End of an Era for Disney World’s DVC Family Kitchen

It’s the end of an era for one of our favorite underrated restaurants at Walt Disney World. Olivia’s Cafe, which we long ago lovingly dubbed the DVC Family Kitchen, is refurbishing its dining rooms. As part of this project, the photos from generations of guests that have been collected over the years will be removed and relocated.

As basic background, Olivia’s Cafe is located in the Hospitality House at Disney’s Old Key West Resort. It’s one of our top hidden gem restaurants at Walt Disney World, right across the way from Papa’s Den (pictured above), which is one of my favorite not-so-hidden quiet spots in all of Walt Disney World. (PSA: Southernmost Buttermilk Chicken as the #2 fried chicken in all of Walt Disney World, and the dish to order at Olivia’s.)

Disney’s Old Key West Resort was originally named Disney’s Vacation Club Resort when it opened back in 1991. As in, it was the only one and seemingly intended to stay that way given the name. That quickly changed, and it was renamed to Old Key West in 1996 as DVC embarked on a period of explosive growth…which never really ended. In any case, OKW still has a different vibe than most other resorts, and longtime DVC Members are quite protective of it.

One of the very visible ways that Disney’s Old Key West Resort differs from other properties is the large “Family Album” of DVC Member photos from over the years, which is largely located inside and outside Olivia’s Cafe. This is a big part of the reason why I consider Olivia’s Cafe to be Disney Vacation Club’s Family Kitchen. The food is part of it, as is the backstory about Olivia Farnsworth, but it’s mostly those photos.

While some other DVC resorts have a few member photos on display, Old Key West is the only resort that really embraces this, and the Family Album is on full display at Olivia’s Cafe. There are well over one hundred member photos on display in the lobby and throughout the seating area.

These date back to the early days of the club, back when Old Key West was the Disney Vacation Club Resort. My favorite of these are those from the 25th Anniversary of Walt Disney World, where you can see the Cinderella Castle Cake in its full, Pepto Bismol-glory!

Today’s news is that a portion of the dining room at Olivia’s Café just closed for a few weeks for a routine refurbishment, during which the rest of the restaurant will remain open.

As part of this work, the photo collection at Olivia’s Café will be thoughtfully relocated to new albums at Conch Flats Community Hall, the resort’s gathering place for Disney Vacation Club Members and Guests. This transition will help ensure these special memories are preserved and remain accessible for Members and Guests to enjoy for years to come.

Some of these photos have aged and begun to fade over the years, which is likely at least part of the motivation for Walt Disney World moving them to photo albums for perusal. It’s also possible that Walt Disney World is planning to give the interior a different layer of thematic window-dressing. Disney has dubbed this a routine refurbishment, but there’s a decent amount that could be changed fairly simply.

This news is going to be highly controversial with about 3% of you. From the other 97%, it’s going to be met with a collective shrug.

It reminds me a bit of when Walt Disney World removed and relocated the Leave a Legacy tiles from the central plaza of EPCOT’s entrance back in 2019-2021. During our coverage of that, I actually stopped referring to them as the EPCOT Tombstones honoring those lost in the Battle of the Body Wars (that’s right, it was both a war and a battle) because I got so many reader complaints. I maintain that it was a harmless and funny bit, but it just wasn’t worth the hassle.

The point, though, is that Disney’s decision to remove Leave a Legacy was met with a lot of backlash. For our part, we heard from people who were upset about the tombstone (sorry, monolith) removal. This was a vocal minority, and the EPCOT entrance plaza looks so much better now (the area in front of Spaceship Earth, not behind it), but you wouldn’t have known from the online reaction. Guests with photos on Leave a Legacy had more of a vested interest to comment than those who were liked the idea of a cleaner courtyard.

It’s going to be a somewhat similar story with the DVC “Family Album” at Old Key West Resort and inside Olivia’s Cafe.

However, I’d argue that there are a few fundamental differences. The first is that Old Key West is, as the original name suggested, the OG Disney Vacation Club Resort. It is open to the general public, but unlike EPCOT, its demographics skew disproportionately to old school Walt Disney World fans. The kind of people who appreciate personal little touches and nostalgia like this.

If anything, it’s a warm touch that might make other non-owner guests more inclined to join DVC, not less. It’s the kind of thing signaling that Disney Vacation Club is one big happy family, as opposed to a massive timeshare apparatus. It makes people feel warm and fuzzy; it’s good marketing.

Finally, family vacation photos on a wall are not ugly in the same way as tombstones (sorry sorry, monoliths) that greet guests as they enter an optimistic and upbeat theme park. Photos on the wall of a dining room like this are something you might expect; they’re charming and don’t make a negative or odd first impression.

Just to be clear, I don’t have a dog in this fight. We do not have a family photo up at Olivia’s, so it’s not as if we’re biased towards this but against the tombstones (sorry sorry sorry, monoliths). In both cases, I’d like to think I’m a neutral third party observer.

And my observation is that there’s something about these gallery of family photos that I love. They tug at my heartstrings, personifying the abstract concept of nostalgia. They make me think of the trips my family took, and emphasize the “club” side of Disney Vacation Club.

At times it feels like Walt Disney World is really adept at emotional manipulation, but this comes across as real. Like something some long-since-retired manager of Old Key West decided to do on a whim, without layers of bureaucratic meetings and approvals. They just did it.

Much like the resort itself, Olivia’s just exudes old school Walt Disney World. And it probably is, as I’d hazard a guess that the decision to display a Family Album was back in the early 1990s, as most of the photos on display are at least 20 years old. Maybe it’s just the ones my eyes gravitate towards, but I’d say the majority of the Family Album predates the Millennium Celebration.

These photos of random families on the wall really resonates with me. It sets the tone for the ambiance at Olivia’s Cafe, and is a touch that I appreciate. It makes Olivia’s Cafe feel personal, giving DVC Members a literal and figurative seat at the table. It’s the antithesis of some of the newer, more “corporate” spaces around Walt Disney World.

Otherwise, the interior of Olivia’s Cafe feels a lot like the neighborhood greasy spoon that you might find somewhere in the Conch Republic, right down to the collection of nautical and ocean-inspired bric-a-brac adorning the walls.

With all of that said, I can also understand Walt Disney World’s decision to remove the photos.

As noted above, many of them are decades old. I don’t know the background of the collection, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it started in 1991. That’s 35 years! Disney isn’t lying–many have aged, are discolored and badly faded.

From Disney’s perspective, that’s probably a bad look that makes the restaurant look dated to first-timers. And I’d hazard a guess that “dated” is already a common complaint about Old Key West among casual visitors. (Remember, it’s not all DVC owners; Disney rents out a lot of rooms at OKW, too.)

Given that, I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. I wish the solution were to solicit new guest photos for a refreshed Family Album, but I can also understand why they’d move away from that completely.

Like I wrote at the beginning, it’s the end of an era for DVC’s Family Kitchen at Walt Disney World. Sometimes eras end after a good, long run. I’m not mad about it, as I’m sure those longtime DVC Members will be who actually have a family photo up on the wall. It’s just a little sad how small vestiges of 1990s Walt Disney World have been slowly chipped away.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of Olivia’s Cafe at Old Key West? Did you like the old “Family Kitchen” vibe of the interior? Or do you think it was too quaint and mom & pop, like something you’d find in any random small town? Think this is different from the Leave a Legacy removal? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!