We're from South Dakota. This Cold Shouldn't Bother Us!! - A Dec 2010 TR -UPDATE 2/7

Found my way over from my TR.
Your daughter is adorable, and it looks like she really enjoyed Beauty and the Beast.

And I agree, you can't capture the Osborne lights in photos; it's something you have to see for yourself to believe!
 
Found my way over from my TR.
Your daughter is adorable, and it looks like she really enjoyed Beauty and the Beast.

And I agree, you can't capture the Osborne lights in photos; it's something you have to see for yourself to believe!

:welcome: Thank you! She did seem like she enjoyed it. We're trying to get her hooked on Disney early! :)

I'm in. DD is just a cutie. Those blue eyes. Waiting for more.

:welcome: Thank you! She gets those eyes from her mom. :) I should be posting another update today.
 
I've seen recaps for each day on a lot of the trip reports I've been reading lately so I decided I would steal that idea for my TR. Here's the list of what we set out to do on our Hollywood Studios day and what we accomplished. Things in red we didn't accomplish and things in green weren't planned.

Toy Story Mania (2x)
Tower of Terror
(2x)
Beauty & the Beast
Lights, Motors, Action!

Animation Academy
Rock 'n' Roller Coaster (2x)
Fantasmic!
Osborne Lights


As you can see, we did pretty well on our first day. We didn't necessarily do things in the order we planned to, but we hit almost everything on our list. The story for every day of the trip was things going usually completely different but way better than we planned. Each day was a huge blessing! :)
 


Gah! I had this update almost finished and then I went to preview it and the DIS lost it all! Here we go again!

At about 2:30, Lucy woke up and started to fuss. This happens from time to time so I rolled over, knowing that DW was awake and attempting to calm Lucy. After about thirty minutes I knew that if things continued on their present course, there would be no sleep for anyone in our room. I got up, threw on a jacket, and took Lucy for a walk. In our six months of parenting, I could count on one hand the number of times I've gotten Lucy to fall asleep while I was holding her. I was not expecting to get Lucy to sleep, but I figured that three people in our room sleeping was better than zero people sleeping. I left the room at about 3:10. Lucy and I watched cartoons in the lobby. There weren't a whole lot of people around, but I did get some knowing and sympathetic looks from the CM's who were cleaning as I walked by. Lucy was quiet for a little while but started fussing again. In desperation, I realized that I would have to try and get Lucy to sleep. I downloaded a white noise app to my phone and began walking circles around the fountain in the lobby. After about 20 minutes Lucy began to drift off. She finally fell asleep at about 3:50. I wanted to make sure she got some sleep and I was pretty sure she'd wake up when we went back outside so I continued to walk circles. During this process I got to see a lot of the tired people returning from the Magic Kingdom's evening EMH. I walked back to the room and Lucy woke up right when we got back. DW took Lucy and got her to fall asleep on her chest. I got a nice half-hour of sleep before it was time to get up.

We woke up, got ready, and headed down to get breakfast. We made it to the bus stop as planned and only had to wait about 10 minutes for a bus. We had it to ourselves. The morning bus rides to ourselves were always a nice contrast to the evening bus rides when the buses were standing room only. :) We took a few pictures as we walked to the entrance. You can see that there weren't a whole lot of people around yet.

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We took turns pushing Lucy around in her stroller and she eventually fell asleep.

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As we waited at a turnstile, a dad struck up a conversation with us. I'm always very appreciative of people willing to offer advice to strangers and so I usually just smile and say thank you. Plus, no matter how much research I've done, I usually hear something I didn't know. The dad recommended Pecos Bill's or Cosmic Ray's (which I did know about) and offered a few other pieces of advice. He was also the first of many people that morning to tell us to get in, accomplish what we wanted, and get out because it was going to get really busy. It was during this conversation that we stopped paying attention to the world around us. As CM's started to activate turnstiles, we didn't notice until too late that a CM did not approach our turnstile. There weren't too many people in the lines around us, though, so we just got in the back of a line and waited a few minutes before entering.

I love the Magic Kingdom opening show! After watching it, I always find myself bouncing up and down as I walk down Main St. Sadly, I didn't get any good pictures of the show this time.

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You can see from the last picture that as the park opened there was a big crowd of people waiting with us.

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The entire crowd apparently had somewhere to be. They all beelined down Main St. and through the castle. We would not see most of them until much later in the day. Our plans were slightly different. I think that everyone on their first visit to Magic Kingdom should take time to meander down Main St. and soak in everything that is Main St., USA. I actually do this on every trip. As the crowds hurried off to get things done, we were left with a fairly empty Main St. and hub to explore.

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Along the way, Lucy woke up, happier and more rested.

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As we meandered, we talked to a few CM's and they again informed us that the park would be very crowded today. It felt weird hearing in that in a deserted Hub. We made our way to the castle so that everyone could walk through it before things got busy.

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It was now time for us to start getting some things done. As we made our way to Liberty Square, someone realized they needed new batteries for their camera and someone else decided they needed a bathroom break. We were still ahead of schedule since I had planned for a lot of exploring. I left the main group to go grab fastpasses for Splash Mountain. As I walked through Liberty Square and Frontierland, I still couldn't believe how empty the park felt. I grabbed the fastpasses and made my way to meet the group at our first attraction, snapping this picture along the way.

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The rest of my family had fun as they made their way to meet me.

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So what was our first attraction? You'll have to wait until my next update because DW has been waiting patiently for me to finish so we can eat dinner.
 
Hi ChildatHeart82!! We're also from Rapid City :cheer2: We were at WDW mid December, and the cold bothered us too. I was surprised! Definitely long underwear weather then. Anyway, fun to see a fellow RC DIS'er!:yay:
 
Great update! I'm sorry you didn't get much sleep, but Lucy was probably very appreciative going for a walk and watching cartoons :cutie: It actually sounds kind of fun, being out in the lobby in the middle of the night, watching all the EMH people come back! :thumbsup2

I love the MK rope drop show! I don't think I will take pictures of it the next time I see it, sometimes I think I'm so busy playing with my camera that I forget to enjoy what I'm trying to watch!

Great pics along Main Street, I always try to take my time walking down Main Street in the morning too, there is just so much to look at!

Can't wait to see what you did first! :banana:
 


I had a similar experience in 2007 with a 9 month old. We were at the All-Star Movies, in the cafeteria at 4 am watching cartoons. I was bummed because the food court didn't open until 6, so I'm sitting there with an empty coffee mug and nothing to put in it. Disney should really offer coffee to parents who are up in the middle of the night with their kids.
 
Hi ChildatHeart82!! We're also from Rapid City :cheer2: We were at WDW mid December, and the cold bothered us too. I was surprised! Definitely long underwear weather then. Anyway, fun to see a fellow RC DIS'er!:yay:

Hi! :) When we got to WDW, it was in between the two cold snaps. Most of the time we were there, it was chilly in the morning, nice by afternoon, and then cold again at night. It didn't get really cold until our last day.

Great update! I'm sorry you didn't get much sleep, but Lucy was probably very appreciative going for a walk and watching cartoons :cutie: It actually sounds kind of fun, being out in the lobby in the middle of the night, watching all the EMH people come back! :thumbsup2

I love the MK rope drop show! I don't think I will take pictures of it the next time I see it, sometimes I think I'm so busy playing with my camera that I forget to enjoy what I'm trying to watch!

Great pics along Main Street, I always try to take my time walking down Main Street in the morning too, there is just so much to look at!

Can't wait to see what you did first! :banana:

I know what you mean about being behind the camera. There were a few things I feel like I didn't get the full experience for because I was busy taking pictures. It wasn't anything that was my first time for, though, so it wasn't too bad.

I had a similar experience in 2007 with a 9 month old. We were at the All-Star Movies, in the cafeteria at 4 am watching cartoons. I was bummed because the food court didn't open until 6, so I'm sitting there with an empty coffee mug and nothing to put in it. Disney should really offer coffee to parents who are up in the middle of the night with their kids.

The CM's did ask if I wanted anything to drink while I was walking around. I figured I had too many things to carry at the time anyway. :)
 
We left off when we were touring Magic Kingdom, touring what felt like a nearly empty park.

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We eventually met up at our first attraction for the day.

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There was no wait. This was probably the most fun I've had on Jungle Cruise in a long time. It was the same jokes as usual but the CM did a great job.

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Looking back, this was not a great day for picture-taking. I guess in all the moving quickly from place to place, we didn't pull the camera out that much. After jungle cruise, we moved on to Pirates. We walked right on and enjoyed ourselves. From there, we headed toward Haunted Mansion. I did a quick detour to grab fastpasses for Thunder Mountain on the way. My family loved the ride, especially the hitchhiking ghosts.

It was now time to head toward where we thought the crowds were. We made our way toward Fantasyland and found no wait for Small World either. My family did begin to wonder at this point if the majority of the rides at Magic Kingdom were boat rides. I really like Small World and surprisingly the song wasn't stuck in our heads for that long after we rode.

I left the group to go grab fastpasses for Space Mountain, telling them I would meet them in front of Philharmagic. When I got back, I couldn't find anyone and no one would answer their phones. Finally, I got a hold of DW. Apparently, Lucy needed a diaper change and the bathroom was busy. While DW and her mom were taking care of that, the rest of the family was riding the carousel.

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Once the group was all back together, we we went to watch Philharmagic.

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I absolutely love Philharmagic! It's definitely my favorite of the 4D shows at Disney World and it might be my favorite attraction at Magic Kingdom. I like all of the mountains, but Philharmagic is probably the attraction I could do the most times in a row without getting tired of it.

After Philharmagic, we were well ahead of schedule and decided it was time for an early lunch. Since I started planning, I'd been really looking forward to trying Columbia Harbour House. DW and I both had the Lighthouse Sandwich with chips. It had hummus, tomato, and broccoli slaw on it. DW thought it was okay and I thought it was delicious. I'm not a big fan of slaw of any kind but I liked the sandwich anyway. All of us really liked how fresh everything tasted.

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I thought it was neat that the chips were Disney-brand.

I left lunch a little early to grab fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear and then we met up at the Teacups. I've never been a big fan of the teacups, but had a lot of fun this time. We got our cup spinning as fast as we could and by the end of the ride our arms were pretty tired. Lucy fell asleep while we were riding the teacups and we didn't want to get her out of the stroller until she'd otten a good nap. Since DW had been to the Tiki Room on our last visit and wasn't a big fan, she stayed with Lucy while the rest of went in. I like the show and it brings back good memories of past trips, but the overall sentiment of our group was that it was nice to sit down for a few minutes. After Tiki Room, we moved on to another classic but corny Disney show. The Country Bears! Lucy was a awake when we got there so everyone got to experience the full effect of this show. I was the only one who had seen this one before. It had been a few trips since I'd seen this since it always seems to under refurbishment when I'm at Disney.

It was time to satisfy the thrill-seekers in the group so we went to use our Splash Mountain fastpasses. DW said she was feeling a little sick so elected to be the one to stay with Lucy. I think she didn't want to get wet. ;) Speaking of getting wet, we got soaked at the very beginning when we floated by the big drop. Our timing was perfect (or not, depending on who you ask) and we got hit by the splash from another boat. Everyone enjoyed the ride, but not everyone was happy that we got wet.

At this point, DW and Paul were feeling tired and we knew Lucy would benefit from a nap. The three of them headed back to the hotel, while the rest of us went to use our Thunder Mountain fastpasses. By the time we were done, we found ourselves trapped by the parade. Our next planned stop was in Adventureland so we could either circle all the way around the parade route or wait until the parade was done. We decided to wait. After about fifteen minutes, which felt like much longer, the parade was done. It then took another 10 minutes until we finally broke free of the crowd.

Here's a quick crowd comparison between the morning and the afternoon.

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We eventually made it to Adventureland for something that is on my must-do list for every trip.

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The line to get a Dole Whip was by far our longest wait in line for the entire day. I'd say it took us about 30 minutes. After we were done enjoying all of the pineapple goodness, we went to use our Space Mountain fastpasses. There were only four of us that wanted to ride so we got to ride twice. I looked at the new games that Disney added to the queue during the last refurbishment. They looked like they might be fun, but I still wouldn't be willing to wait too long in line. Our first ride we went on the left side and it was a lot of fun! The second time we went right and we all thought we got thrown around a lot more. It was still fun, but a lot rougher ride.

After Space, we made our way to Cosmic Ray's to grab dinner. I got a bacon cheeseburger with guacamole and took full advantage of the fixings bar. Dessert choices were chocolate cake or carrot cake.

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DW and company met up with us after dinner, feeling very refreshed. We found a great spot in front of the castle to watch the castle lighting.

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The show was cute and the castle was spectacular with all of the lights on!

After the castle lighting, we set out to accomplish the last few things on our list. First, we went to Laugh Floor. It was a short wait, but we still had time to text a few jokes in while we waited. The worst one happened to be picked and used in the show. It was "What do you call the abominable snowman in the desert? Water" In the show they added. "As in, water are you doing here?" The show hadn't changed a lot since our last trip, but it was still a lot of fun. After Laugh Floor, we used our Buzz fastpasses. The funniest part was that Lucy rode with Paul and Karen (DFIL and DMIL). When we got off the ride, Karen didn't understand why their car kept spinning at random. They had let Lucy mess with the joystick because they didn't know it controlled the spinning. :rotfl2:

After Buzz, we had a few more Disney classics to accomplish. We went to Carousel of Progress. That song did stick in everyone's heads for awhile. After that we went over to the PeopleMover. There was a pretty long line, but it moved quickly and we only waited for about five minutes.

I grabbed some ice cream on Main St. and then we found a spot on the Tomorrowland bridge to watch Wishes. Wishes is my favorite fireworks show and the holiday theme made it even better. After Wishes, we followed the massive sea of humanity headed for the bus stop. We were some of last people to get on the first bus back to our resort. Everyone, including Lucy, managed to sleep very well this night. :)
 
Here's the recap for our Magic Kingdom day. Missed attractions in red and unplanned attractions in green.

Jungle Cruise
Pirates of the Caribbean
Haunted Mansion
it's a small world
Philharmagic

Prince Charming Carousel
Tiki Room
Country Bears
Columbia Harbour House

Teacups
Dole Whip Float
Hall of Presidents
Splash Mountain
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Space Mountain
Main St. Ice Cream
Buzz Lightyear
Carousel of Progress
Peoplemover
Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor
Castle Lighting
Holiday Wishes

As far as planning and productiveness go, this was our best day. We did things in the order we planned and got so much done. It was so much fun and also very tiring. That might me because I was the Fastpass runner, though. :)

Up next, pixie dust before rope drop at our next park!
 
Subbing. I've enjoyed our TR so far and can't wait to read the rest. I am amazed at how much you have accomplished with a baby. :)
 
Subbing. I've enjoyed our TR so far and can't wait to read the rest. I am amazed at how much you have accomplished with a baby. :)

:welcome: Lucy made things really easy on us! That said, even with a very cooperative baby, I would say that it's a good idea to take a break in the afternoons. The couple of days where we pushed her to stay all day resulted in a fussy and irritable baby by the end of the day.
 
After a much better night of sleep, we woke up, grabbed breakfast, and headed to the bus stop. We only had about a five minute wait. We had a little more company than we were used to on our morning bus, but the bus was still fairly empty. We got off the bus and made our way to the turnstiles.

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Lucy took her pre-rope drop nap.

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After ten minutes of waiting in line, a CM asked the crowd, "Is anyone here to ride Soarin'?" Cheering loudly was obviously the best reponse to such a question. She then asked, "How would you like to ride Soarin' now?" We all thought about it and decided that we would rather wait until rope drop? The CM walked away, obviously disappointed.




Just kidding. :) We were all very excited. They started letting people through the turnstiles and then guided us back toward Soarin'.

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DW and Karen stayed with a sleeping Lucy while the rest of us went to ride. It was a lot fun, as always. This was a great piece of pixie dust. The cynics among us, including me, also recognized this as a brilliant crowd control strategy. By letting a big crowd in early to ride Soarin', Disney made room for more people to ride Soarin' at rope drop. We finished riding about five minutes before rope drop. I sent the rest of the group up to rejoin with DW and get a head start toward Test Track, which was the next stop on our touring plan. I waited around until they opened up the fastpass machines and grabbed fastpasses so that we could ride again later. As I exited the Land building, I discovered that our group hadn't made it as far as I hoped they would. Apparently, CM's were making people wait until after the rope drop crowd went by. I immediately realized the bump this would put in our touring plan.

When we could we made our way over to Test Track.

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The standby line was was strung outside the building. The posted wait was 30 minutes. This put us significantly off schedule. Our group got in line, but DW, Lucy, and I stayed back. The original plan, which we stuck with was to have us wait so that the other six would have their own car. DW and I would ride later if we had time. If not, we'd experienced Test Track before and would be back to Disney soon enough.

As our group got in line, despite my efforts to go with the flow, I had a meltdown. If we had all day to experience Epcot, I think I would have been okay, but Andrea and I had to leave at 2:00 to get ready for our Anniversary dinner reservation. Sticking to the plan was more important today than any other day. I can sit back now and easily say that being 45 minutes off schedule is not the end of the world and I should not have overreacted like I did. At the time, though, I was tired and I had been herding eight other people through the crowds at Disney. I had reached my breaking point. DW decided it would be a good idea to sit down on a bench that was barely within sight of the Test Track entrance and nowhere near the exit. I stood there and stewed for a little while.

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I walked off toward the exit of Test Track. I got to the area where you see your ride photo and waited....and waited...and waited. Again, in retrospect, the wait was probably pretty close to the posted 30 minutes. At the time, it felt like hours and the longer I waited the more frustrated I got. Finally, our family exited the ride. In my frustrated state, I wasn't thinking clearly and made a mistake that made things worse. We knew that only four of us would want to ride Mission Space. The plan was to grab four Space fastpasses and then grab Test Track fastpasses for the other four. I went to the Test Track machines and had seven fastpasses before I realized my mistake. Now, we had to wait two hours until I could get fastpasses for Mission Space. We were getting even more behind schedule.

I finally got it together and came up with a plan. The standby wait for Mission Space Green was only 10 minutes. We had someone in our group who has motion sickness issues so this was a good starting point. We enjoyed the ride, but I like the Orange side way more. After Space, we rode the Seas with Nemo and Friends and went over to watch Captain EO. Our family's reaction to this was as expected. They did appreciate how 80's the show was, but thought it was a little weird. It was a nice trip down memory lane for me, but it's not something I need to see again.

It was now time to grab lunch. We went to Sunshine Seasons. I had the seared tuna noodle salad and DW has some sort of sweet and sour chicken with rice and noodles.

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The food was okay and was a good alternative to burgers and fries for a counter service meal. I should have realized, though, that ordering seared tuna from a counter service restaurant was probably not the best idea. I would recommend Sunshine Seasons for counter service at Epcot.

I left lunch early and grabbed Mission Space fastpasses. When I got back, we rode Living with the Land. Again, the Lines app proved its worth. The posted wait was 30 minutes but Lines said the estimated wait was 10 minutes. We were on a boat in 10 minutes. Everyone enjoyed the ride, especially Paul, who works in a greenhouse and was a horticulture major. Karen remarked as we were getting off that the Behind the Seeds tour might be fun. I smiled because I knew that we had the tour reserved for Friday. Since we already at the Land, we used our Soarin' fastpasses.

After Soarin', we made our way back toward Test Track. DW and Lucy fell behind a little for a diaper change. Since we had fastpasses, those remaining that did not want to ride Mission Space Orange went to ride Test Track. Three of us rode Mission Space Orange. It was way better than Green! :) After our ride, we met up with DW and went to ride Test Track while the others stayed with Lucy. After that, it was 2:00 and it was time for DW and I to head back to the buses. Karen was ready for a break too so she and Lucy went with us too. The rest stayed to tour World Showcase.

Here's a quick recap of our first Epcot day. Missed attractions are in red. Unplanned attractions are in green.

Soarin'
(2x)
Test Track (2x)
The Seas w/ Nemo and Friends
Spaceship Earth
Journey Through Imagination

Captain EO
Mission Space Green

Mission Space Orange
Living with the Land
Club Cool

We didn't do too badly, but you can see that we did miss a lot of planned attractions. Still, we were coming back to Epcot and our plan for that day was planned as a makeup day anyway. Like I said before, looking back we did very well. :)

Up next, the most amazing dinner ever!
 
We made our way toward Fantasyland and found no wait for Small World either. My family did begin to wonder at this point if the majority of the rides at Magic Kingdom were boat rides. I really like Small World and surprisingly the song was stuck in our heads for that long after we rode. [/COLOR]

Is this a typo? You are surprised it got stuck in your head?
 
Oops! :eek: Definitely a typo. It didn't get stuck in our heads despite my best efforts to sing the song every once in awhile throughout the day. I'll go back and change that. :)

Seemed like an odd statement to say about IASW. I think they have taken people away in straight jackets who are singing the song. :lmao:
 
Great updates! :thumbsup2 I love the whole recap thing for each park day...I might have to steal that, if you don't mind... :rolleyes1

I cracked up about Lucy controlling the car on Buzz! That is so cute! :lovestruc She wanted to play too!

That was so cool that you got to ride Soarin' early, even if it was just for crowd control. That's what I love about Disney- everything they do feels magical!

I'm sorry to hear about your frustration at Epcot, but I completely understand! :hug: Our Epcot day was very frustrating, as you will read about in my TR.

I am loving your TR so far! I'm so glad you are going back soon, because I want to read another one when you finish this one! :)
 
We left off as DW, DD, Karen, and I were leaving Epcot. We had a short wait for a bus, but the bus made a stop at Hollywood Studios before going back to our resort. We didn't pick up anyone there, but we stopped and waited for a few minutes.

We went back to the room and Karen watched Lucy while we got cleaned up and dressed for our anniversary dinner. After about an hour, the rest of our group showed up. Apparently, they did a very abbreviated tour of World Showcase and decided it was time for the pool and naps. :)

DW and I made our way to the bus stop and a bus came almost right away. In planning for the worst, I had alotted time for a long bus wait. As a result, we had some time to kill when we got to Magic Kingdom. We decided to do some shopping on Main St. before heading to our dinner. We were dressed very formally, but I don't think we got any weird looks, none that I saw anyway. We ended up buying a Minnie Mouse outfit and some socks for Lucy and then went back to catch the monorail. We had a little more time to kill so we rode a full circuit of the monorail before getting off at the Grand Floridian.

We found Victoria & Albert's easily and went in. At this point, I will say that we didn't take a lot of pictures. It was an effort to convince DW that we needed to take pictures of the food. On top of that, I didn't take a whole lot of notes on what we ate, and this was the kind of the place that required that if I was going to give you a great report. Also, some of our pictures are a little blurry. Still, I will give you the best report of our dinner and hope that you have a chance to experience dinner at Victoria & Albert's at some point because it is an amazing experience!

We walked in and were led to our table after the host wished us a Happy Anniversary! Our "Victoria" for the night came by and explained the menu and took drink orders. DW got an amaretto sour and I wasn't really in the mood for a cocktail so I just asked for water. A little while later a CM came by and with a stool for DW to put her purse on. She apologized that she wasn't there with the stool when we arrived at our table. Yes, that's how fancy this place is and the level of luxurious service they strive to provide. I want to include those kind of details to try and capture the whole experience. :)

Our "Albert" came by and took our food orders. V&A is a six course meal with a teaser course, called an Amuse-Bouche, at the beginning. A lot of the terms used throughout the night were terms I'd only heard from watching Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen. I've had to look up what they mean since.

The Amuse-Bouche was lobster four ways.

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The upper-right was a delicious lobster bisque. It was our favorite of the four and we both wish they would have given us more. The lower-right was a lobster remoulade. I had thought a remoulade was a sauce, which I have since confirmed. Either we misheard the description or that was just describing the sauce. It was lobster inside of a pastry crust. The lower-left was poached lobster with caviar. The upper-left was a lobster pannacotta. It was a basically a creamy foam. It and the rest of this course was very tasty.

The next course was the cold appetizer. I got the Tuna and Octopus a la Plancha with Jamon Iberico. I will add here that I'm copying these names off of the menu that menu they gave us to bring home.

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The tuna and octopus are in the middle. It came with leafy greens (left) and some sort of fresh tomato thing (right). All of it was delicious! Not surprisingly it was much better than the tuna I had for lunch at Sunshine Seasons. By the way, I think by the end of this I'm going to run out of words for delicious.

DW had the Applewood Smoked Buffalo "Waldorf."

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I don't remember a whole lot about this one. I tried some of the buffalo and liked it. Being from South Dakota, buffalo wasn't a new thing for either of us. DW says this dish was outstanding.

The next course was a fish course. We both got the Vegetable Ash-crusted Halibut with Butter Clams and Corn Chowder.

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This was really good! DW isn't really a big fish person and she loved it. The outside of the fish was crispy and the inside was moist and delicious. The fish was on top of a really flavorful corn chowder.

The next course was the hot appetizer. I had the Duck Three Ways.

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From left to right, there was duck breast, duck sausage, and duck confit. It also came with a gooseberry jam. It was good, but my motivation for ordering it was that I haven't really eaten a lot of duck. I wish I had ordered the soup that DW ordered. After looking up what confit is, it doesn't sound nearly as appetizing. It refers to a cooking process that involves poaching the meat in it's own fat.

DW had the Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Tortellini.

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This was one of the best things we had all night. There's not a whole to describing it beyond its name.

Next was our main entree. I ordered the Blackmore Wagyu Strip Loin with Oxtail Jus.

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I've eaten a lot of steak and this was by far the best piece of beef I have ever tasted. The Oxtail Jus was a sweet sauce to go with the beef. I don't usually put sauce on my steak, but I did enjoy this. I remember Albert saying something about it taking four days to make the Jus. The beef also came with a potato puree topped with barbeque pork and vegetables.

DW ordered the Australian "Kobe" Beef Tenderloin with Smoked Garlic-Potato Puree.

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This is the second best piece of beef I have ever tasted. It also came with the oxtail jus, potatoes, and vegetables. I've forgetten to mention the bread. Three of our courses came with a bread specifically picked to go with that course. Each different bread had it's own type of butter to go with it. We enjoyed them all but I do not remember the details.

Our next couse was the cheese/gelato course. We both ordered the cheese and did not get a picture of this. It included Colston Bassett Stilton, Southern Belle Chevre, Gouda Reypenaer V.S.O.P., and Comte Saint Antoine. We enjoyed these. I wasn't a huge fan of one of them and I think it was the Belle Chevre.

Our final course was dessert. I ordered the Hawaiian Kona Chocolate Souffle.

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By the time we got a picture, it was starting to collapse. This is the first souffle I've ever had and it was so good!! It also came with a chocolate gelato.

DW ordered the Grand Mariner Souffle.

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This was also amazing! It came with some sort of citrus-flavored gelato.

Though we were through our final course, there were still a few more bits of deliciousness to enjoy.

We ordered the coffee.

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The coffee brewed at our table as we were eating dessert. The flame underneat causes the water to steam, causing a seal to open a little bit and let the steam into the top pot. From there, the steam turns back into water and go through the coffee grounds back into the bottom pot. It was very good coffee.

While we were waiting for our check, Victoria brought by a small tray of sweets. We got a picture after we'd eaten some. I don't remember the details but they were all good.

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Finally, we were given a loaf of orange date banana bread (or something like that) to eat later. We ate it for breakfast the next morning and it was very good.

While taking all the pictures of the food, we did manage to get a few of us.

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We did a little shopping at the Grand Floridian gift shop after we left and I bought a Mr. Potato Head shirt. We also got a photopass picture in front of the Christmas tree. I'm still waiting to get our photopass CD in the mail. When we were ready to go back to our resort, we hopped on the monorail to Magic Kingdom and took a bus from there.

As I said earlier, I would highly recommend eating at Victoria & Albert's at least once if you can ever manage it. We wish we could do it every trip now, but we can't really afford it. Plus, no children under 10 are allowed so we would need to find a sitter for Lucy and we're not quite ready for that. We will be back at some point, though. We left after dinner very full, but not stuffed. It was definitely a highlight of our trip!

Up next, we have one more park to visit!
 
WOW! That dinner sounds amazing! :eek: I have never in my life been anywhere so fancy that they give you a seat for your purse! :rotfl: John and I ate at Artist Point on our trip for our "special" dinner, and that was really nice, but nothing like what you described! What a great experience! :thumbsup2
 

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