Review of Denny’s - Wisconsin Dells Pkwy S

When my family and I went searching for dinner while visiting Wisconsin Dells, we didn’t intend on eating at Denny’s. Instead, there were a couple local restaurants we were interested in but ended up having to avoid because of the long lines outside the buildings (my kids were getting hungry and tired by that point and I had no interest in making them wait to eat longer than necessary).

 In fact, the only reason we ended up picking this particular Denny’s was we happened to spot it while trying to get turned back around to go back to our motel and realized it was one of the few restaurants that didn’t have a long line out the door. As it turns out, there was probably a reason for that.

This Denny’s had a 50s theme to it, complete with some 50s icons out in front of the building, that seemed pretty neat. Well, at least it did at first, until we saw the statues weren’t well-maintained and, for some reason, their 50s icons included the Blues Brothers. The rest of the restaurant, fortunately, seemed to be in better shape. But, once we ordered our food, the theme really did lose some of its luster.

As I mentioned before, the restaurant wasn’t overly busy. In fact, compared to most of the restaurants we had to reject on the way there, it was practically deserted. Yet, it took forever to get service. We sat in our booth for several minutes, at least, before we even saw our server and could have driven back to our motel, ordered a pizza and had our food in less time than it took them to cook up our order. Yes, our server was very friendly. She just wasn’t overly quick and didn’t act very interested in doing her job.

The food itself was also kind of disappointing. We’ve eaten at other Denny’s restaurants in the past and enjoyed our experience. This time around, there really wasn’t anything overly special about what we got. My omelet was very peppery and my wife’s eggs were seriously undercooked. And, the only reason we didn’t complain then and there was we were getting very tired and honestly didn’t want to wait forever to get more food.

The kids, to be fair, did seem to enjoy their dinners. However, both were very tired and hungry at that point and probably would have eaten just about anything we put in front of them without complaining. Plus, it would be pretty hard to screw up chocolate chip pancakes.

I appreciated the fact we were able to find a restaurant that didn’t have a waiting list. However, as I mentioned, I’m not convinced I wouldn’t have been better off just going back to the motel and ordering a pizza because the slow service and less-than-average food just didn’t win us over.

My Grade: C