Art of Animation - Landscape of Flavors
We stayed at AoA in August. We spend a lot of time at our resort so we ate here a lot. I totally forgot to take pictures of most of our meals so this review is very short on pictures. I only remembered during one meal (one of our breakfasts) so you'll have to take my word about how yummy things looked.
I got a call from Chef Dan (one of my favourite WDW chefs; he worked with us at Pop during each of our stays there and even found us the bread that we use today at home for DD14 during one of our Pop stays) around a month before our trip. We went over a bunch of my girls' likes and dislikes and discussed my concerns about the changes in products leading to lack of options for DD14. He absolutely agreed that it stank and said he already had ideas that he wanted to look into but wasn't going to go into what they'd be because he didn't want to get my hopes up or make promises he couldn't keep. I definitely understood that. I knew that even if he didn't come up with alternate products that he'd manage to make tasty meals for us so I wasn't worried.
We checked in at AoA mid-afternoon. We weren't hungry at all because we had just pigged out at WCC so we checked into our room and hung out for a bit. I wanted to hit the food court before the rush so maybe around 4:00 DH and I headed over while the girls hung out. Chef Dan came out to greet us with his usual huge smile. Warning: he's a chatterbox. He's one of the few people who can talk as much as we can. LOL!! He was ready for us. He remembered that I had asked about the sweet potato fries but they weren't gluten free. What he DID do was prep some sweet potatoes to see if he could manage some from scratch. He tried. They didn't come out how he liked but we all enjoyed them. He only did this once because he really wasn't happy with them but I was really touched that he had tried. He ordered a carton of Silk milk for DD14 because the soy milk they carry contains gluten (I still don't know what genius made that decision) and he had the CM at the register only charge us for a regular carton of milk which was really nice of him. He also sent one of his staff over to Pop to get some chicken tenders for our kids because they don't normally carry them. I couldn't believe he would do that. How nice is that? He felt bad that there just weren't as many options for DD14 as he would have liked so that's why he did that. Have I mentioned that he's one of our favourite chefs?
I have to say that I loved having a suite with lots of room and nice big table because it was wonderful being able to carry our food back to the room to eat and have the room to sit. The table only fits 4 and you really can't pull a chair up to the end of the table so even though the room fits 6, you can't all fit at the table. You can fold up the sofa and use the little tables there but you really can't sit as a family of 5 or 6 all together and eat. But, it was very nice being able to eat in a calm, quiet environment. If you plan to bring your food back to your room, say so when ordering so they can put it in a to go box. The default is to put the food on regular non-disposable dishes and those don't have covers so they don't stack and don't travel as well.
Because we eat at such off times, when we did eat in the food court, most of the tables were empty and not much was going on. It did feel very big and open and I'm not sure why I'm remembering it this way but I'm recalling it feeling kind of echo-y if that makes any sense. Going over to the Lion King area felt more contained as it's away from the windows and even the ceiling felt lower. You can't see the ordering area from the Lion King area so just in general this is a less overwhelming area to sit.
It does get loud. It does get busy. Visually it is VERY stimulating in there. Even just sitting at the tables there's a lot of visual stimulation and unless it's empty then there's a lot of noise. Because the dishes are real dishes, it's louder than with paper plates and plastic cutlery. As I said above it is a lot better in the Lion King section but if your child is already overstimulated from ordering then it might be too much.
When ordering allergy food, it is REALLY slow. This is to be expected but it sometimes felt more excessive than other times. I know it was based on what was being ordered for pasta they have to get the water boiling then cook it and this brand of gluten free pasta takes 20 minutes once the water's boiling then it had to be sauteed with the meats and veggies). They gave us a pager each time but we were nervous about going too far because I just wasn't sure of the range plus it seemed as though at least 1/3 of the time the chef would have questions for us so I wouldn't want to go far. We never actually witnessed lines (honest) but again, we eat at very off times.
Breakfast
We ate breakfast a few times at AoA. I took pictures one morning so here you go.
Jumbo Mickey waffle with fruit. She ate the bacon before I took the picture. Normally the fruit is a mixture of strawberries, blueberries and oranges I think maybe in a syrup but my kids can't have oranges so they gave them fresh fruit instead. This is the waffle they started with when we arrived but part way through our trip they switched to the round ones. They do use a dedicated waffle press and according to the chefs they use a mixture of Bob's Red Mill and Namaste. The margarine is Earth Balance and in the other cup is real maple syrup. The bacon is the same stuff you get everywhere.
Nemo waffles with bacon and fruit. With an adult meal some chefs will give 3, some will give 4.
Breakfast platter - scrambled eggs with turkey bacon and fries. The regular potato casserole has dairy so fries is the option we were given. The turkey bacon is surprisingly good. Regular grocery store turkey bacon IMO has a plastic texture. This had an actual meat texture and tasted pretty good. This also came with a roll. The chef originally gave DD12 an Ener-G roll which is not good because it contains citrus fiber which she can't have. It's a good thing I recognized it as Ener-G or she would have eaten it. The chef replaced it with an Udi's dinner roll. Those Udi's dinner rolls are not very good; the only Udi's product we haven't liked. The chef did offer to replace the whole meal since the roll was on this plate with the other food but I know DD12's intollerances well enough to know that in this case it won't cause problems having had the roll on her plate.
That's it for the pictures.
DD14 really enjoyed her waffles so she got those again. They were very consistent. DD12 and I ended up trying something else that was wonderful. They have somethign called steak and eggs. It's really a bacon cheeseburger with an over medium fried egg served with potatoes. They carry both american and mozzerella Tofutti so we ordered it with Tofutti on an Udi's hamburger bun with fries since the potato casserole is still not safe and can't be made safe. SO YUMMY. The egg is a bit runny so when you bite into it the yolk runs down into the bun a bit making it gooey and good. I would not hesitate to order this again.
I do want to mention though that the only problems we had from an allergy perspective were at breakfast. The roll wasn't the only problem. One of the steak and egg dishes was served with regular pepperjack cheese. It's a really good thing I look closely and that pepperjack has those telltale little bits of peppers in them or I would have been really sick. Actually, DD12 would have been too because when she saw what I ordered she immediately asked to try it and almost took a bite when I saw the flecks. The actual chef didn't prepare it himself and the line cook wasn't paying enough attention. Scary stuff!! I watched our food like a hawk after that and this did add to my feeling of having to stick around so I could see if chefs were going back and forth and getting others to prepare our food in the non-allergy area of the kitchen. I'd still order it again and eat here again but I'll definitely stay on my toes.
Lunch & Dinner
Sorry, no pictures of any other meals. But, I can certainly describe our food. I'm definitely not short on words (that's my way of admitting I'm long winded).
Create your own pasta: This was a huge hit. They have a couple different shapes of Tinkyada pasta to work with. This meal takes a long time to prepare but it's worth the wait. They have lots of ingredients to work with and they can do tomato sauce or olive oil. The pesto has parmesan and I think also pine nuts so it's not a good allergy sauce and the alfredo obviously has milk. DD14 and I both tried this with the tomato sauce and olive oil at different times and we tried it with different ingredients. It was really good each time. This is definitely a huge hit!!
Bacon cheeseburgers: What can I say? A burger's a burger. They're served on Udi's buns which are pretty good, though DD14 can't eat them due to eggs so she never got a burger. As I said in the breakfast part of this review, they have both american and mozzerella Tofutti. They do have a dedicated french fry fryer so this is a pretty quick meal to order.
Chicken tenders: These are not normally on the menu. Chef Dan was so wonderful to send a runner over to Pop to bring back a case just for us. I do not expect this to happen typically but boy am I grateful. They're the same ones sold all over WDW and they were yummy.
Pizza: The crusts I think were Udi's and the chefs used Tofutti mozzerella to top them. The could put just about any toppings they had around but we didn't ask for anything fancy. They were pretty good. DD12 got this a few times. The pizzas come with salads so the chefs would just put together a simple tossed salad. DD12 doesn't like vinegrettes and likes dressingless salad with bacon so they gladly just topped hers with bacon without dressing. They did a few different types of vinegrettes for me when given creative freedom to do anything. Very tasty!
If I wasn't already tired of vinegrettes I likely would have tried the create your own salad station but after a few days at AoA and having already been at WDW for 4 days before that, I was very tired of them. It looked good but I just wanted a different dressing if I was going to have another salad and that just wasn't an option unfortunately.
DD14 one night just wasn't in the mood for the typical items on the menu so the chef came up with something for her based on her request. She just wanted plain pasta, a dish of sauteed mushrooms and a dish of rice. This is what she wanted so this is what they made. The rice was the white rice they make for the tandoori station so it's cooked with some spices that she's never had before in her life. That was a mistake. I don't actually know what spice she reacted to but she got itchy spots all over her body. I was actually wondering at one point if she might have chickenpox because her OCD go triggered by this and after picking all night at the spots they looked a lot like chickenpox. I finally figured out it was an allergic reaction (FYI: they don't carry GFCF antihistamines at MK) and the only thing I could figure was the rice. She has a milder version of this exact rash when she consumes yeast but there wasn't any yeast in anything she ate. I'm going to have to watch indian spices closely going forward. In no way to I blame the chefs for this; she's never had star anise or a few other spices that were in the rice. You know, I should really take note of those spices and look up their relationship to other stuff.
Smoothies: The regular smoothies have milk in them. They can make custom smoothies in the kitchen for you if you can't have milk. The base of the smoothies is Odwalla juices so in our case we were very limited in our options as most of those have citrus juice in them. We gave chef Huy (another wonderful former Pop chef) the freedom to create whatever he wanted as long as it was safe and he made a few tasty options for us. Normally they don't allow the custom smoothies using the dining plan but since none of the regular ones are safe for us they allowed us to get these as our desserts.
Babycakes mini cupcakes: Such an amazing option. They were very well stocked and never close to running out. They were basically brownie bites with flavoured and coloured icing. They had chocolate, mocha, mint chocolate and vanilla in every pack. YUMMY!!
They also carry a wide variety of allergy snacks and I also found out on our last day that they had Babycakes chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. I wish I had have known earlier. They don't put them out on the shelves and I think they keep them to offer to people who just don't have many options (like DD14).
And now I can't recall if we ate anything else so I'll end here.
