Akershus Royal Banquet Hall Reopening Date!
Walt Disney World has announced more meal services returning to table service restaurants, with the most notable reveal being a reopening date for Akershus Royal Banquet Hall in the Norway/Arendelle pavilion in World Showcase at EPCOT. This post will share dates, details, and thoughts on our last experience doing Storybook Dining at featuring the Disney Princesses.
To quickly recap recent progress, several character dining experiences have been recently restored, going from standard meal services to character meals. This includes lunch and dinner at Crystal Palace: A Buffet with Character featuring Winnie the Pooh and Friends, Minnie’s Beach Bash Breakfast at Cape May Café, and ‘Ohana Best Friends Breakfast featuring Lilo and Stitch. All of those have returned within the last month–breakfast at Crystal Palace comes back next week.
Additionally, buffet service and regular character encounters have returned to a range of restaurants. This includes fur character dining experiences like Breakfast à la Art at Topolino’s Terrace — Flavors of the Riviera and Minnie’s Seasonal Dine at DHS. It also includes Story Book Dining at Artist Point with Snow White, but not most other face character locations.
October 19, 2022 Update: Walt Disney World has updated the official Akershus Royal Banquet Hall page, which offers some new details that were not previously announced. The restaurant will serve one family-style menu (see below) throughout the day, and will not serve breakfast.
Rather, Akershus will be open from 2:45 pm until 8:05 pm daily. This is almost certainly due to staffing shortages–because there are only enough performers and/or culinary Cast Members for a single shift when the restaurant first reopens. Expect Akershus Royal Banquet Hall to offer expanded hours down the road, adding breakfast to the mix at some point, too. (Don’t hold your breath on that happening anytime soon–Garden Grill reopened over 2 years ago and still doesn’t have breakfast back. It has been slow-going!)
One notable exception of the restaurants that has already been back for a while is Cinderella’s Royal Table, which is still not normal. (Despite recent price increases to every character dining experience, including Cinderella’s Royal Table!)
Likewise, Bon Voyage Adventure Breakfast and 1900 Park Fare remain ‘temporarily unavailable.’ Same goes for a handful of other locations previously offering breakfast or other unique meal services.
Despite this, Akershus Royal Banquet Hall was still expected to return this year, and reopening preparations have been underway for a few months. The Free Florida Blue Lounge during the 2022 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival was relocated from Akershus to Restaurant Marrakesh. Additionally, the Cultural Representative Program returned to EPCOT over 2 months ago.
The latter change resulted in the reopening of Monsieur Paul, which is our #3 restaurant in all of Walt Disney World. It’s expected that Takumi-Tei (our #2 restaurant) in the Japan pavilion won’t be too far behind, which would pretty much restore the pre-closure dining slate in World Showcase. (Minus Restaurant Marrakesh, but it’s likely Disney has long-term plans for that venue now that it owns the location.)
Against that backdrop, Walt Disney World announced today that Akershus Royal Banquet Hall is reopening. Here’s the official announcement…
Walt Disney World cordially invites you to feast at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall, which will open its doors once again on November 4, 2022. This dining experience is found at the Norway pavilion in the World Showcase at EPCOT and gives guests a taste of Norwegian cuisine.
There are plenty of plates at this royal feast, whether you’re looking to indulge in your favorites or wanting to try something new. This family-style dining experience includes Traditional KjØttkaker featuring Norwegian meatballs or the Kylling og Melboller, a Norwegian take on chicken and dumplings.
If you’re looking for some more classic American-cuisine, they’ve got that too with Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, Grilled Salmon, and Macaroni & Cheese. And what meal is complete without dessert. The meal serves up both a Rice Cream with strawberry sauce and a Chocolate Roulade with lingonberry cream.
Here’s a full look at the new dinner menu for Akershus Royal Banquet Hall:
This reflects the family-style menu indicated in the press release. Previously, Akershus offered an all-day menu for lunch and dinner and we’re assuming that will remain the case.
Note that this does not reflect a price increase, which is likely to occur given that prices increased at every other character dining location at Walt Disney World last week. If this remains consistent with Storybook Dining at Artist Point, it’ll cost $65 for adults and $41 for children.
Prices for children did not increase at Artist Point, but they did at other character dining locations. Even at the March 2020 prices, this is already more expensive than most character meals for kids.
Here’s the drink pricing…
These menus have already changed in the last week and the ‘temporarily unavailable’ banner has been removed, but it’s possible more substantive changes are to come.
Now, let’s turn to Akershus ADR and princess details…
Aside from the delicious eats and treats, what makes Akershus Royal Banquet Hall so special is it being home to a unique Storybook Dining featuring the Disney Princesses. As you indulge in the Norwegian-inspired fare, you can interact, take photos, and create lasting memories with some of your favorite princesses when Akershus Royal Banquet Hall opens on November 4, 2022.
Advance Dining Reservations will become available for Akershus Royal Banquet Hall starting October 24, 2022.
One thing to note here is that Walt Disney World does not indicate which princesses will return, or whether it’ll be the full pre-closure character slate. This is worth mentioning because, as indicated above, Cinderella’s Royal Table still does not have its roaming dining room characters–just Cinderella at the entrance.
It would be odd for Walt Disney World to bring back Storybook Dining featuring the Disney Princesses at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall before restoring the flagship in-castle princess meal at Magic Kingdom. (At least, in our opinion.) Hopefully, this means that Cinderella’s Royal Table will return to normal by then, too. The alternatives are scaled-back princesses at Akershus, or it being fully restored before CRT, despite that having reopened ~2 years ago.
As I’ve lamented elsewhere, we did dinner at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall in March 2020 to get the most bang for our buck from the then-new Disney Dining Plan Plus.
I had been dragging my feet on revisiting Akershus for a while, because dining with face characters makes me uncomfortable. However, it was probably the meal about which we received the most questions, so we did it. (I know, play me a sad song on the world’s smallest violin.)
Part of my personal motivation for doing the Disney Princess Storybook Dining Dinner was getting back inside Akershus Castle. We stayed until the very end of the night and I took a ton of architectural photos without other guests. It was actually a fun food-filled evening and unique experience.
Shortly after eating at Akershus, I wrote a review of dinner, weaving in details about the history of Akershus and its themed design. That review was never published, for reasons that are probably obvious given that we did dinner there in March 2020. Of course, I’d never recycle content…
On a totally unrelated note, let’s take a look around Akershus Royal Banquet Hall!
This location opened with the Norway pavilion in 1988 as Restaurant Akershus, serving a Norwegian buffet. When the Norwegian government stopped supporting the pavilion financially back in the early aughts, princesses were added for breakfast, followed by lunch and dinner a few years later. The restaurant was renamed Akershus Royal Banquet Hall, a precursor to the princessification that would occur a decade later with Frozen Ever After replacing Maelstrom.
While princesses were added, the restaurant largely maintains its opening day appearance. It’s based on Akershus Castle and Fortress, a fortified medieval castle on Oslo harbor. That castle and fortress was built in the late 1200s to protect and provide a royal residence, which was also strategically important for the capital city.
Whoever controlled Akershus ruled Norway. From what I understand, this is the premise of Frozen III, with Elsa seizing Akershus Royal Banquet Hall from Belle. This culminates in the climactic Battle of Test Track, before the tear-jerking conclusion with the Guardians of the Galaxy rewinding the cosmos to restore order to the Other-World Showcase. Synergy at its finest.
The Norway pavilion’s Akershus replicates many architectural features of Oslo’s real Akershus Slott og Festning. Elements of the facade, towers, and hall in the World Showcase version are all strikingly similar to the real thing in Norway.
In All About Norway in Epcot’s World Showcase, we cover the pavilion’s other architectural inspirations from Bergen, Ålesund, Oslo, and the Setesdal Valley.
We haven’t toured the real Akershus, but have visited a variety of forts, castles, and churches in Norway and elsewhere. The interior is reminiscent of many of these, and feels like an amalgamation of locations throughout Scandinavia. Many of these are austere instead of opulent, with largely unadorned architecture.
I don’t purport to be an expert on Norwegian forts and castles, but the use of patterns and decorative dishware to punctuate the design “feels” authentic. (One of the coolest things we saw throughout Norway’s countryside was church walls covered in rosemaling.)
Ultimately, we’re excited for the return of Storybook Dining featuring the Disney Princesses at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall on November 4, 2022. This is mostly because we know so many of you have been anxiously awaiting this, and it’s a family-favorite offering at EPCOT.
It will once again be one of the more popular Advance Dining Reservations at Walt Disney World, and we’d expect those ADR slots for November and December 2022 to fill fast.
Honestly, I’m looking forward to returning to Akershus, too. Our last meal there was shockingly good–and a lot of fun. It also helps that I have zero pressure to get new character photos, as I have a ton of unused ones from March 2020 and zero reluctance to recycle those images of us while dining there again for new food photos. (Just don’t question why it looks like I’ve aged about 16 years in some of the photos versus others while Sarah still looks the same!)
The bottom line is that the reopening of Akershus Royal Banquet Hall is a big win for families looking for princess dining at EPCOT. While it’s unlikely to surpass Story Book Dining at Artist Point, it might end up surprising us. Plus, that dinner is practically impossible to book, and it’s outside the parks…so not exactly an apples to apples comparison. In addition, dining at Akershus is a chance to see inside an exemplar of Imagineering’s old school World Showcase design work while enjoying somewhat unique cuisine. A nice win for both kids and parents!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Will you be booking an ADR for Akershus Royal Banquet Hall once it reopens on November 4, 2022? Have you dined at Akershus in Epcot’s Norway pavilion? Will you be booking lunch or dinner with the princesses here on an upcoming visit to Epcot? Excited about the opportunity to experience the design and details of Akershus Castle and Fortress? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Glitchy launch. Didn’t seem to follow patterns from any previous launches we’ve experienced. We wouldn’t have been able to reserve anything if we didn’t have the added reservation window from our late December on-site hotel stay. Strangely, we were able to reserve Akershus Candlelight Packages (didn’t even know that was going to be a thing!) before any availability showed up for us for regular dining reservations. I’ve seen online that some people got a pending charge in conjunction with their reservation to their on-file credit card and we did too. Strange, considering it wasn’t mentioned during the checkout process.
Akershus was the most bang for your buck when it comes to the “princess” experience prior to Covid. If it returns to its old glory and full slate of princesses return, this is the must do and I would recommend it over CRT.
Buffets=more food waste. There is only a set amount of time you can leave food out before it has to be thrown away. With food cost increases and labor shortages, this is a logical choice for many restaurants. Also, with people being more concerned about germs spreading it also becomes safer to serve food this way.
Totally believe there’s more food waste at buffets than at a la carte restaurants–but more food waste than family style?
I truly don’t know. I just *see* a lot of food waste at Walt Disney World’s family style restaurants. It’s entirely possible there’s more invisible food waste at buffets, though.
dare i give the unpopular (or perhaps popular?) opinion re: CRT- bring back characters to breakfast only, but leave lunch and dinner character free, save for meeting cindy and fairy godmother in the lobby. i’d love to eat a fancy-ish sit own meal in the castle again character free.
I’d love if CRT didn’t do characters for one meal service–even just dinner (or late night meals). However, I understand that it’s Magic Kingdom and character dining is in high demand among families.
Me too. I miss the buffet at Akershus. And the character free dinner at Artist’s Point. Let the kids have a hot dog at Casey’s Corner.
“On November 4, 2022, Akershus Royal Banquet Hall will reopen. Check back on October 24, 2022, for details about making reservations.”
From the website. Also, it is showing hours of 2:45 pm-8:05 pm, with only the Dinner Menu available. No lunch, it seems. They still have the $63.00 price (you should start a pool for when they increase it), and the upper right-hand corner of the menu has those wonderful words “Character Dining”.
yes! this is the one restaurant I really wanted for my daughter’s 7th birthday trip. she is afraid of costumed characters but the princesses she’s great with. I’m so excited. our trip is right after Thanksgiving.
I may be the lone dissenter here, but $65 for a buffet is robbery. We’ve done every buffet at Disney and the food isn’t that great. You’re basically paying to see the characters, most of which you can see at the Meet-&-Greets at the parks.
But I suppose $65 isn’t so bad when you compare it to Monsieur Paul at $195 per person plus tax and gratuity. But even that doesn’t seem so bad as paying $425 for a meal at Victoria & Alberts, $625 if you want wine with your dinner. Even by Disney standards, the prices are ridiculous for food. I can’t even begin to fathom how one dinner could be worth $225 (without wine, even!).
I really wonder what percentage of guests who previously dined at Akershus were on the Disney Dining Plan. It always topped the list of best values–I’d hazard a guess that over half of guests dining there used it. Perhaps a far higher percentage than that.
Still, I don’t doubt people will pay these prices (for now), if only because every restaurant at Walt Disney World is doing very well (for now), especially character dining.
I don’t think Monsieur Paul will do so well. There were times we dined there with the special seasonal menus that were a fraction of that price and the restaurant was STILL over half empty. Even if it can snag a Michelin star, I just don’t see it being able to sustain those price points. But I’ve been wrong plenty of times before about what people are willing to pay!
I was so hoping they were opening the breakfast option because that would likely mean Garden Grill breakfast would return. That was both of my kids request for this year.
Thanks Tom! Your article talks about lunch but the website has been updated and no longer shows the lunch menu. Does it mean it will only be dinner or did Disney announce it specifically for both lunch AND dinner?
Disney didn’t specifically announce any meals, but this isn’t the least bit surprising. They probably only have enough Cast Members for one shift right now–I guess we’ll find out once they post restaurant hours.
[Googles “rosemaling” — pretty!] So excited this is coming back for RunDisney weekend! The first race is for the ADRs. Thanks for keeping us posted.
Do you know if breakfast will be offered?
Walt Disney World didn’t mention it, but my guess is that it will not.
I’d be shocked if they have the staffing for all 3 meals from day one. That would be relatively unprecedented as compared to other restaurants that have reopened lately. (If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if Akershus starts with limited hours so they only have to schedule a single shift.)
Just glancing at the current menu items/descriptions, they don’t seem too different than what you might see at one of the better IKEA restaurants (just marked up by about 800%). I know you’re paying for the atmosphere, but still for those prices I would expect a little bit more from a gastronomic perspective.
Yayyy!! I’ve been waiting for this one! I’m setting my alarm for October 24th. Thank you for another amusing and thoroughly enjoyable read, looking forward to seeing more of your recycled photos.
I ate at Akershus during my first ever visit to WDW in early 1989! I went with my dad and my uncle, and they booked our reservation when we got to Epcot in the morning on some type of screen kiosk at the park entrance. I distinctly remember the cold pickled herring on the buffet. Unfortunately for 7 year old me, that was way before the princesses.
We have visited the actual Akershus in Oslo and there really isn’t too much to see there. The Disney version does feel like it captures the architectural theme well. We’ve enjoyed breakfast there (I love Gjetost!), but dinner at those prices is a tough sell, even with princesses added in.
Taking the grandkids to DW next August and this will definitely be on our list.
BTW, had lunch at the Biergarten buffet a few weeks ago and it was one of the best lunches we’ve ever had at Epcot.
Such a pleasant surprise.
Thanks for sharing your experience at Biergarten!
For what it’s worth, we’ve found Biergarten to be hit or miss–if you dine there on a day when the buffet is firing on all cylinders, it is REALLY GOOD. If not, it can be mediocre. Always a great time, though!
UGH, enough with the “family style” meals already! They’re generally awful. And I was really looking forward to this one, too. Wouldn’t the buffets be much easier to manage with fewer cast members? What’s Disney’s motivation here?
It’s possible Akershus doesn’t have enough space for a full buffet–it didn’t have one before (just partial).
I generally agree with this take on family style v. buffet, but it doesn’t bother me so much here. Assuming the currently-posted dinner menu is accurate, this actually sounds better than our last a la carte entree experience at Akershus, and even that was pretty good.
I have never worked in a restaurant but I wonder if family style meals might be easier on the kitchen than buffets. You know exactly what you’re making for each order and can basically get an assembly line going with very little variation. That’s probably easier to train staff for than a more varied menu, and cuts down some of the guess work in coordinating the timing of different menu items so the buffet stays full. It also might be easier to buy food for than a buffet because you have a pretty specific idea of how much of each dish you need, whether than having to guess if the chicken or the fish is going to be the hot item on the buffet that day. Again, no real insight, just a thought.
I’m also clueless about this, but I think Jared’s guess is probably a good one.
Most restaurants have shortages in the kitchens, not of servers. So bringing food to the tables is less of an issue than preparing it.
I agree with Christina, I am not a fan of “family style” meals. For such high prices, I would prefer buffet style. We did “family style” in several other restaurants and so much food gets wasted.