With the opening of Pandora – The World of Avatar at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Walt Disney World introduced their first fully immersive theme park land. Guests weren’t just given a celebration of the mythology of James Cameron’s Avatar with some nice scenery and a few good attractions. Instead, Disney has created an absolute otherworld—an experience akin to stepping into a living video game where everything from the signage to the way your smartphone interacts with the environment reinforces the atmosphere of the Na’vi homeland.
Besides its two highly-praised attractions, one of the most anticipated elements of Pandora has been its food. Disney promised guests a dining experience like no other— Satu’li Canteen, a fully realistic restaurant based on an Alpha Centauri Expeditions mess hall in the valley of Mo’ara, featuring cuisine unique to Pandora.
Image: Disney
With how insanely busy Pandora has been since its opening, it may be tempting to write off Satu’li Canteen as just another Disney counter service stand. I mean, how good can it possibly be with a drink on the menu that is literally just fruit juice and Powerade in a fancy cup (seriously, Disney)? Considering all the other amazing options Pandora has to offer instead, we initially assumed Satu’li Canteen would prove more hype than substance.
Boy, were we wrong.
We found five reasons why for some of us, it might be the best thing since swiss cheese.
1. Legitimately healthy food
Image: Jett Farrell-Vega
Healthy dining isn’t necessarily at the top of many visitors’ list when it comes to picking Disney culinary choices. After all, part of the fun of a Walt Disney World vacation is casting aside restrictions to imbibe in a buttery School Bread or decadent Tonga Toast.
However, it is very difficult to enjoy your vacation if you feel lethargic, sick to your stomach, or you run face first into a sugar crash. Even so, most guests don’t want to be doomed to salads and wraps for the entirety of their trip just to eat clean.
Satu’li Canteen provides one of the best genuinely healthy dining experiences at Disney World, so long as you skip the fancy Pandoran cake at the end (and for goodness sakes, don’t order the Powerade-gone-wild.) The majority of the menu surrounds customizable bowls with your choice of beef, fish, chicken, or tofu. This is paired with a base of your choice featuring rice and grains, red and sweet potatoes, or quinoa and vegetables and a sauce of your choosing topped with (a surprisingly tasty) vegetable slaw.
We tried the beef and tofu bowls with the rice base and chimichurri, and it was legitimately one of the best healthy quick service meals we’d had at Walt Disney World. While Disney’s Animal Kingdom is already a frontrunner when it comes to healthy eating at the parks, Satu’li Canteen adds an entirely new array of flavors to the mix. Speaking of flavors…
2. Seriously tasty food
Image: Jett Farrell-Vega
If you like zesty spice blends, Satu’li Canteen might become your new home away from home. In trying to capture the “flavors of Pandora”, Disney combined several different elements from South Asian, Brazilian, Korean, and other cuisines. If you are a fan of any of these, you will have no issue finding something enjoyable at Satu’li Canteen. The Vegetable Steamed Curry Pods were a particularly delicious surprise.
While the menu is small, the customizable nature of the bowls allows guests to play with a wide variety of combinations to match a range of flavor palettes. It is well worth visiting more than once to find the protein-base-sauce combination that transports your taste buds to Pandora and back, and on top of that, the desserts aren’t just a treat for your eyes. All in all, Satu’li Canteen gives one seriously good quick service experience. While we loved our meal, there is another element of this establishment that truly took the cake for us.
3. It’s delightfully geeky
Image: Jett Farrell-Vega
Satu’li Canteen is the most magnificently geeky restaurant in all of Walt Disney World. You don’t have to be a fan of James Cameron’s Avatar to enjoy the restaurant’s atmosphere, which could be likened to a hodge-podge of Firefly meets Pacific Rim meets Ferngully.
If you’ve ever played an MMORPG video game, you might be familiar with the efforts online games go to to keep players in a constant state of immersion. Visiting Satu’li Canteen feels like leaving the real world to step into a mess hall that could exist in almost any popular science fiction canon. It feels like a living role-playing experience. The place is thick with references to the mythology of Avatar, and despite not being a fan of the original film, I found myself grinning and totally entranced the whole time. It’s insanely nerdy in all the best ways, and if you are the special type of fan who would appreciate that, you are in for a treat at Satu’li Canteen.
4. Mobile ordering
Another great perk of Satu’li Canteen has been the introduction of Mobile Ordering. While this My Disney Experience feature is popping up at more and more locations throughout Walt Disney World, Satu’li Canteen was one of the first locations where it was tested. Particularly considering Pandora’s extreme popularity, this is a very well-timed feature.
For those unfamiliar with Mobile Ordering, the premise is simple. While you are visiting other parts of the park (or standing in line for one of Pandora’s two attractions), you can hop onto My Disney Experience on your phone, review the menu for Satu’li Canteen, and place an order without having ever entered the restaurant or stood in line. Payment is handled through the app. When you’re ready to pick up your food, use the app to let the restaurant know that you’ve arrived. Once your food is prepared, you’ll get a notification and can pick up your food from a mobile ordering pick-up window.
While Disney is undoubtedly still working kinks out of this new system, overall, it is a huge leap for theme park dining, and at Satu’li Canteen, it only helps reinforce the thick science fiction atmosphere.
5. A glimpse of good things to come
Image: Disney
There’s one last thing that we loved about Satu’li Canteen, and it lines up well with our earlier comments about it being an amazing destination for fans of the geek-persuasion. Satu’li Canteen gives visitors an excellent preview of what might be to come when Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge hits Walt Disney World in 2019.
Similar to Pandora, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is going to be a fully immersive land on a scale never attempted before. Guests’ decisions on attractions (and even in the land’s enormous resort) will affect how elements in the park react to you, and it has already been confirmed that Galaxy’s Edge will feature at least one Star Wars themed restaurant.
If Satu’li Canteen is even a tiny indicator of what is to come for immersive Disney dining, we can’t wait to see what’s on the way. Can’t bear the wait? Next time you visit Satu’li Canteen, just imagine that it could be a mess hall anywhere in the Star Wars universe. It isn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination.
Have you been able to visit Satu’li Canteen yet? What was your favorite element there?
