A chance to dine up in the clouds? There was no way I would miss making a reservation at a restaurant that promised that! Come join me as we visit Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls, Canada.
Any time we are visiting a new area, I always make a list of “things to do, places to visit, food to eat,” and I compile this list by doing two things:
1. Googling the “top ten things to do in xyz,” and changing the google search to cover food and things to eat that the area is known for.
2. Ask locals! They are your best resource, particularly for food suggestions, and have led us to some of our favorite stops when we travel, and when asking locals, I ask where THEY GO, not where they send the hordes of tourists.
These two exercises never fail to leave me with a pretty good list of things to do, and we, of course, leave a little wiggle room to go where the wind takes us as well. I don’t want to be so regimented with an itinerary that we forget to have fun too!
And so, I, of course, did the above when we visited Niagara Falls in Canada for Spring Break last year, and through my searches, I discovered the Skylon Tower.
Billed as a revolving dining room in the sky, how could you not immediately put it on your list??
A fine dining experience, reservations are strongly suggested. The restaurant seats just under 300 guests for their dinner service, and 165 for their buffet (check their site for details because the buffet is not every day). Luckily when we were there during Spring Break, it’s not really a busy season for them, so we had no problems getting the reservation we wanted for our large group.
To be honest, what they were serving for dinner didn’t really matter, because you know I was just there for the view! Despite it being rainy and quite foggy when we were there, it did nothing to dampen the experience.
The outer rim of the tower, where the dining guests sit is a little over 13 feet wide, and that’s the part that rotates. So, when you enter the restaurant, the hostess stand, bar area, and kitchen don’t rotate (that’s the center core of the restaurant), and then you step onto the dining track that rotates. It rotates so slowly that unless you’re paying attention to the changing view, you might not even notice, but it completes one full rotation every hour.
The Falls from 775 feet in the air!
It was seriously so cool.
Equally cool were the drink stirrers that came with the kids’ Shirley Temples!
And how cute are the kids menus?
There are two early dinner seatings at 4:30 and 5:00, and the menu is simple with something for everyone. Adults are $39.95, considerably less expensive than their 6-10 pm dinner options. For their early dinner seatings, you pay the flat fee and have just a few options in each category to choose from. For the 6 pm and later seatings, you choose from a larger menu and pay per item selected. Kids are $16.95 or $18.95, depending on which seating you go to. We found the earlier dinner seating model (and pricing!) to be perfect for us, much more bang for your buck!
The portions aren’t huge, but they were enough with the salad, the bread and butter, main course, and dessert. I went with the salmon (because neither of my kids will eat any fish, I try to eat it when we’re out), and it was delicious and tender, and the vegetables were fresh (I inhaled that roasted tomato, and the carrots were just beautifully tender).
The kids’ menu items were perfect for the target audience, and their portions were quite generous.
The service was well paced and very attentive. We had a head waiter and he had an assistant, and all our food was brought out in a timely manner, and they tended to whatever we asked for.
Once we were done with our meal, we took the elevator up to the Observation Deck to check out more of the view. Even though it was mid-April, it was quite chilly, so we didn’t stay out there long, and a lot of the ground was wet because it was so rainy that week. No matter the weather, you need to at least pop up to the deck. Once done there, we, of course, stopped at the gift shop before heading downstairs. The shop was small but packed with the usual touristy goodies, and fairly reasonably priced.
Even the bathrooms had a cool water feature with their unusual sinks!
It was such a memorable experience, if you find yourself planning a trip, it’s definitely worth adding to your list.
Skylon Tower
5200 Robinson Street
Niagara Falls, ON L2G 2A3, Canada
Hungry for more of our Canadian adventure?
A recap on our visit to Canada.
Bird Kingdom was a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon.
Our first (and definitely legit) taste of poutine.
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