Magical Dining returns to Central Florida with 180+ participating restaurants, benefiting seven charities
Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining is back for its 21st year, featuring record-breaking participation and benefiting local nonprofits, including Opportunity, Community, Ability.
Visit Orlando’s magical Dining presented by Orlando Health is back for its 21st year, and it’s another record breaking one. Nearly 200 restaurants throughout Central Florida will be participating with this initiative. Everyone wins. That includes local businesses, customers like you and me, and more than *** half dozen nonprofits. Joining me now to share how you can dine in to help make *** difference is Cassandra Matte. Great to see you. Good to see you too. Yeah, we always love having you in. The president here and CEO of Visit Orlando, by the way, and Sylvia Haas, the CEO of Opportunity Community Ability. Great to see you, Sylvia. Thank you. Yeah, and, and we’ve heard *** little bit from you this week on West 2 News. Your organization there is one of the beneficiaries. What does, what does this event mean to the work you’re doing? It’s life changing. It really is, you know, like every nonprofit, we’re in the grind, we’re doing the work, and then you get something like this that is so unexpected and it now catapults what can be done and how much work needs to be done here in the Central Florida community. So it’s *** tremendous honor and we’re just really humbled and honored to be recipients. Well, congratulations, well deserved, and let’s talk about magical dining here. We’ve grown out of just *** month. It extends to almost *** month and *** half here and there are so many new people coming to Central Florida and they say, what is it? How do you explain that? You know, when I look back at its 21 year history, it started as helping small businesses during *** slower period of time, so really pushing business to our local restaurants. But then *** few years later we added the nonprofit component component because we really wanted it to impact our community. And so we’re very proud of that and so I like to say that it is the perfect, uh, 3 piece, 3 ingredient recipe. You help small businesses by supporting our restaurants, uh, you get to dine at *** great value either at *** $40 price point or *** $60 price point, but then the cherry on top is the contribution to our charities and in this case, our primary beneficiary is OCA. Yeah, and and. Passed we’ve focused on *** nonprofit and *** community champion story and saw the work that they were able to do because of that big check that came to them thanks to all of us dining out through magical dining. So let’s talk, Sylvia, specifically about the mission behind Opportunity, Community and Ability and how your nonprofit sort of came to be. So the nonprofit came to be because there was *** huge need in the community in 2008 we had *** big recession. And the school system had said, hey, we’re not going to provide uh extended school year for families and so for the families that we were working with in our school setting, we said wait *** minute, we can, we can do things we can provide Special Olympics training, we can provide summer camps which are critical, and we can provide social skills training and from that one little idea, Jason, it has now exploded from servicing 19 families to over 1100 families in *** wide variety of programs. year round and I think that’s the critical piece. We’re the only organization in Central Florida that offers summer camp year round and families need that. Yes, they sure do. Yes, OK, so we’ve got to get behind supporting these nonprofits and getting *** great meal at *** value here. Let’s talk about something that you were just sharing with me. There’s *** new component here. Everybody loves an app. What’s that going to mean for us? Well, you can go right now on. OrlandoMagical Dining.com and start making your reservation right on the website. You can filter it by neighborhoods, the type of food that you want, but this year we launched *** magical dining app I’m so we can trace right in your hand on your phone. You can make reservations and there’s an AI component so you can simply put you’re looking for *** restaurant on *** rooftop with fireworks and it’ll pop up. Options for you. So we’re glad that that that’s an offering this year. So we hope everyone will take the opportunity to download the Orlando Magical Dining app. OK, I’m I’m so in. I’m doing it because it really is, you know, *** value. You’ll find some of these places that you go, we would have spent *** lot more and we’re going to go there and have *** mini course meal and get to try it out. It’s great stuff and then we’re benefiting the work that’s being done in Central Florida. All right, Sylvia, thank you for being with us. Cassandra, thank you too. And we’ve got all the information about magical dining up right now on West.com.
Magical Dining returns to Central Florida with 180+ participating restaurants, benefiting seven charities
Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining is back for its 21st year, featuring record-breaking participation and benefiting local nonprofits, including Opportunity, Community, Ability.
Updated: 10:04 AM EDT Jul 17, 2026
Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining is back for its 21st year, featuring record-breaking participation and benefiting Central Florida nonprofits, including Opportunity, Community, Ability. Casandra Matej, president and CEO of Visit Orlando, and Silvia Haas, the CEO of this year’s primary beneficiary Opportunity, Community, Ability (OCA), join WESH 2 with a preview. Magical Dining runs from August 14 through September 30, offering diners the chance to enjoy three-course menus priced at either $40 or $60 at 188 participating restaurants.>> Watch the full interview in the video player above. Click here to learn more about Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining. For more information about OCA, click here.
ORLANDO, Fla. —
Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining is back for its 21st year, featuring record-breaking participation and benefiting Central Florida nonprofits, including Opportunity, Community, Ability.
Casandra Matej, president and CEO of Visit Orlando, and Silvia Haas, the CEO of this year’s primary beneficiary Opportunity, Community, Ability (OCA), join WESH 2 with a preview.
Magical Dining runs from August 14 through September 30, offering diners the chance to enjoy three-course menus priced at either $40 or $60 at 188 participating restaurants.
>> Watch the full interview in the video player above.
Click here to learn more about Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining.
For more information about OCA, click here.