Chronicles of the DDP Eaters w/ pics updated 10/13/08 Cantina de San Angel & Kringla

[crystalcml]

Hi there everyone! Welcome to my Disney Dining Review thread. Let me welcome you to our story. You are embarking on a journey with a Princess, a Slugger our Disney OCD Mom and our favorite Aunt and Uncle, taking a joint family trip to the World. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Background-
Crystal, Brandon and Mary this is our 3rd year in a row vacationing at WDW with the dining plan. For my Aunt and Uncle, they have been on numerous trips and this is their 2nd time using the DDP. This is our first time going together. We are staying at the same resort Pop Century (of course) and utilizing the DDP so we will be having lots of yummy suppers together. We are left frigid (not really, but people seem to think its cold here year round) Minnesota Saturday September 27th, 2008 and returned Friday October 3rd, 2008.

The Cast:

Princess Crystal -26-

Loves anything and everything baseball especially the Minnesota Twins, Disney World and anything fun. Favorite princess is Jasmine. Likes the magic of Disney to be just that, magic. Is a really picky eater but will try most things once. Favorite WDW restaurant is Liberty Tree Tavern character dinner.


Slugger Brandon -11-

Typical 11 year old boy. Likes fast rides, science, magic and any behind the scenes info he can get his little hands on. If he knows how a ride works or any of the special effects it has, plug your ears if you don't want to know because he is 10 seconds away from blabbing the secrets. Likes to eat but not willing to try new things. His favorite WDW restaurant is Whispering Canyon Cafe.

Disney OCD Mom (Mary) -55-
Mother to Crystal and Brandon. Has and obsession with WDW. She will cry everytime she sees the Castle (regardless if it's on TV or in person). She wears a handy dandy bottle holder, camera, pin trading lanyard and a fan all around her neck. Doesn't like roller coasters but will go on them if we drag her. Will eat just about anything. Always willing to try something new. Favorite WDW restaurant is Coral Reef.

Favorite Aunt Bonnie -52-
Has 2 grown children of her own. Has been on multiple trips to Disney both Land and World. Loves thrill rides and stage shows. Not really a picky eater and will try new things. First trip to the World with us. Favorite WDW restaurant is Le Cellier.

Favorite Uncle Greg -52-
Favorite Aunt Bonnie's husband. See above. Also likes golfing and relaxing a bit. Not really picky. His favorite restaurant thus far is the character dinner at Liberty Tree Tavern.

I will be reviewing the following restaurants and counter services:
50's Prime Time Cafe
Cantina de San Angel
Coral Reef
Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe
Crystal Palace-Character Breakfast
Electric Umbrella
Everything Pop Food Court
Flame Tree Barbeque
Goofy's Candy Company-Just for fun
Kringla Bakeri og Cafe
Le Cellier
Liberty Tree Tavern-Character Dinner
Main Street Bakery
Pizzafari
Typhoon Tilly's
Whispering Canyon Cafe

Stay tuned....... 1st up Liberty Tree Tavern

 

[MickeyNicki]

Wow what a lineup, cant wait!

 

[SuzieN]

Looks great! Can't wait to see your pics and read your reviews!

 

[HonnyDipp]

Sweet! I'm in!

 

[John's Mom]

Count me in!

 

[crystalcml]

We went to Liberty Tree Tavern our first night in the World 9/27/08. We had a 5:15pm reservation time. We checked in around 5pm. We were seated within 10min. I love LTT, this is my 3rd year in a row going there.

Once seated, our server came out to take our drink order. We all ordered standard drinks such as pop and milk. After our drinks came, he brought out a salad with strawberry vinagarette dressing and dinner rolls with this sweet butter. I am not a fan of the salad as it is already tossed in the dressing and I don't like it but my mom, aunt and uncle all really liked it. My brother and I liked the dinner rolls a lot! I think he ate 3 or 4 and I had 2.

After the salad and dinner rolls came our full meal. Everything is served family style and you can always ask for more. We were given a plate of turkey, beef, pork and stuffing, a bowl of green beans, a bowl of mac and cheese, a bowl of mashed potatoes and a boat of gravy.

After the meal came dessert. It was a fresh apple cobbler with vanilla ice cream.

Cost for dinner after tax for Mary, Crystal and Brandon was $92.63. We left an 18% tip of $15.00 bringing the grand total to $107.63

Crystal-I absolutely love this dinner. To me it tastes like a good home cooked meal. I liked the beef and turkey the best out of the meats and I loved the mac and cheese. I love the characters they are really cute and super easy to take pics with.

Mary-Thought dinner was just ok. Liked the roast beef the best. Likes the characters the best. Would not go there again when they take the characters out.

Brandon-Thought everything was "Awesome". His favorites were the mashed potatoes and he liked Chip and Dale the best.

Bonnie-Liked it. Favorites were the mashed potatoes and gravy and the stuffing. Favorite characters were Chip and Dale.

Greg-Thought it was alright. Food wasn't that great. However, he loved the dessert. He thought it was one of the best desserts at WDW.

Since we had just gotten off of the plane and headed straight over to MK to eat I didn't get any pictures of the food but here are some with the characters.

Brandon and Me (Crystal) with Chip

Uncle Greg and Aunt Bonnie with Minnie

Brandon with Dale

Uncle Greg and Aunt Bonnie with Dale

Next up.........
Crystal Palace character breakfast and Whispering Canyon Cafe.

 

[CanadianPaco]

Great start!! Can't wait to read more!!

 

[raftislander]

Count me in for the fun! Keep the reviews coming.............

 

[TigerKat]

I'm in.....

 

[crystalcml]

We ate at Crystal Palace 9/28/08. Our reservation was for 9:30am and we checked in around 9:15am and we were seated within 10min. I have noticed that most of the restaurants give you one of those pagers now and that comes in handy.

This has got to be THE best breakfast TS I've ever had in WDW. They have a station where you can order eggs and omelets any way you want them. I had 2 eggs over easy and they were done perfectly. My brother ordered an omelet with sausage and cheese (he loves those). I also hopped over to the kids section to try the famous puffed french toast. It was well worth it. I actually went back to get another piece. They had a great assortment of foods, pastries, meats, breads and pretty much anything else you could think of having for breakfast.

Cost for breakfast after tax for Mary, Crystal and Brandon was $60.68. We left an 13.5% tip of $8.00 bringing the grand total to $68.68.

Crystal-Gives it 10 thumbs up! I will definitely be going back next year.

Brandon-Thought it was good. Ate lots of fun things.

Mary-Liked it. Thought restaurant was bright and cheery and liked the characters a lot. Not a big breakfast eater but went for us and was pleasantly surprised.

Bonnie and Greg-Both really enjoyed this restaurant.

Sorry all but I didn't get any food pics here either. I felt stupid taking pics of the buffet so I only got some with the characters.

Brandon in front of Tigger made out of plants.

Bonnie and Tigger

Brandon and the real Tigger

Brandon in front of Pooh made out of plants

Bonnie and Eeyore

Next up..........
Whispering Canyon Cafe

 

[crystalcml]

We had dinner at Whispering Canyon Cafe on 9/28/08. We had a reservation for 6:30pm. We checked in somewhere around 6:10pm or so and were seated right around our ressie time. That was ok because it gave us a chance to look around the hotel and take pictures.

We were given the menu to look over and me, my brother and my uncle all went with the skillet and my mom and aunt chose the ribeye steak. For dessert my uncle and I ordered the Smores cheesecake, my mom and aunt ordered the carmel-apple pie and my brother ordered the chocolate kahlua cake

The cost for dinner after tax for the 3 of us was $113.76. We left an 18% tip of $19.00 bringing our meal total to $132.76

The skillet was good. It came with a salad tossed in apple vinagarette and corn bread for starters.

Our entrees came out and here is the Ribeye:

Then the Skillet, it had ribs, pulled pork, chicken, beef brisket, corn on the cob, baked beans and mashed potatoes, :

Then the desserts:

I like this restaurant. I think they have good food and I find the antics hilarious.

My Aunt and Uncle hated this restaurant. They thought it was noisy and obnoxious and the food was just ok. See faces below:

My mom didn't care for this either. She felt the same way my aunt and uncle did. Since I don't have a pic of my mom up on this review yet, here is one of her and my brother at WCC.

Our waitress wasn't really into antics so we weren't bothered the whole time. but she did bring this out for my brother.

My brother and I loved this restaurant and thought all of our food was awesome!

My mom, aunt and uncle didn't like it. My mom and aunt thought the ribeye steak wasn't good and my uncle didn't care for the skillet. They all thought it was too loud and thought that too many people were asking for ketchup which would trigger servers to scream for people to bring ketchup over to another table.

Up next......
Flametree Barbeque
Pizzafari
Cosmic Rays Starlight Cafe

 

[3boys4me]

Did WCC have shrimp on the skillet? I thought that was suppose to be on the menu. Please say yes and you all just asked to skip them. Thanks

 

[crystalcml]

Did WCC have shrimp on the skillet? I thought that was suppose to be on the menu. Please say yes and you all just asked to skip them. Thanks

We were expecting it to have shrimp on it but they took it off the skillet. Sorry.

 

[3boys4me]

We were expecting it to have shrimp on it but they took it off the skillet. Sorry.

 

[crystalcml]

FLAMETREE BARBEQUE

We had lunch at AK on 9/29/08. My brother ate at Flametree Barbeque and I ate at Pizzafari. My mom wasn't that hungry so she had some of each of our meals.

My brother ordered the Ribs meal. It came with Ribs, baked beans and cornbread.

He really liked his meal.

Sloppy face and all.

My mom and I ordered some onion rings. They were only like $3.50 but they weren't eligible as a snack credit on the DDP so we had to pay out of pocket.

My mom and I oth thought the onion rings were alright, nothing special.

The only advice I can give is to watch out for these guys:

There was no shame in their game. They were just waiting for us to drop some food.


PIZZAFARI:
After my brother ate his lunch, we headed over to Pizzafari so I could grab lunch. We had bbq the night before so I wasn't hungry for it again. I didn't get any pictures of my lunch cause I forgot but I ordered an individual pepperoni pizza with a bottle of water and a frozen strawberry lemonade as my dessert.

I liked Pizzafari. The pizza is the same as it is at any other CS in WDW. The frozen lemonade was good and so was my water.

 

[crystalcml]

We went to Magic Kingdom and had dinner at Cosmic Ray's 9/29/08.

My mom and I ordered the bacon double cheeseburger with fries and carrot cake for dessert.

My brother ordered the ribs meal with mashed potatoes and green beans and the chocolate cake for dessert. The ribs meal came with 2 slabs of ribs but my brother couldn't wait for me to take a picture and started eating right away.

Desserts:

I love the burgers here. They are some of the best I've ever eaten and definitely the best in WDW. They have this awesome toppings bar so you can go put whatever your heart desires on your burger. My mom loves that idea. The only downfall with this is that the portions are quite large. I was never able to finish a whole burger and I never ate more than 5-6 fries. So I wasted a lot.

Brandon loved his ribs. He said they were awesome. He left a lot of his green beans and mashed potatoes but somehow, all the ribs disappeared.

As for the desserts, they have one of the best carrot cakes I have ever eaten however, on this trip I read the nutrition label and was shocked so lets just say that I didn't eat more than 3 bites of my carrot cake. Brandon liked his chocolate cake and the nutrition label was no where near what the carrot cake was so he had a few more bites then me. My mom ate her whole carrot cake and asked us not to tell her how many calories were in it.

 

[crystalcml]

Here is my little treat for you guys. We went to Goofy's Candy Co and made our own treats.

I have done this before and think it's a lot of fun.

Here is Brandon waiting for his creation to be complete.

Here's Brandon's creation:

It's a fudge cookie with chocolate filling, dipped in white chocolate with assorted sprinkles, pecans, crushed oreos, m&m's, butterfinger, reese's peanut butter cups, with a milk and white chocolate drizzle. Can we say toothache.

Here's my creation:

It's 3 pretzel rods dipped in white chocolate. One is rolled in pecans, one in butterfinger and one in reese's peanut butter cups. All 3 are drizzled in caramel.

This is a lot of fun to do for adults and kids. I recommend it to everyone. And the best part is that it only costs 1 snack credit on the DDP.

Up next...............
Coral Reef
50's Prime Time Cafe

 

[PoohsThe14Me]

Thanks for your reviews

 

[jinkies04]

We are eating at some of the same places your family did in two weeks! Thanks for the great reviews and pictures

 

[crystalcml]

We ate at the Coral Reef on 9/30 /08 and let me tell you, it definitely exceeds expectations. We ate there last year and it wass good then but I think it might have been even better this time around.

We had a lunch reservation for 11:30am. We checked in around 11:25 and were seated within 10min and we had a lovely view of the aquarium.

My brother and I ordered the chicken with bacon. It was supposed to come with some stuff we weren't sure of so we asked if we could substitute and they were more than accomodating. So we got chicken and mashed potatoes. My mom ordered the new york strip steak with roasted potatoes and roasted veggies. My aunt ordered the grilled mahi mahi served with rice and pineapple sauce. My uncle ordered the grilled pork with green beans.

For our drinks, 3 of 5 ordered pop. My mom ordered the sour apple freeze and I ordered a non-alcoholic lava colada. Those were the best 2 drinks I've ever tried in my life. I can't wait to go back next year just to order a lava colada.

For desserts, 4 of us ordered the chocolate wave and my aunt ordered the seasonal sorbet.

All of us thought this was the best meal of all of our table services. My aunt enjoyed her fish and she said it wasn't fishy at all. Me, my mom, uncle and brother all enjoyed our meals as well.

The cost for 3 of us (2 chicken meals, new york strip steak and 3 chocolate waves) was $111.20. we left an 18% tip of $20 bringing our grand total to $131.20

We were started off with loaves of ciabatta bread with this olive oil and vinagar dipping sauce.

Then came the entrees:

The grilled chicken with mashed potatoes

The new york strip steak

The grilled mahi mahi

The grilled pork.

Then came the desserts:

The seasonal sorbet. I believe it was mango flavored.

AND..................................................
The chocolate wave

We all really liked the Coral Reef and will definitely be back next year. If you get the chance to go I definitely recommend it!

Up next.................................
50's Prime Time Cafe