As a kid growing up with a summer birthday, I had to watch classmates get balloons during lunch and watch them walk around the halls celebrating and parading their gifts. But, when it came down to my birthday in late July, I had to hope that enough of my friends weren’t away on vacation or camp or whatever.

Luckily, this year Disney offered a free day at a park of their choice and I chose Animal Kingdom, because of my love of animals, traveling throughout bio-cultural ridden countries, socio-ecological experiences under the guise of an epic rollercoaster (and I respect places that trick kids into learning), but it was one of the two parks in the world that is Walt that would be appropriate for a Drink Orlando review.

However, I was way too excited too drink, nevertheless eat, there. And by the time we left, I realized I had only consumed tap water and only one cigarette. WTF?!

To continue celebrating we went to Downtown Disney and the first place I saw, which I had never heard of, was T-Rex, a dinosaur themed restaurant.

I decided T-Rex was the perfect place to dine and drink because, at Animal Kingdom, my all time favorite ride was Dinosaur, in which riders aboard Time Rovers into the prehistoric land of audio-animatronic dinosaurs, in almost total darkness, and trying to escape to the present time before the infamous meteor shower strike, which killed most of their civilization. 

And T-Rex perfectly paralleled the ride.

Since I never get a chance to venture that far from East Orlando, I convinced myself that I couldn’t go to the first place I saw, regardless of how enticing the exterior decor of T-Rex was:

A building mimicking an organically-eroded, stalagmite-esque mountain; a full-size, 125-foot long, skeleton replica of an Argentinosaurus arching the main entrance; a paleontological rickety wooden bridge to exit on another side of the restaurant; waterfalls pouring into a rising mist of craggy rocks; a jalopy covered in dirtied excavation tools of the “T-Rex Paleo Dig Team;” and mini volcanic fire pits surrounding the building.

So, after walking around for an hour, nothing could beat that excitement when I first saw T-Rex, not even the prospect of going to Rainforest Café, it’s older sibling in terms of restaurants, which was our original plan to consume butt-loads of calories before we entered Animal Kingdom.

The host stand is wooded and cutely guarded by an orange plastic anthropomorphized baby bronto. Seemingly tame, right? Ehh, no.

The first animatronic to greet us when we walked in was a two-story T-Rex; roaring through its massive teeth and leather body hit by colorful lights, not only to create a heightened and layered atmosphere, but maybe also because of a St. Elmo’s fire effect, which is when luminous colors appear due to lightening or volcanoes mess with the atmospheric electric field.

I already explained there were volcanoes at T-Rex; the lightening I’ll get to later.

For regular dining seats there was a 45-minute wait and a separate line with a 15-minute wait for those who made reservations.

However, they do not offer special preference as to which section (Ice Cave, Coral Reef Dining Room, Fern Forest, Geo-Tech Room and Sequoia Room) you would like to be seated in due to the fact that they have a considerable number of guests at all times.

But, since were of age we could walk straight to the Shark Bar, which apparently always has an open seat.

T-Rex’s Shark Bar’s psychedelic-ocean feel included: a bar in the round with a centerpiece of a 5,000 gallon cylindrical aquarium of fish swimming around a coral reef titled “The Shark Tank” (even though there were no sharks in it), a canopy of a giant octopus perpetually squiggling it’s tentacles that extend beyond the drinking patrons, and the bar was clear and water-like, interiorly lit by cyan lighting to either mimic ice melting or slow moving water.

Normally, I don’t really like to sit at the bar in restaurants because the food-eaters usually get more comfortable chairs. However, the seats were the same, save for the booth-eaters, except that they were a few feet taller.

As an extension of the Shark Bar, we were technically considered in the Aqua Room, wherein the ceiling and floor mimicked rushing water. Hanging from the ceiling were white and lilac Flower Hat Jellies, orange jellyfish, opaque moonfish.

Our bartender approached us as if he was genuinely glad to greet us, which I didn’t expect because, in my experience, front of house workers in themed restaurants are either overly eager or totally jaded and exhausted by the whole let’s-make-this-night-the-

customer’s-best-ever sentiment demanded from management. He followed his hello promptly with, and I paraphrase, ‘Oh, I see it is your birthday. Happy Birthday!’ because he noticed I was still wearing a giant pin Animal Kingdom gave me, which announced thus. 

Because it is a giant themed restaurant, there aren’t any drink specials; however, the did offer some clever mixed drinks. The Cotton-tini is a martini, served with shaker, covered in cotton candy and as the latter dissolves the drink becomes exponentially sweeter. They also have your basic mixed drinks, just with dino-inspired names, Raptor Rita, Caveman Punch, and the not so cleverly named Frozen Mojito.

And because it is in Downtown Disney, don’t expect to get a cheap drink. Prices range from $6 for a beer to just-cheap-enough-to-not-have-to-foreclose.

The wait staff was a tad bit slow, but when you go to a place with 30,000 sq. ft. of dining space, can seat up to 600 guests, and every inch that isn’t walking space or a table is covered in decoration, you can’t really expect fast food service. Plus, it was kind of nice that they took a while so we could point out all of the decorations and take pictures.

Every twenty minutes a meteor shower hit T-Rex. The lights would lower as flaming debris would fly across the ceiling, lightening would crash, and sky would explode in the impending strike. The dinosaurs were programmed to become confused and scared as all the lights in the room would change colors, namely Wholly Mammoth in the Ice Cave, which freaked out as the giant cave tuned from aqua to magenta to red.

As post drinking/eating entertainment they offer the Discovery Dig Site, an excavation pit with replicas of fossil bones, interactive Paleo Screens to learn about the prehistoric era, and a Build-a-Dino Workshop, which is basically Build-a-Bear for dinosaurs.

For any dietary needs, for example a sugar-free Raptor Rita’s, requires a 48-hour advanced notice.

T-Rex is non-smoking, reservations need to be made at least 90 days prior, and they ask that you contact them about accommodating parties of 9 or more.

T-Rex is located at the Downtown Disney Marketplace at 1676 Lake Buena Vista Dr. and is open Monday-Thursday from 11 AM-11 AM and Friday-Sunday 11 AM-12 AM.