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.
Glad you enjoyed your first Uncrustable! My son used to eat them when he was little as well and I would sneak them in every now and then.
Guardians 45 min is not a long wait at all!
