*6/4 Update: Our Intentions Were Good, But The Treats Were Better: One Month in Disney (4/21-5/21)

[Noreen411]

Hi. Happy to see another report from you. A month in Disney sounds amazing. Can’t wait to read all about it.

 

[mickey916]

Hi. Happy to see another report from you. A month in Disney sounds amazing. Can’t wait to read all about it.

Welcome and thank you! It was amazing. It was everything I imagined it could be!

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

Looks like a great start to your trip!

 

[mickey916]

Looks like a great start to your trip!

It was!

 

[tinkerbellmagic]

A month in Disney! It sounds like quite an adventure. Your food pics look delicious! Can’t wait to read about your fun trip!

 

[GGOOFY1]

I look forward to the chance to spend a month in Orlando.

 

[mickey916]

A month in Disney! It sounds like quite an adventure. Your food pics look delicious! Can’t wait to read about your fun trip!

It was! Thank you so much!

I look forward to the chance to spend a month in Orlando.

If you ever have the opportunity, do it! DH just said to me last night, we just spent four weeks there and I would go back again tomorrow. So fun!

 

[mickey916]

4/23 Spending the Day in Our Favorite Park​

Even though we thought it might be busy during Easter week, we just had to start our day at Epcot, our favorite park. We couldn’t wait to see all the flowers and topiaries. Not only is Epcot our favorite park, the Flower & Garden Festival is our favorite festival (although we have yet to experience Food & Wine or Festival of the Arts).

Being off-site guests, we weren’t eligible for early entry so we arrived about 8:40. Off-site guests were allowed in and held to the left of Spaceship Earth. As we made our way there, we stopped to admire the new Moana 2 topiary at the entrance.

Since we were not planning on joining the mad rush to Guardians of the Galaxy, we decided to wait next to the line for Spaceship Earth. Cast Members dropped the rope at 8:55 and we headed under Spaceship Earth and straight for the Land pavilion.

I arrived at Soarin’ at 9:03 with a posted wait of 10 minutes. I was on the ride in under 8 minutes. We then rode Living with the Land and Journey into Imagination with Figment with no lines. We took a few photos of the beautiful topiaries and flowers as we headed to the World Showcase.

The Lion King topiary is always a favorite.

I loved this new garden based on the emotions of Inside Out 2. Each emotion had plants and flowers suited to their personality.

This is so gorgeous! I told DH I think he should put a pond in our yard and attempt this.

We also witnessed the return of the Phineas and Ferb topiaries. We are actually not familiar with these characters, as our sons had outgrown cartoons by the time the show aired but people seemed pretty excited to see the topiaries.

We just love that everywhere we turned there were gorgeous flower displays and topiaries. We love Encanto!

After admiring some of the displays, we were hoping to ride Frozen so I pulled up the Touringplans Lines app and saw a 26 minute wait. My Disney Experience showed the wait to be 40 minutes. Having found the Lines app to be much more accurate in the past than MDE, we decided to make our way to Norway to ride. As we approached the ride, it looked to us to be much longer than a 26 minute wait but we decided to wait anyhow. Turns out MDE was exactly accurate, we waited 40 minutes. What’s interesting is that throughout our trip this time we found MDE’s wait times to be far more accurate than the Lines app. I have never found that to be the case in the past. I still appreciate the ride suggestions in the Lines app to “ride now”, “ride any time” or “wait to ride” but eventually we just started trusting the MDE wait times as the Lines app always seemed to underpredict. Since we usually only ride Frozen with a Lightning Lane, we actually didn’t mind our 40 minute wait as it allowed us to enjoy the sites in the regular queue. We especially liked seeing Oaken through the sauna window.

After riding Frozen, we decided to get an early lunch and headed to La Cantina. We opted to share the Arroz Bowl with Grilled Chicken: Rice bowl topped with grilled chicken, corn, spicy tomato salsa, pickled onions, queso fresco and cilantro

I liked the added flavor from the spicy tomato salsa, pickled red onion and cilantro but overall this dish was just okay. We thought it was good for quick service park food, but nothing we would make a point to get again.

We also shared an order of guacamole and chips.

This was not great. It really needed more flavor. It was basically mashed avocado with diced tomato on top. The chips also were not particularly fresh. Overall, we gave our lunch at La Cantina a C. It was fine but not memorable.

Feeling a little unsatisfied, we headed back to Norway to get dessert from the Kringla Bakeri. Since we’ve eaten the school bread many times and loved it, we decided to try something new. Our plan was to share a Troll Horn.

We enjoyed this a lot. The outside pastry was fresh and crisp and the chocolate filling was very tasty. It was exactly as we expected. We gave it a B+.

Since the size of the troll horn seemed a little small for a shared dessert, we made an impulse buy of another treat we have never tried from the Kringla Bakeri, the Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Oh my goodness! This cookie is fantastic! My DH took the first bite and looked at me with huge eyes. He said, “I won’t say anything until you taste it.” I didn’t know what to think and then I bit into it! Wow, there is so much flavor in this chocolate chip cookie! It has a slight hint of cinnamon and tons of chocolate chips. It is crispy on the outside and softer on the inside. We gave this an A+ and it rocketed to the number 1 spot on our dessert list. Did it stay there? You’ll have to wait and see. This was one impulse buy we do not regret! We love the schoolbread but I don’t think we’ll ever be able to go to Kringla and not get the cookie (too).

After dessert we returned to Mexico and rode the Gran Fiesta Tour with the Three Caballeros ride which had recently re-opened after some upgrades. I thought the attraction was definitely improved with better sound, video quality, and lighting. I don’t know if I just didn’t notice them before but I thought I saw one or two new animatronics too.

Up next..a free treat at Epcot and an interesting educational offering.

 

[disneyAndi14]

I love F&G, such a beautiful festival!
Hmmm we have always had delicious guacamole and chips at the QS in Mexico. The empanadas there are always delicious!
I just read about the cookie in Norway on someone else’s TR and they also gave it rave reviews! I need to give it a try. I love the school bread and haven’t had it in the last several trips! I need to make a visit end of August!

 

[rdkeim]

Following! You're off to a great start!

 

[HomeSweetDisney]

Wow, what a dream to spend a month in WDW! I am so jealous! I will be there in November for 9 days but only 5 park days and it still does not feel like enough

That salad looks delicious! I love peanut dressing, it is always so good. Looking forward to reading more about your Disney days and food!

 

[mickey916]

I love F&G, such a beautiful festival!

It is spectacular!

Hmmm we have always had delicious guacamole and chips at the QS in Mexico. The empanadas there are always delicious!

I'm actually glad to hear you say that about the guacamole. I've heard so many people like it but it was so bland. Perhaps it was just an off day or they forgot to add the seasoning. We've had the cheese empanadas before and really enjoyed them! Might have to give La Cantina another try sometime.

I just read about the cookie in Norway on someone else’s TR and they also gave it rave reviews! I need to give it a try. I love the school bread and haven’t had it in the last several trips! I need to make a visit end of August!

Yes you do!

Following! You're off to a great start!

Welcome! Thank you!

Wow, what a dream to spend a month in WDW! I am so jealous! I will be there in November for 9 days but only 5 park days and it still does not feel like enough

It was a dream for sure! Enjoy your November trip. We enjoy our non-park days a lot!

That salad looks delicious! I love peanut dressing, it is always so good. Looking forward to reading more about your Disney days and food!

I love peanut dressing too when it's done well! Welcome!

 

[mickeystoontown]

Joining in! I would love to spend a month doing the Disney parks! Our trips are 16 days and I would stay even longer if we didn't have jobs to get back to.

 

[ddluvsdisney]

We love F & G too! DH also has the touring plans app and usually works really well.

 

[ddluvsdisney]

Continued….that guacamole doesn’t look very good at all. Next time try Choza de Margarita across from la cantina. The Tostada de Pollo is my favorite lunch dish along with a cucumber margarita of course! Both those desserts from Norway look amazing! I’m taking notes for my July trip.

 

[mickey916]

Joining in! I would love to spend a month doing the Disney parks! Our trips are 16 days and I would stay even longer if we didn't have jobs to get back to.

16 days is about the longest we had done previously. Stinkin' jobs always interrupting vacations!

 

[mickey916]

We love F & G too! DH also has the touring plans app and usually works really well.

We have used touring plans every trip and it's been great but for some reason it was off this trip.

Continued….that guacamole doesn’t look very good at all. Next time try Choza de Margarita across from la cantina. The Tostada de Pollo is my favorite lunch dish along with a cucumber margarita of course! Both those desserts from Norway look amazing! I’m taking notes for my July trip.

We've never tried Choza de Margarita. We will put that on the list for next time. We have some other excellent desserts coming up too for you to add to your list but that Triple Chocolate Chip cookie is a must do!

 

[kclark9830]

Joining in excitedly! Epcot is also my favorite.

 

[mickey916]

Joining in excitedly! Epcot is also my favorite.

Welcome! Thank you for following along!

 

[mickey916]

4/23 continued - Free Treats are Always Good!​

We were heading back to World Celebration for a special offering when we stumbled upon a booth where CMs were giving away free Uncrustables! True confession: DH and I have never tried an Uncrustable. I had bought them for our boys when they were young to throw into their lunch boxes from time to time but neither of us had actually eaten any of them. We each got a strawberry Uncrustable and ate it immediately. It was still a little chilled, having come from the cooler but not frozen.

We both thought they were very tasty! So much so that, for the rest of the trip, DH was always checking to see if the booth was open again (and he was very happy to find it open one or two more times).

Since we were in the mood for free refreshments, we decided to pop into Club Cool to try a few sodas, which we have done many times. DH likes the Sprite Cucumber (Russian) and I like the Viva Raspberry (Moldova) and Royal Watermelon (Phillipines). No, we did not drink the Beverly!

After our surprising treat and refreshing drinks, we made our way over to the Purple Martin birdhouses. We had seen on YouTube that there were Purple Martin presentations at 1:00 every Wednesday so we wanted to check it out. As we were waiting a bunch of CMs came out to check all of the nests, looking for eggs and hatchlings.

One CM was available to answer any questions we had. One of the interesting things she told us was that they go from birth to fully grown adults in 21 days. She explained that Purple Martins are very comfortable around humans and are reliant on them to provide structures for their nest. The birds didn’t seem bothered at all by all the humans in their space.

My understanding is that several times a week Cast Members check each of the nests to track eggs, babies, etc. One of the CMs found babies inside one of the nests and showed them to us. Unfortunately my phone’s camera focused on the piece of straw but the pink things in the bottom are the babies. So cool!

After seeing the birds, we rode Spaceship Earth. There was a posted 10 minute wait but it only took us 3 minutes. I next checked the Lines app for Guardians and they suggested “ride now” with a 38 minute wait. The MDE wait was posted at 45. I thought that was pretty good so I hopped in line. I forgot to check my watch for the exact wait time but I was off the ride within an hour so it wasn’t too bad! I was happy that I finally got to ride to the song “Conga”!

Love the Groot topiary. I didn’t hear his music though. Not sure if they were doing that this year.

After Guardians, we rode Finding Nemo with no wait and then decided it was time for another refreshing beverage. We opted for the Pineapple Dole Whip Float from Pineapple Promenade.

This was refreshing and delicious! I didn’t realize that DH had never tried Dole Whip before. I had tried a Dole Whip Float on my solo day in April 2022 and a twist in May 2022 but he had a Citrus Swirl that day. He was surprised at how much he enjoyed this float!

Rejuvenated after our treat, we walked around enjoying the topiaries. I love the geese in Canada!

We also searched for Spike the Bee as we made our way through the gardens. I didn’t purchase the official Spike the Bee scavenger hunt wheel this time, as we didn’t really need a mini watering can. We just took pictures and kept track of his locations as we went along.

Here’s a couple other photos I took of the topiaries:

In France, I joined the single rider line for Remy. I’m so glad they offer single rider lines. DH can’t do a lot of motion so it really helps when I can just hop on a single rider line instead of having to buy a lightning lane or stand in a long line alone. I used the single rider line a lot on this trip.

Up next…our first time dining at Shiki-Sai, will it be the last?