COURTESY OF FLORIDA TODAY:

Visitors to Walt Disney World near Orlando will get two new restaurant choices — one themed around dinosaurs and another that ties into the Expedition Everest ride.

The restaurants will be operated by Landry’s Restaurants Inc., which runs the Rainforest Cafe restaurants on Disney properties.

The new restaurants are scheduled open at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in late summer 2007 and in Downtown Disney in early 2008.

At Downtown Disney, the venue called T-Rex will combine table-service dining and retail in an interactive “prehistoric” environment, Disney said. Guests visiting the restaurant will be greeted by life-sized mechanical dinosaurs set against cascading waterfalls, bubbling geysers and a fossil dig site.

At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the Asian-themed eatery, which also will include retail, will be set in the mythical kingdom of Anandapur, near the Expedition Everest roller coaster attraction.

The restaurant will feature table-service dining and quick-service food.

“Landry’s has been operating at Disney for a while,” said Michael Gallo, senior vice president at C.L. King & Associates, a New York City-based investment firm that covers the restaurant industry, among others. “For restaurateurs at theme parks, you have a captive audience. In the case of Disney, it’s the children who make the decision where people are going to eat.”

Gallo said the Disney Rainforest Cafes are the highest-
earning restaurants in the Landry’s family, earning roughly $75 million annually in aggregate sales, compared with the average aggregate across the entire restaurant industry of $3 million a year.