Wednesday, October 17th - Crystal Palace and Breakfast with Pooh AKA: A Most Feculent Feast
**A love note to the readership: Due to some technical difficulties yesterday many of the most recent responses I posted in response to your recent posts in response to my posts...gack! It's a vicious cycle, isn't it? Anyhoo, those musings are no more, and since I can't even remember if I took my pills this morning let alone remember what I posted yesterday, please just let me say a big thank you to everyone for reading, posting, lurking and hopefully laughing. Maxiesmom: there's no right or wrong way to eat a cheese plate - just enjoy the by-product of what is essentially a bacterial process. 
And happy belated birthday to Jusmom! Many thanks again to all of you for popping in to share the food love with us one last time. B&J**
I'm not exactly sure why I decided to book a character breakfast at Crystal Palace - Jay and I are not big fans of buffet food and we're not especially enamored of Winne the Pooh and his posse, although Jay does admit to a certain fondness for Piglet (could it be due to his Homer Simpson-like love of pork products?). I think the choice had something to do with my desire to get into the Magic Kingdom early on my birthday combined with the novel idea of trying a new restaurant.
Here's how the conversation went when I first had the idea:
"Hey buddy, what would you think of having breakfast with Pooh on my birthday?"
"I'm not really interested in contracting hepatitis, thanks anyway."
"Huh?"
"Breakfasting with poop is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard you say, and you've said a lot of really disgusting things over the last 13 years."
"
Pooh...breakfast with
Winne the Pooh! Not breakfast with poop!!!"
Well, we got a big laugh out of that because if there's one thing that Jay and I really appreciate it's bathroom humor. And the end
(see what I mean? Even now I can't restrain myself) result was six months of truly terrible humor that didn't stop until we finished our breakfast at Crystal Palace, re-christened by Jay as the Translucent Toilet.
Here's an early morning picture of Jay and me on the bus to the Magic Kingdom:
Unintentional birthday cleavage...no ice cream in sight
Despite what some of you may be thinking, I did not wear the color brown on purpose that morning. Although when Jay asked me about it my response could only be, "Are you trying to tell me I look like crap?"
We had our first surprise of the day when we arrived at the MK and found that CMs were just letting people into the park willy nilly. As far as we knew it wasn't an EMH morning, so we were a little baffled by this. We discovered later it was the morning that Fantasy Land opened early for the wee little children and their parents who were staying on property - that's a new one (or not, if we had bothered to read the 657 pieces of paper we were presented with upon checking in Monday morning). So there were a few more people wandering Main Street than I had hoped for, but I still managed a couple of pictures that weren't too bad.
Hey...down in front!!
The MK was really decorated well this year for fall and
MNSSHP. Main Street seemed especially vibrant and I loved all the extra little touches that were on display. It really made me wish we were going to be attending the Halloween party on this trip, but
**sigh** we'd already decided against that and had earmarked that money for something else.
I took some pictures of the costumed pumpkinheads anyway, because they were just cool.
Minnie seems really excited to see Plankton...
Hey Disney, we'd let you let us spend the night here
Having never eaten at Crystal Palace, we weren't exactly sure what to expect. We knew the food was going to be standard breakfast buffet fare; we knew that Winnie the Pooh and his friends would be there; we knew that it was likely to be crowded.
How crowded, you ask?
Take a laxative, CP; you've got a serious logjam building
There may be a few people left in this world who have never eaten at Crystal Palace, so please bear with me for a moment while I go through the arrival / check-in / seating process at this particular establishment. Located just to the left of the restaurant's front doors is a check-in / reservation window and one lucky CM who verifies guest reservations. At that point you are told to wait in the general vicinity and someone will "shout" your name when a table is ready.
I'm really a fan of pagers, especially when waiting outdoors with masses of people who all sound like they are speaking at the highest human decibel possible. Due to the noise around us and the whisper-thin voice of the CM calling for guests, we had to listen really hard for our name to be "shouted." It doesn't help that for some reason when people see our last name for the first time they always transpose the letters and call for what sounds like a very unique and hard-to-find German sausage.
"MENSCHWAGER!!! Party of two: MENSCHWAGER!!!"
That's us...
I think...and we pushed through the human sea to the high ground where we were escorted to our table to, as Jason phrased it, "wallow in our own crapulence." Here is what will meet your gaze upon your entrance to the Translucent Toilet, uh, I mean Crystal Palace:
Topiaries!!! I love topiaries!!
I liked the atmosphere and the decor immediately. Light-filled and whimsical, I felt like we were breakfasting in the Victorian conservatory of a very eccentric individual. And lookie there! Said eccentric individual remembered that it was my birthday!
We were among the first guests seated that morning, so we decided to raid the buffet before the restaurant became overly crowded. It's a fairly small buffet area, compared with something like Chef Mickey's, but it's charming nonetheless.
The above picture is the area of the buffet where the "hot" foods are served. To either side are additional buffets with fruit, breads, salmon, and yogurt. There is also a children's buffet which includes that puffed french toast I'd read so much about.
Brenda's plate: I'm saving room for all the meals still to come today
Jason's plate: missing!
I don't know what happened...I'm sure we took a picture of his plate, but then again maybe we didn't. I do know he had some kind of egg-ey frittata dish on his plate that he said was pretty tasty, but aside from that I'm willing to bet we both had a lot of the same things.
Biggest food disappointment: the puffed french toast (you can see it at the top of my plate). It was completely coated in sugar - makes my teeth hurt just thinking about it. The closest comparison I can come up with is that the puffed french toast is like a jelly donut without the joyous discovery of a jell-filled center. Too gritty and sweet for my taste. Oh, and excuse me waiter, could I get six more packets of sugar for my cup of coffee?
So the food was exactly what we thought it would be, nothing more and nothing less. The service and the character interaction were great. Our waiter was attentive and helpful and invited us to stay as long as we liked even after we'd paid the bill. And we did hang out for a bit in order to nab some pictures with Pooh and his Dingleberry Gang.
First up: a painfully bright Tigger.
It is physically impossible to take a bad picture of my husband...
I also had my picture taken with flourescent Tigger but it didn't turn out very well so it seemed best not to include it here.
Don't look now, but here comes Pooh!!
Pooh is so soft and cuddley
You're hugging Pooh!
Why yes, I think a picture of the two of us with Pooh would be lovely...
I'm not proud, but by the time the poor bear had moved on Jay and I were doubled over with hysterical juvenile laughter. We moved on from Pooh jokes to those tired old Uranus jokes and then I topped off a grand old morning of laughter with my favorite version of Yankee Doodle, which I first heard when I was six years old. I'm not sure if I can post it here ... it's not really offensive but it is kind of gross. I guarantee that if any of you have children, especially boys, they'd love it. Really intrigued? Send me a PM and we'll have a little conversation.
**I seem to have exceeded my image limit in this post, so I'll have to continue in the next one ... please stay tuned.**
So we bought half a pound and gorged on cheese last night. That did wonders for my weight loss program, I'm sure.
making this face
Can't wait to read through another one!
