Walt Disney World has officially announced the Spring 2023 opening date of Toy Story Land’s new Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restaurant. Additionally, we have menu details and food photos from the table service dining option that’s coming to Hollywood Studios in a couple months.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, the backstory behind Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restaurant is that Andy and all of his toys are inviting guests to participate in the fun of a backyard barbecue. However, we do not mean the walk-around variety when referring to Andy’s toys. Toy Story Roundup Rodeo Restaurant is NOT be a character dining experience–Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the other characters will continue doing meet & greets around Toy Story Land.
Instead, this is a regular all-you-care-to-enjoy, family-style restaurant with an art style similar to that of both Toy Story Mania and Slinky Dog Dash. Andy has built a rodeo restaurant consisting of Woody’s Roundup toys and other playthings. To create the restaurant, he cut and taped cardboard boxes together to create a new rodeo arena. While some pieces are western-themed, Andy really just used whatever he had laying around–it’s a broad assortment of toys assembled to create a fun, colorful mashup-atmosphere.
The latest news is that Walt Disney World has officially announced that Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ opens on March 23, 2023 at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
No information about when Advance Dining Reservations will become available has been released. We will keep you posted as soon as we know when these go live, as ADR demand is going to be sky-high for Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restaurant and you’ll want to book reservations ASAP. Regardless of how good or bad the cuisine or themed design ends up being, this will be the most popular restaurant at Disney’s Hollywood Studios because Toy Story.
Compounding the popularity of all things Toy Story is the fact that Roundup Rodeo BBQ is opening on March 23, 2023, which is during the heart of spring break season at Walt Disney World. It’s just after local school breaks conclude, but it’s still before Easter–the peak week of spring break.
Honestly, that doesn’t matter that much. Roundup Rodeo Restaurant could open during the slowest week of 2023, and it’ll still book up in minutes. This restaurant will likely be on par with Space 220 Restaurant at EPCOT in terms of demand. And that’s despite it not having a highly-themed or immersive component. Toy Story Land is incredibly popular, and people love barbecue.
A unique collaboration between Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney World Food & Beverage, this one-of-a-kind dining experience will be the first Toy Story table service restaurant in the world. Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restaurant will offer all-you-can-eat barbecue cuisine, served family-style.
With the Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ opening date out of the way, let’s take a look at the menu…
Start with the Prospector’s Homemade Cheddar Biscuits served with sweet pepper jelly.
While these might very well be delicious, keep in mind that Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ is all-you-can-eat, so you don’t want to eat too much “filler” before the many meats arrive!
Next up, more filler: salads. Here are the options for you to graze:
- Tomato Salad: Tomatoes, cucumbers, and pickled red onions tossed in a white balsamic vinaigrette and garnished with fresh dill (plant-based)
- Rex’s Romaine and Kale Salad: Romaine and kale mixed with green apples, pumpkin seeds, and dried cranberries tossed with green goddess dressing
- Watermelon Salad: Cubed watermelon garnished with freshly torn mint leaves (plant-based)
Enjoy a hearty serving of house-smoked meats at Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ, including:
- Evil Dr. Smoked Ribs: Fall-off-the-bone pork ribs, slow-cooked for hours in our onsite smokehouse
- Buttercup’s Beef Brisket: Hand-sliced beef brisket, smoked then slow-cooked to juicy perfection
- There’s a Sausage in My Boot: Spiced pork sausage fire-grilled over live oak to give it an added kick
- BBQ Chicken – with Style! Chicken brined for 48 hours, rubbed with our secret backyard BBQ spice and smoked to tender juiciness
I misread the first one as Dr. Evil Smoked Ribs, and now that’s the crossover film I never even knew I needed.
Savory plant-based offerings are available upon request at Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ for vegetarians and vegans:
- Slow-smoked Cauliflower topped with sweet harissa drizzle and crunchy walnut gremolata
- Oven-roasted “Bratwurst” that is tender and juicy, sliced to perfection
- Impossible “Rib Chop” seasoned with spices, then roasted and glazed with sweet BBQ sauce and skewered on a sugar cane “bone”
All entreés at Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ are served with an assortment of sweet, traditional, and spicy BBQ sauces.
Choose four of the following sides for the table:
- The Married Spuds: Loaded potato barrels drizzled with green goddess dressing, cheese sauce, and seasoned BBQ spices
- Force Field Fried Pickles: Jumbo pickle spears coated with a dill-flavored breading and fried to perfection
- Slinky Doooooooooog Mac & Cheese: Spiral pasta in a creamy house-made cheese sauce topped with crumbled cheddar crackers
- Buckin’ Baked Beans: A traditional BBQ picnic favorite (plant-based)
- Cowpoke Corn on the Cob: Grilled and seasoned with a chili-lime spice blend, cilantro, cotija cheese, and lime juice
- Mean Old Potato Salad: Homestyle with red-skinned potatoes
- Veggie Slaw: Crunchy shredded veggie slaw that is a summertime favorite! (plant-based)
- Campfire-roasted Vegetables: A variety of roasted seasonal vegetables (plant-based)
Interesting that you have to choose four for the table. I guess Sarah and I will be booking separate tables when we go! (Not really–I already know which four I want. Spoiler alert: none of the plant-based ones. This is a BBQ joint, come on!)
Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ’s chuckwagon desserts offer a sweet take on the BBQ picnic classics. Choose from a selection for the table:
- Cupcake à la Forky: Forky is up to something sweet! A classic chocolate cake with a gooey chocolate ganache center topped with velvety graham cracker buttercream and a sugar cookie
- Lemon and Blueberry Cheesecake: An iconic creamy dessert that balances the tanginess of the cheesecake with the natural sweetness of blueberries and lemon
- Billy’s Chocolate Silk Pie: Layers of graham cracker crust and silky chocolate mousse topped with chantilly cream
- Goat’s Apple Pie: A picnic classic! Tart apples and warm pie spices balance perfectly with the creamy sweet filling under a crumble crust
- Gruff’s Peach-Strawberry Pie: With its silky sweet peaches and tartness of strawberries, this dessert is a fruit-centric delight! (plant-based)
An assortment of craft cocktails and nonalcoholic beverages will have you feeling nostalgic for backyard picnics on warm summer days.
Grown-up Craft Cocktails:
- Snake Eye Margarita: Inspired by a summertime BBQ featuring watermelon, smoke, and a bit of spice!
- Rum Punch: Rum punch with vibrant flavors of passion fruit and pineapple finished with a smoky spiced garnish
- Chocolate with a Grown-up Twist: A blend of chocolate rum, horchata liqueur, cocoa, and flavors of toasted marshmallow
- Frozen Peanut Butter & Jelly: A fun frozen twist on the classic peanut butter & jelly featuring peanut butter whiskey
- Whiskey Lemonade: A fresh take on a strawberry lemonade made with Tennessee whiskey and Italian bitter aperitif
- The Rodeo Mule: A classic “patio sipper,” this mule mixes vodka with fresh juices and ginger beer
A selection of beer, hard cider, and wines by the glass are available.
Nonalcoholic offerings:
- Molly’s Frozen Iced Tea: A frosty concoction with iced tea and citrus flavors
- Frozen Cocoa: A frozen blend of cocoa and vanilla topped with miniature marshmallows
- Partysaurus Tex: Strawberry lemonade is even more fun when you garnish it with gummy worms!
As with ADRs, Walt Disney World has not yet released pricing for Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ.
If we had to guess based on pricing at Space 220 and Be Our Guest Restaurant, we’d expect adult pricing to be $55 and kids pricing to be $29. It could be as high as $39 for kids and $59 for adults. Anything higher than that would surprise us. Although it’s “only” BBQ (as opposed to those more ambitious prix fixe menus), Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ is all-you-can-eat cuisine, served family-style–so there will be premium pricing for that.
In terms of additional background (that you probably already know if you’ve been following the prolonged construction of this Toy Story Land addition), Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restaurant is located to the right of what’s currently the entrance of Toy Story Land, behind the giant Woody figure and land’s marquee (you can see construction walls in the photo below).
In our most recent construction update, we noted that construction workers have been putting the finishing touches on the exterior facade of the restaurant. We’re starting to see visible signs of this, as the restaurant marquee and other details have been installed of the exterior of the building, which is now behind construction scrims. It’s progressed significantly since we shared that–the facade is now coming alive and starting to resemble the concept art at the top of the post.
This new table service restaurant should help address many of the issues we’ve had with Toy Story Land. It’s currently pretty miserable during the summer heat or daily rain showers due to the lack of shade or shelter. Giving guests even a temporary reprieve from the sun or storms in a place that isn’t the restrooms would be nice. So from a purely functional or role-filling perspective, Toy Story Roundup BBQ Restaurant is a good addition.
The menu at Toy Story Roundup BBQ Restaurant actually looks better than I was expecting, although I have to admit that my expectations were pretty low. I figured this would basically be a table service version of Regal Eagle’s Distinctly Patriotic Smokehouse: A Salute to All Foods, But Mostly Barbecued Meats. It looks like a step up from that. (Granted, these are stock photos and what’s actually served could look considerably different.)
Design and ambition-wise, Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restaurant does absolutely nothing for me. It looks mostly phoned in, but honestly, I feel that way about much of the various Toy Story Lands. Obviously, I am in the minority on this–I get that. I just think that Toy Story is thematic low-hanging fruit, and could be so much better than what Imagineering has delivered to date.
This feels like more of the same on that front. Not that I want to see yet another Toy Story Land pop up somewhere, but I really wish Imagineering were given the budget to do one of these lands proper justice so fans see just how much better this concept could actually be if its full creative potential were reached.
Otherwise, about my only thought about Toy Story Roundup BBQ Restaurant is, “why not have an elaborately themed Pizza Planet instead?!” I’m guessing the answer to that is storytelling consistency. My retort to that response would be: “who cares.” Seriously, it’s not like Toy Story Land at DHS is the pinnacle of themed design.
This is not Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge…break the rules! It would be pretty easy to concoct a storytelling contrivance to explain away the presence of Pizza Planet in “Andy’s Backyard,” if Imagineering truly wanted to build the better restaurant. But that ship has sailed, so no need to continue fixating on it.
In any case, we’re just glad that Toy Story Roundup Rodeo BBQ will finally open on March 23, 2023. So long as we’re able to secure one, we’ll be booking an Advance Dining Reservation for opening night–or shortly thereafter–so stay tuned for a full restaurant review coming soon.
But don’t want on one before booking your own ADRs–as noted above, this restaurant will book up 60+ days ahead of time! Both of us will be monitoring ADR news like hawks in the coming weeks and will give you a heads up ASAP if/when availability live. You can subscribe to our free email newsletter for instant alerts.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think about the addition of a table service restaurant to Toy Story Land? How does the menu look to you? Excited to dine at Roundup Rodeo BBQ Restaurant starting on March 23, 2023? Thoughts on its themed design and details as compared to other exquisitely Imagineered restaurants at Disney’s Hollywood Studios? Do you agree or disagree with our thoughts? 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!
