Bull & Bear at the Waldorf: Order This Steak First

Published August 11, 2026 · Updated September 9, 2026

Here’s the part most planners get wrong about a steakhouse night like Bull & Bear: the steak you order first isn’t a flavor decision, it’s a pacing decision. At a serious steakhouse, the cut you lead with sets how long you sit, how much you spend, and whether you make it back to a park for evening rides. Order the big, fat-marbled showpiece and you’ve committed to a two-hour-plus dinner. Order a leaner center-cut and you can be done in ninety minutes.

So before you obsess over the menu, decide what the night is: the finale, or an intermission. Everything else follows from that.

The single biggest thing to know: this is an off-property night

Bull & Bear is the signature steakhouse at the Waldorf Astoria Orlando, which sits in the Bonnet Creek pocket right next to Walt Disney World — not inside a Disney-owned resort. That distinction matters more than the menu does.

What it changes for your plan:

You’re leaving the Disney transportation bubble. No monorail, no Skyliner, no boat. You’re driving, rideshare-ing, or using the hotel’s own shuttle if it’s running. Build in real transit time in both directions, and assume the ride back after a big dinner takes longer than you think.
The dress code is real. This is a jackets-and-nice-shoes kind of room, not a shorts-and-a-park-tee kind of room. If you’re coming straight from a park day, you’re going back to the room to change — that’s another 45 minutes of your evening, minimum.
It’s an adults-first room. Kids are not banned from fine dining, but a long, quiet, multi-course steakhouse dinner is a rough ask for a six-year-old who did 18,000 steps at Magic Kingdom. This is a date night, an anniversary, a grandparents-treat-the-family night — or a non-park day.

The smart version of this reservation is on an arrival night, a departure eve, or a deliberate rest day. The sloppy version is squeezing it between rope drop and fireworks, and it almost never works.

Which steak to order first — the actual logic

Steakhouse menus all run the same architecture, and once you see it, ordering gets easy. Here’s how I’d read it.

If it’s your first time and you want the room’s best swing: go ribeye. It’s the most marbled of the standard cuts, which means it’s the most forgiving of a kitchen having an off night and the most flavorful when the kitchen is on. A steakhouse that can’t nail a ribeye can’t nail anything. It’s also the cut where a good char actually pays off, because there’s enough fat to carry it.

If you want tender over beefy: filet. Leanest of the classics, buttery texture, minimal chew — and the safest pick for anyone at the table who says “I don’t love steak.” The trade-off is honest: filet has the least beef flavor of the big three. If you order it plain and find it a little boring, that’s not the kitchen failing, that’s the cut.

If you want the middle ground: the strip. More flavor than a filet, less fat than a ribeye, and it’s often the cut a steakhouse quietly does best because it’s the workhorse.

If you’re two people and want the event: a shareable large-format cut — a porterhouse or a big bone-in — is the move. It’s usually better per-ounce value than two individual steaks, and it turns dinner into a thing rather than two plates. Just know you’ve now bought the long version of the evening.

Ask for medium-rare unless you have a strong reason not to. At a kitchen operating at this level, medium-rare is where the cut is engineered to land, and asking for well-done on a marbled cut is paying premium prices to cook the reason you paid them out of the meat.

The order-first strategy nobody explains

Here’s the tactic that actually saves the night: decide your steak before you sit down, and let the table’s appetizer strategy be the flexible part.

At a steakhouse, sides and starters are where the bill quietly doubles and where you lose 40 minutes. Two shared sides for a table of four is plenty — steakhouse sides are famously oversized, and ordering one per person is how people end up staring at a mountain of untouched potatoes on a $400 check. Same energy as the resort-food-court trap: buying more than you’ll eat because it’s on the menu isn’t a splurge, it’s waste.

If you’re the one at the table who wants the big cut and everyone else wants to be done in an hour, order yours first and be honest with the server about the pacing you want. Good fine-dining service will absolutely accommodate “we’ve got somewhere to be at 9” if you say it at the start instead of at the end.

Booking: the 60-day rule doesn’t apply here — and that cuts both ways

This is where a lot of Disney planners trip. Advance Dining Reservations for Disney-owned restaurants open 60 days before your arrival, at 6:00 AM Eastern, in My Disney Experience. Bull & Bear is not a Disney restaurant, so it doesn’t live in that system at all — you’re booking it directly with the restaurant or through a standard restaurant reservation platform.

Good news: no 60-day sprint, and generally a friendlier availability picture than a same-tier Disney signature on a peak week.

Bad news: it’s not in My Disney Experience, which means it’s not on your Disney plans list, which means it’s the reservation people forget they made. Put it in your phone calendar with a departure alarm, not just a dinner-time alarm.

And keep your two morning times straight, because they’re separate and people constantly merge them: 6:00 AM Eastern is dining, 60 days out. 7:00 AM Eastern is Lightning Lane Multi Pass — bought per day, with selections made in advance (7 days before arrival if you’re staying at a Disney resort, 3 days if you’re off-site), then refilled one at a time through the day as you redeem. Those are two different alarms on two different days.

How to build the park day around it

If you’re doing a steakhouse dinner, treat the park portion of that day as a front-loaded half day, not a full day.

Rope drop hard, then quit early. The first 30–45 minutes after park open is reliably the shortest standby of the entire day on the big rides — Space Mountain, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, the headliners — because the crowd hasn’t reached the back of the park yet. Get your two or three must-dos done before 10:00 AM, then you can walk away at 3:00 PM guilt-free.
Don’t rope drop the wrong stuff. The PeopleMover, Buzz Lightyear, Astro Orbiter, Carousel of Progress — those barely move all day. Save them for the dead afternoon hours you’re not going to use anyway on a dinner day.
Front-load your Lightning Lane Multi Pass selections. If you’re leaving the park at 3:00, a 7:40 PM return time is money set on fire. Stack your selections into the late-morning and early-afternoon window when you make them.
Skip Seven Dwarfs and the other Single Pass rides if the timing doesn’t work. TRON Lightcycle / Run, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, and Avatar Flight of Passage are Lightning Lane Single Pass — bought à la carte, not covered by Multi Pass. Paying Single Pass prices on a day you’re bailing at 3:00 PM is usually the wrong spend. Save it for a full park day.

Who should skip Bull & Bear entirely

I’d skip it if:

Your trip is short. On a four-day trip where every park hour counts, an off-property fine-dining night costs you an evening of low-crowd riding — and evenings are genuinely good. Late-night posted waits are frequently padded; a sign reading 55 minutes near closing often walks faster than that.
You’re staying Deluxe and have Extended Evening Hours available. That’s the single best free perk on property — near-walk-on headliners late at night, no Lightning Lane needed. Burning one of those nights on a two-hour dinner off property is an expensive trade.
You have young kids and no sitter. Not because kids aren’t welcome, but because the value of the room is the pace, and the pace is the thing a tired kid can’t do.
You want steak but not the ceremony. Disney World has signature steak options on property that don’t require leaving the transportation bubble or changing clothes. If “good steak” is the goal rather than “a real steakhouse evening,” stay closer to home.

Where SupaPark fits

The hard part of a night like this isn’t the menu — it’s the timing around it. That’s what supapark.com is built for: the best-time forecaster shows you when your must-do rides actually bottom out, so you can compress a park morning and leave early without feeling robbed. Live wait times and ride-status alerts tell you if something you were counting on goes down while you’re mid-plan. And if you’re also chasing a hard-to-get Disney dining reservation for another night of the trip, Drop Watch catches the moment a cancellation frees one up and pings you — you grab it yourself in My Disney Experience, because the booking always happens in Disney’s app, not ours.

The one thing to remember

Order the ribeye if you want the kitchen’s best shot, the filet if tenderness matters more than beef flavor, and a shareable large-format cut if the night is the event. But decide the length of the dinner before you decide the cut — because on a Disney World trip, the real cost of a steakhouse night isn’t the check, it’s the park hours on either side of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Bull & Bear inside a Disney World resort?

No — Bull & Bear is the signature steakhouse at the Waldorf Astoria Orlando in the Bonnet Creek area next to Walt Disney World, not a Disney-owned restaurant. That means driving or rideshare instead of Disney transportation, and extra travel time in both directions.

Which steak should I order first at a steakhouse like this?

Go ribeye if it’s your first visit — it’s the most marbled cut and the truest test of a kitchen. Choose the filet if you want tenderness over big beef flavor, the strip for the middle ground, or a shareable large-format cut if you want dinner to be the main event of the night.

Can I book Bull & Bear in My Disney Experience?

No. Because it isn’t a Disney-owned restaurant, it’s booked directly with the restaurant or through a standard reservation platform, and it won’t appear in your My Disney Experience plans — so set your own calendar reminder with a departure alarm.

When do Disney World dining reservations open, and is this the same as Lightning Lane?

Advance Dining Reservations for Disney restaurants open 60 days before arrival at 6:00 AM Eastern in My Disney Experience. Lightning Lane Multi Pass is separate — selections open at 7:00 AM Eastern, 7 days before arrival for Disney resort guests and 3 days for off-site guests.

How should I plan my park day if I have a steakhouse dinner that night?

Treat it as a front-loaded half day: rope drop the headliners in the first 30–45 minutes, stack your Lightning Lane Multi Pass return times into late morning and early afternoon, and skip Single Pass purchases you won’t have time to use.

Go deeper — the full guides: The Insider’s Guide to EPCOT’s Regal Eagle Smokehouse: What to Eat, Skip, and Share · The Insider’s Menu and Booking Guide to California Grill · The Insider Guide to Vegetarian Dining in EPCOT’s World Showcase

SupaPark tracks live wait times and crowd forecasts, and pings you the second a hard-to-get reservation opens or a ride goes walk-on — free to start at supapark.com.

Keep planning: Bull & Bear · live dining reservation drops · is Lightning Lane worth it