Rainforest Cafe — Restaurant in San Antonio

My friends and I went to Six Flags Fiesta all day and were ravenously hungry after a long day of thrills and walking in the hot sun. Two of my friends had been to a Rainforest Cafe in Chicago years ago. They said they had an overall pretty positive experience, so we decided to choose this one in San Antonio to restore our bodies with what we thought would be great food along with an immersive restaurant experience. So it’s safe to say we had high expectations, but boy did the restaurant not even meet the bare minimum for even a decent restaurant experience.

First thing that should have raised some red flags was that there was no host at the door when we walked in and people were piling up by the plenty. It took 5-10 minutes for a hostess to arrive, but she was randomly chewing ice from her ice water as she seated us and 6 other parties very nonchalantly like she hadn’t been away from her post at all. My boyfriend has worked in many restaurants and he said someone would get fired for doing something like this.

We were being seated at one of the round table booths when one of my friends accidentally touched the seat. It seemed there was some mystery ketchup that had leeched onto him, as it was very sticky. The mystery is that we have no idea how long that ketchup had been there for. We ordered two orders of the Chile Con Queso. The queso tasted like the cheese was fake or had been store bought but my friends and I were too hungry to even care at this point.

We all got different items from the menu. It was annoying that they didn’t have any entrees under $20, but hey, if the food was worth it, why not? We got the Anaconda Pasta, Rasta Pasta, Lasagna, and the Blue Mountain Chicken Sandwich. I’m sad to say that none of us thought their dish was good at all. The Blue Mountain Chicken Sandwich’s chicken was very bitter and came with fries that had a sweet aftertaste to them. It was described by my friend as sad and very underwhelming. The Lasagna’s tomatoes were very acidic and half the lasagna tasted undercooked, probably because the microwave they put it in only cooked half of it. The Anaconda Pasta had the same problem as the Lasagna; very acidic tomatoes, but the difference between the Lasagna and this was that it was actually overcooked. I wish these microwaves had some consistency to them. And the Rasta Pasta was the only somewhat decent thing that we tried, but why did they put peppers on this pasta that was supposed to be a fettuccine and pesto mix? Gordon Ramsey would have a fit if he saw this.

Admittedly, we were going to fake my friend’s birthday to get a free dessert here, but after eating this disastrous meal, we decided to just pay and book it, afraid that they would overcook the ice cream or add peppers to the lava cakes.

The atmosphere was decent with the rainforest theme, but they didn’t have to go as far as make the whole restaurant feel as hot as a rainforest, as there was no ventilation near us.

Overall, food was a 1/5 experience. We actually had a lot of fun making fun of the food though. I felt bad for the waiter; he was actually great and pretty attentive but I think deep down in his heart, he knew we hated the food after none of us asked for doggy bags for our half eaten entrees.

There is one last thing I wanted to add. You remember the mystery ketchup that had leeched onto my friend’s hand? I was sitting next to my friend and the ketchup somehow leeched onto my leg but only noticed on the way out. I guess I got leftovers afterall.

Update: The day after we had this dining experience, 2 of my friends found the mystery ketchup on their shoes. More revenge for not taking...

I don't know how anyone can give less than 5 stars! Some say the food isn't good. Maybe we ordered the right stuff. Our family of 6 enjoyed all our meals and drinks. I'd give my lasagna a 9 out of 10. So tasty.

We had 3 kids meals and 3 adult meals. Note it is not remotely cheap. Wow it cost a pretty penny. We had a $75 gift certificate and it still cost us well over $100! I think about $250usd all told but we also got 5 souvenir cups and glasses, but no dessert!

Of course the atmosphere is insanely cool with loads of life-sized, moving animals. The sound effects are fantastic. You sit through all the jungle animal noises and a tropical storm. Even the elephant is life sized! And the anaconda, gorillas, jaguars, a croc, and so much more. There are life size trees all over the place. The pandas were a little strange looking 😂. And of course there are multiple huge aquariums throughout the restaurant filled with tropical fish.

Our server was fantastic and very attentive. It was, however, an incredibly long wait to get in this popular place. They told us to expect a one hour wait so we went and walked around (always a joy). However it was more like 1:45 I think! We were famished. But it was worth the wait and it wasn't like we were waiting somewhere boring. We went back to check out the Alamo and take photos and toured around some shops and streets, enjoyed some live jazz. There was no boredom. Even the store is loaded with fun things.

The main drawback of this restaurant, apart from the long wait times, is the disgusting bathrooms. They are absolutely sickening and considering the price one pays to eat here, really shocking. They should be super clean and checked hourly or more. Granted, a lot of people go through here and I expected the lower bathrooms to be gross cuz even the public use them (in the gift shop part), but the 3rd floor bathrooms where we were seated were actually worse.

Also the jungle paraphernalia is super dirty. But how couldn't it be? It would be impossible to clean so I just assume it never has been and never will be. If you were to shake out a tree branch above your table it would be covered in an inch of dust, no doubt. So while the atmosphere is 10 out of 10, it is impossible to clean! But the bathrooms aren't impossible to clean, they just AREN'T cleaned (so it appears).

But bathrooms aside, it is a...

Okay, I only came on here to give my honest opinion. First I'd like to say that i hadn't been to the rainforest Cafe in like 20 years. My birthday was last weekend and I wanted to bring my kids for the whole rainforest Cafe experience. I really wasn't prepared. We did have to wait an hour but that wasn't even an issue since we were on the Riverwalk and theres tons to do while we wait. After we waited, we got a text that said our table was ready so we went to the hostess who sent us to the 3rd floor. As we went up the stairs as soon as you got to the 2nd floor it smelt like a sewage pipe broke. I wasn't the only one who noticed, sadly my husband just looked at me with wide eyes and we pushed up to the 3rd floor. It didn't smell Nearly as strong. So we walked to the hostess to see where we'd be eating only to be told to go back to the 2nd floor. My stomach literally dropped. We slowly walked back down and held our breath asking for our table. She sat us in the far back away booth with the animatronic pandas. Which is honestly my favorite animal.but these poor guys looked like they haven't been cleaned or kept up with in 20 years! Ill be honest we should have just left but the kids had never been and they were excited to sit and eat. We did see our server about 10 mins after being seated. I ordered a sweet tea thinking it was a safe bet. Oh Lord , I don't even know how you mess up sweet tea but it tasted like bottom of the pitcher tea.. the refill at the end of our meal was a much better batch of tea but we were finished with our food at that point and really ready to leave. We had all ordered my husband had a burger, it was ok. I have shrimp tacos, meh. My kids got dino nuggets. It really did take awhile to push out a lot of meh food that wasn't very hot. And our server was so busy with other tables birthdays it wasn't good service. Like I said it was my birthday but it was also the 4 other tables birthday so we had already heard the song 4x 😂 so we didn't mention anything! also, I know I'm older, but the volcano used to have a sparkler and it's just not the same with tinsle. I kinda figured it wouldn't wow us either.. sadly I really wanted to love it. But I just couldn't, I definitely wouldn't recommend this place if you actually enjoy eating food. It really has went way down hill and I wish my kids could've had the experience I...