Magic Happens, and Then You EAT: Our Gluttonous *Year of the Dragon* COMPLETE!!

[jude&jonah]

I loved loved loved your reviews and read each one! Thank you so much!

[iloveeeyore]

Originally Posted by WDWaddictt

I like CP, but I don't find anything really special here. This will be the first time we are not going there, on our upcoming trip because we are going to try BOG for supper instead.

Yah! Tomorrow we are surprising the kids and leaving for Disney! Can't wait!

Thanks for sharing in your review, it has made me look forward to a few. Can't wait to hear about Kona, because we are going there for our first time.

Kona coming up today. Sorry it's probably not up in time to help you! Hope your trip is going perfectly!

Originally Posted by emmysmommy

Oh no! Sorry your CG dinner was not as spectacular as before. It definitely sounds like from the waiter to the table location to the food something just wasn't right. I agree with you about the pork. I've ordered that the last 2 or 3 times and I'm ready for something different. (I suppose with the restaurant rehab and menu changes there should be some great choices.)

We've viewed Wishes from the back terrace before and it hasn't been crowded... I suppose the secret it now out and more and more people go there. Darn that waiter for holding you back from going sooner!

Oh, and I loved the caramel banana dessert - one of the few that I have really enjoyed at CG.

Glad to see that hula Eeyore met Eeyore at CP!! That is an adorable photo!!

Now that your TR is winding down I see another trip in your future.... Yes?

Our experience this time at CG wasn't perfect, but certainly not bad by any means, and we will certainly give it another try after the rehab. It just didn't meet our expectations, and our dinners at Yachtsman and Citricos were both better this trip, though it's hard to decide if they were better than our LAST time at CG. I think not.

The trip won't happen in the near future because we have so many other things going on in our family, but at least we will have a ticker! Stay tuned!

Originally Posted by jude&jonah

I loved loved loved your reviews and read each one! Thank you so much!

I'm so glad you loved my report!! Thanks for reading! I can't wait until I can provide another for you. Meantime, please stay tuned for Kona Cafe...

[iloveeeyore]

By our last day, we still had so many snack credits left, we didn't know what to do with them! We weren't hungry after breakfast at CP, and we wanted to save some room for lunch at Kona, but far be it from us to allow perfectly good snack credits to go to waste! We decided instead to let them go to our waists!

We always go to Aloha Isle for Dole Whips, and we thought perhaps we ought to give Sunshine Tree Terrace a try. We got a lemonade and a Citrus Swirl:

We thought this was very, very good and refreshing, but not as great for us as a Pineapple Dole Whip. It was pretty creamsicle-like. If you like a creamsicle, you should enjoy this!

Here is the lemonade and a little something extra that Belle went OOP for:

An Orange Bird cup! So retro and adorable! I don't have a receipt, but Aladdin thinks it was around $5. She loves this little thing and it sits on the desk in her dorm now, a lovely souvenir of our trip.

On our way out of the park, we stopped by the Main Street Confectionary to grab some transportable snacks for the trip home . Unfortunately, we only have a photo of one:

This is the Vanilla Mickey Mouse Cake Pop. We loved this! It was so nice and moist! There were many different colored sugar toppings and also I think different chocolate toppings to choose from. This one had milk and white chocolate. We have no pictures of the Mammoth Cashew Patti, Mickey Mouse Gingerbread Cookie, and Mickey Mouse Rice Crispy, all were delicious! We enjoyed these in the airport with tears in our eyes.

Our rating for this day's MK snacks:

4/5! Yummy!

[iloveeeyore]

Well, it's time for our final meal of the trip, lunch at Kona Cafe! We had eaten lunch here once before several trips ago and were very impressed, so we were excited to try it again!

We showed up a few minutes early and were seated right away; the place seemed virtually empty. Our server was Pat, who was fabulous, and when she saw me taking photos, she knew right away we were DISers. She was lovely and funny and spent quite a while chatting with us about life in Orlando and working at WDW, which is a lifestyle we imagine trying out at some point in the future. Pat also brought our attention to the harm in writing trip or dining reports that name servers who don't necessarily do a great job. Thank you Pat! I will be very aware and only name the names of those I have nothing but nice things to say about, like you!

The lunch menu at this place is phenomenal, and we had quite a hard time deciding what to order. Pat made some suggestions and they were all wonderful!

Small Kona Salad:

Delicious! So light and refreshing and packed with flavor!

Pot Stickers:

Yummy!

Wings for 2:

Absolutely delicious. We have tried these before at dinner and they did not disappoint. Now we all really, really love 'Ohana, but the pot stickers and wings at Kona are NOT the same...they are even better!!!

Aladdin's Tuna Sandwich with Sweet Potato Fries:

These sweet potato fries were perfection, and the tuna wasn't overcooked. He loved this. I think this roll is like pineapple bread?

Belle's Island Chicken Sandwich. Sandwich with Sweet Potato Fries:

She thought this was delicious! It had crispy bacon and just the right amount of cheese (that is to say, a lot) for her!

Hercules was having a hard time deciding between the between the Fish and Pork Taco, so we got one of each, and he and I split them:

Pork Taco:


Fish Taco:


They were both delicious! He preferred the pork, and I preferred the fish, but both were greedily devoured. That macaroni salad was just so yummy!

For dessert, I had the Banana Creme Brulee:

I am a big creme brulee fan, and this is my second favorite ever. My favorite ever is at a small french cafe in NYC, La Bergamot, and it is pistacchio-infused. But Kona's is a VERY close second! There is a chocolate bed on the bottom of this thing, and that banana with the carmelized crust puts this dessert over the top! Excellent!

Herc ordered the Kilahuea Tort:

This has a liquid center if I remember correctly, his favorite kind of dessert, and he thought this one was really good. He didn't love it as much as Cali Grill's version, but hey, that was a signature dinner.

Belle went for the Chocolate Fondue:

She enjoyed this.

Sorry about the blurry pic of Aladdin's Panna Cotta:

I can't find this on any menu, but I'm pretty sure this was a coffee-flavored panna cotta. Honestly, we don't remember too much about it. Maybe that is why it's off the menu.

Pat brought us a little extra treat, some cookies:


Kona Cafe is really one of our overall favorite restaurants in all of the world, not just WDW. We are big fans of all things Polynesian, so that gives it a little edge for us. The setting is beautiful to us, the service has always been great, the food is delicious, and it really feels like home there. It's even all the more fabulous knowing that we COULD have ordered drinks from Tambu Lounge if we had wanted to. We probably should have...it was one last chance for that trip!

Our total cost for this feast would have been $151.65, which includes our OOP tip of $24.

Kona gets a very enthusiastic:

4/5!

That concludes our dining review! We will be back soon with final thoughts...

[jmm476]

I love the Kona review! It's definitely on my short list of places to try. Those pot stickers looked so delicious! And the tacos... yum!

[iloveeeyore]

Originally Posted by jmm476

I love the Kona review! It's definitely on my short list of places to try. Those pot stickers looked so delicious! And the tacos... yum!

Yes the pot stickers were fabulous and so were the tacos. Those shells are home-made and so special. We will definitely be back. There were so many more things on the menu we want to try!

[iloveeeyore]

Another magical vacation with wonderful dining adventures! We keep hearing how Disney dining is going downhill, but so far, over many trips, we have been lucky not to experience this.

Overall, our dining experiences met or exceeded our expectations, which could be a function of managing our expectations at a realistic level. With a few oddball exceptions, service was good to excellent, and food was mostly very good to outstanding. Character interaction was tremendous at our few character meals, and we believe this is because we actively engage the characters by making jokes or asking questions, etc.

And what did we think about the Deluxe Dining Plan? Shockingly, way too much for us! Now, if you have read this and my other reports, you can see that we are people who love dining and have pretty enormous appetites! But this was just too much food, even for us. We rarely felt hungry enough to fully enjoy a three course meal; in fact, we felt overly full most of the time. Yet we would order those 3 courses, because feeling we had paid for it, we had to get it! We won't do deluxe dining again. In the future, I imagine we will just go OOP, unless the promotion is Free Dining. We love the signature restaurants, but probably wouldn't do more than a few per trip, because we felt that signature almost every night made each one a little less special, if that makes sense? Also, we are generally happy sharing a few appies and a few desserts, rather than getting 4 of each. We occasionally enjoy 2 TS per day, but 3 was too much, and we find that CS places in the parks generally fit our needs for a quick bite at times...we actually missed some of our favorite CS places, which we skipped because we felt they weren't a good value on the DxDP. I'm not saying this was a bad experiment, we are really glad we tried it...but now we know it's not for us.

Here are the prize winners:

Best breakfast: It's a tie! We LOVED both Kona and Crystal Palace for different reasons, and will absolutely return to both, even though we aren't big breakfast people.

Best lunch: Via Napoli! This meal was off the charts in every category, and we will be back again and again. Maybe even again. Honorable mentions Kona Cafe and Biergarten, we love these places!

Best dinner: Yachtsman's Steakhouse! Hands down! This might have been our best dinner on-property ever, or at least tied with our first CG dinner.

Best snack: Dolewhip swirl float! Honorable mention Carrot Cake Cookie, Mickey Premium Bar.

Best dish: Truffle Mac & Cheese at Yachtsman Steakhouse. Best. Thing. On. The. Planet. TRUST ME!!

Worst dish: Poutine at Le Cellier. Dishonorable mention, cupcakes.

Most pleasantly surprising restaurant: Via Napoli! It totally blew us away! Honorable mention, Liberty Tree Tavern...that's because we weren't expecting much from LTT, and while we weren't blown away, it was a lot better than we thought it would be. I guess Yachtman too. It was fabulous, but it SHOULD be and we pretty much expected it to be.

Biggest disappointment restaurant: Le Cellier. It was great for the stuff that make it famous, but everything else was pretty bad (see "worst dish"). Dishonorable mention, California Grill, probably because we didn't adequately manage our expectations based on our prior experience, please note, we STILL rate it a 4!

Biggest Slice-of-Heaven: TAMBU LOUNGE!!!

Where we WILL DEFINITELY return (someday):
HDDR
Via Napoli
Biergarten
Kona Cafe (breakfast, lunch or dinner)
'Ohana (dinner)
Chef Mickey's (first night tradition)
Yachtsman Steakhouse
California Grill
Crystal Palace 8 am breakfast
TAMBU!

This marks the end of my dining report. I'd still be happy to answer any questions! Thanks for reading!

[MainStreetFireman]

How about Tambu?

What an unexpected gem that turned out to be! And decent prices to boot!

More comments from me tomorrow.

So, where's the new ticker? Summer 2014!

[jesswindsor]

Really great report!! I loved following along, I really like your writing style and how you describe what you ate. Not only was your report entertaining but it was also extremly helpful.

[iloveeeyore]

Originally Posted by MainStreetFireman

How about Tambu?

What an unexpected gem that turned out to be! And decent prices to boot!

More comments from me tomorrow.

So, where's the new ticker? Summer 2014!

See above post where I edited in Tambu. I just didn't know how to include it, but now I think I got it!

Looking forward to your comments.

Working on ticker now!

Originally Posted by jesswindsor

Really great report!! I loved following along, I really like your writing style and how you describe what you ate. Not only was your report entertaining but it was also extremly helpful.

Thanks so much! That is very sweet. So glad to have you here!

[MrsB1228]

What a great finish! We love Tambu lounge too and enjoyed the Island Sunset and Pina Colava during our last trip. That Malibu Macaw looks amazing, I think that will be on my "must try" list next visit!

I really enjoyed reading about your family's dining adventures and I love your writing style and fairness in your ratings. Looking forward to reading about your next trip, congrats on the new ticker!

[auntfrannie]

It's over already!!! Enjoyed reading your reviews, as always! Thanks!

[MainStreetFireman]

Before offering specific comments about our meals, I have some general comments about the DDP and DxDP.

The first time that we used the DDP, it was part of free dining. Of course, free is a great value. However, I kept our receipts anyway. After analyzing what we would have paid, I concluded that we ran a small profit in that we ate more $ than we would have paid. This was done with almost no focusing on picking "higher-priced" entrees.

The next time we went, we bought the DDP. This time, you no longer had starters and the tip covered. However, we still managed once again to eat more than we paid. I must add that this required us to focus more on the cost of each entree than we had the last time. It was still a good experience, but it required more work.

This time, after multiple trips to WDW, and with unlimited FastPass times no longer the norm, we figured that we might have more time for more sit-down meals. So, we decided to try DxDP. We figured that, snce we didn't usually eat breakfast, we could get 2 good TS a day from an early lunch and a later dinner.

While we did get to have more Signature dining experiences than ever before, it was just too much. The combination of the time required to enjoy a sit-down meal, and the lack of time between said meals to become hungry enough for the next meal was just too much. Did we get our "money's worth"? Yes. Was it a quality experience? For us -- not as much as it should have been.

In order to maximize the financial cost of the plan, we had just about the most extensive (and most expensive) meal on every menu. Of course, this also added to the hidden total cost (by adding to our OOP, since we are NEVER cheap to our service staff.). But, as alluded to earlier, the sheer amount of the food was just too much.

Later in her report, iloveeeyore mentioned that the overall amount of food might have affected our ratings in a negative way. I could not agree more. While everyone needs to find their own happy place; ours is a clearly a place with much less food than we might have consumed a number of years ago. What can I say? I guess that we are getting older.

In the end, it was a great trip, with some great new foods, and returning to some "must-dos" for us. But, as I have said on a different thread about OOP vs. DDP spending, this doesn't mean that I will not eat too much pretzel bread next time we go to Biergarten. It just means that I will do so without eating another big meal that day, and I will do so OOP.

That being said, if free dining were to be offered in the future, I would probably compare the cost at 75% (an estimate of the cost of the amount of food we would actually eat) versus whatever room discount we could find. In the end, it is more about the overall experience my family has together in our special place than any individual meal or attraction.

[MainStreetFireman]

In no particular order, here are some of my dining observations on this trip:

VIA NAPOLI -- Cannot believe how much I loved this place. As a native New York City boy, I have had more than my share of excellent pizza. Since moving to the suburbs, I find the pizza to be generally bland and simply a lazy food to save the work of shopping and prep. So, to say that I was less than ecstatic about pizza in WDW would be an understatement. Wow. I could not have been more wrong. The pizza here was comparable to some of the best thin-crust NYC pizza that I have ever had.

LE CELLIER -- My DS had been talking for months about wanting to try "Poutine", a native Canadian dish supposedly comprised of chipped potatoes with cheese curds and, sometimes, served with tomato sauce. So, when we asked if it was authentic, told it was, and ordered it here, we were both disappointed to get fries with yellow cheese and gravy. Back home, we call these "Disco Fries" or "Brooklyn Fries". I know it sounds like a small deal, but it was big to us.

YACHTSMAN -- After having water literally dumped on us in a deluge at Illuminations, I was pretty much ready to call it a night. The fact that I shivered through this meal while my tastebuds danced is a testament to how great this meal was. Incredible.

TAMBU LOUNGE -- Since our DKs were younger during last trips to the Poly, the DW & I never spent any time at Tambu. Besides, we could get the same drinks at our regular trip to Ohana, right? Well, yes,,,and no. There is such a different vibe at the bar. The bartenders are top-notch. And, even for a destination location, the prices were not crazy. We will never miss a opportunity to spend time at Tambu on future trips.

CRYSTAL PALACE -- As you may have read, the DW has a bit of a crush on Eeyore. So, I promised a return to CP after not being there for almost a decade. Last time was dinner at MNSSHP. This time was breakfast. Well, not only was breakfast great (we were there at opening, it should be noted), but the character interactions were too (even for us older folk). On top of everything else, we still got into the park just as the gates were opening to the MK. A great breakfast and I don't lose time to have a commando morning? That's a win-win for me.

KONA CAFE -- Seemingly always in the shadow of Ohana, this just might be the gem of the Poly, as well as the entire property. Great dishes at breakfast and lunch. Great service. If I lived in the area, this would be a regular for me and our family. More time needs to be spent here by us in the future.

That's about it from me. Enough other specifics can be found in this dining report, as well as DW's "live" trip report. Can't wait to start planning our next trip, even if it is a bit far our there. Maybe it just seems far away since it's snowing here...

[DLFan123]

I enjoyed reading your reviews! It does look like on the deluxe dining plan, you have to order so much food to feel like you are getting your money's worth. I'm glad you had a chance to try it and figure out what works best for your family. We almost tried the deluxe dining plan once but realized in advance it would be too much for us. But when you are at home, hungry and reading the disboards, it sounds like such a great idea!