Do I really have to eat dessert again?! COMPLETE!

[fallonkendra]

Hi! I currently have an in-depth trip report started, which you can read here, but I thought it might be helpful to also create a dining report!

This was our first trip to the World (although we had been to Disneyland before), and we were on the standard dining plan. I was determined to make sure we got our money's worth out of that thing, and I have the information entered into a spreadsheet I'll post it at the end of this dining report, along with a breakdown at the end of each day of the trip.

We stayed at All-Star Music for 7 nights, so we had 7 table service credits, 7 quick service credits and 7 snack credits each to use.

First things first - who are we?

​

Fallon (that's me in the Minnie ears!)

• 27 in that picture (turned 28 while in Florida on this trip)
• Work: Welding inspector (although I spend most of my time hidden in my office beneath mountains of paperwork)
• Favourite WDW park: Magic Kingdom/Animal Kingdom
• Favourite WDW ride: Expedition Everest, Haunted Mansion, BTMR, TOT
• Favourite Disney character: Eeyore (I had my room decorated in Winnie-the-Pooh when I was younger!)

Luke

• 33 in that picture, turned 34 shortly after our trip
• Work: Creative Writer for a group of radio stations
• Favourite Park: Magic Kingdom
• Favourite Ride: Haunted Mansion
• Favourite Disney character: Wall-E

 

[fallonkendra]

Tuesday, January 5th, 2016

• Intermission Food Court (out-of-pocket) - Late night

Wednesday, January 6th, 2016 - End of day Cost Breakdown

• Intermission Food Court (out-of-pocket) - Breakfast
• Peco's Bills (quick service credits) - Lunch
• Be Our Guest (table service credits) - Supper

Thursday, January 7th, 2016 - End of day Cost Breakdown

• Tusker House (table service credits) - Lunch
• Intermission Food Court (quick service credits) - Supper

Friday, January 8th, 2016 - End of day Cost Breakdown

• 50's Prime Time (table service credits) - Lunch
• Sci-Fi Dine-In (out of pocket) - Supper
• Intermission Food Court (quick service credits) - Late night

Saturday, January 9th, 2016 - End of day Cost Breakdown

• Morimoto Asia (out of pocket) - Lunch
• Hoop-dee-Doo Musical Revue (table service credits) - Supper

Sunday, January 10th, 2016 - End of day Cost Breakdown

• Sunshine Seasons (quick service credits) - Lunch
• Garden Grill (table service credits) - Supper

Monday, January 11th, 2016 - End of Day Cost Breakdown

• Be Our Guest (quick service credits) - Breakfast
• Be Our Guest (quick service credits) - Lunch
• Crystal Palace (table service credits) - Supper

Tuesday, January 12th, 2016

• Yak & Yeti Quick Serve (quick service credits) - Lunch
• Tamu Tamu Refreshments (out of pocket) - Snacks
• Intermission Food Court (quick service credits) - Supper

Recap/Dining Plan Breakdown

 

[fallonkendra]

Before reading, please keep in mind that I am not a fancy-food person. I don't have a refined palate, and I'm also a little bit on the fussy side. Also worth noting is that I have Crohn's disease and certain foods do not get along very well with my digestive system - namely eggs on their own (but they're fine cooked into something else like a cookie) and anything with sesame (cooked in sesame oil, seeds, etc). So you won't see me eating breakfast very often!

Intermission Food Court - January 5th, 2016​

After hours of flying and 2 layovers, we finally landed in Orlando and hopped onto the Magical Express! We were the third stop out of four on our bus, but it didn't take long before we were checking in! Once we received our MagicBands and room assignment, we decided it was time for our first Disney meal of the trip! It was late, so Intermission Food Court was offering a reduced menu but we had no trouble finding items to order.

We activated our refillable mugs - I chose blue and Luke grabbed a green one for himself. These were included in our dining plan

Luke ordered the chicken nuggets with salad. I was not expecting these for the nuggets! I figured he'd have a plate with some pressed meat blobs similar to what they serve at McDonald's, not real white meat chunks! I stole one of these from his plate and was really impressed by them! I didn't try the salad, it looked disgusting to me but Luke said it was really nice, and he enjoyed the fact that he had an option to eat vegetables even if his main meal was deep-fried...

​

I had the make-your-own pasta with penne, a chicken breast (it's buried under that sauce!) and marinara sauce with a breadstick and salad on the side. The pasta was nothing special, but it's a food I really enjoy (I was gluten free for 4 years, from the age of 21 until my Crohn's diagnosis at the age of 25, so I have an appreciation for the taste of refined flour now ) The penne didn't seem to be normal white pasta, but it wasn't quite whole wheat either - is there some hybrid of the two? Or am I just that terrible at judging food? Either way, I ate it all. The chicken breast was good and a decent size, the sauce had flavour (I've had much better, but I've also had much worse) and the breadstick was just a classic breadstick that had some salt on it. I ate everything, even a little bit of the side salad (you'll notice in this dining report I'm not a huge vegetable person haha). The dressing was some sort of balsamic, which I am not a fan of, and there were a lot of things in the salad I didn't like (like tomatoes, gross!). But, I ate a few pieces of lettuce and then let Luke finish it off - he was happy with that - he loves his veggies!

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We didn't buy drinks with this meal, we just used our refillable mugs. I want to say we both had Coke (which is so much better in the States - Canada doesn't allow high-fructose corn syrup, our Coke/Pepsi products are sweetened with glucose-fructose and I find they have completely different flavours). For this meal we decided to pay out of pocket as we didn't want dessert that late at night, and it didn't cross our minds that we could save it for the morning as a snack. The total cost for both meals came to $20.10 - which really isn't terrible for what we got.

 

[fallonkendra]

Intermission Food Court - January 6th, 2016 - Breakfast​

On our first morning at Disney, we decided to grab some food in the food court of our hotel again, before heading out to the Marathon Weekend Race Expo.

I'm not much of a breakfast person. My first meal of the day usually involves some sort of junk food if I'm being honest, but I decided to go with some banana bread on this morning. The cost was $3.79, but I used our first dining plan credit of our trip - a single snack credit. This was fine, nothing really special. It was enough food for me to take my Crohn's medication, and to hold me over until lunch later in the day. I prefer my banana bread to have chocolate chips in it, like I said I like my junk food . Would I buy this again? Probably. It was cheap and good enough for me.

​

Luke on the other hand, eats breakfast every morning. Most mornings when I come downstairs I find him sitting at the kitchen table sharing pieces of bacon with our two dogs and two cats haha. He decided to go with the Bounty Platter, which contained scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, a Mickey waffle, a biscuit, bacon and a sausage link. He also picked up a banana to go with his meal. I ended up snacking on the breakfast potatoes, I liked them a lot. In Luke's words - "the bacon was standard restaurant bacon - it's still good but just not great. The sausage was surprisingly really good! The Mickey waffle was way better than I expected it to be. The eggs were just basic, but fine. I can't remember if I ate the biscuit or not?" We paid out of pocket for this one and it came to $11.97 - and $1.69 of that was for the single banana. The platter was a decent amount of food, especially for the price.

​

 

[Kelly Anne]

Following along....

 

[fallonkendra]

Peco's Bills - January 6th, 2016 - Lunch​

After the race expo, the first park we headed to on our trip was Magic Kingdom! After our first Fastpass for Splash Mountain, we decided it was time for lunch and decided to give Peco's Bills a try.

After looking over the small menu, we made the decision to share a single meal. We had a supper reservation at Be Our Guest, and we knew we'd be having a large meal there, and we wanted to fully enjoy it without being too full.

From all of my research on the dining plan before we left for our trip, I knew that each quick service credit was good for one entree, one non-alcoholic drink and one dessert. We agreed to go with the build-your-own fajita platter with beef, black beans, cilantro rice, grilled onions/green peppers and three flour tortillas, with a coke and the churro bites and chocolate sauce for dessert.

I was impressed by the "fixin's bar" here, where you could load up on a variety of items to pile on your fajitas. Between us we picked up some shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream, jalapeno peppers, guacamole, banana peppers, hot sauce and pico de gallo. All of these toppings are free with the purchase of a meal, and they really elevated our fajitas!

Three tortillas might not sound like much, but once you pile on your fixin's, meat, grilled veggies, etc, they became difficult to even close! I only ate one, and it was so full of meat, rice, sour cream, salsa and shredded cheese it was messy! I definitely enjoyed it though! Obviously, don't order this expecting the meat to be comparable to a filet mignon from a fancy steakhouse or anything haha.

​

We were both skeptical of churros - the only ones we'd ever had were hard and dry and gross, but we'd heard so much about Disney churros. After one bite, we realized what all the fuss was about - these were so much better than any churro we'd ever had before! I wasn't crazy over the chocolate sauce these ones were served with, but the churros didn't need them, there was plenty of cinnamon sugar to go around!

It ended up being more than enough food for us to share and hold us over until supper. While we were eating, I noticed a large bird walking around. I'm actually terrified of birds, and this guy walked right up to us with no shame, and stole a mouthful of beef off our tray before we even realized what had happened. I had my phone out just to take a picture of him, he was a couple feet away from us when I started raising my phone up for a picture - this guy was fast! But there you go - the meat is Disney wild-bird approved as well!

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Had we paid for this meal ourselves, it would have cost $14.99 for the fajita platter, $4.99 for the churros and $3.69 for the Coke. That's a pretty good use of a quick service credit!

 

[DisneyJo]

Great reviews, thanks

 

[Disney_Mama]

Great reviews and pictures. Can't wait for the rest. Thanks for sharing.

 

[phabric]

Enjoyed reading your review with pictures. I am also staying at All Star Music and from Toronto, Canada.

 

[ALEXandFAB]

​

Oh my God, I would have screamed!

 

[fallonkendra]

Following along....

Thanks for reading!

Great reviews, thanks

Thank you!

Great reviews and pictures. Can't wait for the rest. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks! Unfortunately we did have a few meals where I forgot to take pictures, but I tried!

Enjoyed reading your review with pictures. I am also staying at All Star Music and from Toronto, Canada.

I'm originally from New Brunswick, Luke is originally from Manitoba and we currently live in Alberta! If you read my trip report, I have pictures of our room at All Star Music. It was nothing fancy, but it was all we needed on this trip!

Oh my God, I would have screamed!

I hate birds, they terrify me. I think I was more in shock that this had happened at the time...

 

[fallonkendra]

Be Our Guest - January 6th, 2016 - Supper​

After an amazing day afternoon at Magic Kingdom, it was finally time for our supper ADR - at Be Our Guest! I was so excited for this one, and felt so lucky to have even managed to book us in . When we booked this trip, we were already well within the 180 day window for making dining reservations, but I refused to give up on this place! I kept checking, and I finally managed to find a single opening, for 6:20 on our first full day at Disney! I had to juggle a few of our other ADR's around to make this fit, but we did it!

We checked in, and then walked over the bridge to sit outside. Within 5 minutes our names were called and we were being led into the Beast's castle! We were led to a table at the very back of the main room, right beside the Christmas tree! Sorry this picture is kind of blurry, the room was really dark and I hadn't quite figured out my new camera yet...

​

I loved the red napkins at each place setting, rolled into a rose. So simple, yet it added a nice touch.

​

I went a little crazy in the planning stages of my trip, and had read all of the menus posted online for the restaurants we knew we'd be visiting, so I knew exactly what I wanted before I even sat down - the grilled strip steak (cooked well done of course!) with green beans and fries. After reading over the menu, Luke decided to get the same thing, only with his steak cooked medium (gross!). I ordered a glass of water and a glass of root beer to go with my meal. I thought about a glass of wine, but I knew we weren't finished going on rides for the night, and with my Crohn's I really have to be careful of alcohol. Luke ordered a glass of water, a coffee and a bottle of Kronenberg beer (he's not a huge drinker, but you have to take advantage of being in the only licensed area of Magic Kingdom!).

I wish I could remember our waiter's name - he was excellent! Very attentive, friendly and personable without being too intrusive. Our meals came out perfect - my steak was actually cooked well done properly (which a lot of places seem to struggle with). It was cooked fully, but still juicy. And the beans - Oh. My. God. Those beans. According to the menu, they were cooked in truffle oil (which I had never had before - I'm an extremely fussy eater so we don't usually go to very many fancy restaurants), and I couldn't get enough of them. I ate every last one, while picking out the onions and red peppers which came mixed in with them and shoving them onto Luke's plate haha. Like I said, I'm really fussy. Here's a picture of my amazing meal (the plating wasn't the prettiest):

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I ended up eating only a few of my fries. I was not a fan of the sauce they were served with, and I prefer shoestring-style fries to thick cut ones like these. It was fine though, the beans and the steak were so fantastic I didn't mind not eating everything on my plate - plus it was more than enough food for me. The steak was huge - I think the menu said it was 10 ounces? I typically struggle just to finish an 8 ounce steak at a restaurant, but I was impressed by how much I was able to eat. Luke of course finished all of his, because he's a man and that's what they do.

We knew we would be using credits from the dining plan on this meal, so dessert was included. I already knew what I wanted - I had to try the grey stuff! Luke ordered the orange eclair. Here are our desserts in all their glory:

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The grey stuff was a grey coloured mousse that tasted like cookies n' cream tucked inside a chocolate tart. The tart was harder than I was expecting, I ended up scooping the grey stuff out with my spoon. Luke declared his eclair was "great!" I tried a bite, and I'd have to agree!

Our amazing waiter had actually noticed my birthday pin stuck to my backpack, which I had put on the floor beside me and brought me a Happy Birthday card signed by Belle and the Beast, and a plate of grey stuff mousse sprinkled with Mickey sprinkles and a candle stuck in it. I thought this was such a nice little touch - some really great Disney magic! It was nice to begin celebrating my birthday a week early

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The cost of our meal: $35/each for our steaks, $5 for each dessert, $3.50 for my root beer, $3 for Luke's coffee and $13 for two beer. We swiped our Magic Bands and used 2 table service credits, leaving us with a bill for $13 for the beer, plus tip (and we tipped well - we loved that waiter!).

We stopped to meet the Beast on our way out. I don't know why Luke was cut out of this picture...

Overall we had a fantastic experience with great food, atmosphere and waiter. The steak is by far the most expensive item on the menu, and in my opinion the only thing worth using a table service credit on if you care about breaking even on the dining plan. I would not hesitate to return for supper, but I don't think it's going to make it into our plans for our next trip.

 

[Xclusive2WDW]

OMG that bird! How

I'm enjoying your DR and look forwarded to seeing all the ways you enjoyed the savings

Weirdest thing just happened. . . I clicked "post reply" and the screen blanked out and then there was a picture of a tree . . . I was sooooooooooo confused, then I looked, we must've posted at the same time

 

[chocolateMinnie]

loving the reviews so far - I look forward to seeing how the cost pans out. :

 

[auntfrannie]

So far it sounds like you had a great trip! Love the reviews!

 

[suse66]

Great reviews so far! I'm another Canadian (originally from Charlottetown but living north of Toronto now). We are an OOP family but I am interested to see how you maxed out the DDP!

 

[MissKIA]

Everything looks so yummy! Other than that salad your boyfriend had. I agree with you on that one! (not a tomato fan!)

Can't wait to read more!

 

[fallonkendra]

OMG that bird! How

No Kidding!

I'm enjoying your DR and look forwarded to seeing all the ways you enjoyed the savings

I'll have the cost breakdown for the first day posted shortly!

Weirdest thing just happened. . . I clicked "post reply" and the screen blanked out and then there was a picture of a tree . . . I was sooooooooooo confused, then I looked, we must've posted at the same time

That's so weird!

loving the reviews so far - I look forward to seeing how the cost pans out. :

Thanks for reading! I'll have the cost breakdown of our first full day at Disney posted today!

So far it sounds like you had a great trip! Love the reviews!

Thanks for reading!

Great reviews so far! I'm another Canadian (originally from Charlottetown but living north of Toronto now). We are an OOP family but I am interested to see how you maxed out the DDP!

I'm originally from New Brunswick, so we were neighbours! We're going OOP for our next trip, but that's due to the restuarants on our wishlist. We did end up saving money by being on the DDP!

Everything looks so yummy! Other than that salad your boyfriend had. I agree with you on that one! (not a tomato fan!)

Can't wait to read more!

I'm glad someone else understands! Tomatoes are gross!

 

[fallonkendra]

End of Day One - Disney Dining Plan Cost Breakdown​

For simplicity, I call one day on the dining plan $60/person (I know it's up to $63/day now, but this trip was booked before that price increase).

As of January 6th - 1 night at Disney - 2 people - $120 spent on the DDP.

2 Quick Service Credits (1 each) - only 1 used - $24.69

2 Table Service Credits (1 each) - 2 used - $90.83

2 Snack Credits (1 each) - only 1 used - $3.49

$119 worth of food - $120 paid but 1 Quick Serve Credit and 1 Snack Credit carried forward.

$32.07 paid out of pocket at Intermission Food Court, plus $13 for beer at BOG and tip.

 

[Xclusive2WDW]

End of Day One - Disney Dining Plan Cost Breakdown​

For simplicity, I call one day on the dining plan $60/person (I know it's up to $63/day now, but this trip was booked before that price increase).

As of January 6th - 1 night at Disney - 2 people - $120 spent on the DDP.

2 Quick Service Credits (1 each) - only 1 used - $24.69

2 Table Service Credits (1 each) - 2 used - $90.83

2 Snack Credits (1 each) - only 1 used - $3.49

$119 worth of food - $120 paid but 1 Quick Serve Credit and 1 Snack Credit carried forward.

$32.07 paid out of pocket at Intermission Food Court, plus $13 for beer at BOG and tip.

You're saving money already, great job