Chick-fil-A — Restaurant in Bangor

TLDR: Overcrowded, flies, quality food, but not worth the price.

We recently visited Chick Fil A in Bangor, but we’ve visited numerous times. We want to congratulate the owners on being successful enough to get a remodel and expand the drive thru. They certainly have a popular establishment in the Bangor area. Many people enjoy it, and our experiences may not reflect those of everyone, but we seem to have bad luck there. From our experiences, it’s not worth it to return, as every visit has gotten progressively worse.

It’s been severely overcrowded for the majority of times that we’ve been there. The drive thru remodel hasn’t streamlined the service. It only created more space for vehicles to wait instead of clogging up the road, and the wait times are still long. We’ve waited ten minutes to simply order, and another ten minutes for a simple fries and shake order. Going inside isn’t any better. I’ve waited 15 minutes for one shake before. I wouldn’t consider it to be FAST food by any stretch of the imagination. If you go any time around dinner or late evening, you can expect to be shoulder to shoulder with people immediately upon entering the door. It’s not a pleasant time, and I’ve had to awkwardly hold and keep the door open for people while waiting in line before. For the traffic this location gets, there simply isn’t enough room. Additionally, the parking lot is tight and cramped, but people still fly through it. I park at the mall and walk over.

This last visit a few nights ago was less than desirable, as there were fruit flies everywhere. I had to constantly swat them away for our visit, and we weren’t even near a trash can. One managed to get in my shake while I was trying to drink it. I was almost finished with it at that point, so I’ll take the loss. The wait time wasn’t as bad as it usually is, only 9 minutes for one meal. The employee who brought our order didn’t respond when one of us thanked him, but I don’t think he heard us because it was so loud. When we went to leave, we tried to throw away our trash, but it was full and the automatic door refused to open. The people before us piled their trash on the top of it, and I felt bad doing that as well, but we didn’t have an option. The overall experience was poor. Not terrible, but there was nothing that made me want to return.

The food is usually good quality, but it’s often not worth the cost. It is in the opinion of this author that Chick Fil A food lacks flavor, especially compared to the Colonel, but it has better consistency and I’ve never been sick from it. The fries, chicken, basic shakes, mac n cheese, etc. are usually bland, but they’re not bad overall. The tenders we were served last night were tiny. They were each approximately 1 inch by 2 inches in size, which I’d consider to be an elongated nugget compared to a normal chicken strip or tender that you’d find at a local gas station or corner store. They simply weren’t worth the price of the tender meal. Many items are similar in the way that they look good, and have high prices, but taste bland or they aren’t the size you were expecting. For the prices, the portions are smaller than I’d expect. Is that due to rushing every order to keep up with demand?

Overall, Bangor Chick Fil A is a popular place to eat, and they usually have quality products. However, the establishment suffers from severe overcrowding, excessive wait times, poor sanitation, congested traffic patterns, and the portions are always small for what you pay. The staff are usually friendly, and I would consider it to be one of the better-kept properties in the mall area. Unless we visit at opening or at lunch changeover, to avoid crowds and hopefully get better portions, I would not consider this establishment to be on my go-to list. We simply don’t have good luck there.

Best...

Chick-fil-A is our family's go-to fast food / restaurant. We regularly drive more than an hour to eat here. It's the best location we've ever been to, and we've traveled to quite a few.

The place is always clean and decorated for whatever season or event. They have a chalkboard that's done up. Bathrooms are always kept up with. I mentioned one time that it would be nice to have a stool for little kids to reach the sink, and it was there within our next few visits.

The staff is always above and beyond, kind at the counter, checking in, and getting you anything you need. You get free drink refills.

Drive thru is PACKED sometimes but they manage to get through high numbers of cars quickly.

The price is on par with pretty much everywhere else.

There are food options that satisfy our whole family, and they have seasonal items that are fun to try. They often give out free samples.

They host events, and we've been to several, including Bingo many times, and a family game night where each family got a board game to bring home and also a trip to an ice cream bar. The cow mascot is usually present at events to take pictures with. The kids love him. They also have a cow in a highchair for you to dine with - my kids always roll him over to our table when we visit. There are usually coloring sheets and a few other kid activities near the cow to keep kids busy.

The toys in the kid meals are the BEST. We've gotten shine a light books, mini board games, games to get family talking and interacting, and most recently a couple of Novel Effect books that you read aloud and the app makes sound effects that correspond with where you are at in the book.

As far as recommendations for food, my husband always gets the spicy deluxe meal, waffle fries, and chickfila sauce. A sun joy (basically an arnold palmer) for the drink. I get the classic deluxe and a sweet tea. It's my favorite sweet tea anywhere.

Kids get breaded nugs or tenders, and we sub for Mac and cheese. We also get a side of Mac ourselves because the stuff is good!

Don't leave without a shake or chocolate chip cookie because you'll regret it.

They are closed on Sunday, which we respect, but often find ourselves craving it on Sunday! Haha. Then we visit another day.

WE...

We stopped here to grab food before heading back to the border. Never been here before, so when we got there before 10:30 when lunch starts, we decided to wait. When the time came, we got 3 chicken sandwich meals - regular, spicy and pimento honey - with waffle fries, Greek yogurt parfait, Sunjoy and a caramel cookie milkshake, I think (whatever the flavor of the month was). We sat at our table to wait for our food, and within 3-4 minutes - No Exaggeration - the long winding order line was full, out the door, with lines even for the bathroom. I didn’t see a tour bus, but it had to be - they just got slammed. We saw two cars of people park, walk up the door, see the lines, and just leave. I’m so happy our order was already in. We got our food brought to our table not that long after ordering - a little slow but no mistakes on our order - and almost everything was excellent. The spicy chicken sandwich was the best - it’s not just a regular sandwich with cayenne or hot sauce thrown in, it tastes like a complex spice mix. Maybe I’m wrong, but, I loved it and the pickles really set it off. The honey chicken pimento sandwich - I tried a bite and loved the honey flavor to the chicken but hated the pimento and my husband had the exact opposite reaction, but that’s just personal preference. All of the food was cooked perfectly, the fries were super crispy and not too salty, the parfait was very nice and that Sunjoy is amazingly good - BEST drink from a fast food place EVER. The downside was the milkshake - maybe it was just this particular one, but it was overly sweet and the flavor was not good, so none of us would take more than the initial sip before we ended up throwing it out. We’d definitely go again for the chicken sandwiches, parfait and Sunjoy, and would stick with Five Guys for fries and shakes. Finally, I’d like to say that from our table, we watched how the staff handled that insane crowd - they did a really good job getting people served and delivering orders both to tables and to take out, and that’s in addition to whatever was happening in the drive through. Good...