DisBrides do Disney! - where I meet friends from the DIS - Feb 2013 *complete*

[librarygeek]

Great TR...Loving all the pics!

Thanks!

I love this alteration to the standard Stitch pop-up picture!

I'm glad you enjoyed your meal at Ohana. I'm really excited to eat there on my next trip.

I agree, that Stitch picture is really fun! And I'm sure you'll love Ohana

I really enjoyed O'hana last year. And I learned that had to pace myself during the meal to make sure I had enough room for the bread pudding which was my favorite part of the meal.

Love the Stitch photo!

So true, pacing is key! And even then I don't think I could eat everything!

I finally have my reservations for Ohana's after years of trying to get in! I read the complaints of the menu changes and was worried so thanks for showing all the options. Everything looks delicious to me!

Congrats on your ressie!! I'd also read the complaints, but I think it's mostly from people that don't like change. Since like me you never experienced the menu before, I doubt you'd notice or care.

I plan to eat at both Ohana and akershurs on our next trip so i'm having a great time reading along

Awesome, great choices! Akershus coming up next!

 

[librarygeek]

Day 3 - Epcot

I'm not really a morning person, but we got up at 7am to make it to Epcot for an 8am reservation at Akerhsus! Let me tell you, it is not easy planning and making dining reservations for a large group of people. We originally planned for lunch at Akershus, and probably 15 girls were going to come. Then some people decided they wouldn't like the food, others would rather do Via Napoli, some didn't want to pay that much for lunch, etc. So we changed it to a breakfast to accommodate some of the people worried about the food and the price, but we still ended up with 6 of us. In the end, a small group was much nicer though! The big events were fun, but the small meals were less stressful.

Epcot was empty and I loved seeing that, especially when it got really packed the next day.

Empty Norway:

We headed over to Akershus and first got our picture taken with Belle! My favorite princess, as you'll find out more as you read this TR!

Then it was into the restaurant, where the princesses came almost immediately. We decided to wait to get food so we didn't miss them. We saw Aurora, Snow White, Cinderella, and Ariel.

We ended up getting our plates of hot food first, since we didn't go up to the cold buffet til after the princesses. It was pretty standard, with eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes. They only brought out one plate at first, which seemed a little ridiculous for 6 people (1 sausage each, 1 piece of bacon each, and some people didn't even get a scoop of eggs the first go around!). Luckily, they eventually brought out more.

The cold buffet stuff was also pretty standard for the most part, but it was good. I'm not a big breakfast eater so I prefer something light, like fruit. Their fresh fruit here was incredible. Melons, pineapple, strawberries, blackberries, and grapes, and all of it was really good. I also had a muffin.

The price per person of our breakfast was something ridiculous, like $40 or $45. Totally not worth it for the food, but it's about the experience of meeting the princesses. And for that it was worth it for me, meeting princesses with my Disney friends was fantastic! That said, now that I've done it - probably never again for a long while!

Next we headed for some rides. We grabbed fast passes for the new Test Track and then headed to Spaceship Earth.

Of course, we couldn't go anywhere without stopping for some photopass pics (this became the theme of the trip; there was almost never a photopass photographer we didn't stop by!)

We also did Nemo before heading back to Test Track. It was my first time being on it since they re-did it. It looked cool with all of the lights and stuff, but it felt like you lost the story a little bit this way. Also, on the fastpass line you apparently don't get to do the full experience or designing your car - it was just choosing a color and whether you wanted to focus on power, efficiency, safety, or something else, I forget. And that was it. But I still like Test Track!

I did really like how in the showroom, you can have your picture taken with some of the model cars, and then they send those pics right to your email. Pretty cool!

Next we did Soarin'. This ride is great. I think perhaps riding it again, combined with not being super impressed with Test Track now, has moved this ride up to my favorite in Epcot (it used to be Test Track).

By this point the 6 of us from breakfast had met up with 4 of the other girls in the parks, and all of us decided to walk around the World Showcase together. On the way over, we passed where they were setting up for Flower and Garden festival. They have an awesome Oz themed area that looks really cool!

Our World Showcase adventures will be continued in another post!

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

That always happens to us at Akershus - 5 or 6 of us sit down at the table and they bring us a plate of the hot food with portions more appropriate for a party of 4. They're still pretty good about bringing extra portions so not a biggie I guess. We've gotten used to it that we just give our server a heads up when the first plate arrives that we'll be asking for more.

Soarin is by far my favorite ride at Epcot. I also thought the new Test Track was disappointing in contrast to the hype, promotions, and anticipations surrounding the project. Theming reminded me of TRON. We also went through the FP queue and got a very abbreviated "design workshop" experience that didn't even end up working when we tried to scan the info into our vehicle.

 

[laurenvic1312959]

Definitely can't wait for my next trip now All the food looks so good

 

[danceintherain]

It's amazing to me how much they can get away with charging for character meals, especially with the food being the way that it is.
It will probably be a long time before I can justify Akershus for that reason.

 

[librarygeek]

That always happens to us at Akershus - 5 or 6 of us sit down at the table and they bring us a plate of the hot food with portions more appropriate for a party of 4. They're still pretty good about bringing extra portions so not a biggie I guess. We've gotten used to it that we just give our server a heads up when the first plate arrives that we'll be asking for more.

Soarin is by far my favorite ride at Epcot. I also thought the new Test Track was disappointing in contrast to the hype, promotions, and anticipations surrounding the project. Theming reminded me of TRON. We also went through the FP queue and got a very abbreviated "design workshop" experience that didn't even end up working when we tried to scan the info into our vehicle.

You'd think they'd realize by now how much people eat! Oh well, I guess they'd rather not waste food. And I agree, the new Test Track was not nearly as good as I was hoping.

Definitely can't wait for my next trip now All the food looks so good

Awesome, when is your next trip?? The food is one of my favorite parts

It's amazing to me how much they can get away with charging for character meals, especially with the food being the way that it is.
It will probably be a long time before I can justify Akershus for that reason.

I completely understand. I would like to do every character meal at least once, but there aren't too many I would do more than once because of the price. The prices were higher than normal because of the holiday weekend and it being considered peak time, too. Tusker House was very high as well - I think it was $32 per person. On our honeymoon we visited when it was low season (September) and breakfast at 1900 Park Fare was very good, and reasonable (about $23 per person). So far that's the only character meal I'd really want to go back to. Though if you're on the dining plan Akershus is a really good deal at 1 TS credit!

 

[librarygeek]

Epcot, Part 2

The group of us headed to the World Showcase and decided to just walk around a bit.

Some of the others wanted to get more photopass pictures, so we kept an eye out for that. We found photopass photographers in Morocco and France.

After that we had plans to meet up with the whole group of a group photo near the gates. We were originally supposed to do it earlier, I think around 1 pm, but we heard that some of the other people that were going to meet us were still eating lunch in France at around 12:45. Since we weren't sure if they would make it we decided to push it back to around 2. Eventually everyone got together for some pictures!

There were about 15 people together, and it's tough to get any group that large to stay together. A portion of the girls decided to head back to their rooms for an afternoon break, and another group decided to do some shopping in Epcot. I went off with three other girls to hit up the two rides in Mexico and Norway.

Once we rode those it was about 3 o'clock, and I was pretty hungry. I figured it was a decent time to eat, since I didn't want to get too full before the dessert party but it had also been awhile since breakfast! We decided to grab counter service in China, at the Lotus Blossom Cafe.

I ordered the beef noodle soup bowl. This thing was huge, and packed full of beef. The broth was very good. Only downside was that it had onions which I'm not a fan of, so I just picked them out as I got to them. It was funny because one of my friends ordered the same thing and also doesn't like onions, so she also had a little "onion pile" next to her plate! The flavor was actually really nice. I thought it was a very good "theme park" lunch - it felt light but filling. I didn't quite finish it all.

After lunch the three girls I was with decided they needed an afternoon break too. I thought about doing it was well, but to be completely honest I was tired of walking and didn't want to trek back to the front of the park! So I met up with the other girls who were now in America. We hung out together and eventually made our way over to France, where I finally got to try a grand marnier slushie!

It was delicious. The only downside was that it was only about 50 degrees out, and a slushie just made me feel colder! It was around this time that the dessert party was officially moved inside. I was so thankful because as neat as it would've been to be outside, it was just too cold and windy! I would've been miserable out there once the sun went down. After the slushie most of the other girls and their husbands had a reservation at Via Napoli. There were 4 girls left, plus David and Vicki Arndt - David and Vicki are photographers, but they are also friends with many of the brides that were on the trip, and Vicki herself was a Disney bride! So while they were taking some pictures of us they were also there to enjoy some time with us!

They are fabulous and absolutely love what they do. My husband and I have scheduled an anniversary photo shoot with them in August, and we are so excited. It was great to get to spend some time with them. They insisted we take some pictures around World Showcase, and we had a lot of fun doing that with them!

David had fun playing around with photoshop too (he photoshopped us into the little train village in Germany!):

Then it was finally time for the dessert party, and I couldn't be more happy to be inside and warm. We were moved to the American Adventure Parlor, which was a neat room with a great view of Epcot.

It was nice to be warm and just socialize with all of the girls and many of their husbands/fiances.

The desserts were out on the buffet, and they were very yummy. We had chocolate covered strawberries, eclairs, s'mores bars, bread pudding, and Mickey ice cream bars and ice cream sandwiches.

Just before the fireworks started we were led outside to our fireworks viewing area, which was Italy Isola, an area in Italy that had been blocked off at the railing just for us! It was amazing to have that view without having to wait. They also let us bring hot tea or coffee out with us, which my cold blood very much appreciated

Here's some of the shots I got of Illuminations:

And finally, a fantastic picture from David and Vicki:

After the fireworks were over a bunch of the girls were going to head to Jellyrolls to do an impromptu bachelorette party for one of the girls, who was getting married in two weeks. I wanted to go so badly as I really wanted to be there for my friend, and plus I've never been to Jellyrolls, but I had been in Epcot for over 13 hours and I was utterly exhausted. My feet were killing me - we'd walked around World Showcase at least 3 times and went back and forth from WS to the front of the park multiple times as well. So one of my roommates and I decided to head back to get some sleep. We also had a breakfast at Whispering Canyon the next morning at 9am, so we couldn't sleep in much either. I'm definitely hardcore when it comes to Disney but this was truly exhausting! I knew I needed my eight hours because I was getting up at 8am the next morning... and planning to stay for extra magic hours in MK til 2am the next night! Will I make it?? Stay tuned

 

[emilyindisney]

Subbing in! This sounds like a really fun trip, and you got lots of great pictures!

 

[rachel09985]

What a fun trip!!! Great trip report so far.

That dessert party looks delish and the picture of you photoshopped into the train station is hilarious!

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

One of these days, I would love to try out a Illuminations dessert party! For one of our future trips, if we can find 6 or so people in our group I may be interested in putting one together. It's either that or dining at ToT like lurkyloo did.

I can completely understand how exhausted you must have been. Epcot is one park that really gets me winded at the end of the day.

 

[librarygeek]

Subbing in! This sounds like a really fun trip, and you got lots of great pictures!

Thanks for joining in! It was a really fun, unique trip!

What a fun trip!!! Great trip report so far.

That dessert party looks delish and the picture of you photoshopped into the train station is hilarious!

We had so much fun with that photo!

One of these days, I would love to try out a Illuminations dessert party! For one of our future trips, if we can find 6 or so people in our group I may be interested in putting one together. It's either that or dining at ToT like lurkyloo did.

I can completely understand how exhausted you must have been. Epcot is one park that really gets me winded at the end of the day.

Yes, if you can get the people and funds to do it I think it's worth trying at least once!

 

[laurenvic1312959]

The desert party looked great
I'd love to experience one myself at some point in the future, it's definitely on my to-do list

 

[librarygeek]

The desert party looked great
I'd love to experience one myself at some point in the future, it's definitely on my to-do list

Definitely try it if you get the chance!

 

[librarygeek]

Sunday - Magic Kingdom Day (plus Whispering Canyon and tea at GF!)

To start off the day, we had a breakfast scheduled at the Whispering Canyon Cafe at the Wilderness Lodge! I had never been to Wilderness Lodge before so I was excited to check it out, and I heard the Whispering Canyon was a lot of fun.

There were some neat things going on during breakfast that they do there. The most fun that we had was two of my friends were celebrating an anniversary. They brought them a cupcake, but before they ate it the waiter made our friend get up and sing to his fiancee! He sang "You are my Sunshine," and it was very entertaining

As far as the food went, I thought it was just okay. I'm not a big breakfast eater and I had a hard time picking something off the menu that I thought I would like. In the end I went with the typical egg platter - a biscuit, scrambled eggs, bacon, and potatoes. Unfortunately, the potatoes had onions in them and I'm not a fan. Not only could I not eat the potatoes, but the eggs they were touching tasted strongly of onions as well. I'm normally not that picky when it comes to flavors but this was just an extremely strong onion flavor.

We were planning to do a photo shoot at the GF at 1:00, and tea at 2 that afternoon. By this time it was already 10:30 and it just didn't seem worth it to go into the parks for an hour or two, especially since everyone was going to change into dresses for the tea. Instead we decided to go visit the store that is just for cast members and their friends, since my roommate is a cast member! It was kind of neat to see all of the discounted stuff, and we shopped for awhile there. After that we returned to OKW to get changed and head over to the GF!

We had another photoshoot planned with Regina, so we could get some fun pictures of us in dresses and hats before tea. It was freezing outside but we did get some good shots!

Then it was time for tea. I'm a big tea drinker and I definitely loved this. I ordered the Buckingham tea, which came with a pot of tea, tea sandwiches, a scone, and dessert.

I had the Russian Earl Grey tea, which was Earl Grey with vanilla flavoring. It was really good. I also tried some of the tea that the other girls got since they give you so much. You get your own personal little tea pot.

I enjoyed pretty much all of the little sandwiches that they gave you. My favorites were the chicken curry and the salmon. I think there was also cucumber, egg salad, and one other I can't quite recall.

I then had a scone and a jam tart. This was really good as well. I was impressed that the jam had whole pieces of strawberry in it.

Finally, for dessert I had strawberries and cream. They way it was presented was absolutely stunning, and it was quite tasty too!

Overall I really loved the tea here. My meal was very filling and held me over just fine until our late dinner that evening at 8:00. I would love to return here, and it was definitely tons of fun getting dressed up for it too!

 

[librarygeek]

Magic Kingdom!

After tea, we all got changed and then it was finally time to head into the Magic Kingdom! We got there around 4pm and I was getting a little antsy. This was the moment I had been waiting for all trip. Even though all of my friends had already been to Disney since new Fantasyland opened, I had not so I hadn't seen any of it. I love the princesses and Beauty and the Beast especially, so I was really excited!

When we first arrived we headed to the Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom station since some of my friends collect the cards. I had never tried it so I decided to "sign up." I went through the little training program. It was cute, though I never actually got to play since it was so crowded. But I liked the cards, and hopefully I'll be able to try it next time!

The first thing we decided to do was go back to new Fantasyland so I could see it. My friends wanted to wait until later to do any of the rides so that they could hopefully have shorter wait times. I was so in love with new Fantasyland!

My new favorite store where I want to buy absolutely everything:

I really, really wanted to do Enchanted Tales with Belle, because it's my favorite movie and I love Belle, but my friends insisted we wait until later because it was a 60 minute wait, and with the Magic Kingdom open until 2am we wouldn't have to wait that long later. We decided after our 8pm reservation at Be Our Guest we would come out to watch Wishes and then go to Belle right after that.

For now we decided to go meet the princesses at the meet and greet. Since it was True Love week they were with their princes, which was cool. The wait time was about 45 minutes, so we grabbed fastpasses for Mickey and Minnie and then got on line for princesses.

Well, I don't know what it was - if they had terribly misestimated or if it has something to do with the new fastpass system they are implementing, but they were letting through so many more fastpass people than on the normal line. We didn't get to start meeting the princesses until almost 2 HOURS of waiting. Insane given the fact that it was a 45 minute posted wait time.

It was at least cool to meet the princes. Flynn and Rapunzel were awesome, so much fun. My friend asked Flynn what was in his satchel and we got a fun picture because of that!

We also met Cinderella and Prince Charming, and Aurora and Prince Phillip. They were handing out Valentines instead of doing autographs, which I was at least grateful for because it made things move a little quicker.

By the time we got out of there it was already past 7pm. We went to guest relations to complain about the inaccurate wait time. They gave us some new fastpasses to use on any ride we wanted for the rest of the day, so that at least was nice. We decided to go ride the new Little Mermaid ride.

I guess it was just not our day, because the ride broke down right before we got on it. Now we were approaching our dinner reservation time, and so we thought about leaving (though we'd already handed in our fastpasses). The ride operators assured us it would be up in no time and there wouldn't be any more problems. We finally got on... when it broke down again. The ride was really cute, but it was stressful wondering if we would make it for dinner (also considering the fact that we were meeting up with the rest of our group for that!). We did manage to make it to Be Our Guest right around 8pm though.

And can I just say... I am so in love with this restaurant. It is absolutely stunning on the inside, and Beauty and the Beast fans are sure to love it.

Most of us decided to start the meal off with some champagne. It felt like a special occasion being there at Be Our Guest, and we were all just so happy and excited about it.

We had a table of ten people and everyone else ordered the steak except for me - I went with the salmon. The salmon filet was really tasty, though I wasn't crazy about the potatoes it came with. I did get to try some of the fries that came with the steak though, and those were amazing! I would definitely see if I could sub fries if I got the salmon dish again.

Then they brought the adorable little dessert cart around. I decided to try the passion fruit cream puff. I'd never had a cream puff before so I wasn't sure what to expect. This was hands down one of the most delicious desserts I've ever eaten. I'm dreaming of coming back and having this again. It was sweet and just so good.

We also had someone at the table with a birthday, so they got the gray stuff. We all tried a tiny bit of it. It was pretty good, but nowhere near as tasty as my cream puff!

After eating we got to meet the Beast in his study! He was huge haha!

By the time we were done with everything and got outside it was already 9:50. Wishes started at 10, so we decided to find a spot on the ground outside new Fantasyland over near the carousel and watch from there. It was an interesting experience because half of the fireworks were in front of us over the castle, and the other half were actually behind us. But it was a nice spot to watch because it wasn't very crowded.

Though it was already 10pm our night in MK was really just beginning... I'll continue with all of that soon!

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

Great update! Be Our Guest restaurant was the one thing we didn't get to try during our last trip because I couldn't get an ADR for dinner and the lines for the lunch were just too long. So good to see you enjoyed it. We're looking forward to it for our next trip!

Also, so good to see Flynn! Our DD loved his smolder!

 

[SuperNEMOfan]

Joining in

I love your BOG pictures!!

I cant wait to see it in person in september!

 

[librarygeek]

Great update! Be Our Guest restaurant was the one thing we didn't get to try during our last trip because I couldn't get an ADR for dinner and the lines for the lunch were just too long. So good to see you enjoyed it. We're looking forward to it for our next trip!

Also, so good to see Flynn! Our DD loved his smolder!

I hope you get the chance to do Be Our Guest soon - it was really a great experience!

Joining in

I love your BOG pictures!!

I cant wait to see it in person in september!

Awesome, you will love it! The pictures are great but it's nothing like seeing it in person!

 

[danceintherain]

Tea at the Grand Floridian sounds like so much fun, but I don't drink tea, and I've heard different reports about adults being able to order the "kids" tea.
Everyone wearing dresses was a great idea though!

I can't wait to see New Fantasyland. I've been trying to avoid the pictures, so it will be more of a shock when I get there, but we'll see.

 

[teekathepony]

Subbing! This looks fun!