Next up I will talk about the CL lounge/ food a bit. I'll post this on the CL thread also. I didn't take a ton of pics and the ones I took aren't great.
@focusondisney 's photos were much better.
They still have self pour until 10 pm. I am not 100% sure what time it starts, but I believe that the one day that I got there around 4, it was already set out. It was not out any of the days that we were there for midday offerings, so definitely not an all day thing.
Food was very good. I want to first give my disclaimer. I am normally a HUGE lover of RPC food. All of it. My stomach was "off" this whole trip (even before arriving at the resort), so this definitely may have affected my opinion, but I didn't find as many of their offerings as delicious as I usually do. Many of them were just ok, and that surprised me. But again, maybe it was just because I didn't feel quite right. One concern that I had was that the one night, the salmon was cold. I mean, stone cold, not even slightly warm. And it had been sitting out a long time at that point. I immediately told the staff, who didn't seem concerned? I saw them go over there but didn't see them remove it, and a few minutes later we left so I am not entirely sure how it was handled. It felt like a food safety issue to me.
The food was not on its usual three day rotation this week, neither breakfast nor dinner. We ate both every single day. It seemed sort of random, and one night you might have one combo of hors d'oeuvres, and another night they'd combine some foods from one night with other foods from a different night. A couple of times they only had three hors d'oeuvres out and then maybe around 6:15 they would put out an additional one or two. One night they ran out of one item, left it empty for a while, then later brought out a totally different item to replace it. Most evenings they were not fully ready by 5 pm. Sausage only made an appearance on our fifth day, as did the breakfast pizza. There were no interesting egg dishes/ casseroles, only scrambled eggs, thought the quality of the eggs was much better. It seemed more disorganized overall than usual but it may just have been that they were intentionally doing things differently. Mickey waffles were still every day.
The CL staff did a MUCH better job clearing tables this time than our last trip. A complete 180. Almost clearing excessively, if that's possible, lol. And many more of the CL staff were much more personable and engaging this trip. I saw a huge positive difference overall in staff. We were also asked multiple times every day how we enjoyed our food.
We only ever saw the cucumber sandwich and the chicken noodle soup for midday offerings, not the tomato soup or pimento sandwiches, BUT, we were not there every single day. They had a really delicious chicken salad midday every day that we were there.
They had one evening offering that I don't recall seeing posted before. It was Tonkatsu, and it was actually my favorite RPC offering. Oh! And shrimp and grits was fantastic and I think that one may also be new. Both of those offerings only were served on our fourth night. Also shoutout to their meat and cheese selections each evening, which did change, my dh was thrilled with the selection every evening.
I'm so sorry the photos ended up so out of order. I have nearly lost this whole post about ten times and at this point I just want to get it posted before the site eats it. Edited because I typed out what each photo was but then it posted them in completely different order than what they were in before I hit post so my post made no sense. I give up, lol. Most of it is self explanatory. The plate with three things (sorry that is a little gross looking) has the Tonkatsu on the right and the Asian slaw on the right. The two pink drinks were new welcome drinks.
