Free Dining Again-Disney845 & GardenGuy's Labor Day Trip

[Disney845]

A bit of background:

Disney845: Have had a love of Disney since I was a child. Generally an obsessive planner, but due to a fairly last minute (2 months is last minute for me) decision for this trip, and being completely bogged down with work, I didn't go all out with my color coded spreadsheets and time charts this time!

GardenGuy: Never really vacationed as a child. His first trip I just about dragged him along. But now he is the one asking when we are returning!!

We normally make our September trip later in the month (around the 21st) to coincide with GardenGuy’s birthday, but due to work constraints for me, we had to do a shorter trip of only 5 nights (we like to go for around 9 nights) and go earlier in the month. We decided to go around the Labor Day holiday (again, based on work time frames for me).

Dining Review related info:

This will be our 4th time on the Disney Dining Plan, and our 3rd time having it free!!! We are visiting some of our favorites and trying out a couple new TS.

Disney845: Loves bread, cheese, and potatoes. Doesn’t like broccoli, seafood, or warmed fruit (i.e. pies, desserts, etc with heated fruit). I am very strict on my eating at home (only consume certain amount of calories, no soda [can’t stand diet, both the taste and I try not to eat/drink things with artificial sweetners, plus I try not to “drink my calories”], etc), but do not adhere to that on vacay. Favorite Disney snack was the Strawberry Swirl (R.I.P. ), so now I have no “must-have” snacks.

GardenGuy: Eats very little red meat. Very cautious about not consuming food with red dyes, MSG, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, artificial sweetners, so-on and so-on. Doesn’t think he is picky, but he is. Our dining is often buffet heavy as he has a greater chance of finding something he will like. He has no reason to “watch his calories”, yes he is one of “thoooose” people who can eat a house and never gain one ounce of weight. *sigh* Favorite Disney snack was the Toll House Ice Cream cookie sandwich (R.I.P. ), so no must-have snacks.

Where will we eat?

Table Service:
Tusker House (Lunch)
San Angel Inn (Dinner)
Tutto Italia (Dinner)
Crystal Palace (Dinner)
Boma (Breakfast)

Counter Service:
Everything Pop (Dinner)
Backlot Express (Lunch)
Electric Umbrella (Lunch)
Cosmic Ray’s (Lunch)
Restaurantosaurus (Lunch)

Forgive the sad choice of CS locations. I unfortunately got pretty sick during our trip and didn't feel like eating much of anything, and GardenGuy was happy with a hot dog, so we didn't chose more adventurous or tasty CS.

 

[Disney845]

9/2/09
Before hitting the highway (to drive to WDW), I mention that I am hungry and would like a snack, we stop at McD’s (which I never eat, but what the heck, I am already in vacation mode, and everyone knows calories don’t count when consumed on vacation). GardenGuy hates McD’s so he has nothing (he had brought a small soft sided cooler with a few cans of Pepsi [since WDW is Coke only] and a few “snacky-cakes” that he likes, so he had a Pepsi and a chocolate chip muffin he had brought from home).

I get a double cheese burger which happened to be on “sale” for $0.89, a small fry from the dollar menu, and was going to get a small Sprite, but see a sign saying any size drink was only $1, so I get a large Sprite. Total with tax is $3.10. We hand the drive thru teller a $10 bill and a dime and ask for only $1s back (as we were going to use them for the tolls along the way). He is extremely confused by this. We repeat, “may we only have $1 bills back?” He says, so you want a $5 and 2 $1s? Ummm, no….we would only like $1 bills, instead of a $5 dollar bill please give us only $1 bills as change. Again he gives us a perplexed look, but we finally seem to get through to him and pull along to the next window to collect our food.

As I said, I never eat McD’s any longer, so was really looking forward to the burger and fries. Sadly the burger was dry and the fries had absolutely no salt on them. Definitely wasn’t worth the calories.

Sorry no pictures of this drive thru meal.

 

[Disney845]

We arrive at Pop Century and check in around 7pm. There was a very short wait to check in (maybe 5 minutes), and we had noticed that the check-in parking area is not very full, which was a change from most of our previous visits. Our check-in CM is "earning her ears" so there is another CM watching over her. We were through very quickly, and on our way off to our room.

We are in the 50s section (we have stayed in 50s before and like the proximity to the main building).

Room 1152

We are on the 1st floor (a first for us, as we are usually on a higher floor), but this would prove nice, not having to navigate the stairs after a long day. Our room faces a small circular courtyard (used by the Disney vehicles for driving up laundry/other things), and beyond that is the parking area. Most people would think this a poor "view" but we didn't care. We have previously faced the bowling pin pool, the lake (in the 60s area), and the computer pool while staying at Pop. We are still very close to the bowling pin pool, just a short walk to the other side of our building (literally like 1 minute). We are also very close to the main building/bus area. We much prefer this to the time we were located in the far reaches of space (also known as the 90s buildings).

We unpack and decide we are just going to stay at the resort tonight and get to sleep early so that we can start our next day at the parks fresh. So we head down to the food court. Unfortunately I had forgotten to charge any of the camera batteries before we left home, so we had plugged them in when we got to our room, and thus didn’t have the camera to take pictures of our dinner.

 

[natalielongstaff]

we liked the location of the 90's buildings !

great reviews so far

 

[Disney845]

The food court is not very busy. GardenGuy asks if I want to split a pizza and an order of breadsticks. Ok, I wasn’t starving after having my sad McD’s snack a few hours before, so we spend a few minutes deciding how best to use our dining plan credits and which items would be best paid for oop.

In the end we check out separately. GardenGuy with a tray of (1) Pepperoni Pizza, (1) bottle of white milk, and (1) chocolate cake (the latter two for me). My tray has (2) refillable mugs, (1) order of breadsticks, and (1) worms and dirt (the latter dessert for GardenGuy).

Totally off topic here, but I hate this new mug graphic. Not interested in starting a debate, but just to mention, we DO NOT reuse mugs, so we buy new when we visit WDW. I was really bummed a few years back when they stopped doing the resort specific mugs, as it was a fun collectable to bring home with you. I totally understand the “generic” mug saves WDW $, but I still miss the different resort themes. On top of that however, I really just dislike the way this new “Celebrate Today” themed mug looks. Oh well.

We find a booth (the food court seating is not very full) and GardenGuy fills our mugs, with Coke for me and Sprite for him. They no longer have Cherry Coke in the machines , nor do they have a regular iced tea machine , it is a combo iced tea machine, where you press a button for any 1 of 4 choices including sweet, unsweet, decaf, and green tea. I only drink unsweet and only like freshly brewed unsweet, so I was bummed. Oh, and they no longer seemed to have the icy machines . On a slightly positive note for anyone who enjoys it (not me), they now have blue powerade dispensed from the machines. GardenGuy was very pleased with this!

My seat is facing a television on a far wall playing a movie on one of the umpteen Disney Channels. We can’t hear the sound from where we are seated, but I was surprised to see Dave Coulier of Full House fame. I haven’t seen him on anything in years (with the exception of the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget, but he wasn’t even one of the comedians roasting Bob, he was just in the audience, and some of the other comedians were making fun of how no one has seen him in years).

GardenGuy and I split the Pepperoni pizza and the breadsticks. The pizza is ok. The breadsticks are dry, have no baked cheese on top, the sauce is watery, and you only get 2. We have had the breadsticks at Pizzafari (AK) and at the All Star Sports and POFQ food courts in the past and they were soooo much better. You received 3 breadsticks, they were covered in crisped cheese and had a huge serving of thick and yummy marinara sauce. Not sure if the price tag was higher at the other locations which could have something to do with the 3 vs 2? I eat mine, but GardenGuy only eats half of his. He then inhales his worms and dirt (we noticed that the serving size seemed much smaller than it has in the past). I get the 2 reddish colored worms on top because GardenGuy avoids dyes if he can.

We spend our dinner “people watching” and commenting on the weird assortment of styles (like the guy with the 4 mini-braided goaty???), the totally off the wall clothing options people choose to wear, and the HUGE amount of young pre-teen and teen girls who seem to be wearing extremely provocative clothing (skin tight tank tops with push up bras and copious amounts of cleavage, mini skirts so tight and short they can barely move in them, or shorts that aren’t even fully covering their butt cheeks, etc) and just wonder at the lack of parental concern for the inappropriate attention this draws to minors??? Don’t get me wrong, we are not old prudes, I just think that “children” should not be drawing that sort of attention to their bodies.

We look around the gift shop for a bit and I take my milk and chocolate cake back to eat in the room later, after I have put my milk on ice. I rarely drink milk (in fact this is the first I have had it in probably 6 months), but when I do drink it I like it icy cold. The cake is good, but rich. I eat only about half and give the rest to GardenGuy. GardenGuy watches a bit of TV. I take a hot bath and read a book for a bit and we call it a night.

 

[Disney845]

9/3/09
Today we are headed to Animal Kingdom. I get up around 7:15am and hop in the shower while GardenGuy sleeps in a bit before taking his shower. We wanted to be at the park by 9am, but what can I say, I don’t like to be rushed in the morning while on vacation. GardenGuy is getting antsy by 8:30ish, so I send him off to the food court to fill his mug up and leave me in peace to finish getting ready (I was ridiculously straightening my hair, which living in FL I should just know better, but what can I say, I am vain! Unfortunately it was soooo humid and sticky that I ended up putting it in a pony tail before too long anyway ). He gets back to the room and eats one of his from-home snacky-cakes while trying to rush me along. By 9am we are heading to the bus stop for AK. What luck, the bus has just pulled up and we walk on to a seat. This starts a precedence for the day of very little wait.

We arrive at AK and head to guest relations to get our 1 day park tickets removed from our room keys (we have seasonal passes, but had to buy them for the free dining plan, so we wanted them separated off the room key to save and upgrade at a later date). When I hand the guest relations CM our two room keys and ask that the 1 day tix be removed and put on their own ticket he acts like this is a HUGE deal. First he questions why we want it done? Then he says no one has ever asked him to do this before, and it will take him a while to figure out how to do this. Not sure if he is new or just really never had anyone ask him that before, but we have done the same thing in the past by having the 1 day taken off the packaged room key and used to buy/renew our seasonal pass. Finally we receive the separate tickets and it is on to AK.

I was sad to see the centralized FP experiment was not open, as I had read it was still going on just recently? But this didn’t prove to be a problem today at all.

After a quick detour to the Asia area restrooms (I had to put my hair up before I turned into the Yeti myself, curse this FL weather ).

Stamped into the rock outside the restroom.

A warning sign for users of the water fountains.

We head straight for EE, grab a FP (which the return time started in 30 min) and get in the Stand-By line which said 5 min. There was no wait at all, by the time we walked all the way through the winding queue we walked right on to the next train.

A few pics from the ride, before I got scared I was going to drop the camera.

On the way to the first hill.

A view while climbing the first hill.

 

[Disney845]

After EE we headed to Dino-Rama. I had woken up with a slight headache, which wasn’t going away, and wanted to grab a drink and take some pills. Restaurantosaurus didn’t open until 11am, so we headed over to an ice cream cart to grab a bottle of coke (stopping for a picture with Pluto and Goofy on the way).

We waited behind a few people and were just telling the 2 gentleman behind the cart we only wanted a bottle of coke when another man burst back up to the cart with a strawberry bar in his hands and started ranting about the “real quality control issues” they were having. Apparently his strawberry bar wasn’t as frozen as he wanted it? It looked a bit sticky, but certainly wasn’t a pool of red liquid in the wrapper by any means (and there was at least 5 other people sitting on benches nearby consuming ice cream bars, so really how bad could they have been? He is going on and on and on and saying how he wanted his money back. The one CM said he would have to call a manager to come to do a return to give him money back and gets on his walkie-talkie to get the manager. All the while the guy just keeps on, over and over berating these two CMs. I mean come on, it was an ice cream, not the end of the world people!!! It was really getting to the one CM, I could tell, and he told the man that if he would like, he could head up to guest relations in the front of the park to formally complain.

We finally get our coke bottle and head over to a shady bench by the store.

Sorry for the picture after it was already opened and partially consumed, but if I hadn’t had a headache before, this over-the-top ice cream customer had made it 10 times worse.

 

[Disney845]

After the coke we looked around the shop for a bit.

Then headed to the Dinosaur ride.

Where we walked into the pre-show room just before it started, and then we
walked right on to the ride with no wait.

After Dinosaur we make a quick stop at Primeval Whirl.

Then it is back to EE for our fast pass ride.

 

[Disney845]

The wait with our FP at EE was minimal maybe 3 minutes.

At this point GardenGuy is ready to sit down somewhere cooler, so we head for It’s Tough To Be a Bug.

After a short wait for the next show to start, we enjoy the few minutes in the cooler theater.

After ITTBAB GardenGuy says he needs a snack. I mention several things close by, but nothing sounded good to him. He was starting to get whiny (Men!) so I finally suggested soft serve ice cream, which he agreed to, so we headed back towards EE where I saw the ice cream stand.

I have a root beer float, notice the ice cream already melting in the hot sun.

GardenGuy has a chocolate and vanilla twist soft serve cone. It was melting like crazy so he had to consume part of it before I could get the picture.

Sorry for the extreme close up, he about shoved it into the camera as I was taking the picture.

 

[Disney845]

We then killed time till our lunch reservation by listening to a bird demonstration

and spending time in the Pangani Forest taking in the sights.

Tusker House 1:30pm:

This will be our second lunch visit to Tusker House since it became the Table Service buffet restaurant. We really enjoyed our first visit in 2008, and GardenGuy was happy to eat there again, as it is a buffet and he would have a wide selection.

When I was making our reservations (using the new online system, which I really like btw), the time I chose for lunch just happened to coincide with the time to get priority seating for the Nemo show. Now we saw the Nemo show when it first opened, and it didn’t do anything for us (I really preferred the Tarzan Rocks show). So I wasn’t really sure if we planned to use the passes and go see the show again. I had mentioned it to GardenGuy this morning, but he wasn’t interested in watching the people with the “stick puppets” as he called them.

We check in at the podium about 5-10 min before our ressie. There is a swarm of female CMs around the check in podium arguing with each other on who is going to take the 2pm podium shift, because so-and-so was going home, but the woman scheduled didn’t want the podium and so-on. I was really put off by this “argument” all of these women were having while another woman was checking us in right next to them? We were asked if we wanted the FP to Nemo, but we declined. We were handed a pager and told to sit down at the outside tables right next to the podium for them to call us.

Note: they have moved the check-in area from last year. There is a podium out front of the restaurant that is located near the bar and the covered bar seating pavillion. This is near where the African dancers perform. This is now for walk-ups, we were directed around to the back side of the building where another podium and smaller un-covered seating is located for those with dining reservations.

A few pictures of the outside waiting area for the restaurant.

In the 15 min or so that we waited a family (multiple adults and multiple children) arrived to check in. Two little girls (maybe 6-7) take seats on either side of one of the small outside waiting tables and begin to start pushing the table back and forth at each other, and each one is upset with the other and screaming at mommy or daddy (“Susie (not sure what the names were, just using for point of reference)?) did this”, “no I didn’t”, “Molly (?) did that”, “no I didn’t”, “liar”, “no you’re a liar”, next thing you know one girl stands up to shove the other and the other kicks her in the chest, one of the men in the group yells at them to stop and one of the women turns to see what is going on. The girl who was kicked is crying and telling the adults she was kicked and the adult woman turns to the other girl and yells at the top of her lungs, “You did what? You kicked her?” To which the little girl who clearly did kick her says “No, she is lying.” To which the adult woman (their mother?) Yells loudly “No You’re A Liar!” to this 7 year old. Then announces to everyone that she needs a cigarette and stomps off?!? Wow! The “liar” child is still denying everything and one of the adult men keeps yelling at her, “shut up, Shut Up, JUST SHUT UP”! Now we have no children of our own yet, but I can’t imagine how yelling at a 7 year old at the top of your lungs to “SHUT UP” and calling them a “Liar” is great parenting skills, and is showing what mature adults act like (even if it is true and they are lying, there are better ways to explain why being dishonest is not a good thing without resorting to name calling of your own children!?). No wonder the kids were acting up.

 

[gracie1]

Loving this review

 

[Disney845]

Finally our beeper goes off and we are shown into the restaurant where we are very surprised to see that it is almost empty. There is a long area directly off the buffet which is maybe a quarter full, with a smaller chamber to the left (where we were seated) that was still sizable, but only had about 5 filled tables in it???

We didn’t mind in the least, as our touring plan was a lazy one today, but wondered why the 15 min wait when they were clearly not anywhere close to busy. I suggested to GardenGuy that maybe they were short on servers and were doing it for crowd control, and suggested that maybe some of the 5-6 women who were out at the podium “arguing” with each other could have been better put to work inside.

Our waiter was very pleasant and after taking our drink order (unsweet ice tea for both of us) we went up to the buffet. The food was plentiful, and due to the shortage of filled tables, there wasn’t really a line at any of the food stations. By the time we had prepared our first plates and were sitting back down, the waiter arrived with our teas and a small bowl of lemon. I do not take lemon in my tea, but GardenGuy does (as well as sugar, yuck!), but I thought it was a nice touch. The waiter was also nice enough to bring up second glasses before we were through with our first, preventing us from sitting without a drink.

 

[Disney845]

First off, I apologize for the fuzzy quality of some of the food pics, not sure what happened.

This first plate was 3 types of bread to share (corn muffin, underneath was like a dry soda bread with pieces of corn in it maybe? and a dinner type roll with seeds on top) and a small portion of both Caesar salad and mixed greens with ranch, shredded cheese, and croutons, with a pickle spear. For reference this is on one of the smaller “salad-sized” plates. I cut the corn muffin in half and GardenGuy ate his half, but I only had a bite or two. Neither of us liked the slice of bread with the yellow (corn?) pieces in it. I enjoyed the dinner roll (I LOVE bread but don’t eat much of it these days), but it needed butter, so I put it to the side for the time being. The salads were fresh and tasty and the pickle spear cold and crisp.

My first full plate (turquoise). I decided to try a small sample of the many different things up on the buffet. Clockwise from 12 are pearl couscous (good), some sort of spiced rice (was cold [supposed to be I think] and hard-yuck), a spiced potato wedge (good), some very tiny grained couscous (also cold but very good), a pastry triangle with spicy meat filling-good, salmon (I know I said before I don’t like seafood, but I think salmon is ok, and will often try a smidge on a buffet, this one was pretty good), saffron(?) vegetables (zucchini is my favorite veggie, and this was pretty good), another type of not so good hard rice, zucchini and tofu dish (sadly yuck, the zucchini was ruined by the flavor), and in the middle- a thin grained white rice like substance (very good), green beans (I like long green beans, but these were cold, and not so good), curry chicken (pretty good).

GardenGuy’s first full plate (light blue). Sorry for the picture, he started eating before I made it back to the table!. Clockwise from 12, the cold hard rice I didn’t like (he also didn’t like), the cold small grained couscous I enjoyed (he also liked), curry chicken, pearl couscous, and mini corn dogs (on the kids table, but still pretty yummy!).

My second plate (another turquoise, but it is a different plate, I promise I am not one of the people who bring the same plate back to the buffet). Also, even though it looks kinda messy, I hadn’t started eating from it before I took the pick. I promise! Clockwise from 12. Carved piece of pork loin (dry but tasty), above it is this spicy mustard sauce the carving station attendant told me I should take for the pork as it was really good (I didn’t care for it, but I only like yellow mustard, none of the spicy types). Slice of beef (this just wasn’t cooked enough for me, I could only do a bite or so), rotisserie chicken (moist and tender, very good), potato wedges (I enjoyed my first, so I tried some more), little more salmon, corn dog bite, mashed potatoes and gravy (I love almost any sort of potato ).

GardenGuy’s second plate (blue, again, we didn’t plan it, just ended up being the next plate from the stack we chose). Clockwise from about 1, mashed potatoes, corn dog bites, butter (for my roll from before), pearl couscous with curry chicken on top, and macaroni and cheese (now way back when, Disney use to serve a Stouffers mac and cheese which I really liked, then they went to this nasty tasting water cheesy sauce mac and cheese that I can’t stand. GardenGuy still thinks it is ok, but he also thinks Kraft mac and cheese in a box tastes good! Ugh).

My dessert plate (yellow-also small like the salad plate size), clockwise from 12. Chocolate cake (hard as a rock!, yuck), cinnamon bread pudding drizzled with vanilla sauce (this had some sort of nut in it, which I tried not to scoop up when serving myself, I really like bread pudding with no fruit in it [remember I don’t do warm fruit, so any bread pudding where they put apples, or raisons, or some other fruit I won’t eat], well this had no fruit, but the flavor of the cinnamon was over powering and I didn’t enjoy it at all), carrot cake (very good), passion fruit tart (GardenGuy had already filled his dessert plate while I was still eating my last food plate, and said this was great I had to try it…didn’t like it that much?), lemon bar (cold and lemony, but by this point I was so full I ate only a bite).

GardenGuy’s dessert plate (blue again!) Clockwise from 12, coconut something (I can’t stand coconut, so I don’t know how this was, but he ate them both after scraping the red gooey stuff from the top), carrot cake, chocolate chip cookie (he said this was good, and better than some of the large cookies you get sometimes that are too crispy and not soft enough), lemon bar (which he had already taken a bite of before I could snap the picture), and a passion fruit tart in the center.

A very filling meal. We enjoyed ourselves quite a bit, and will return.

 

[Disney845]

After lunch we headed over to Kilimanjaro safaris where we just about walked on. Had a great and very lively older gentleman driver! Something new that I had never had happen, when we got to the unloading dock they said they were allowing re-rides if you wanted to ride again without going through the line. They made everyone exit, then the CM checked the truck for left belongings, then anyone who wanted to re-ride was loaded towards the back of the truck. I guess because the wait time was so short? We (along with 3 other families) re-rode. Again when we got to the exit, they announced anyone could re-ride, but we wanted to move on.

We took the train over to Conservation Station.

Walked through the inside and went right up to Rafiki and Jiminy Cricket and had the handler take our picture with them (no one else was around, it was very strange?).

Then we spent some time in the petting zoo.

GardenGuy loves animals.

I really liked the miniature donkeys!

The lambs had been sheered with little designs on their butts, like this one with a Mickey head.

Was chatting with one of the CMs and she said they had just recently (within a few months) retired their old goat (herd?) that was about 12 years old and these were all new goats. She said they were about 2 years old, and were just getting used to each other and their surroundings.

Several of them were “fighting” over the bridge, butting heads and such, she said they were still trying to work out the dominance, and that when the alpha males finally put the other males in their place and took over, that the bridge would be their's.

She said all the males were neutered and there were only 2 females, but they were just going into heat so it was still creating some behavior problems with the neutered males.

 

[Disney845]

We didn’t realize how long we had been hanging out at Rafiki’s Planet watch, and the next thing we knew it was 5pm. We made our way back on the train and stopped in a few shops on the way to the front of the park. When we got to the exit, we noticed a truck with characters and CMs singing and dancing with guests. We had never noticed this at AK closing before?

Walked right up to a bus for Pop Century, got a seat and made it back to the hotel. We were originally going to go out to MK for the evening, but GardenGuy wasn’t feeling too well, so he asked if we could stay in. He asked me to get his mug filled with coke and get him a plain cheese cake. I filled both the mugs (I originally filled mine with unsweet tea, but I really prefer naturally brewed tea, and didn’t care for the stuff that came out of the 4 in one tea machine, so I dumped it out and got coke for both of us), got him the plain cheese cake, and got myself a chocolate croissant and by the time I was back to the room he was asleep!

So I ate my croissant (yummy) and filled the ice bucket to keep his cheese cake cold.

By the time he woke up from his "nap", I was getting ready to head to bed. He went down to the food court and got a sugar cookie (sorry no photo) which was yummy (I managed a bite), ate his cheese cake, and watched TV while I went to bed.

 

[DLo]

enjoying your reviews. just have to chime in on your mug opinion - totally agree. We liked having the resort on the mug as a relatively inexpensive souvenior.