Club 33 Review & Photos!

Before I say anything else I just need to put it out there that I AM SO EXCITED TO WRITE THIS POST!!!!!! I know many people have been looking forward to this post ever since I posted this pic on instagram during our honeymoon:

I got so many questions from everyone about what and how and “omg please take tons of pics” and I am going to answer all of them now! Today I’m telling you all about what it was like to dine inside Disneyland’s Club 33!! I had to check to make sure that I was allowed to post all these photos and I am so excited to share everything ^_^

Before we get going, one caveat: I’m going to write individual posts for every day of our honeymoon, but this and a few other experiences seemed special enough for their own post…so they’re getting their own posts 🙂 so here we go!

I’ll start with the question that some may be asking: what is Club 33?

All my friends out there who are Disney Parks fans probably already know, but Club 33 is a secret exclusive restaurant located inside Disneyland. There are actually a few different ones around the world in different Disney parks (including some coming to WDW soon) but the original is inside New Orleans Square at Disneyland. It was created by Walt Disney for exclusive use by VIPs and sponsors, and was later opened up to individual memberships. It’s not exactly a “secret” because obviously many people know about it, but it is VERY exclusive. Club 33 memberships are super expensive (like, think the tens of thousands of dollars a year range) and it’s got a long wait list to join. It’s not open to the public and many people don’t even know it’s there. The only way to get in without being a member yourself is to have a member make a reservation for you – basically, you need a hookup.

Ready to go and so excited!!

And luckily for us, we got one! We were so lucky to have an INCREDIBLE friend offer to help get us a reservation at Club 33 for our honeymoon. It was the most perfect way to celebrate our wedding and we are so grateful that she helped us out! Thank you Sarah <3

So – because it’s difficult to get reservations ahead of time for non-members, we actually didn’t know if we were going to get to go until about a week before! We were in Disneyland for such a short time we didn’t know if it would work out, but they managed to get us in and our reservation was set for 5:45pm!

We had checked it out earlier in the day (you’ll read more about the rest of the day in a post to come though!) so we knew where we were going. The entrance isn’t exactly hidden, but it’s easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there. There was another group there who seemed really excited and were taking tons of pics, it seemed like it was their first time there too! I went up to them and said “you seem fun and nice can you please take our photo too” and the guy was so excited and took a bunch for us haha

At exactly 5:40 we rang the doorbell for our reservation!! We told them our name and then the door opened and we went inside!!!!!

Just inside the door is a little concierge-like desk where they checked us in and then asked us to wait in the courtyard before we were seated. They had some water for us while we waited in the stunning courtyard and we had time to take a few photos!!

Before long someone came to take us upstairs. We had the option of doing the stairs or the elevator and we decided to do stairs up, elevator down later.

Just upstairs we entered into the main lobby where they have another little host stand, a case of merchandise and a bunch of other cool things we’ll come back to later. We were seated at a table close to the entrance and were immediately overwhelmed by how beautiful everything was. The plates, menus, everything was just STUNNING!!

Our server was a lovely man named Alastair who immediately greeted us with a few surprises: complimentary glasses of champagne and some Just Married buttons! I already had a pair for us from Walt Disney World but it was so cool to be able to have the ones from the west coast as well 🙂 and made even more special by where we got them from!

Spoilers for Aulani but here’s my collection of all our Just Married buttons!

There was also a really sweet card on the table for us, signed by the cast members of Club 33!

I was also EXTREMELY SHOOK when one of the cast members saw that I had my purse on my lap and immediately went to get A TINY STOOL TO SIT MY PURSE ON.

This was one of many times that I thought “we are too poor to be here” lol

So for dinner they have a five course meal with a fixed price, and you choose your courses. Here’s what was on the menu this evening:

Peep that caviar option at the top LOL again, I felt too poor to be here!!!! Also, that head chef note at the bottom right, Andrew Sutton – in my Disneyland research I’ve read so much about his work in Club 33 and Napa Rose and it was soooo surreal and cool to see his name on the menu!!

Anyway of course since I’m the way I am, I took photos of all of our courses! Apologies in advance that these aren’t very good photos because I felt very embarrassing taking pics of my food at such a fancy place lol so I had to quickly snap them and then shove my phone back in my bag.

So – Chris and I tried to get all different things because we wanted to try as many items as possible. First, we were served an amuse-bouche of…I don’t even know what this is. It was some kind of meat I think LOL but it was good so we didn’t question it. We had also never had an amuse bouche before so we knew we were in a Very Fancy Place.

So for our first course, I chose the sautéed diver scallop:

Alastair told us that these scallops are specially hand harvested by trained divers from the ocean floor. Pretty crazy!! This was served with cauliflower and a fancy ham that was sliced super thin and wrapped around the scallop.

And Chris chose the steak tartare of filet mignon with grilled sourdough:

We knew right away that we were going to be in trouble with this meal because EVERYTHING WAS SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously. I’d never had steak tartare before and it was amazing, so delicious…but GUYS THAT SCALLOP. I’m going to tell you right now, that was definitely the best scallop I’ve ever had and it’s up there for my favorite part of this meal too. Seriously it was just….UNBELIEVABLY good. Chris was like, what’s that yellow sauce on it and I was like I DON’T KNOW BUT I CAN’T STOP EATING IT. We knew we were really in for a treat for the other courses!

Here’s a fun detail: all the napkins were folded like this in little roses. I got up to go to the bathroom and I came back to a new folded napkin. Another time, when we got up to walk around, we came back to new napkins again. Later when I got up to look at the artwork next to our table, Chris timed it…the hostess took approximately 15 seconds to come get my “dirty” napkin and replace it with a freshly rolled one. It was wild yall.

The second course was soup or salad. Now, you guys know I’m a soup lover – but Chris wanted the French onion soup and it was the only soup option, and we had agreed to get different things so I actually got a salad! I got the winter harvest salad, which had pear, blue cheese and pecans:

And here’s Chris’s French onion soup:

Both of these were super good, but we weren’t blown away like we were with the first course. Like, don’t get me wrong – this is the best French onion soup I’ve ever had and I don’t even like onions, and my salad was great – but that scallop was still on my mind haha

Next up was the third course, for which I chose the winter goose sausage with pappardelle pasta and a butternut squash sauce.

This was SO GOOD!! Something really cool too that added to this dish was that we had Alastair add some shaved truffle to the dish, which was an add-on you could purchase. We were AMAZED at how much it enhanced the flavor??? It completely transformed the dish. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of it but you’ll have to trust me when I say it was great. And we felt very fancy.

Chris got the pacific swordfish – and I feel like I’m getting repetitive here but this was amazing. It was cooked PERFECTLY and the sauce or whatever it was served with was amazing!!

Before our next course we were presented with another little palate cleanser, this was a fruity sorbet of some kind and really good! I put my hand next to the spoon for scale so you could see how tiny it was lol

Somewhere between all these courses we were also able to go explore the whole restaurant a little more – they have a few balconies that we went out to that were sooo cool to see! They’re literally right over New Orleans Square and you wouldn’t even know it if you weren’t looking. It was so peaceful and quiet – it was kind of weird to be able to experience that atmosphere inside of a busy park.

For our “entrée” (have these not all been entrées?!) I had the duck à l’orange – again, cooked perfectly of course!

Something also that we found interesting and noticed most with this course was that all of the plates for each course were different. They were different colors, shapes, sizes, and even sometimes had little indents or small designs specific to each course. It was as if the dishes themselves were designed specifically to complement the food perfectly. It was like no restaurant we’d ever been to before. We also noticed that each time a dish was brought out to us, the person bringing it knew which of us to put it in front of… this seems like a weird detail to point out but it was definitely something we noticed! It’s the little things that set Club 33 apart from other places.

Anyway, for Chris’s entrée he actually went off-menu at the suggestion of our server, who offered a specialty for the evening in the form of a steak!

I don’t remember all the details about this one since it’s not listed on the menu but OMG this was another one in our top favorites. I keep saying everything we ate was perfect but this was on another level. Chris loves a good steak and I’m pretty sure he had a religious experience with this one. It was so good.

At this point we felt like they had just been bringing us food for hours haha but it was time for our final course which was dessert! Chris chose the Valrhona chocolate marquise, which is this concoction:

Upon doing further research at home I found out that Valrhona is a French chocolate manufacturer that’s basically very fancy chocolate. And this was AMAZING!! It was served with a coffee chocolate chip ice cream that I absolutely LOVED! And as you can see, they were so sweet to put a little chocolate “Congratulations” on both of our desserts 😭 so cute!!

For my dessert, I chose the pear tart:

We preferred the chocolate marquise but this was actually so good too! The pear flavor wasn’t too strong and it was just the right amount of sweetness. We enjoyed both!

We had reached the end of our meal but Alastair had a few more surprises for us! He told us that for such a special meal just one dessert wasn’t enough, and brought us each a cute little bag of macarons:

And then he brought us ANOTHER treat of little boxes of chocolate to go! We were actually pretty full so we tucked these away for later. I ended up eating them on the plane the next day!

AND THEN if that STILL wasn’t enough he brought us out another small gift at the very end of the meal!

Inside this cute little bag was two of these Club 33 lapel pins!

They are so beautiful and I couldn’t believe how generous and kind they were to give us all these little gifts. By this point I was just so overwhelmed by the whole experience and didn’t want to leave!

But unfortunately, our meal had come to an end, and it was time to go! We took our time wandering out and taking everything in:

We made a stop at the souvenir case again to see if there was anything we wanted. I wanted to buy one of those Club 33 Dooneys so bad, but there were a few items that were for sale only for members so I couldn’t get that one this time!

However because Chris is the best husband ever, I didn’t leave empty handed… because he got me that beautiful sparkly Club 33 castle necklace!!

We admired everything one more time on the way out.

This is a harpsichord given to Lillian Disney as a gift from Walt – it was stunning!

Beautiful chandelier <3

There was also a cute little guest book that you could sign, which of course we did!

Finally we made our way down the elevator and said our goodbyes to this beautiful place! The whole experience was about 3 hours from start to finish. We enjoyed the quiet courtyard for a few more minutes before being escorted back out through the same way we came in. Before we knew it we were back out in New Orleans Square where we started, on a high from the amazing time we just had!

And that’s our experience at Club 33! It was such a special meal and we had the MOST amazing time. I am so happy that we were able to go, and grateful to our dear friend who made it happen. It was the best way to start off our honeymoon! Everything was stunning, the service was amazing, and the food was SO GOOD. I think our top favorites were the scallop, the steak, and the chocolate dessert.

I really hope that you enjoyed this post, as I’ve been looking forward to writing about this pretty much since we were there! Like I mentioned previously, this is one of MANY honeymoon posts – I just felt like it was special enough to warrant a post of its own 🙂 Thank you for reading as always!! <3

xo,