This summer, we are reintroducing our listeners to the BEST OF SCFADP by playing our 10 most popular episodes. In this episode, we review Nomad Lounge at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
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All music for this episode is available through a creative commons license. The background music for the News segment was created by Kevin Macleod: Fuzzball Parade by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5044-fuzzball-parade
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Show Notes:
Kelli and Chris shared their experiences at the Nomad Lounge at Animal Kingdom. Kelli praised the lounge’s prime location, beautiful view, and impressive bread service, while Chris highlighted the bread, beef sliders, and churros. Both speakers highly recommended the cocktails, with Kelli citing their creativity and flavors, and Chris singling out the Pisco sangria as a standout. Overall, the speakers enjoyed their visit to the Nomad Lounge and would recommend it to others.
Outline
Nomad Lounge at Animal Kingdom with food and drink recommendations.
- Nomad Lounge at Disney World offers reservation-free menu items in a chic setting.
- Kelli and Chris share tips for navigating the Nomad Lounge at Animal Kingdom.
Food at Nomad Lounge, including menu items and recommendations.
- Kelli and Chris shared their dining experience at Nomad Lounge, highlighting the menu’s variety and quality.
- The Tiffins bread service was a standout, featuring four different types of bread with dipping sauces.
- Kelli and Chris rave about Nomad Lounge’s bread service and churros, calling them the best they’ve ever had.
- They highly recommend the lobster mac and cheese and smoked pork ribs, describing them as fall-off-the-bone meaty and sticky sweet.
Unique cocktails at Animal Kingdom’s Nomad Lounge.
- Kelli and Chris discuss unique cocktails at Animal Kingdom, including Pisco-based drinks and those using liquors with animal-themed names.
- They enjoy Snow Leopard salvation, a refreshing vodka-based drink that supports conservation efforts for snow leopards.
- Relaxation area in Animal Kingdom with lounge seating and beverages.
Episode Transcript:
NOTE: This transcript was produced using AI. Please excuse any errors.
Hello out there Disney fam. Welcome to this show. My name is Chris
Kelli 0:37
and I’m Kelly and we are continuing our best of summer tour with our eighth most popular episode. This was originally released on February the 10th of 2021. This is from season three and I am drooling. Just thinking about this episode honey. This is our bonus episode on Nomad lounge.
Chris 0:58
The churros, the ribs that your drinks the cavalcades that go right by you on the Nomad Lounge is is a is a gem a hidden gem the candied hibiscus Oh man. It’s like a fruit roll up. So good. So good. I hope you love this episode as much as we enjoyed actually testing out Nomad lounge. Yes, absolutely.
Enjoy it. We are going to be talking about the Nomad lounge and cocktail bar, affectionately called the Nomad lounge. Look as a general pro tip when it comes to Disney. Don’t sleep on the lounges. Okay. Many of the higher end restaurants at Disney have an attached or nearby lounge to offer many of the same menu items as their restaurant counterparts. But without the need for reservations. The Nomad Lounge is one of these options and absolutely worth the visit. Yes,
Kelli 2:03
definitely. And during COVID They are doing a waitlist on the app. So when we were there in December when we got to the park, we immediately checked the waitlist and it said the waitlist is full and we were pretty bummed out about that. But we just kept checking back and checking back and literally within 45 minutes it had opened up and we had a reservation within five minutes. Yep. So don’t give up on it. If it says it’s full. Just keep checking and checking and checking you can get in we had no issues walking right in and getting an amazing seat under the water.
Chris 2:33
Absolutely. And really all it took for us to want to try the Nomad lounge was the words bread survey man. Bread service were sold. But it offered so much more by way of small plates and wonderful libations Nomad Lounge is located right next to Tiffins, which is easily the nicest restaurant animal kingdom. It’s one of the nicer restaurants on Walt Disney World property for sure. If you’re walking towards Pandora from discovery Island, it’ll be on the right just before the bridge over the water to go to Pandora. So you’ll see Tiffins and then you’ll see the Nomad lounge. It includes an indoor and outdoor seating area. And if you sit outside, you have actually a fantastic view of the river that runs through animal kingdom, which means you get prime viewing of the floating character cavalcades that are so cool that animal kingdom was fantastic. So relaxing, beautiful. And there’s so many details in the banks of the river that you can just try to spot things. It’s amazing. The decor speaks to the heart of those with wanderlust, which we both have they here these the inside has these large banners hanging from the ceiling in the center of the lounge that pose questions about traveling in the thrill of discovery. In normal times non pandemic times the cast will provide you with a decorative little tag and you jot down answers to the questions on the banners and the your the people that work there might display your answers on the quote tag chandelier that hangs up on the bar for all to see your answers. That’s
Kelli 4:14
really cool. But as always, the menu is the star here right? We went for the bread service, but we knew it was going to be a phenomenal menu. And at Nomad lounge, it’s a collection of small plates. There’s a decent selection of beers, wine, specialty cocktails, the wine and beer options as well as the cocktails not extensive. But they are all quite interesting. And you can tell that was very intentionally selected. So let’s go down through the small plates. They have and this is sort of on their standard menu. There’s also a specials menu and we’ll hit that too. So on the small plates they had the chicken Manchurian Nomad bowl, and all these are meant to be shared. So this is steamed rice, red cabbage, kimchi and ginger scallion oil and cremini mushrooms that’s $13 The togarashi spice tuna Nomad bowl which is steamed rice, red cabbage, kimchi, Ginger scallion all and cremini mushrooms as well. We had the other three which are the impossible sliders with Chipotle Ali and yuca fries. The Tiffins bread service which comes with what four different types of bread,
Chris 5:24
there was the pomegranate of Akasha there was non lavosh And there was another one that I can’t
Kelli 5:30
really crispy one yeah, yes. And that comes with red pepper, hummus, spicy coriander, yogurt and ginger pear chutney for $12. And then churros, which are somehow gluten free. I don’t know how they do that with vanilla crema and chili strawberry, which I’m going to be honest, those things were just amazing. Just drank those out a little. So we got the impossible sliders obviously because I’m vegetarian, but what did you think about them?
Chris 5:54
I thought they were fantastic. Yeah, I thought they weren’t delightful. Yeah, there was an impossible there was like a vegetarian booth at Epcot Festival last year. That that’s what they reminded me of. Yeah, but the slaw on them just set it off. It was Yeah, absolutely. The yuca fries. Not only that, but the bread was you could tell the bread was fresh baked. Oh, yeah. These little rolls and bread will make a salad or break a sandwich. And they just killed this.
Kelli 6:21
Yeah. So they brought out our impossible sliders at the same time. They brought out the tables next to us. Regular slide. Yeah. So on the specials, we need to have beef sliders and beef sliders. And so we were like, do we get the beef or do we get the we couldn’t we honestly couldn’t tell the difference by looking at which one they had delivered to us. But I’ll
Chris 6:38
tell you that ours were bigger. Oh, ours were bigger. Ours looked prettier. Yeah.
Kelli 6:42
I thought they must be the real beef because they looked like a prettier little slider. Yeah, absolutely. Sure. The bread service was as amazing as we thought it was going to be. It is Tiffins bread service. So you’re getting the same bread service at Nomad lounge that you would get if you had reservations at Tiffany’s. And it was just phenomenal. The dips, the bread, everything about that service. Amazing. And the Cheras I don’t even know what to say the
Chris 7:08
best churros that I read in my life and let me tell you something. I’ve eaten a million churros. Whether at Disney, not a Disney. We tried making them at home one time and baseball games. If they sell a churro I tried to eat it were for churros. But no churro will ever stand up to these.
Kelli 7:25
They weren’t they were the best euros I’ve ever had. How are they? How are they gluten free?
Chris 7:29
We had churros in Lima, Peru at a place that specialized in churros and these were better. These were better. That chili spice strawberry so good. Oh my gosh,
Kelli 7:39
the sauces did make it man man. They made it. So yeah, so we highly recommend those three on the regular menu, the bread service, please don’t miss the bread service. Don’t sleep on that. Don’t skip the impossible sliders just because it’s impossible mate and if you go and don’t get the turas just You’re messing up and
Chris 7:55
go to just get the churros if that’s if you get nothing get the churros in the bread service.
Kelli 8:00
Well then so they had several specials while we were there. They had a squash soup, some beef sliders, smoked pork ribs with a sweet soy glaze and an apple Hichem a slaw charcuterie board and lobster mac and cheese with Black Diamond cheddar cheese Sherry And orange Shetty pasta. Yeah, but so you got the lobster mac and the smoked pork ribs. So tell us all about so this
Chris 8:22
smoked pork ribs were just fall off the bone. Just there were massive. They were massive. They were they were meaty. They were sticky. Sweet. That little umami flavored sticky sweetness like Korean barbecue almost they were beautiful. Gosh, they just I can I’m just thinking it was like gorgeous and I would not I mean it I get it they’re defined as a small plate but man Yeah, you could you could walk away for these were these were massive. But we were there to eat man. So I also got the lobster mac and cheese. Which is everything you want lobster mac and cheese to be plenty of big chunks of lobster in there isn’t a crock. It wasn’t a it wasn’t a crock that you know they baked it right in that crock. It was a layer of cheese on top and just it was so decadent. It was yes. Rich.
Kelli 9:14
Yes. Beautiful, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. We also went for the cocktails, right? No lie. These are cocktails you can’t get anywhere else on Disney property. These are unique to animal kingdom, right? So a lot of them use liquors that specifically have a tie into some something to do with animal catcher.
Chris 9:36
That’s right, right.
Kelli 9:37
So for example, the Lamu libation has star African rum. And so then you’ve also got the spice trader classic. And Annapurna zing, the Long’s delight, which also has the star African rum, temp, attempting Tigris, scrape in that gray. It’s Russell’s reserved in your bourbon with an all spy Drum, tamarind syrup and lime juice. The night monkey the night monkeys fantastic plantation original Dark Rum guava puree coffee, simple syrup and lime juice with a hint of cilantro. Yes, I all I can seriously consider the Mustang coffee which is Crown Royal brown sugar and butter with hot coffee. That sounds good. Yes, but I ended up getting the Sinaloa Sangria which is a South American Sangria made with Susana Balbo creos Rosae barstool, que Bronto Pisco and fresh fruit.
Chris 10:35
They had me at Pisco Pisco was was the selling factor there.
Kelli 10:39
Me at Pisco and it was it was delightful. It was refreshing, again, you’re sitting out on a porch, on a perfectly perfect day with like people, you know, characters coming by and cavalcades and I’m sipping on a Pisco sangria. It was fantastic. They also had Ibotta Reedham. and a high tower rocks. You had the Snow Leopard salvation. Tell us about that.
Chris 11:03
It was great. It’s very refreshing. And so this was Snow Leopard vodka. They had to breed a pear liqueur, so pear liqueur, mint, lime juice, topped with ginger beer reminded me a little bit of like a mint julep, maybe like a mint julep. And, and, again, we’re sitting on a porch, the sun sort of coming down, it was cool, but you had the radiant heat from the sunshine, and that refreshing drink. It was pretty, it was just delightful.
Kelli 11:36
And it Snow Leopard salvation that vodka in particular donates money to help keep the snow leopards alive. Well, I’m
Chris 11:44
sure that’s why I ordered it I’m sure.
Kelli 11:45
I also had the Djinns tattoo just because I really love the name and that was a huge win. It’s kettle one vodka, watermelon hibiscus, and lime juice. That is an actual candied hibiscus flower sitting on top of that, and I gotta tell you, it made my day. They have several wines all coming from the southern hemisphere, and several beers again, these are all very intentionally selected. They also have some non alcoholic beverages for the kiddos. They have some ala carte small plates for the kiddos including falafel with garlic yogurt, and they have an opportunity for the kids to create their own entree and slide like build your own entree and slides things which is really cool. Now I will say this is a lounge it’s meant to sit and chill this isn’t a run in and run out place. So you know you know your kids the best and decide if that’s something that you want. But this is one of the most relaxing places in Animal Kingdom and I can’t see us ever going back to Animal Kingdom and not doing Yeah, this
Chris 12:41
is the these this couch seating and easy you know wicker chair seating. This is not sitting at a table and dining the service is wonderful, lovely but this is this is a place to go to relax. Yes,
Kelli 12:53
absolutely. Yes. I loved every bit about it.
Chris 12:55
So look, if you if you go into animal kingdom do not sleep on Nomad lounge man. Make a make a plan to get in there just to relax for a minute. You will not regret it go in there. If you do nothing else. Get yourself a beverage, get the red service and the churros. And you will be thanking our podcast for giving you that idea. So hey, if you enjoyed this, go out to iTunes and write us. Give us leave us a review. Run out to our YouTube page Supercalifragilistic awesome Disney podcast and subscribe. We’ll put out more stuff like this. We hope you enjoyed it. And with that we hope to see you real soon