About Mealtrip

Mealtrip.com is a small, independently owned publisher with all daily operations being performed by two people. The nom de plume "Mealtrip" has been written by the owner of Mealtrip.com since it's inception and has remained consistent from day one. Unlike several other large fan-based theme park websites – I do try to keep my identity somewhat concealed so that when we dine at a restaurant – our experience is exactly the same as any other guest.

The Mealtrip site has appeared in it's current form for over 13 years, (since 2012). Before that date, we only covered festivals at the parks and had not yet included restaurant reviews. I have published over 200 long-format reviews in that time, along with countless other reviews of festivals and events, guidebook pages, overviews and menu pages.

We intentionally keep the ads that appear on our pages to a minimum. The theme park blog sites that I've seen, toss up so many cheep, low budget ads on each page — that it's often difficult and frustrating to find the content you were looking for.  We also do not publish deceptive headline links that take you to fake news articles that end up being long format sales pitches for DVC or discounted travel.

I do not consider the Mealtrip.com site to be a "blog". The core component of the site has been set up like a dining directory so that visitors can search a specific park or resort for dining options. Our site is faster than many actual theme park sites, and (while this is purely subjective), I think it's easier to navigate and locate all the dining spots in a specific park or resort area on the Mealtrip site.

Dining reviews and photos from actual experiences are used to support each listing in our database. The scoring system used on the Mealtrip site is a unique feature that is not found on other "blog" type sites. Our scoring system is not weighted in any way, we don't "drop off" the lowest rated reviews or give publisher reviews any more significance than any other review. The final score for each location is pure math – and not influenced by marketing.

Our goal at Mealtrip is to add relevant, high quality content to our listings and providing interesting, useful information to our site visitors. I do not add posts every day (or every hour) with sensational headlines that lead to useless information.

What Does Being an "Independently Owned Publisher" Mean?

I've found that many of the large theme park blogs are owned and operated by people and companies that are also selling travel packages to the parks that they are posting about. Either directly, or by way of another website that they also own. Some of the really big sites that you think are "just" blogs ... aren't "just" blogs.

There are variations on that theme as well — sometimes they sell DVC, directly or as an affiliate, they sell discount tickets, rent wheelchairs and strollers, or try and convince you – that you need to buy their guidebook so you don't miss anything on your vacation.

All of that is perfectly legal – and probably a really good idea even – but I find it a little hard to believe that they would publish unbiased information about the parks that they, themselves have a vested interest in marketing.

We don't sell anything here at Mealtrip.com. I don't sell travel, discount tickets, dvc, guidebooks, t-shirts — nothing. I publish articles about dining in theme park restaurants with photos — because I like visiting and eating in themed dining locations. If I have a really good time, I'm going to write about that. If I leave the dining experience wishing I could get my money back, I'm going to write about that too.

We do have ads on the Mealtrip.com site, but I've kept the locations and frequency of those ads to a minimum. Surprisingly, I don't have a lot of control over what kinds of ads are shown on the Mealtrip site — I can only (really) control their placement and number. So while you might see an ad for "discounted tickets" (for example) – that ad doesn't click through to a site that I own or operate.

Why AI Search Engine Overviews Aren't Enough

Most of the time, AI catches a case of "rose colored glasses syndrome". It simply collects information from the top "popular" sites, and then re-writes that informaiton as a quick fact. If the top five big blogs write "The burger at Steakhouse 71 is really great", the AI overview will read "Guests visiting Steakhouse 71 find the burger to be exceptional." The problem with this is – you'll never know that the top five sources of that information, are all publishers that are indirectly profiting from writing "the burger at Steakhouse 71 is really great".

In order to be well-informed, guests visiting the parks have to read and visit multiple sites ... and then actually go visit the parks and have the experience themselves. It's only then — that you could say "this publisher at webiste.com did the most actuate job of expressing how I actually felt about the experience".

As the publisher of Mealtrip, I expect dining experiences inside the parks — to be as good as similarly priced experiences outside the parks. It's one of the bedrock principles that I have in my head when visiting dining locations at the parks and resorts, and even visiting the various food festivals they offer.

We Don't Publish Traditional "Vlog" Style Videos

I love watching tv and movies and all kinds of video clips on YouTube. However, I think watching someone else walk to a restaurant and then eat for 35 minutes ... while talking – is a form of torture. Those videos are always 30+ minutes long ... I've never watched one of them all the way through without grabbing the playhead in an attempt to find some part of the video that I'm interested in, before ending up frustrated — and just clicking on to something else.

Photos and words can quickly inspire someone to go experience something for themselves. Videos are often used to replace going to, and experiencing something for yourself.

Have you ever thought something like "Oh I can't wait to see what that new fireworks show looks like." – and then you watch the first beautiful 4k video that a blogger posts only to say "well, that was nice, maybe I'll go one day."?

Watching someone else eat is never going to be as good as going to the location yourself — and trying to find useful information in a long-format video is too time consuming. For that reason alone, we don't publish traditional 30+ minute video reviews of dining experience.

Our Content is Exclusive and Experience Based

All of the news, festival menus, review pages — everything is written by a human. I do not use AI to write anything for the Mealtrip site. I do not scrape press releases, emails or other web pages and simply copy and paste them to the site. The reviews, articles and photos that are posted on the Mealtrip site are not shared or co-published on any other site.

The  festival menu pages we post on Mealtrip are a good example of this. I always try to adhere to a specific format that makes sense, keeps all of our menu pages looking similar, and is also functional.

Many of our festival menu pages include a "Tap to Highlight" feature — that function requires special formatting and the festival menus can't simply be copied from another web site and pasted into a page.

If you happen to be reading one of our festival menu pages and find something you want to try – just tap the item and that item on the page will be highlighted. Everything you highlight will be saved, so that when you're at the event and check back on that menu page – you'll already have a list of things you want to try. (As long as you bring the same device with you to the event.)

I do occasionally use photos provided by various parks, simply because an event is new and we haven't gone to get our own photos yet.

Our Scoring System

Another unique aspect of the Mealtrip site is the scoring system that appears with any review we publish. When I tried looking at dining location scores on the big sites — TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc. — I noticed that most of the park restaurants got the same 4.5 stars. That's great for the parks, but it doesn't really tell you much about that dining location as it compares with other dining locations in the parks. In order to more easily see and compare the restaurants — I decided to "zoom in" on that scoring system.

Our scores are a combination of four categories ... Food, Service, Environment, and Value. Each of those categories can have a score from 1 to 8, with '8' being the best. The results do not follow the pass/fail US Grading system that is used by most educational institutions in America. All of our scores are aggregated into a final score that's based on a 100 point system.

In the Mealtrip system '50' is the average middle point. Any location that has a score of around 50 means that it's no better and no worse than any other dining location that you'll find in a theme park. It's an average dining location — but that's not "bad" per say ... 50 isn't a failing score, it's an "average" score.

Anything in the 85-100 range is an exceptional location, that we would recommend as being a great restaurant to visit.

Anything under '40' — means that there's some element or elements that we feel could really use some work, and you may want to consider the pros and cons of visiting that location.

At the end of the day, any location that you're really looking forward to visiting, is going to be a great location for you — and you'll probably have a great time. There are really very few dining locations in the parks and resorts that I would consider "bad". In most cases, a lower than average score is the result of a particular dining location not living up to it's own description, on it's own website — or because of where it's placed in the dining market.

An interesting side-note about our scores — they're not all based on just my own reviews of dining locations. The scoring system is open to anyone that signs-up to leave a review. Publisher Reviews and Member Reviews are treated equally and averaged  ... my "Publisher Reviews" tend to be a bit more wordy than Member Reviews, so if you want to read why I gave a certain score, to a location — find the reviews labeled "Publisher Reviews".

Mealtrip.com is a Consistant, Trusted Source of Themed Dining Information

Mealtrip continually strives to offer consistent, un-biased, experience-based information, features, and planning tools that work across multiple devices — and are quick to load and easy use. It's my sincerest hope that our readers find the photos, reviews, and information that we publish — to be as fun and useful to read, as they are for us to publish.

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