Full Menu for New Lounge in Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
Walt Disney World has revealed the full menu of food, drinks & desserts coming to the newest restaurant at the Poly, Wailulu Bar & Grill. This shares the breakfast, lunch and dinner menus of this lounge located in the Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, along with our commentary and thoughts on the locale.
For starters, Wailulu Bar & Grill is the brand-new, casual walk-up pool bar and grill that will be calling the new Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows home when that new Disney Vacation Club expansion opens its doors on December 17, 2024. You’re probably familiar with this polarizing addition, but in case not, refer to New Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort: Opening Date, Timeline & Progress Photos.
As you take in breathtaking views along the water’s edge of Seven Seas Lagoon at Wailulu Bar & Grill, you’ll be surrounded by Polynesian-inspired artwork that was crafted exclusively for this location. Some pieces have even been made with recycled materials and reclaimed fishing nets. For those dining as the sun goes down, Wailulu Bar & Grill will feature firework views from Magic Kingdom.
According to Walt Disney World, your taste buds will be going on a journey at Wailulu Bar & Grill whether you’re enjoying specialty coffee and on-the-go morning pastries for breakfast, or venturing over for lunch or dinner. The new Wailulu Bar & Grill menu celebrates the flavors of Polynesia with influences of the Pacific Islands, from Easter Island and New Zealand to Fiji and Guam.
Some of the cultural highlights include the Sweet Potato Hummus with Breadfruit Tostones, Spiced Ham Musubi, and Chocolate Cake with the essence of Kona coffee. The beverage menu is masterfully crafted, combining modern flavors of the Polynesian Islands with classic ingredients like hibiscus flowers, sake, yuzu, pandan, oolong tea, coffee, and passionfruit. Some stand-out sips include cocktails, the Pandan Gin Gin Mule and Passionfruit and Pineapple Daiquiri, and non-alcoholic specialty beverages, the Hibiscus Iced Tea and Yuzu Oolong Tea Lemonade.
The name even draws inspiration from these cultures, too! Wailulu comes from the Hawaiian words “wai,” which means water, and “lulu,” which means calm.
Here’s a look at the food menus for Wailulu Bar & Grill at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort…
Wailulu Bar & Grill Menu
Food Items
- Sweet Potato Hummus, crispy chickpeas, espelette pepper dust, and breadfruit tostones
- Ahi Tuna Crisps: Marinated ahi tuna, crispy fried wontons, avocado crema, sriracha-aioli, and soy glaze
- Grilled Shrimp, smoked paprika, black garlic emulsion, garlic-lemon butter, and crispy garlic
- Spiced Ham Musubi with glazed spam seasoned with traditional furikake and served with crispy rice pearls
- Crispy Chicken Wings: Adobo-marinated, soy glaze, and tomato-fresno pepper relish
- Wayfinder Burger: Two pressed patties, American cheese, onion jam, volcano sauce, and sweet bun served with mac salad or sweet potato fries
- Beef Short Rib Loco Moco: Shiitake mushroom gravy, crispy rice cake, and fried egg
- Grilled Fish of the Day: Green curry broth, jasmine rice, chickpeas, and sweet potato
- Poke Bowl: Sushi-style rice, pickled cucumbers, vegetables, spicy poke sauce, and macadamia nuts with choice of ahi tuna, grilled teriyaki chicken, or grilled tofu
- Chow Mein Salad: Charred cabbage, shishito peppers, hearts of palm, pickled sweet potato, and sunflower butter dressing with choice of sauteed shrimp, grilled teriyaki chicken, or grilled tofu
- Sticky Pork Ribs, salt-cured green cabbage, jicama slaw, and pineapple chips
Kids Meals
- White Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese
- Grilled Teriyaki Chicken
Desserts
- DOLE Whip Sundae with hibiscus meringue and passion fruit crispies
- Chocolate Cake with salted caramel ganache and Chantilly cream infused with the essence of Kona coffee
Breakfast
- Pineapple-Coconut Bread (Available for breakfast only)
(I think it’s interesting that they’re specifically noting this will be available for breakfast only. My immediate thought when seeing it was that it could become the next craveworthy Walt Disney World snack. Maybe they think so too, and want to get ahead of off-menu requests? Either way, if it is good, I wonder how long the ‘breakfast-only’ thing lasts.)
Beverages
- Hibiscus Tea: Hibiscus flower-infused tea with lime and agave nectar (Non-alcoholic beverage)
- Kula Strawberry Sake: Wildflowers Junmai Sake, Campari Liqueur, Rockey’s Botanical Liqueur, and wild strawberry
- Passionfruit and Pineapple Daiquiri: Ten to One Caribbean White Rum, Minute Maid Passion Fruit Orange Guava Juice, pineapple, and lime
- Pandan Gin Gin Mule: Pandan-infused Fords Gin, lime juice, and ginger beer
In terms of commentary, I only have a couple of major thoughts. First, that the menu at Wailulu Bar & Grill looks strong. By lounge standards, it has a reasonably wide variety of food choices with some crowd-pleasers (with fun twists) as well as a couple more inventive items. It also looks fairly on-theme to the Polynesian, so that’s a win.
It seems like this has been the recent ‘formula’ for new lounges at the domestic Disney parks. That’s not to say recent lounge menus have been formulaic, as they absolutely are not–quite the opposite. This reminds me a bit of both Palm Breeze at Disneyland Hotel and Bar Riva at Riviera Resort. Probably not a coincidence since those are the two newest large-scale Disney Vacation Club properties.
Next, I can’t help but wonder how busy Wailulu Bar & Grill will be.
On the one hand, other recent lounges like this have not been bursting at the seams. Again, I’ll come back to Palm Breeze and Bar Riva, two places where we dine quite frequently. Despite neither being particularly large, they’re usually more than sufficient for accommodating demand. Same goes for other locales at Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, and Wilderness Lodge.
On the other hand, the Poly is a totally different beast. Unlike the aforementioned hotels, the Poly is a destination resort. It’s one where many off-site and on-site guests staying elsewhere do dinner to get a taste of what’s arguably Walt Disney World’s most iconic resort.
I would argue that restaurant capacity was already too low for Disney’s Polynesian Resort, and that was before Island Tower. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens when all these rooms are added to the mix. Will Wailulu Bar & Grill be enough to serve the added capacity? Will the views of Magic Kingdom result in even more demand than normal?
I’m hoping the answers are yes and no, but I’m guessing they’ll be reversed. I just have a really hard time believing anything at the Polynesian can not be busy. This is also one of my bigger fears about Island Tower in the first place–that the resort and monorail infrastructure is insufficient to support the new room inventory (unless the resort goes on lockdown, which would be a very controversial move). I guess we shall see.
Finally, we have heard a chorus of complaints over the last several years that is, essentially: “Walt Disney World only builds bars! They need to focus on more family-friendly stuff!!!”
To each their own, but I think that’s no longer a fair criticism, and hasn’t been for a while. Sure, when Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto, Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar, The Edison, and a handful of other locations that were very clearly aimed at adults–and only adults–it was true. Especially during the peak years of the Downtown Disney reimagining into Disney Springs. There was also validity to the grousing when more bar kiosks were popping up or a greater emphasis was placed on alcohol on restaurant menus.
That hasn’t been the trend of the last several years, though. Instead, Walt Disney World has added a slew of family-friendly lounges that are more food-forward. These are more fairly categorized as restaurants than bars (or at least “and grills”), and are oozing inviting atmosphere and have robust food menus that arguably surpass some of the regular restaurants at their respective resorts.
We know this because we have kids (well, kid, singular) and dine at these locations with regularity. This includes Geyser Point Bar & Grill at Wilderness Lodge, Three Bridges Bar & Grill at Coronado Springs, Nomad Lounge at Animal Kingdom, the reimagined Banana Cabana at Caribbean Beach (and, again, both Bar Riva and Palm Breeze).
Point being, we’d highly recommend giving these so-called bars a shot before dismissing them as only for boozehounds. I’d go as far as to say we actually prefer lounges in a lot of circumstances because they tend to be more laid back and lower stakes. If we eat at Bar Riva or Banana Cabana, it’s pretty easy to step out or expedite the process in a way that just isn’t possible at Topolino’s Terrace or even Sebastian’s Bistro, for example.
All of this to say we’ll be frequent fixtures of Wailulu Bar & Grill (assuming it isn’t always bonkers busy, undercutting this paragraph) and will have a full review at some point to let you know how this menu stacks up to the fairly formidable lounge competition around Walt Disney World.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of the menu at Wailulu Bar & Grill? Expect this restaurant to be significantly busier than its counterparts at other recent resorts due to the Poly factor or its views of Magic Kingdom? Or do you think there’s an upper ceiling on bar demand at Walt Disney World, and this should be fine? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment that this type of “and grill” lounge is really more restaurant than it is bar, and is a good type of addition to Walt Disney World? Is it somewhere you’ll make a point of checking out next time you’re staying at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort or doing a monorail crawl? 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!
Stop talking up the bars “and grills” – its now hard to get into Nomads Lounge – next it will be geyser point will be too crowded.
Loved spam on the menu at the Poly!
I can’t get a feel for how big the entire restaurant is supposed to be in terms of seating area from either the . concept art above or the construction photos elsewhere. Is there any, any chance that there’s enough space there for a decent size dining room *and* an indoor lounge and an outdoor pool bar area? I could see trying to attempt the use of single oversized kitchen and menu for what could otherwise be 2-3 locations, but they’d have to be very careful designing the layout.
When is Disney going to acknowledge that the monorail needs to be the next thing on the agenda to replace? This addition is just going to make it work that much harder with even more breakdowns occurring. What is it going to take for Disney to see it needs to replace the cars NOW?
In typical fashion, an ambitious menu they probably won’t be able to execute when actually turning tables. if you are a person that thinks Landrys is an upscale restaurant, maybe you will be inpressed. Now the architecture of one of the classic Disney hotels is ruined by yet another tower. It’s funny how Disney was built by the middle class yet no longer has no use for it. Universal is heading the right direction and they are doing it while actually paying taxes this whole time.
I would not expect this to be upscale. It’s a bar.
Also very odd to invoke Universal in a comment that’s snobbish about food. Out of curiosity, which are your 5 favorite restaurants at Universal Orlando?
I do agree that Universal is heading in the right direction, otherwise.
Props for Disney on at least trying to be more authentically Polynesian (well Hawaiian) with the menu, we shall see how they execute, but it’s not like you really have to dumb down classic Hawaiian food like that. Also the images look decent and seem to integrate it better into the space than Kona Cafe is currently shoved into the main Poly building.
That said, I’m honestly sort of surprised they didn’t add a signature restaurant with this expansion somehow. I know that’s not really the Poly’s vibe, but it’s increasingly the Poly’s price point and this seems like a missed opportunity to target the sort of people who are willing to pay those prices but aren’t Disney regulars. Sure those people can go to Citricos at GF or CG at Contemporary (I exclude V&A from this because it’s so small and also, while the group I discussed probably can afford V&A’s, I doubt they are going to be looking for or want that kind of meal at Disney, while they would be fine with the former two, and probably less fine with ‘Ohana), but this new expansion is just going to put more pressure on Citrico’s and CG and the Poly itself. I have to imagine they could have carved out a space in that giant, blocky, easy to configure tower for something like that.
I realized just after I posted that the DVC aspect is probably the reason why a signature restaurant wasn’t added, because it probably would have had to be disentangled from any costs Disney can pass down to DVC owners for the new tower. They probably could have worked with lawyers to segregate such a restaurant from the DVC owners, but they probably decided it wasn’t worth it.
Still seems short-sighted to me from a business-perspective, but as an in-house lawyer for a Fortune 100 company I can see how that went down.
I like lounges, and this looks like a pretty good lounge.
But I’m still disappointed and underwhelmed. Because a 200 room tower, set back a decent walk from the main resort, needs more than a lounge.
Furthermore, Poly is the only full deluxe resort that does not have any signature dining. Just a bunch of venues to get medium quality pan-Asian food.
Thus, you can’t compare this to a lounge like Bar Riva. Bar Riva is a bar first, food second. All in the same building — it sits next door to above-average QS. Walk up 1 flight of stairs, you have a good coffee shop. Go up the elevator, you get a character breakfast and a signature dinner.
Here, if you are staying in the Poly Tower, this appears to be the only option for dining in the hotel. And it certainly doesn’t seem compelling enough to draw guests from the main Poly resort. So it does nothing to really enhance the dining options at the Poly.
I would have loved it if they kept it casual for breakfast and lunch, but upped it to signature level for dinner. High quality Pacific ocean seafood dining.
Fully agree, but Disney is probably more constrained I what they can do with a DVC property than with a non-DVC one. That said, there were ways they could have worked around that and it seems they just took the easiest path forward.
Totally agree.
But I think that’s a critique for the hotel/tower as a whole rather than this lounge/restaurant.
Some might say Riviera is looking better and better. 😉
I have to say that this menu looks wonderful! Love island style food and these offerings look not too daring for some but elevated for others (and that is Ohana’s bread they are serving for breakfast, right?) I wish they had another offering or two for the kid’s menu though. I do see what you mean about the Palm Breeze vibe- at first glance that is what I thought before you even wrote that in your post! But this menu looks much, much more like my kind of food than Palm Breeze. Sadly, I do feel like you do regarding the property still needing a lot more dining options to meet demand, and this one has a large selling point for atmosphere and fireworks to accentuate the issue. We will be staying at a DVC studio in the old buildings in June and looking forward to hopefully securing a spot at Wailulu. Here is to hoping the sticker shock is not enough to scare me away like all of my intentions of visiting The Cake Bake Shop did!
In terms of the lounge complaints, we are also parents and have also been to Nomad Lounge, Geyser Point, outdoors at Trader Sam’s at DLR and are fans of being able to feel a little “adulty” but not full on bar with our kid. We love them! And totally agree with you about the lounge versus full-service feeling.
Love doing all the lounges/grills at all the resorts you have mentioned, especially Bar Riva, Palm Breeze and Geyser Point, and we have 4 and 9 yo daughters. As for congestion and lacking infrastructure to handle the new rooms and subsequent guests at the Poly, a friendly boat captain told me on our most recent trip in November that they would more than likely begin to use the bigger 120 person capacity boats at GF and Poly, similar to what they have always used in rotation at Wilderness Lodge and Ft. Wilderness, so that should help at least with the overcrowding that already exists at certain times on the monorail (which is why we usually walk from GF to MK half the time). Another transportation side note, the same very friendly captain said the rumor of adding another Ferry to the TTC loop was true as well, will be in service before Cars and Villains land is finished. Love your Blog Tom!
Menu looks good, not great-obviously a loco moco to represent Hawaii is awesome. That pineapple coconut bread looks so crazy dry though-they need it soaked in fruit or something.
For the lounge haters – we have kids who like to explore different cuisines, and the lounges are the cheapest option for food sometimes! We can’t afford to just go to V&A or Flying Fish with our kids, but places like Nomad Lounge and Bar Riva have become staples for us! We all share dishes and end up so much more fulfilled. I understand it’s not for everyone, but come on, we know that Disney has chicken nuggets ready at pretty much EVERY eating establishment. I love your take on food at Disney, as always. And I’m looking forward to that coconut pineapple bread without paying for Ohana!
The menu looks and sounds very good. I think it’s quite interesting that they are more local-style foods, like Loco Moco and spam musubi, and “elevating” it for this menu. This looks fairly ambitious for Florida, I think, but I hope it succeeds. (I had a loco moco burrito at the Disneyland Hotel a few weeks ago that sounded good but tasted very subpar)