Eating Keto while At Disneyland - a Plaza Inn Review

Travel. Independence. Excitement. A Growing Waistline. All of these words plus many more describe my 20s.  That waistline (or more accurately the hip/butt area) are now starting to be a bigger concern of mine now that I am in my 30s.  One day, I will share with you my body image story, but for the purposes of today’s blog, all you need to know is that I am trying out the Keto diet and I successfully stayed on it while having a date night at Disneyland!

My husband Erik had a lot of success on a low carb diet years ago, so after we both learned that living off of Trader Joe’s easy to make meals (specifically their fried mac and cheese bites) is definitely NOT going to help us live the life we want to, we decided to try the Keto diet.  

Honestly, the first two and a half weeks, Erik cooked all our meals at home, which made it easy to stay away from temptation.  A little ad on Facebook let us know that there would be a double feature of The Incredibles and The Incredibles 2 in Imax at Downtown Disney the Wednesday before it opened!  It had been a few years since we had seen The Incredibles, so we just had to go! The only hesitation was that because of the timing of the movies, it would be best to eat dinner at Disneyland - the hardest place to stay true to a diet!

The Disneyland app saved my life!  I scoured EVERY single menu item to try to see what our best options were.  To my knowledge, Disney doesn’t release nutritional information for their meals (although they do a great job at accommodating dietary restrictions), so having the menus available was a lifesaver.

We ended up at the Plaza Inn because it seemed like the best bet to get delicious food that would keep us filled up during both movies.  Normally, we would split the chicken dinner meal with double mashed potatoes instead of the green beans. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a prime example of why our decisions got us into this little predicament in the first place.  Still, it was amazing, and I have never had a bad meal here.

I decided to go for the Chopped Salad.  I have this weird gut reaction of paying over $10 for a salad, and this was $13.49!!! One of the things that helped me get over that is the lovely cast members make it right there in front of you, so you can customize it without feeling too difficult.  It normally comes with lettuce, pesto chicken, ranch, cheddar, bacon, trio of beans, pickled onions, tomatoes, and croutons. I just asked them to hold the beans and the croutons, and it was delicious!!!! I wasn’t sure if tomatoes were ok to eat on the diet, so I just didn’t eat them because they aren’t my absolute favorite vegetable anyways.  I really appreciated how much packed on the chicken and all the other ingredients!! It was definitely filling and perfect for a hot day. I LOVED this salad, and I’m not a huge salad fan.

Erik got the chicken dinner meal but asked for double green beans, no mashed potatoes, and no biscuit.  He was planning on not eating the skin because it was obviously breaded. I snuck a few bites, and I was surprised at how flavorful the chicken was without the skin!  This was a great option for Erik, who likes salad even less than I do.

We ended up having a great little date at Disneyland before we saw our movies!  Speaking of movies, The Incredibles 2 was so good! It lived up to the hype. If possible, try to see a double feature, or see the first right before you see the sequel.  The Incredibles 2 does a great job at continuing the pacing and tone of the first.

There are so many things to love about Disneyland, and I’m just so thankful that I can find options to support the new decisions I am making to try to improve my life.

Happy cruising readers,

Amy