Boma Buffet Reopening at Animal Kingdom Lodge
Walt Disney World has announced the reopening of Boma – Flavors of Africa at Animal Kingdom Lodge as a buffet for breakfast and dinner. In this post, we’ll offer opening dates, Advance Dining Reservation timeframes, plus what else we can expect from WDW dining for the next few months. (Updated August 16, 2021 at 6 pm EST.)
Before we dig into the details, let’s cover some of the good news on the Walt Disney World dining front. A ton of additional restaurants since last month. Here’s just a partial list of restaurants that have opened in the last few weeks: Columbia Harbour House, Nine Dragons, Pizzafari, Toledo: Tapas, Seafood & Steak, Trader Sam’s, Yachtsman Steakhouse, Crew’s Cup Lounge, ‘Ohana, Trail’s End Restaurant, and Citricos. In fact, our List of Open & Closed Restaurants at Walt Disney World has mostly minor locations left in the closed column, which is a pretty significant shift as compared to even a month ago.
This is further aided by Walt Disney World starting to turn a corner on its staffing shortages. The College Program officially restarted in mid-June and has expanded in August 2021. The hiring initiative is also paying off—tons of new employees have gone through Traditions training and been assigned to locations around Walt Disney World in the last two-plus months.
Many of these new Cast Members have been working for a couple months, and now have the knowledge, skills, and comfort level necessary to make an impact. As these fresh faces have learned on the job, Walt Disney World restaurants have started filling more tables. We’ve experienced this firsthand, and also heard from friends and readers who have dined at the same restaurants we did in June or July–but now with significantly more tables in use.
In addition to this, off-season is here, schools are back into session, and crowds have already decreasing as compared to their end of July highs. Consequently, Advance Dining Reservations are becoming easier to book for mid-August and beyond.
This is all great news. Walt Disney World has been playing catch-up since (at least) spring break, and for the first time in a while, it feels like there’s some sense of relief to the supply v. demand imbalance. With Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary–and its accompanying crowds–less than 50 days away, this might be short lived, but it’s nice for now…
Let’s start with the official news: Boma – Flavors of Africa at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge reopens on August 20, 2021. Advance Dining Reservations will be available for booking starting Wednesday, August 18, 2021.
This has been an open secret for over a week. In fact, we were expecting a “Disney Foodie News” update about this (and more) towards the end of last week. Instead, the return of Boma was revealed via Tweet, which itself says “just announced” (where?) rather than the Disney Parks Blog, which is odd and inconsistent with past practice.
UPDATE: Walt Disney World has confirmed that Boma – Flavors of Africa will return with all-you-care-to-enjoy buffets at breakfast and dinner.
Per Disney, breakfast offerings include creamy pap, turkey bobotie, pancakes, waffles, deviled eggs with salmon, and delicious freshly baked items from the Boma bakery.
For dinner at Boma, the rotisserie area will offer pork ribs, salmon, African-spiced strip loin, Durban rotisserie chicken, and lamb bobotie. The kid’s cooking pod will have pasta and meatballs, mac n’ cheese, and chicken bites. The rotating selection of soups, stews, and chowders are back, as well as tasty salads like berbere chickpea salad and North African cauliflower salad.
For dessert, Guests can enjoy delicious Zebra Domes and a variety of other sweet treats.
Beyond that, all we know is that Boma slated to be the first buffet to return to Walt Disney World.
In fact, the Boma buffet is one of several dining updates (all of which are improvements that will be well received among fans!) that are slated to be occurring in the very near future at Walt Disney World.
After Disneyland brought back buffets last month, it’s an inevitability at Walt Disney World. Nevertheless, we can already anticipate outrage over this. Just keep in mind that “banning” buffets was never a legitimate health safety measure–it was always health or hygiene theater. As we’ve been stressing for months, there is no compelling scientific reason to not bring buffets back at this point.
Fomite or surface transmission is exceedingly rare and unlikely, thus handling serving utensils or being near communal food does not present any meaningful degree of actual risk. This is not to say buffets are the most sanitary thing–just that they’re no more “dangerous” than they were in January of last year. The highest risk activity at Walt Disney World is indoor dining, as has been the case since reopening. Adding buffets to the mix does not change the risk profile in any non-trivial way.
We didn’t eat indoors at Walt Disney World for roughly 9 months, so I can understand and respect the decision of others to do the same. However, since being fully vaccinated and comfortable dining indoors, we see no rational reason to be uncomfortable with buffets.
More than anything else, I’m excited about this from a “getting back to normal” perspective. We’re at or near the point where some cuts made under the guise of health safety might become permanent for other reasons, such as cost-savings. I feared that might happen with buffets, at least in the short term as demand outstripped dining capacity. Thankfully, it appears that won’t be the case–and the tables are already starting to turn on ADR availability.
Ultimately, this is exciting news and another step in the right direction. Even if you’re not a fan of these particular restaurants or don’t dine at buffets, this should be great news to all Walt Disney World fans–more normalcy everywhere is better for everyone. Moreover, the return of buffets is another signal that staffing levels are improving, kitchens at Walt Disney World are getting back to normal, and there’s less emphasis (at least in one area) on cost savings.
As previously noted, we’re now at the point when reopening news will slow down. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if we only got another announcement or two about additional restaurants reopening for the remainder of this year. There are still several locations on my personal wish list–Takumi Tei, Monsieur Paul, World of the World Lounge, and Artist Point all come to mind–but it wouldn’t surprise me to see some of those not return until 2022. Hopefully that’s wrong and everything is back later this year–after all, Disney stated during the quarterly earnings call that things would be 100% by the end of this year!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of this news of restaurants reopening at Walt Disney World? Excited for the return of Boma and Flying Fish? Looking forward to the return of more Signature Dining at Walt DIsney World? Any restaurant reopening announcements that you’re still anxiously awaiting? Hoping for more ‘restored normalcy’ announcements in the near future? Planning on going to Walt Disney World for the start of the 50th Anniversary celebration? Does this have you optimistic or pessimistic for more dining to reopen at Walt Disney World? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
You do understand the problem with buffets is people crowding together jostling for position and breathing / spraying on each other not “fomites” right? You may be vaccinated and comfortable with it, but it is not “health theater” as you so dismissively describe it.
Physical distancing is not occurring anywhere–Disney is back to “please fill in all available space.”
Zebra domes!! Can’t wait! Thank you.
Buffets returning can’t come back soon enough. I’m sorry that so many people are afraid of it, but to each their own. Those individuals can stay home and we can all go have fun.
Oops! That was directed to Mike, ha!
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Great insight Mike. Just in case you missed it, Boma has been given an opening date.
Ok, this is a story where the general principle (potential return of buffets, major shift in WDW health policy, the sort of thing that could get on major news on a slow day) is overshadowed by THE NEWS THAT BOMA IS BACK!!! I only did this for the first time in Feb 2020 and couldn’t believe what I’d been missing all this time. I am THERE.
(By the way, I did a “buffet” at DLP – Downtown Restaurant – and they’ve been running an “unlimited ordering” table service offering. But I just don’t see how that would work for Boma with the huge variety on offer).
I was so excited about buffets but I just went to Disney, wore a mask the entire time, am vaccinated, and got covid so unfortunately I feel like a lot of this needs to pause
An announcement that buffets are returning in the same newsletter announcing Florida’s high COVID numbers is disconcerting. I’m sure Disney will get a lot of push back over buffets returning, and they should under the current conditions. The CDC disagrees with you on the safety of buffets. They highly discourage them. I think I’ll so with the CDC on this.
“Avoid offering any self-serve food or drink options, such as buffets, salad bars, and drink stations. This limits the use of shared serving utensils, handles, buttons, or touchscreens and helps customers to stay seated and at least 6 feet apart from people who do not live in their household.” CDC 6/14/2021
It also took the CDC until late last year to concede that COVID was “possibly” aerosolized and until spring of this year to update guidance that droplets and aerosolized particles were the primary forms of transmission, even after other countries (with significantly superior responses and success) made that determination that COVID is an airborne virus in February of last year.
There’s voluminous data and studies at this point on the unlikelihood of transmission via surfaces in multiple highly credible scientific journals.
8 paragraphs for you to say that the buffet return is a rumor? Are you paid for each word in your reports?
What a waste of my time.
Any news on 1900 Park Fare? It is our absolute favorite for our departure day.
Now if we can just get CAPE MAY, Trails End and Germany back to buffet normalcy!!
I am also very excited about Boma reopening…Yaaaay
I have a question totally having nothing to do with Boma…
What is club level and how do you use dvc for it…I think I am out of the loop
On Club level …. Elaine
In my opinion, Boma has the BEST food at WDW.
I’m so excited!!!
I’ll continue to avoid the buffets for now. I have no fears from the surface transmission aspect, but I really don’t feel comfortable with Bob who just wants to grab that one piece of bread reaching in between me and my wife and coughing into his below-the-nose mask in the process. It’s one thing when he’s across the restaurant, but mixing with the masses at the buffet just gives me the heebie jeebies.
WDW hasn’t been able to revive the cultural representative program, right? I wonder if that’s the hold-up for Takumi Tei since it’s such an authentic experience. It was on my wishlist for Christmas 2020, which obviously didn’t pan out, but even if it’d reopened in time, we had already decided we wouldn’t go there until we could get the full experience. More generally, I’m looking forward to the return of that program all over Epcot since it helps with the illusion of traveling around the world, and it’s so fun talking to the cast members about their home countries.
Boma’s reopening is excellent news, though!
Excellent! We have Club level reservations at AKV (a fun way to use extra DVC points which we really enjoy!) in Dec & Jan and can now add dining at Boma to our itineraries for both trips!!! Hoping Jiko is next!
Thanks Tom, this is great news. Its the final piece of the puzzle for our upcoming trip. We were really hoping for it and return of club level at Animal Kingdom Lodge and now we have both.
Thanks Ton, this is great news. Its the final piece of the puzzle for our upcoming trip. We were really hoping for it and return of club level at Animal Kingdom Lodge and now we have both.