REVIEW: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly of the NEW Wailulu Bar and Grill in Disney World

The time has finally come for the opening of the Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort!

This new hotel is a new Disney Vacation Club (DVC) resort, but anyone can stay here! It boasts beautiful Polynesian art and atmosphere, four terrace gardens with amazing views, and fun new swimming and splash areas. We are here checking out everything this hotel has to offer and, of course, trying out its brand-new restaurant!

The Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort is the newest Disney Vacation Club resort at Disney World. It officially opened on December 17th, and we are excited to check out this hotel that has been years in the making! Not only are we getting to explore ALL the details, but we are also dining at Wailulu Bar & Grill.

Background

Wailulu Bar & Grill is located inside the Island Tower and is themed to be an island getaway that will have you enjoying cuisine from the South Pacific Islands. The name comes from Hawaiian words meaning water (wai) and calm (lulu), which you can see aspects of throughout the decor.

Atmosphere

The restaurant features lots of Polynesian-inspired artwork and a stunning view of the Seven Seas Lagoon.

The restaurant (and whole hotel) focuses on sustainability, which includes a fully electric kitchen and repurposed recycled materials included within the artwork.

There’s a bar…

…and patio seating with breathtaking views. At night, the music from Magic Kingdom’s fireworks in pumped into the restaurant so you can enjoy the show!

Or you can dine inside, if you prefer!

One of the special things about this resort is that they have worked hard to preserve Polynesian and Hawaiian culture throughout. For example, while you dine at Wailulu, you might hear the Cast Members refer to each other as “Cousin.” We even overheard a Cast Member say, “In Wailulu, we all fam.” It’s a subtle, but fun detail!

You can dine at Wailulu Bar & Grill for a full menu at lunch and dinner or stop by for grab-and-go breakfast options in the morning.

The lunch and dinner menu includes several appetizer options, including Spam Musubi, entrée options like Short Rib Loco Moco and a Poke Bowl, and desserts like a DOLE Whip Sundae! We really enjoy this restaurant because it has very original offerings that you can’t find almost anywhere else (if at all) around Disney World.

Of course, we tried breakfast earlier in the day, but let’s talk about lunch and dinner!

Food & Drinks

Wailulu Bar & Grill specializes in dishes from the South Pacific Islands, and we can’t wait to dive in! For lunch, we started with the Musubi for $12, which is glazed spam, crispy rice pearls, furikake, and sriracha-honey in a seaweed roll.

This was so delicious! The Spam is nice and savory, which the rice pearls added a great crunchiness. It’s very unique and a really great way to start your meal. We could also see this being a fun option to grab while you’re relaxing by the pool, since Wailulu is right next to the hotel’s pool, or enjoying a drink.

We also grabbed the Grilled Shishito Peppers as our second appetizer. These are $11 and come with an eggplant-tahini purée.

In general, shishito peppers are hit or miss when it comes to spiciness, and these were no different. We had about two or three peppers that were hot, so this is a fun game of heat roulette. Overall, they were really well cooked, soft peppers. The purée served with them were good, but honestly it was more than we needed. We wanted the flavor of the peppers with a bit of sauce, so we ended up not needing all of it. These are a delicious appetizer that would go great with a drink at the bar!

For our entrées, we tried the Short Rib Loco Moco, which is a highly recommended dish here! It costs $33 and has shiitake mushroom gravy, a crispy rice cake, and a fried egg.

The Short Rib Loco Moco is amazing. We’ve tried this twice now, and both times we LOVED it. The ribs are very tender and the mushroom gravy is absolutely delicious — it was our favorite part of the whole dish. The egg on top is perfectly cooked so you get a nice yolk dripping down into the gravy giving it amazing flavor.

The crunchy rice cake that comes with it is great because it’s crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside. Honestly, this dish is just incredible all around.

We also tried the Chow Mein Salad with sautéed shrimp for $22. This has charred cabbage, shishito peppers, hearts of palm, pickled sweet potato, and sunflower butter dressing and is served with three sautéed shrimp. You can also get this salad with grilled teriyaki chicken or grilled tofu.

We were really impressed with this salad! It might feel a little overdressed for some people, but that wasn’t the case for us. It’s very, very flavorful because of how much sunflower butter dressing is on it. While you only get three shrimp, they are huge, so it worked out for us. Honestly, we didn’t even feel like we needed the shrimp, or the salad might have been even better and more flavorful with the grilled teriyaki chicken (which is also cheaper). Everything worked SO well together in this salad and, with so many elements, it was very filling!

Since we know a lot of families will have little ones with them, we also gave the kids’ White Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese a try for $10.50. You can choice of two sides with the entrée, but we opted to just try the steamed broccoli. Other options include steamed baby carrots, Jasmine rice, french fries, or DOLE Whip Pineapple.

Unfortunately, this mac and cheese didn’t live up to the rest of the items we tried. To be completely honest, this was probably the worst mac and cheese we’ve had at Disney World. Both the mac and cheese and the broccoli were very bland and sad. The pasta was overcooked and the cheese sauce was very watery. We were so surprised to be so disappointed by this dish!

We also tried two drinks! We grabbed the Lili’uokalani Mai Tai for $16.50. It is made with Lili’uoakalani tea-infused vodka, Jamaican rum, passion fruit, guava, lime, orgeat (almond), and falernum.

In this drink, you can taste a bit of the guava, but overall it’s not nearly as fruity as the description makes it sound. It was a bit lackluster, and we were kind of disappointed by it.

Then, we tried the Banana Old Fashioned made with Michter’s Single Barrel Rye Whiskey, Tempus Fugit Spirits Crème de Banane, Appleton Estate 8 yr Reserve Rum, St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram Liqueur, and Angostura Bitters. This drink costs $17.50.

This drink was definitely the best of the two, but still not a stand out. It’s not a particularly rum forward drink, which old fashioneds are supposed to be, so if you typically an old fashioned drinker, you might be disappointed in this take. It’s not particularly sweet and not overly banana-flavored. It is a well-balanced drink that we did enjoy, but it’s nothing we will shout from the rooftops about.

For desserts we tried the Chocolate Cake and the DOLE Whip Sundae! Let’s star with the Chocolate Cake for $11. It comes with a salted caramel ganache, and coffee-infused Chantilly cream.

This is probably our favorite dessert in all of Disney World right now. We were pleasantly shocked with how much we liked this because we were expecting just a basic chocolate cake, but that’s not what this is. It’s so much more. The coffee Chantilly cream added a nice flavor; the cake was super moist; and the salted caramel ganache was absolutely amazing. It’s a salty sweet combination, and even our server knew we were in for an amazing treat when he pointed and raised his eyebrows at it. The caramelized banana was fantastic, and we wish there were even more slices of them!

Finally, on to the DOLE Whip Sundae! This is one of, if not the only, restaurant that you can get DOLE Whip ordered to your table, so that’s a neat treat! This sundae is $8 and has hibiscus meringue and macerated pineapple and berries on it.

This isn’t anything special; it’s a typical DOLE Whip sundae, but it is cool that you can get it served to your table. It has pineapple juice as well, so it’s similar to the DOLE Whip floats you can get elsewhere. The standout here is the fresh fruit you get with it. Of course, we love DOLE Whip, so we enjoyed it, but don’t expect anything special or fancy.

Okay, let’s talk about dinner! We grabbed four appetizers to try. First, the Ahi Tuna Crisps (essentially nachos) with marinated Ahi Tuna, crispy fried wontons, avocado crema, sriracha-aioli, and soy glaze. These are $17.00.

These are very delicious and a much bigger portion size than we were expecting for an appetizer. The wonton chips were nice and crispy and didn’t get soggy under all the toppings! The dressings are great as they tie everything together. The Ahi tuna is very high quality meat and melts in your mouth. There’s some spice, but not enough to make the nachos all that hot. We definitely recommend this one!

Then, we tried the Crispy Chicken Wings for $15. These are adobo-marinated and have a soy glaze and tomato-fresno pepper relish.

These are awesome, and it’s really all because of the sauce and toppings. The chicken is fried to be really crispy on the outside but tender and juicy on the inside. The toppings are perfectly cooked, and you’ll definitely want to load them up on each bite of chicken you take. Every flavor is fantastic together.

Next, we tasted the Sticky Pork Ribs with salt-cured green cabbage, furikake, jicama slaw, and pineapple chips for $15.00.

The glaze on these ribs was like a teriyaki sauce. They’re delicious, but the inside is mostly fattier meat, but it’s so, so good. The outside is very well cooked and crispy, so it looks like you’re chewing on a burnt piece of meat, but it’s honestly very tasty if you like a fattier rib.

Our last appetizer was the Garlic Shrimp for $16. These are made with smoked paprika, black garlic emulsion, garlic-lemon butter, and crispy garlic.

These shrimp are HUGE. You do only get three, but just like our shrimp at lunch, they’re large enough to make up for the small number you get. The sauce has a bit of heat and is VERY garlicky. We loved it, but if you don’t like garlic, you might want to skip these. It was also nice to have the fresh greens on the side, so it made it feel a bit lighter, but still substantial for an appetizer.

Next up, the entrées! We grabbed the Wayfinder Burger for $23. It is two pressed patties, American cheese, onion jam, and volcano sauce on a sweet but and served with mac salad or sweet potato fries. We tried the sweet potato fries this time!

The burger patties were very obviously fresh from the grill! They’ve clearly pattied out the burger instead of using pre-shaped, frozen patties. It reminded us a lot of the burger we love at Steakhouse 71, which is definitely a bonus! There is a very hot kick from the volcano sauce, which was very nice (unless you don’t like heat!). The onion jam did help to taper the heat a bit with a sweeter element. It’s a very yummy and filling meal, for sure.

We also tried the Grilled Teriyaki Chicken Sliders with kimchi slaw on sweet buns. You get two sliders with your choice of the mac salad or the sweet potato fries. For this one, we tried the mac salad. This dish costs $19.

These may be considered “sliders,” but they are huge for sliders. They’re only a bit smaller than a regular sized sandwich, which made this easily two meals for us. They are very tasty with the delicious teriyaki flavor. What might be surprising about this meal after our lunch is the mac salad!

As opposed to the kids’ mac and cheese at lunch, we LOVED this mac salad. It might be our favorite mac salad we’ve ever had. It’s made with purple sweet potato, which is a nod to it being a common ingredient on the islands. It’s a mayo base with a zingy vinegar flair. It was SO good; we would totally grab a pint of this to take and eat on the beach.

On the menu you’ll find Grilled Fish of the Day for $32. When we were there the fish was Hamachi. It’s served with a green curry broth, Jasmine rice, chickpeas, and sweet potato.

The Hamachi was a well cooked, white fish that was super meaty and didn’t have a really strong fishy taste at all. It went really well with the rest of the dish, especially the chickpeas. Of course, this flavor profile may change each day as the fish options rotate. Our one complaint here was that it could have used a bit more sauce.

Next, the Grilled Teriyaki Chicken Poke Bowl for $22! It has sushi-style rice, pickled cucumbers, vegetables, spicy poke sauce, macadamia nuts, and grilled teriyaki chicken.

While this a typical poke bowl as you would expect, it was really very good. We got it with chicken which was tender, well marinated, and super flavorful. Everything in the bowl was proportioned well to go with each other. We especially enjoyed the mayo poke sauce that was on it. While this was good, it doesn’t stand out to us like some of the other options since a poke bowl is a poke bowl as long as the ingredients are fresh and good, which these were.

For cocktails with our dinner, we tried the Kula Strawberry Sake for $16.50! It is made with Wildflowers Junmai Sake, Campari Liqueur, Rockey’s Botanical Liqueur, and wild strawberry.

Unfortunately, we were not fans of this drink. There is a good strawberry flavor on the front, but it’s such a fruity flavor that you worry the drink is going to be overly sweet, but then the opposite happens and it becomes very bitter. It ended up tasting like cough medicine after the sweetness has worn off and you just have a bitterness lingering on your tongue. It just has a really rough aftertaste.

Then we tried the Hibiscus Margarita for $17.50. It is made with Teremana Blanco Tequila, Sorel Liqueur, cinnamon syrup, hibiscus, and agave.

This drinks is pretty tasty and is a well-balanced margarita. You can definitely taste the tequila, which unfortunately doesn’t mesh well with the hibiscus tea. We preferred the non-alcoholic Hibiscus Tea when we tried that previously. It’ll be a solid margarita to drink by the pool, but it’s not our favorite margarita we’ve ever had.

Our last drink of the evening was the Passion Fruit and Pineapple Daiquiri for $15.50. This is made with Ten to One Caribbean White Rum, Minute Maid® Passion Fruit Orange Guava (POG) Juice, pineapple, and lime.

This is a really odd drink. It has a strange taste on the back of it and the sweet POG Juice that we’re used to isn’t what we’re normally used to. It might be the addition of the pineapple juice that cuts the sweetness we’re used to with a more acidic flavor. It just wasn’t what we were expecting, and it was pretty wonky.

Magic or Tragic?

So, was this restaurant a magic or should you plan on eating somewhere else? Well, it depends, but if you’re looking for the following, Wailulu Bar & Grill could be a great option for you if:

• You want great food with a Polynesian and Hawaiian twist! The food here is generally pretty great, and we really enjoyed getting some cultural aspects in it such as Spam.
• You want a great view of the Magic Kingdom fireworks show! The views here are fantastic, and it’s cool that you get to hear the music here too.
• You’re looking for a snack by the pool! This is right next to the pool at Island Tower and is technically the pool bar. You can walk up and grab a snack and a drink to enjoy.

But, you may want to dine somewhere else if:

• You want specialty cocktails you can rely on. In general, we were pretty disappointed in the drinks we tried. You may totally love them, but they were pretty miss for us.
• You want theme park food. The food here is very much NOT typical theme park food. While you’ll find a burger on the menu, it’s not a basic in the parks burger.
• You’re not a fan of island flavors. Teriyaki, sweet potatoes, tuna, Spam, and more are highlights on the menu here. If you’re not that into these flavors or items, you might want to try elsewhere.

If you are looking for more restaurants to try at Disney World, make sure to check out the BEST Disney World restaurants for 2024:

Stay tuned to AllEars for more coverage of the new Island Tower and all your Disney World tips, tricks, and news!

You don’t want to skip this underrated Disney World hotel restaurant!

Will you be stopping by Wailulu Bar & Grill? Let us know in the comments!

Disclosure: We were invited by Disney World to attend the media preview of Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort. This did not affect our reporting of the event — our opinions are our own.

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