Next time someone from upstate calls me out for putting ranch on my wings I’ll just show them this post about what upstate New York considers respectable pizza and we can call it even.
I’ve been to New York. I’ve been to Italy. I know what good pizza tastes like, and I can firmly tell you that, for a theme park, the personal pans at Darien Lake last season were definitely some of the best I’ve had throughout theme parks. You definelty just had a bad pizza.
I gotta agree. While it’s certainly not even close to the best pizza out there (i’ve lived in Buffalo my whole life, I know good pizza), in relation to other theme parks, it’s actually pretty impressive. Honestly, Darien has some of the best theme park food in general. I mean, it isn’t necessarily good but in comparison to other theme parks i’ve been to, besides maybe Disney, the DL food has been impressively good.
I am not sure if the food that they contracted for a corporate party in the party area is the same stuff they serve within the park but we went to a corporate party a couple years ago and the food served was some of the most vile, disgusting food I have ever had the pleasure of eating. Now I don't expect the world from theme park fare and I am generally not picky about served food especially when it doesn't cost me any money to eat but man, this food was barely edible. A lot of people weren't eating anything and we couldn't access the drink machine because it was swarming with bees, well that isn't necessarily DL's problem as its a problem when you have soda outside no matter what in the summer but still annoying. They could have provided bottles of water to drink instead of having to get the water from the drink machine that was swarming with bees or at least a water dispenser of some sort with paper cups in the food area, I have seen kegs full of water, they could have used one of those. I can't describe the hamburgers and the mac and cheese must have contained a substance other than cheese on it because it both looked like plastic and tasted like plastic. They did serve fruit but well, it didn't taste like fruit, I think they put something on it that made it not taste like fruit, it was the kind of fruit that is served out of a bag. The only good thing was they served ice cream bars out of a cooler and believe me that was the best part of the meal.
I attended a catered party at DL in 2016 I believe. The food at that party was disgusting. I’ve worked in theme park catering in the past and I’ll tell you the food at the catered picnic is far worse and cheaper then the food sold at the stands. Think about it, how much needs to be made at once. Sometimes we’d have over a thousand people we needed to make food for. Hot dogs and burgers are cheap brand, hundreds thrown on the grill at once and everyone rushing. The cheap catering food and cooks rushing to tend to all the hundreds on the grill doesn’t result in a good product. I mean, we could offer better food at these events but think about how much it would cost the person booking it for possibly thousands of people.
I have to agree, I think the party I went to was in 2015 or 2016 as well. Some are huge corporate parties, and the one I went to was a place with a very large employment base, and sometimes they have multiple large parties on a single day, they did when I was there, so that makes sense. I would guess there were probably 3-5k people there on the day I went just from corporate parties. The tickets (1-2 per person) to these corporate parties are completely free and they include free parking as well, so it completely free other than the drive down there for guests to attend these (I am not sure if this will be the case under SF ownership though). If you wanted extra tickets other than the 1-2 provided there was the option to purchase extra tickets at an extremely discounted price. I assume the catered party food is probably ordered separately from the in park fare and cooked elsewhere in the park, and then brought to the picnic area. Regardless of all of this, the food was worse than awful.
Most people when I was at the park due to the insane food prices were bringing in food from home in small lunch bags and eating it right in the park so I guess not too many people order food in the park so that gives more time and food stands that aren't too busy and I assume like most fast food places the food is cooked to order or if its busy they cook food individually and it will be fresh because it is selling. I didn't see too many people ordering at the food stands. I don't think the food stand food is cooked in another place in the park and brought to the restaurant and served warmed up in a microwave or something like that. Besides the little microwave pizzas that look like something you can buy at walmart for 88 cents.
Every time I’ve been there for a catered picnic, it was typically the hot dogs, Mac and cheese, and possibly burgers I think. I haven’t tried much else, I don’t think... but the hot dogs and Mac n cheese always seemed good to me. To be fair, it is kinda hard to mess up a hot dog.