Food-a-Palooza: Four Generations do 8 days of DDP (Lots of pics too)

[tigerdragon]

Great reviews!!! I agree with you about Mama Melrose. I don't understand the bad rap it gets. The food was great when we were there. We were a party of 12 and everyone enjoyed it.

Can't wait to read more.

 

[BamaBelle1025]

Thanks for the great reviews and pics!

 

[soontobewed07]

It wasn't bad. He's a good baby though, so that probably helped. His biggest complaint was that he was strapped into a stroller for much of the time and he would have much rather been putting his newly perfected walking skills to the test. It's funny because at home he only wants to be held but at Disney World he didn't want to be held or put in the stroller. We tried to let him get up and walk around as much as possible but it was tough because he kept getting in people's way and I didn't want him to get run over. Oh, and he was scared to death of the characters. We had to keep a safe distance from them!

I went to WDW once before with my 20 month old DD and that was fine too. She has Down syndrome though and she was happy as a clam just strolling along and checking out the sights.

We took advantage of the baby care centers a lot and they were so nice. I can't stress that enough. They were cool and quiet and clean. Disney is brilliant for putting those things in their parks! They even sell things you may have forgotten like formula, diapers, sunscreen, even baby tylenol and stuff. They were great!

Thank you so much for the info. We are thinking of going this March I guess we will see.

 

[Dis Ohana]

Great reviews! Love the pics too. I have ADR's for many of the places you're reviewing -- can't wait to read more!

 

[PatsMom]

Can't wait for more.

 

[Ms. Heimlich]

keep 'em comin'

 

[dlmaranich]

So this is a day when I didn’t get the first picture of food. Sorry. We ate at Pecos Bill’s for lunch and Crystal Palace for dinner. These will be quick reviews so I can get on to the ones with pictures. I have to preface by saying that I am not a fast food person. I’m one of those mean moms who never takes her children to McDonald’s. Call me crazy, but I try to fill them with food that has nutritional value. Granted, we let that slide a degree or two while we’re on vacation by allowing some extra sugar and snacks and sodas, but I still find that most fast food (and counter service locations) serve food that seems empty and almost fake. I’m not a fan.

Jiminy, Lady, Thunder, and Timon all got burgers at Pecos Bills. Jiminy’s was of the vegetarian variety. Timon rated the meal as “better than a McDonald’s burger, but still fast food.” He really enjoyed the topping bar though as most people who visit this location do. I ordered the chicken wrap and I was sadly disappointed. It was a whole wheat wrap which was a plus, but it was stuffed with tons of lettuce (not iceberg which is another plus), but the chicken tasted almost rubbery to me. There was no sauce in it either and when I attempted to open it to put some honey mustard sauce inside it fell apart. I ate less than half of it. The chocolate peanut butter mousse things they have for dessert weren’t a big hit in our party. Most of them remained uneaten.

Later that evening we had an ADR for Crystal Palace which I was actually looking forward to. In two previous trips to WDW we had ADR’s or PS’s as the case may be at the Crystal Palace and each time we ended up canceling them for one reason or another. So, because I’d heard great things about CP on the boards and the menu on allears looked good, I was excited to give it a try. We checked in at the podium about ten minutes before our ADR time and waited probably about 15 minutes to be seated. We got a great table overlooking the water and set away from a lot of the action. Our server was quick and efficient in bringing our drinks and explaining the character rotations and the DDP process. It wasn’t long before we mad our way to the buffet line. The first thing I noticed was the kiddie selection of food on a smaller counter. It was a bit dirty, but no big deal. Unfortunately though, the regular selection wasn’t any more impressive. There was an entire section of salads including a salad bar. The choices didn’t look very appetizing to me (some wilted lettuce, limited toppings), so I moved on to the hot food area. Again, not impressive. I was happy to see that there were garlic mashed potatoes on the buffet line so I took a huge heaping helping of those. I also chose roasted chicken and some garlic green beans. Once I sat down at our table and took a few bites I was very disappointed. The mashed potatoes were just not good, and really, mashed potatoes are hard to mess up. It’s not that they were sticky or cement-like or anything, it was just that the flavor was not even a little bit good. I think there was too much garlic in them and that’s tough coming from me because I am a garlic lover; I cook with fresh garlic at home almost on a daily basis. Anyway, they were also a bit on the cold side as were the green beans. The roasted chicken was very greasy. Later, I went back to the buffet hoping that I’d missed something the first time around but I had not. There was another buffet line around the corner but it was identical. Oh, and the worst part was that the buffet counter was very dirty. Food that had been spilled accidentally had not been wiped up and had even been smeared. It was not the least bit appetizing. The other people in our party felt the same; most of our food went back to the kitchen with only a few bites into our stomachs. The dessert selections weren’t plentiful either as I thought they would have been after what I read on the boards.

On the positive side though, the characters all made it to our table and posed for pictures with the kids. They certainly weren’t overly attentive but I didn’t feel as though we were “taken” in that sense. The food though, left so much to be desired. I would never, ever ever ever, pay OOP for that meal. I don’t think we’ll even be going back for breakfast. It was just a bad experience for us. It was easily the worst table service meal we had.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I do have a food picture from today. I’d read that one of the best values for your snack credit is the ice cream cookie sandwich at Sleepy Hollow in the Magic Kingdom. We’ll take five of those please! I didn’t eat one but they looked absolutely de-lish!

Moving along to bigger and better things—next up is Wolfgang Puck Express and Whispering Canyon with lots of pictures from both! I'm going to try to get those up this afternoon...

 

[dlmaranich]

Yay! Now that all that negativity is behind us, let’s get on to the good stuff! Tuesday was not a park day for us. We headed to Downtown Disney where half of our party went off to play at Disney Quest and the other half of us did some shopping ( I was in that half). Here we are getting ready to head out for the day.

Before Quest and shopping though, we stopped in at Wolfgang Puck Express and I am SO VERY glad we did!

WPE is not your typical CS location. You order at the counter and they give you a number to take to your table and then someone brings your food out. They have a very small inside dining area with only a couple of tables and then a larger covered patio outside with more tables and I believe they had overhead fans to keep it cool. We placed our order and then found two tables close to each other on the patio.

Lady ordered the BBQ Chicken Quesadilla. It looked so pretty! She loved this. It was very cheesy and the chicken was plentiful. The BBQ sauce had a bit of a zip to it.

Thunder had the roast beef and cheddar melt with homemade potato chips. He ate every last crumb of the sandwich and commented that they chips were very good.

Jiminy had a “knife & fork chicken Caesar salad”. It was served on some sort of foccaccia bread. The dressing was light and flavorful she said. She gave it an A overall.

Cinderella ordered the Turkey hero and I ordered the Rosemary chicken with garlic mashed potatoes. I wanted mashed potatoes because the ones I had at Crystal Palace had been such a huge letdown. Anyway, once the food was presented and I had taken the pictures Cinderella promptly started scraping all the yummy stuff off of her sandwich. I can’t find it on any of the menus online, but I’m pretty sure that is what it was called. Anyway, it had some sort of sun-dried tomato pesto that looked de-lish and it pained me to see her scraping it all away so I asked if she’d like to trade me entress. She said yes and I was glad she did because she shared her mashed potatoes with me anyway and I still got to have that YUM-O sandwich. It was so very good. It was real turkey, not the processed stuff and that sun-dried pesto was so tangy and fresh and yummy. The homemade chips it came with were sprinkled with some parmesan and herbs and they too were yummy. Oh, and the mashed potatoes that she shared with me more than made up for the icky ones served at Crystal Palace. Now these were some real garlic mashed potatoes. They were smooth and garlicy and they had a pool of melted butter in the middle and were sprinkled with chives. Um, um um they were good!

We also had a Margerhita pizza which I had a bite or two of and it was great too. The cheese was slightly chewy and the tomatoes were fresh and delicious.

Timon had some beef melt thing that I also can’t remember the name of or find it on any of the online menus. He said it was just okay. It was very greasy so he didn’t eat the whole thing.

Oh, and for good measure, here is a picture of the kids chicken strips.

For dessert we had a boatload of chocolate chip cookies, a brownie, and a crème brulee. The cookies were bagged and unremarkable. My sweet-toothed DD Cinderella didn’t care for the brownie and the crème brulee was mine. It was great as far as CS desserts go.

Before we boarded the boat to head back up river to the POR we popped into Goofy’s candy company to pick up a few of those personalized treats I’d read so much about. I only have pictures of mine and DH’s. We both opted for the pretzel rods dipped in milk chocolate (he had one dipped in dark) but topped in different goodies. We left them in the fridge in our room and munched on them throughout the week. They were so sweet, yet salty, and a great snack. I would have done this again if we’d had the time and a place to keep them!

Later that day we headed to dinner at the Wilderness Lodge’s Whispering Canyon Café. I’ve got plenty of pictures from our meal there and I will try to get the review up this evening!

 

[my3disneygirls]

OMG! Your pics are soooo good.

 

[FirstMagic]

Great reviews and I love the special four generation t-shirts your family had, so glad you included a picture of them too! We had trouble with them ringing up a CS for us at Starring Rolls, and found Kona very loud too.

Can't wait to read more!

 

[Ciciwoowoo]

I am really enjoying your review! I'm looking at those pretzels right now and my tummy got rumbly!

 

[dlmaranich]

Goodness Gracious…I’m so far behind!

Sorry for the delay in the update. You know how extended weekends go…
So anyway, later Tuesday night we headed over to the Whispering Canyon. My husband and my kids love that place! The fun started out right away when our server threw our napkins at us and then proceeded to “sneeze” straws our way. The kids cracked up. She asked about if we were on the DDP and explained everything to us very thoroughly. She was great. She stepped away to give us a few minutes to go over the menu and when she returned she found my mom on her cell phone with Stitch’s mom. The server yelled at the top of her lungs, “Be quiet everyone…she’s on the phone!” My mom’s eyes got really wide and then she politely hung up. We all thought it was so funny.

On to the pictures though…

So, since Timon ordered the skillet, he doesn’t get an appetizer. The rest of us did though…Cinderella and I ordered the salad. It was good, put unremarkable.

Lady ordered the nachos. Ya know, they were nachos…tough to mess up.

Thunder and Jiminy ordered the Cheese and Sausage Plate. I didn’t get any remarks on this appetizer from either of them. Here is a picture though…

For entrees Timon ordered the skillet as he always has and most likely always will. He loves it, especially the ribs.

Thunder and Lady both ordered the meatloaf. They both liked it very much.

Cinderella and I ordered the roasted chicken. The chicken was flavorful and moist. The mashed potatoes were equally good, did I mention mashed potatoes are my favorite food? They are. These were especially yummy with red skin all mixed up with the salty (but not too much so) potatoes. They gave me a pretty big portion too, but I can always eat more mashed potatoes! Veggies were crisp and good too.

Jiminy ordered the Prime Rib and ate as much of it as she could. She enjoyed it.

Bottomless milkshakes are indeed included as a drink option and all four of the kids took advantage. They loved them of course, but that isn’t saying much. I should have tried them then I could have given a fair review. Next time I suppose…

The reason I didn’t try them was because I was enjoying my own drink. I had one (okay, okay, I actually had two) of these blue glow martinis. They were good, but I had a complaint. They weren’t terribly cold, more like room temperature. But the glow cubes were fun and by the end of the trip I had collected four of them – one for each kid to use later at home!

Timon and I were the only ones who braved dessert. The others had theirs brought out in a to-go box and I didn’t bother taking pictures because they weren’t nearly as pretty as the desserts presented to us on plates! I ordered the Smores cheesecake. It was good. It was rich and sweet as you’d expect cheesecake to be, but the graham cracker flavor didn’t seem to be apparent at all.

Timon ordered the Caramel Apple Pie. I tried some and found it to be absolutely DE-Lish! Way better than the cheesecake and normally I’m a cheesecake type of gal.

Later that night, we took a stroll on the boardwalk. It was all well and good until we spotted the surrey bike that would actually hold all ten in our party. I know this would be more appropriate to add to our trip report but I can’t resist including it because we had such a blast on this thing. We laughed until we had aches in our sides and we even had a minor injury or two but it was all worth it.

Overall, Whispering Canyon is one of our favorites for both food and fun. The food is plentiful and good quality and it has always been a lively place to dine. We give it an A and go back again and again...

Okay, so where does that leave us then? Oh yes, on Wednesday we went to Sunshine Seasons and Ohana. I only have one picture from Ohana and it was of an adult beverage but I figure there are a ton of food porn threads with Ohana pics anyhow...

 

[TigerKat]

I don't know how you guys fared with the surrey bike, but I had to giggle when I saw your pic. We only had three of us and it was HARD WORK trying to get that puppy uphill!!

 

[dlmaranich]

Isn't it hard work??? Oh my we were a sight to see I'm sure. We had two little ones in the basket up front, one of them ringing that darn bell incessantly at all the poor people in front of us. Then of course we would get to laughing so hard that none of us could pedal. My dad had to get out and push a couple of times and once we even had a group of passerby professionals who looked like they'd been at a conference all day come and push us up a hill. It was so much fun though!

 

[lightningmcqueen]

Goodness Gracious…I’m so far behind!

Sorry for the delay in the update. You know how extended weekends go…
So anyway, later Tuesday night we headed over to the Whispering Canyon. My husband and my kids love that place! The fun started out right away when our server threw our napkins at us and then proceeded to “sneeze” straws our way. The kids cracked up. She asked about if we were on the DDP and explained everything to us very thoroughly. She was great. She stepped away to give us a few minutes to go over the menu and when she returned she found my mom on her cell phone with Stitch’s mom. The server yelled at the top of her lungs, “Be quiet everyone…she’s on the phone!” My mom’s eyes got really wide and then she politely hung up. We all thought it was so funny.

On to the pictures though…

So, since Timon ordered the skillet, he doesn’t get an appetizer. The rest of us did though…Cinderella and I ordered the salad. It was good, put unremarkable.

Lady ordered the nachos. Ya know, they were nachos…tough to mess up.

Thunder and Jiminy ordered the Cheese and Sausage Plate. I didn’t get any remarks on this appetizer from either of them. Here is a picture though…

For entrees Timon ordered the skillet as he always has and most likely always will. He loves it, especially the ribs.

Thunder and Lady both ordered the meatloaf. They both liked it very much.

Cinderella and I ordered the roasted chicken. The chicken was flavorful and moist. The mashed potatoes were equally good, did I mention mashed potatoes are my favorite food? They are. These were especially yummy with red skin all mixed up with the salty (but not too much so) potatoes. They gave me a pretty big portion too, but I can always eat more mashed potatoes! Veggies were crisp and good too.

Jiminy ordered the Prime Rib and ate as much of it as she could. She enjoyed it.

Bottomless milkshakes are indeed included as a drink option and all four of the kids took advantage. They loved them of course, but that isn’t saying much. I should have tried them then I could have given a fair review. Next time I suppose…

The reason I didn’t try them was because I was enjoying my own drink. I had one (okay, okay, I actually had two) of these blue glow martinis. They were good, but I had a complaint. They weren’t terribly cold, more like room temperature. But the glow cubes were fun and by the end of the trip I had collected four of them – one for each kid to use later at home!

Timon and I were the only ones who braved dessert. The others had theirs brought out in a to-go box and I didn’t bother taking pictures because they weren’t nearly as pretty as the desserts presented to us on plates! I ordered the Smores cheesecake. It was good. It was rich and sweet as you’d expect cheesecake to be, but the graham cracker flavor didn’t seem to be apparent at all.

Timon ordered the Caramel Apple Pie. I tried some and found it to be absolutely DE-Lish! Way better than the cheesecake and normally I’m a cheesecake type of gal.

Later that night, we took a stroll on the boardwalk. It was all well and good until we spotted the surrey bike that would actually hold all ten in our party. I know this would be more appropriate to add to our trip report but I can’t resist including it because we had such a blast on this thing. We laughed until we had aches in our sides and we even had a minor injury or two but it was all worth it.

Overall, Whispering Canyon is one of our favorites for both food and fun. The food is plentiful and good quality and it has always been a lively place to dine. We give it an A and go back again and again...

Okay, so where does that leave us then? Oh yes, on Wednesday we went to Sunshine Seasons and Ohana. I only have one picture from Ohana and it was of an adult beverage but I figure there are a ton of food porn threads with Ohana pics anyhow...

So funny that you posted this picture! We stayed at the Beach Club and saw you and your family! You all looked like you were having so much fun and what a coincidence that you post on the DIS!

 

[dlmaranich]

So funny that you posted this picture! We stayed at the Beach Club and saw you and your family! You all looked like you were having so much fun and what a coincidence that you post on the DIS!

Really???!! How funny! Gosh, I hope we weren't so obnoxious with that darn bell that you couldn't forget us.

Yes, we had such a blast. And, it certainly helped to work off some of those calories from those free DDP meals!

Small World huh?

 

[dlmaranich]

Next Up, was Epcot on Wednesday. We visited Sunshine Seasons because I’d heard good things and the abundance of choices was a great thing for us. When we arrived there were plenty of open tables which was nice since we were such a large party. We had no problem finding a spot where we could spread out a bit. I scoped out our options while DH obtained Fastpasses for us at Test Track (yes, it was a very long way, isn’t he sweet). I thought the Asian looked appetizing so once he arrived back with our keys I headed off to bring back the food. Cinderella came along and decided on a boring old turkey sandwich. Now that I look at the picture I sort of wish I'd gotten that too actually...She had a brownie from the bakery for dessert (she gets her chocolate cravings from her grandmother).

The Asian left a lot to be desired. It was just not good, but then again, I am not a fast food person. We do have a Chinese combo here though that I actually don’t mind stopping in at for lunch from time to time. This was just icky though. The noodles had absolutely no taste. The chicken was almost paste-like in consistency. The veggies were soggy and icky too. DH didn’t care for it either. Neither of us ate the whole thing.

For dessert I got us a strawberry shortcake and a key lime pie from the bakery. Both were huge, but neither tasted all that great. The strawberry shortcake was worse than the key lime pie. The strawberries weren’t fresh, and there was little to no flavor. It just tasted like sweetened mush. The key lime pie was a bit better. It was very light in consistency; it sort of melted in your mouth. Again though, the flavor seemed artificial to me and I just don’t like fake food. We didn’t eat all of these either.

Based on our experiences at the Sunshine Seasons alone, I’d give it a C- and I wouldn’t go back. The others in our party seemed to have made better choices, having stopped at the rotisserie place and the sandwich place. I didn’t get pictures because by the time I made it back to our tables they’d already begun eating. I don’t think we’ll go back here next time. I guess we’re just not fast food people.

Later that night the adults stepped out for a night at Spoodles. I’ll get that up tomorrow hopefully.

 

[jess20k]

Thank you for your awesome review, with the scrumptous pictures. Now I am very hungry!!