Enhanced Website Feature: Disney Cruise Line Menu Archive & Explorer

After nearly a year in development and data entry, I am happy to share an overview of the website’s enhanced menu explorer. At launch, the menu explorer features over 250 different menus from restaurants, bars, lounges, quick service locations offered over the years across the fleet and at the cruise line’s private destinations. There are more than just 250 menus, there are over 950 historical versions of all the menus in the archive from over the years with over 25,000 menu items archived.

How did I get here? Simple, I was not happy with the way the menu pages looked and I wanted to create an easier way to view the information while providing a historical look at menus and menu variants from the past in a standardized format. Technically, I was working on a different new website feature which led me to this project when I realized I was putting the cart before the horse.

The Disney Cruise Line Menu landing page remains with a list of curated menus served across the fleet during most of the year during typical itineraries, but now there is a new index page listing every menu archived. Clicking on a menu will take you to the menu’s page showing the latest version. Most menus, such as the Animator’s Palate menu shown below in the screenshot, have historical versions as well as alternative version such as Allergy-Friendly, Foreign Language, and Regional Inspirations.

The menu pages will include both images or app screenshots of the actual menus, along with each menu item listed a standardized text format as shown in the Cocktails section of the Arendelle: A Frozen Dining Adventure Dinner.

I searched my photo archives browsing long forgotten photos from past cruises to find menus and pictures of menu items to include, some for the first time. In doing so, there are menus that have been duplicated with new dates. Sometimes I found new images of the menu, or new pictures of menu items. In order to keep the data entry side of the project moving forward, I chose to create a new version of a menu to share the newer images.

Is this a complete collection of Disney Cruise Line menus? Absolutely not, but I’m comfortable call it a substantial collection of Disney Cruise Line menus. I invite you to explore the menu collection and I am open to feedback on anyways to further enhance this feature.

Finally, if you have menus (both old and new), and would be willing to share, please email using the link in the header or our upload form. Feel free to send them via email in whatever format works best for you.

As far as the original project I teased over a year ago which led me into uncharted waters working this side project, I am now able to shift focus back, and I hope to announce this new feature to the website sometime… Hopefully before the launch of the Disney Treasure, but I know better and will not be making any promises.

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