Faint hearts never won fair lady - or got all the ADRs *Update 12/1 - F&WF Kiosks*

[SimplyGoofy]

Joining in!

I really love your inclusion of fun drinks to try. Do you know if they let you take drinks to go at La Cava? I'd really like to try the avocado margarita, but I'm not sure my sister will be super excited to sit there and watch me drink it.

Thanks for your comments about each of the Ohana meats as well as the sauces. Most reviews I've read concentrate on the starters and the bread pudding--although I'm looking forward to those, too!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Glad to hear you had a good experience at 'Ohana. It gets very mixed reviews, but we tried dinner there for the first time last year and absolutely loved it! The dumplings were my favorite part of the meal, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of all the food after reading other people's reviews.

One day, I'll stick around to watch the fireworks from the beach at Poly. I'm always in a big hurry to get back into the parks...

Welcome! Yeah, I was surprised at how much I like a lot of the skewer meats - those don't normally come up much in reviews unless they weren't good.

Watching the fireworks on the beach was really great -> plus we didn't have to have MNSSHP tickets to see Hallowishes

Great reviews so far! All the food pics. look tasty, and are making me very hungry! The Leinenkugal Berry Weis had my friend/co-worker drooling over my shoulder too.

I'm also from NY, and that freak storm sure was a doozy! I hope you and your family are OK.

We are actually right across the river from you on the Putnam/Westchester boarder. We faired ok - much better than a lot of other people.

The Berry Weis was good - but really strong berry flavor so it really didn't even taste like beer .... that might be a good thing though to your co-worker

Joining in!

I really love your inclusion of fun drinks to try. Do you know if they let you take drinks to go at La Cava? I'd really like to try the avocado margarita, but I'm not sure my sister will be super excited to sit there and watch me drink it.

Thanks for your comments about each of the Ohana meats as well as the sauces. Most reviews I've read concentrate on the starters and the bread pudding--although I'm looking forward to those, too!

yes, you can get drinks to go from La Cava -> in fact, those standing at the bar are really just to get to-go drinks. They put it in a plastic cup and I did actually get my Avocado margarita to go. From every review I have read all of their margaritas are much better than the ones you get at the stand outside

 

[TheMaxRebo]

This was one of the first ADR's I made at 6am the first day I was able to as I really wanted a time slot before the Magic Kingdom opened just to experience the empty main street. While it was a bit of a challenge to get up early enough, it really was worth it. Got to park super close to the TTC (didn't even need to take a tram) got through the bag check and ticket turnstile with no wait and got to just appreciate being on Main Stree in the Magic Kingdom. It is great too that they have Photopass photographers out that early as we got some great shots - including one of me and DD next to the statue of Walt and Mickey in front of the Castle with basically no one else around.

Onto the actual dining part of this dining review.

I must say that I was going into this fully knowing that for character meals you are paying for the characters first and the meal second, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Below are a couple of pictures of our plates (they were all similar)

Puffed French Toast at the bottom with syrup above, biscuit with gravy and cheesy potatoes on the left

Made to order blueberry pancakes in the lower left, bacon and sausage on the right with peach cobbler in the bowl at the top of the plate and fresh fruit above

With fresh fruit and peach cobbler and omelets and pancakes made to order, several types of potatoes and hash, fresh biscuits, etc., the food was really good with a lot of choices

And then there is the Puff French Toast. Oh. My. Goodness. I could have just eaten a tray of these they were so good.

Combine all of that with the utter joy my daughter had in meeting Pooh, Piglett, Tigger, and Eyeore (her favorite) this was a pretty perfect start to the day. Another Robin Hood of a meal

 

[Mum from oz]

Just wanted to say I am loving your reviews. We really enjoyed the food at Crystal Palace and your photos reminded me how much. I will definitely be booking here again!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Just wanted to say I am loving your reviews. We really enjoyed the food at Crystal Palace and your photos reminded me how much. I will definitely be booking here again!

Thanks!

Yeah, I was really pleasantly surprised how good the food was and how many choices there were. Having the made to order pancakes and omelettes really put it over the top for me

 

[TheMaxRebo]

This review my be tainted a bit by the crowds. We waited until about 2pm to go for lunch and it was still an absolute mad house here - took at least 1/2 hour to get our food.

What we got was a Lobster Roll for me, the kids chicken nuggest for DD, the Clam Chowder for DW and DMiL just wanted to have some french fries.

Well, when we started to eat, DW noticed that there was bacon in the chowder - and considering she doesn't eat pork this was a bit of an issue. so back downstairs I went to brave the crowds.

Fortunately it was not an issue to exchange it for the vegitarian chili (actually they let us keep both - and DMiL ate most of the chowder).

The food we did get was fiarly good I must say. There was quite a bit of filler in with the Lobster roll (lettuce, mayo, etc.) but the portion was huge and it tasted good. DD liked her nuggets

and it all tasted pretty fresh.

We'll give this one a rating of The Kids

The crowds make me want me to lower it more, but the food we actually got was pretty good and I think the staff was handling things the best they could, it was just that the entire park was just a mob scene -

35 minutes for It's a Small World, nearly 2 hour wait at it's peak for Splash Mountain, 70 minutes to meet the princesses, etc. And to think that my Undercover Tourist App rated this as Green day for The Magic Kingdom. Guess October isn't a slow time any more.

 

[TexasErin]

I am really enjoying your reviews! Great job and pix. And it really makes me smile to read how much you are enjoying watching your daughter's happiness and wonder!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

I am really enjoying your reviews! Great job and pix. And it really makes me smile to read how much you are enjoying watching your daughter's happiness and wonder!

Thanks! it is really a different experience going to Disney with your child as opposed to before we had kids

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Well, we never really managed to have dinner tonight. We kept thinking we would get something and then tried to fit in attractions and characters and fireworks and parades and all of a sudden it was 9:30 and we hadn't eaten anything.


So we did what anyone would have done - we got pastries from the Main St. Bakery: Chocolate Croissant, Cinnamon Roll, cheese danish, and iced mocha. They were all good and hit the spot (though the Iced Mocha was a little sweeter than I would have preferred).

We then went out to watch the second electric light parade and headed out of the park, ending a long day

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Thursday was to be our off day with a few relatives from the area coming up for a visit -> well, we would up making two trips to Downtown Disney and ate there both times.

For lunch we went to Rainforest Cafe. We were seated withing 10 minutes of arriving (albeit a bit early for the lunch crowd) withouth a reservation. For drinks I tried their wildberry sangria (with souviner glass). This was actually really tasty and refreshing.

sorry, no picture, not sure what happened there

For food we started by sharing the sampler appetizer, which came with chicken strips, artichoke cheese dip, mozzarella sticks, and southwestern egg rolls.

This was pretty good - nothing amazing but nothing bad. It was pretty good sized, but fairly expensive for an appetizer at $18 .... this would be a trend here.

For main course, I got the bbq-bacon cheese burger with chips.

This was a pretty good burger. They didn't offer what temperature the burger would be cooked at and it came out fairly well done - but it was pretty juicy and not dried out.

DD got the dino nuggets with apple sauce.

These were pretty good (seemed like the same dino nuggets we make at home) and glad to see they had multiple options for side dishes. DD ate most of these

DW got the oriental chicken salad.

She thought this was pretty good and liked that there were a couple different crunchy elements in the dish.

DMiL got the Chicken Blue sandwich with sauce on the side.

She thought this was fine.

Our two guests were DMiL's sister (DAunt) and mother (DNana)

DAunt also got the same chicken sandwich as DMiL and DNana got a plain burger. Both also thought the food was fine.

Service was ok - he was there a lot at the beginning but then disappeared for a while when we wanted to order and food was a little slow at coming out.

I think the big issue I have here was the price of everything. All dishes were expensive to begin with and then if you wanted fries instead of chips with your burger it was an extra $2. Side salad? that was an extra $6. I know this is vacation and this is Disney and you are paying for the setting here, but the food was really not worth what they are charging. It wasn't bad, just average, and they are charging a lot more than average for it.

We rate this restaurant a Sir Hiss - and that is mostly due to the fact we do not feel it is worth the money

 

[skyecaitlin88]

LOVE the rating theme!

 

[SmallWorld71]

Great reviews! Glad to hear you enjoyed my two favorites - 'Ohana and Crystal Palace.

 

[Cin]

Great reviews! I have ADR's for many of these places this Jan and am really pleased to hear good reports on our choices. Especially 'OHana which gets mixed reviews.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

LOVE the rating theme!

Thanks! I love that movie and definitely think it is under-represented amongst merchandise and in the parks in general

Great reviews! Glad to hear you enjoyed my two favorites - 'Ohana and Crystal Palace.

Thanks! They were both new to us this trip and are new favorites of ourse! I think hitting up a pre-opening breakfast at Crystal Palace on our first full day there might become a new tradition

Great reviews! I have ADR's for many of these places this Jan and am really pleased to hear good reports on our choices. Especially 'OHana which gets mixed reviews.

Thanks! Glad to hear the reviews are helpful. I too was very worried about 'Ohana's based on some mixed reviews but we were really happy about it. Hopefully in January the crowds won't be too bad and you won't have a bad wait like I have heard some people have had

 

[TheMaxRebo]

We returned to Downtown Disney after our guests left to get our main shopping done. While it took longer than expected, we did get everything we were looking for - including a customized "baby's first Christmas" ornament for our soon to be arriving baby

Since we knew were were going back there we made an ADR earlier that day for Wolfgang Puck Cafe, and were pretty excited to try it. On arrival the first thing we noticed was how loud it is in there ... but maybe that is just the lobby/bar area? We were seated about 10 minutes after our 7:30 ADR and lead to a table in the back were it was a little quieter, but still really, really loud. DMiL had trouble hearing anything anyone was saying throughout the meal and we had to basically shout to our waitress.

Speaking of our waitress, she was very nice and seemed to be doing her best, but was also training someone and also seemed to cover (or help out) tables no where near her main area - just appeared to be stretched too thin.

We ordered the Calamari appetizer to split which came with pickled cucumbers and a sweet curry sauce.

This tasted pretty darn good - though the calamari were rather salty. When dipped in the sweet sauce that got balanced a bit, but still a little too salty (and trust me, we never say that - we love salt).

DD got the plain pizza for dinner and this was one of the best kids pizzas I have seen at any restaurant - definitely made like their regular pizzas.

DD was pretty tired by this point but she still managed to eat half of it and really liked it

I got the sushi special for my entrée which was a spicy tuna roll with tuna and white fish on the outside and some spice mayo and then some tuna chucks in a spicy sauce on the side (forget the official name for this).

Oh. My. Goodness - this was one of the best sushi plates I have ever had. Really nothing bad to say about this - really fresh tasting and lots of flavor. It was pretty spicy - particularly the tuna on the side - so some might find it too spicy, but I thought it was just spicy enough.

DMiL got the Pennette Beef Bolognese.

She thought this was really dry and not enough sauce - I tried it and agreed. It looked like it had been under the heat lamp for two long. We mentioned something to the waitress and she went back to get more sauce and it looked like she brought out a whole new dish that was much better than the first - pasta looked fresher and a lot more sauce. While better, this still wasn't the best dish and a little disappointing. Not bad, just hoping for more.

DW got the pumpkin ravioli.

She really liked this a lot - though one of the ravioli she got was empty of filling. At the end of the meal the waitress offered to bring another one, but just wasn't worth it at that point.

This was a hard restaurant to rate because some of the individual food items were really good but the overall experience was pretty poor - too loud to have a conversation, waitress stretched to thin, having to return a food item, etc.. I think in the future DW and I would like to try it for a night out alone and eat at the sushi bar (the sushi was that good), but we will definitely not return to the main restaurant area.

We give the sushi and pumpkin ravioli a Robin Hood .....

.... and the rest a Sir Hiss overall

 

[TheMaxRebo]

My daughter is pretty into the Disney Jr. shows so we thought checking out a character meal at Hollywood & Vine made sense (she was really excited to meet Special Agent Oso)

I had read some very bad reviews of this place though so we figured breakfast would be the best option and would allow us to get in to the park early as we had an 8:10 ADR

We were seated within a few minutes of checking in. We were one of the first tables seated and the place was only about half full at this time. It is a cute restaurant with a very 50's diner vibe to it.

The characters you meet (at that time at least) were Special Agent Oso, Handy Manny, and Leo and June from the Little Einsteins (or the Little Eindersteins as DD calls them). Interaction with them was pretty good as they spent enough time with each kid. They also have two cast members who lead the crowd in songs and dances with the kids, etc. There wasn't a ton of participation that morning but at least it was something going on and helped to entertain the kids.

The food is buffet style (with drinks brought to the table by the wait staff). Here are a couple of plates:

From the upper left then clockwise is a blueberry bagle, a sausage link, some corn beef hash, fritata type thing, pancakes with strawberry sauce and a piece of bread.

This was all ok. Nothing great and some tasted reheated - but certainly passable.

This plate, from the top then clockwise, had a peach crumble, a cheese danish, a form of bread pudding, and a banana

again, ok. I think most of this was a little disappointing because we wanted it to be good, but it wasn't great. Like the first plate, passable but nothing to write home about.

This was DD plate, and she had some grapes, a sausage link, a mickey waffle, and a slice of watermelon.

I appreciated the amount of fruit they had and there were a number of options. DD didn't each much, though I think more for interest in the characters than the fact she didn't like it.

Service was pretty good - brought more drinks when needed, wasn't too in the way or anything. Did take a little while to get the bill, but no horrible.


Overall we found this meal to be acceptable but not great. Certainly not as good at the breakfast at the Crystal Palace - and for about $1 more per person it really seemed not as good. It was nice to meet some different characters and to get into the park early. if you kids really want to meet the Disney Jr. characters it's probably worth it, but otherwise I would skip it.

We rate this The Kids as it wasn't bad, and good character interaction, just nothing more than that:

 

[beccawes7471]

Great report, I am a huge fan of Robin Hood and your rating system is great! I also love your drink reports. We will be travelling in March with our 12 year old son and our 2.5 year old daughter. This will be her 1st trip. I'm really thinking about adding Ohana's to our list and watching the fireworks outside, thanks for the tip!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Great report, I am a huge fan of Robin Hood and your rating system is great! I also love your drink reports. We will be travelling in March with our 12 year old son and our 2.5 year old daughter. This will be her 1st trip. I'm really thinking about adding Ohana's to our list and watching the fireworks outside, thanks for the tip!

thanks for the kind words. It really worked out well going down to the beach, grabbing a drink and watching the fireworks over the Magic Kingdom.

Obviously not the same as being there in the park, but a new, different perspective

 

[TheMaxRebo]

On Friday October 14th we hit the F&WF kiosks - below is our take on what we tried:

Grilled Lamb Chop with Potato-Goat Cheese Salad and Shiraz Reduction (Australia) - the lamb was very good but the potato salad was served cold and tasted more of feta cheese than goat chees

Frozen Caipirinha (Brazil) - This was tasty, tart, cold, and strong

Kona Pipeline (Hawaii) - Described to me as Guiness with coffee flavor, but turned out not so much. Some coffee flavor there but not nearly the richness you get with a Guiness

Kalua Pork Slider with Sweet and Sour Dole Pineapple Chutney and Spice Mayonnaise (Hawaii) - This was very tasty. Good bun, decent portion of pork. Pineapple added a bit without overwhelming

Lobster and Scallop Fisherman's Pie (Ireland) - very good with a decent amount of seafood in it. You can see in the picture some inconsistencies with the cheese levels though.

Warm Chocolate Lava Cake with Baileys Ganache (Ireland) - Excellent ... my wife almost licked the plate. Wouldn't have minded if it was a little bigger though

Coq au Vin sur gratin de macaroni (France) - My wife really, really liked this. I also thought it was tasty. Pretty big portion too, though we did find some fatty bits of meat

Sparkling Pomegranate Kir (France) - My mother-in-law thought this was tasty. Bit sweet and pink for my taste though

Steamed Mussels with Roasted Garlic Cream & Baguette (Belgium) - My wife loved this and loved soaking up the sauce with the baguette

Godiva Chocolate Iced Coffee (Belgium) - I liked this, but it just kinda tasted like a thin Baileys drink. Didn't really get a sense of Iced Coffee

Pumpkin Mousse with Ocean Spray Craisins and Orange Sauce (Hops & Barley) - We all though this was great and one of the best items we got. It's obviously a little on the small side but for only $1.50 we still felt it was a great value

Frozen Red Stag Lemonade by Jim Bean (Fife and Drum) - I loved this drink. It was very refreshing and you could definitely taste the liquor in it

Nurnberger Sausage in a Pretzel Roll (Germany) - This is one of the items I've had on previous trips and knew I wanted to go back for. I wasn't disappointed and it is a great portion size. Just enough kick to the sausage to keep it interesting.

Altenmunster Octoberfest (Brewer's Collection) - I wasn't crazy about this beer. It went pretty well when drunk along with the sasuage/bread, but on it's own it was too hoppy for my taste and not typical for an Octoberfest.

Rauchweizen Roog Smoked Wheat Bier (Brewer's Collection) - Now this was a really good beer. Nice and smooth and can taste the toasted notes

Rather than rate the entire experience I will just list our favorite and least favorite items:

Favorite items:
- Coq au Vin
- Kalua Pork Slider
- Rauchweizen Roog Smoked Wheat Bier
- Frozen Red Stag Lemonade
- Pumpkin Mousse


Least Favorite (though still enjoyed):
- Altenmunster Octoberfest
- Godiva Chocolate Iced Coffee
- Kona Pipeline

 

[jmm476]

Thanks for the F&W reviews. Some of it looks really tasty, I hope to be there during the festival one of these years.

Were you using snack credits or paying OOP? I was just wondering what your take is on whether or not the food items are worth the money in general. I know you commented on a couple of specific items, but we would pay OOP and I worry that we would end up paying a ton of money because I would want to try everything...