beccawes7471
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2005
- Messages
- 230
After 5 trips, four on dining plan, huge amts of research and reading countless other reports, I am going to attempt my 1st dining report. Wish me luck.
Well we finally made it back to Disney, 3 years and 3 months too long since the last trip. This time we are back on site and taking advantage of the free dining promotion. We booked this trip in August when it was announced and decided to surprise our son for his 12th birthday. We told him 5 days before we left. This was also our peanuts 1st trip (well actually second, last trip I was 5 months pregnant.) We wanted to stay at ASM as that is where we stayed on our very 1st trip as a family 8 years ago. Since we went value, we decided to pay to upgrade to the regular dining plan. Our fav part of any vacation is eating so for us we felt it was worth it. I know we are all different but my idea of a nightmare vacation would be eating cold cut sandwiches after walking around the park all day, but again everyone has different priorities, ours is def food. Our Dis trips always consist of our fam of 4 and my sil. Simple introductions: Me (nearly 38) love Disney vacations, resorts, and parks but not what some would call a Disney freak; Im more of a Disney World or Disney Vacation freak. I have a reputation among coworkers and friends as an unofficial travel agent/consultant for Disney vacations; I bet you all do too! My dh of almost 15 years would not always (or maybe never) choose Disney as his 1st choice of vacation destinations, maybe not even 10th, but he loves the customer service and dining and our family so he makes the best of it each time. DS (now 12) into sports (St Louis Cardinals, anything Mizzou, Notre Dame, Green Bay Packers, and would watch Sports Center from dusk till dawn if we let him) and now a vinylmation addict. He is also the best big brother on the planet, seriously. Lastly is peanut (2..75) sweet and sour, loves Buzz and Woody and Jungle Book more than princesses and all out adorable if I do say so myself. She can also be very inpatient, demanding, irrational, and unreasonable, sound like any 2 year olds you know? My sil, same age as me, loves Disney Villains, does not like thrill rides or vegetables but is an amazing aunt and provides a much needed extra hand or dose of patience exactly at the right times. Whew, that was way too long for a dining review, but now you know the group.
I had really good intentions of taking pictures and trying to put together a cost analysis of how much we saved or not, but my goodness, have you ever been to Disney with a 2 year old and also celebrate a birthday and actually get to the parks? If so, hats off, cause I was lucky to get everyones teeth brushed and clean underwear on. Needless to say, Ill cover the restaurants and what we ate as best we can collectively remember. Im not always going to be including my sil as she was in her own room with her own dining plan acct and somedays I noted what she got and somedays I lost track.
Saturday March 10:
We arrived at ASM shortly after noon, I had done online check in, walked right up and rooms were ready. We proceeded to the food court as we had been up since 5:15am for our 7:40am flight. We used 4 counter service meals:
Me: build your own salad with grilled flank steak, fruit cup (to share with peanut) and a strawberry nesquick (to keep in the room fridge in case anyone needed it)
DH: chopped chicken build your own salad, bottle of h20, Mickey rice crispy treat with chocolate ears
DS: Pasta with meatballs, grapefruit juice, and twix bar
Peanut: childs spaghetti and meatballs, grapes, carrot sticks, and milk
We used 3 counter service meals and paid for Peanuts meal oop. I didnt see the total before the swipe and of course the receipt was all zeros. We all enjoyed this meal; felt it was a good value. Lots of fresh veggie options for the salads.
Dinner:
We had 4:30 ADRs for Crystal Palace. BTW, I did not make any ADRs until about 25 days beforehand; I made all of them online and was pretty pleased with the results. We arrived at 4:45pm due to peanuts late nap. It looked mobbed, people everywhere but we were checked in quickly and our buzzer went off in about 7 minutes. We were seated in a great spot, the 1st table the characters come to when they cross the room, unfortunately, peanut did not think this was a great spot nor did she think the giant characters were nearly as delightful as we all did. We had eaten here on our 1st trip and really enjoyed it. I thought there were several really great cold salads; one multigrain pasta salad, one antipasto type with salami and peppers, one edamame salad, and an Italian style salad. I also love peel n eat shrimp and it was tasty and chilled. I thought the beef was average and the dessert yummy, ds and dh really liked the espresso mousse and I really liked the choc banana torte and the lemon raspberry cake. DSIL had mac n cheese, corn and chicken I think and said it was good. Service was okay, not bad, not great and thats fine. It is tremendously louder than I remember in there but we would give this experience a B+ for food and an A for character experience. They were very good about our scared peanut and didnt try to push the issue but also were very patient. We used 3 table service credits for this meal. The price was 40.99 per person. Our oop cost was $32 for tip.
Late that evening, we used three snack credits on:
Mango Fruit Smoothie at a stand at the TTC, Hot fudge Sundae with Mint Choc Chip ice cream from the ASM food court, and a fruit cup for Peanut in the am.
Stay tuned,coming up Teppon Edo and Wolfgang Puck Express....
Well we finally made it back to Disney, 3 years and 3 months too long since the last trip. This time we are back on site and taking advantage of the free dining promotion. We booked this trip in August when it was announced and decided to surprise our son for his 12th birthday. We told him 5 days before we left. This was also our peanuts 1st trip (well actually second, last trip I was 5 months pregnant.) We wanted to stay at ASM as that is where we stayed on our very 1st trip as a family 8 years ago. Since we went value, we decided to pay to upgrade to the regular dining plan. Our fav part of any vacation is eating so for us we felt it was worth it. I know we are all different but my idea of a nightmare vacation would be eating cold cut sandwiches after walking around the park all day, but again everyone has different priorities, ours is def food. Our Dis trips always consist of our fam of 4 and my sil. Simple introductions: Me (nearly 38) love Disney vacations, resorts, and parks but not what some would call a Disney freak; Im more of a Disney World or Disney Vacation freak. I have a reputation among coworkers and friends as an unofficial travel agent/consultant for Disney vacations; I bet you all do too! My dh of almost 15 years would not always (or maybe never) choose Disney as his 1st choice of vacation destinations, maybe not even 10th, but he loves the customer service and dining and our family so he makes the best of it each time. DS (now 12) into sports (St Louis Cardinals, anything Mizzou, Notre Dame, Green Bay Packers, and would watch Sports Center from dusk till dawn if we let him) and now a vinylmation addict. He is also the best big brother on the planet, seriously. Lastly is peanut (2..75) sweet and sour, loves Buzz and Woody and Jungle Book more than princesses and all out adorable if I do say so myself. She can also be very inpatient, demanding, irrational, and unreasonable, sound like any 2 year olds you know? My sil, same age as me, loves Disney Villains, does not like thrill rides or vegetables but is an amazing aunt and provides a much needed extra hand or dose of patience exactly at the right times. Whew, that was way too long for a dining review, but now you know the group.
I had really good intentions of taking pictures and trying to put together a cost analysis of how much we saved or not, but my goodness, have you ever been to Disney with a 2 year old and also celebrate a birthday and actually get to the parks? If so, hats off, cause I was lucky to get everyones teeth brushed and clean underwear on. Needless to say, Ill cover the restaurants and what we ate as best we can collectively remember. Im not always going to be including my sil as she was in her own room with her own dining plan acct and somedays I noted what she got and somedays I lost track.
Saturday March 10:
We arrived at ASM shortly after noon, I had done online check in, walked right up and rooms were ready. We proceeded to the food court as we had been up since 5:15am for our 7:40am flight. We used 4 counter service meals:
Me: build your own salad with grilled flank steak, fruit cup (to share with peanut) and a strawberry nesquick (to keep in the room fridge in case anyone needed it)
DH: chopped chicken build your own salad, bottle of h20, Mickey rice crispy treat with chocolate ears
DS: Pasta with meatballs, grapefruit juice, and twix bar
Peanut: childs spaghetti and meatballs, grapes, carrot sticks, and milk
We used 3 counter service meals and paid for Peanuts meal oop. I didnt see the total before the swipe and of course the receipt was all zeros. We all enjoyed this meal; felt it was a good value. Lots of fresh veggie options for the salads.
Dinner:
We had 4:30 ADRs for Crystal Palace. BTW, I did not make any ADRs until about 25 days beforehand; I made all of them online and was pretty pleased with the results. We arrived at 4:45pm due to peanuts late nap. It looked mobbed, people everywhere but we were checked in quickly and our buzzer went off in about 7 minutes. We were seated in a great spot, the 1st table the characters come to when they cross the room, unfortunately, peanut did not think this was a great spot nor did she think the giant characters were nearly as delightful as we all did. We had eaten here on our 1st trip and really enjoyed it. I thought there were several really great cold salads; one multigrain pasta salad, one antipasto type with salami and peppers, one edamame salad, and an Italian style salad. I also love peel n eat shrimp and it was tasty and chilled. I thought the beef was average and the dessert yummy, ds and dh really liked the espresso mousse and I really liked the choc banana torte and the lemon raspberry cake. DSIL had mac n cheese, corn and chicken I think and said it was good. Service was okay, not bad, not great and thats fine. It is tremendously louder than I remember in there but we would give this experience a B+ for food and an A for character experience. They were very good about our scared peanut and didnt try to push the issue but also were very patient. We used 3 table service credits for this meal. The price was 40.99 per person. Our oop cost was $32 for tip.
Late that evening, we used three snack credits on:
Mango Fruit Smoothie at a stand at the TTC, Hot fudge Sundae with Mint Choc Chip ice cream from the ASM food court, and a fruit cup for Peanut in the am.
Stay tuned,coming up Teppon Edo and Wolfgang Puck Express....
