Disney Cruise Line’s Palo restaurants offer the “Prima Notte” event, a special food and wine tasting experience on the first night of a sailing. We experienced Prima Notte on the Disney Fantasy but the event is similar across Disney Cruise Line ships.
Prima Notte at Palo
Savor an exquisite tasting of fine Italian wines complimented with a curated selection of bite-size delicacies from Palo.
This event can be booked ahead of your sailing with other Disney Cruise Line activities. Pre-bookings open after you have paid in full and depending on your Castaway Club tier. There is limited availability so make sure to book as early as possible. Read our guide to pre-booking Disney Cruise Line activities for more information.
Prima Notte is a 60-minute event at Palo, which is on Deck 12, Aft of the Disney Fantasy. It’s $85 plus an automatic 18% gratuity. The experience is exclusive to guests ages 21 and older.
Vegetarian options are available, just your server know when you are seated at the event. We tried both options.
Reviews
This is a spectacular. You get four small courses paired with wines that take you on a tour of the world. The sommelier tell you about wine-making and the different types of wine, while the chef talks about the dishes.
It starts with a simple welcome champagne for you to sip on before getting into the real meat of the experience.
The first wine was a 2022 Jermann Where Dreams Have No End. This is a tart chardonnay that had a good balance of oaky flavor. It tasted like salted butter and we loved it.
The chardonnay is paired with sliced herbed yellowfin tuna from Southampton, England with a biscotti di regina. The fish was tender and citrus forward thanks to the sweet dried fruit it was served on top of. A mustard on the side was a nice complement.
Every dish was small but a nice bite size for the hour-long experience.
The first vegetarian dish was penne pasta with red sauce and pesto. Despite being relatively similar and just having pasta with red sauce for lunch, this was delicious. The Palo version is elevated with an amazing red sauce, great pesto, and fresh olive oil. It had a heat and was savory.
The next wine was our favorite. It was a 2022 Chianti Classic Riserva from Banfi. This is a mild and lightly acidic wine.
The next dish is Palo’s signature gnocchi with basil pesto. It’s unbelievable. The gnocchi is perfectly cooked and doughy. The pesto is exceptional.
Vegetarians also get the gnocchi, just pan-fried with red sauce instead of pesto. They also get two instead of just one. It’s equally delicious as the standard version.
Our third wine was a Super Tuscan 2021 Luce Delle Vite. This was an extraordinarily rich, heavy red wine.
The robust wine worked well with our Snake River Farms steak. Snake River Farms is where most of the better Disney restaurants source their beef and it’s very good.
The vegetarian option was a pair of thinly sliced porcini mushrooms with olives between. It was topped with broccolini and tomato, and doused in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Another excellent dish.
For dessert, we were served Ben Ryé 2022 Passito di Pantelleria — an ice wine. We aren’t usually fans of ice wine, or sweet wines in general, but this was another one of our favorites from the experience. It was exceptional and tasted like dried apricots.
Our dessert was dusted chocolate mousse around a piece of citrus, topped with a raspberry and sitting on a chocolate square. It was great.
The vegetarian version was similar but tasted caramel-flavored. It had the same chocolate base and raspberry.
Overall
This is five drinks and four small bites — plus a pin! It’s a good value for the price and the pin is beautiful. There have been previous versions of this pin so if you do the Prima Notte again, you might get something new. It’s a nice souvenir on top of an already wonderful experience.
Tom & Rosanna’s European Disney Adventure – Part 1 Video
Watch the video version of this review and hear more about Tom and Rosanna’s Disney Fantasy sailing in the vlog below. The review begins at approximately 1:09:00.
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