuku (the earth mother). According to Māori legend, Tangaroa is the god of the sea and progenitor of fish (a biologically related ancestor).
In Rarotonga (Cook Islands), Tangaroa was the god of the sea and fertility. He was the most important of all the departmental gods.
In Manihiki (Cook Islands), Tangaroa is the origin of fire. In Hawaiian mythology, Māui is a culture hero and ancient chief who appears in several different genealogies.
As legend goes, Māui travelled to Tangaroa across the ocean to obtain fire for humankind. Although Maui was advised to reach Tangaroa’s lair by taking the common path, he instead took the forbidden path of death. Tangaroa was furious and tried to kick him to death. Māui withstood the attack and insisted that Tangaroa give him fire. When Tangaroa still refused, Māui killed him. After others were horrified, Māui was able to use incantations to summon Tangaroa back to life.
Disney doesn’t do things by chance. Maybe the (fire) torches are purposeful. But, as Maggie C. asked in her review, where’s the fish and chips? They have ahi poke and shrimp tacos, but those are different. Perhaps we should petition Mickey Mouse for an explanation.

We had snacks, dinner and breakfast here.
The menu is limited. Very limited. But we had meals that were more reasonably priced without having to leave the park.
Cast members are very friendly and they brought our food to us even though we chose to sit outside.
After watching the transition about 4 years ago, this newly renovated resort has a lot to offer.
Tangaroa Terrace may fill in some meal and snack voids for your party. check them out!

Now I know why the ratings are so bad for Tangaroa.
We went here a while ago for breakfast but we were too late. We went back to try its Hawaiian breakfast and there was no more computer ordering system. The computer screens were covered with the menu and everyone lined up at the cashier to order the food.
Ordered breakfast plate with bacon and loco moco.
Breakfast plate with bacon ($ 7.49): paper thin bacon + bland and semi uncooked potatoes + bland scrambled egg + a tiny bowl of fresh fruits. Please wipe the oil before serving it because my plate was so greasy from the fat.
Loco moco ($ 7.99): minute rice + dry burger patty.
I wonder why they name this place Tangaroa because Tangaroa is the god of the sea in Maori mythology. No fish n chips @ this Disneyland hotel restaurant. They also have breakfast wrap, french toast, steel-​cut oatmeal and Mickey shaped waffles.
QUICK TIP: ANNUAL PASS DISCOUNT IS ACCEPTED.
2 stars!
Tangaroa Terrace is not yummylicious!

Ordered the Loco Moco (7.99) and the Bacon Breakfast Plate (7.49). 15% Premium Annual Discount. Ok if you’re Hawaiian or Asian or like Hawaiian food… AVOID this place! This place has the worst Loco Moco ever. Hamburger is dry, very little gravey, and i mean scarce, and the rice is like minute rice, very undercooked. The Bacon plate, paper thin bacon, over cooked eggs, and under cooked potatos.
Whomever designed this menu/​food needs to really rethink the poor quality. NEVER AGAIN COMING BACK. EVER. The one star is for the ambiance.