Hi!
On one hand, I didn't want to be the person with no diagnosis who won't eat gluten because it's all trendy and Oprah did it. On the other hand...I think there might be some good reasons why it's trendy to not eat gluten, and the overstimulation of a Disney trip can provoke enough meltdowns on its own without adding in First Time Eating Gluten in a Month meltdowns.
I totally get that! Since we have to avoid corn syrup products, and of course some people don't want to believe that there can be problems with it. And there are nasty passive aggressive ADS about how corn syrup is just sugar, blah blah blah. There would be no diagnosis for us (that might not be true, since I think it's a blood sugar spike thing, but who needs some weird blood sugar diagnosis when I can just avoid the stuff and not encounter the problems?), but avoiding the stuff works, so...we just avoid it. So I totally understand.
Columbia Harbor House is, as far as we can tell, the only place (or at least the only quick service) in the Magic Kingdom that serves allergen-free chicken tenders. ....Much better than the chicken nuggets they serve to people without food allergies.
Makes ya wonder what they are putting in the "allergic" chicken things! 
....My understanding is that the fries themselves are gluten free everywhere, but there are issues with cross contamination in a lot of places because of the shared fryers.
OK, as a vegetarian, ew! I haven't had a long convo with a WDW chef, but my talk with Chef Chris at
Disneyland taught me that they want to make as many people happy as possible with any step they take. So they aren't going to share fryers for fries with ANYTHING meat, because then they've destroyed the vegetarian/vegans, and some religious diets as well, and of course gluten-free depending on what they are also cooking. Hoping your manager misunderstood, or else I'll have to rethink the french fry thing at WDW.
...and a pair of Athens Croc flip flops. I wore the flip flops on this, the first day, and
.wound up with blisters between my toes.
When I first bought my Athens, I had the same problem. However, I was at Disneyland and my feet were already in incredible amounts of pain, so the blisters were nothing compared to how bad my feet had already been feeling. The blisters got covered with adhesive bandages, and my bones breathed a sigh of relief thanks to the squishy
Crocs.
Sorry it didn't work out the same for you.
Ooh, those are cute. And they come in wide widths. Not sure I could rock the no-sock look, but I might have to try those in the future!
...because my memory of the rest of the day is that we spent hours walking back and forth between Asia and Africa over and over again.
This is what Dave did in the evenings while I worked on my trip report notes: he's making a spreadsheet to record all the money we spent on stuff. We are two different kinds of geeky.
Funny, my memory of many WDW parks involve walking back and forth from point A to point B repeatedly, too!
Oh I wish I'd had a solid chance to really track our spending during the trip. I've GOT to get a spreadsheet program for my Mac (though my Mac seems to get heatstroke at WDW, b/c it died entirely while there, but now back at home is up and running just fine). Notes weren't enough! (jealous of you guys, obviously)
I did feel a little sheepish watching this environmental tale about how I needed to get back to the land and use fewer resources when I was sitting in the middle of Disney World, though. I mean, it takes a lot of resources to run Disney World, I'm thinking. All the oil that goes into those plastic buckets they put the kid meals in at Restaurantosaurus, for example. And the air conditioning to cool down the Land pavilion where we were watching the movie. I felt like maybe I should just go across the park to the Universe of Energy where I could hear about how great fossil fuels are instead.
Good point!
Mostly I just hate driving anywhere I'm not familiar with; I get really stressed out about taking wrong turns and that sort of thing, and I don't want to be stressed out on vacation! I never have any clue where we are when DH is driving; after all these trips, my sense of WDW geography is still absolutely terrible. It turned out to be very lucky I didn't drive that day, though, or DH would have had to take a cab to urgent care.
Remember, as long as you keep track of the *area* you're trying to get to, you'll eventually get there. (and CentraCare has a shuttle for free, I hear)
Dave asked the CM where the raw material came from (it seemed like there was kind of a step missing in the whole educational where paper comes from thing...basically it seemed to teach kids that you can use paper to make....slightly different paper), and she said, it comes from trees....tree products. Realizing her answer was pretty lame, she added apologetically, they don't really tell us where it comes from.
Love that!
When I was in practice (I was a chiropractor) I had some patients make homemade paper for me. Making paper at home involves ripping up other pieces of paper, turning it into pulp, adding flowers and whatnot, and pressing it into paper (that you can barely write on). So, yeah...you make paper with other paper!
I do want you to know something I found out near Rock 'n Roller Coaster. There's a bead kiosk there, and it seems that Disney takes all of those discarded maps and Times Guides, renders it down somehow, then sends it to Uganda, where women there make beads out of them, then ship them back to Disney to be sold at kiosks. Recycling!
Living with the land sure is a nice comforting ride. We skipped Circle of life so it was nice to read a review of this attraction.
! My favourite CS meal hands down! That's a shame about the Power Ade not being a drink option for kids.
on booking Port Orleans for a possible trip next year! Think that is where I would like to stay on my next trip as well.
. Alas, I think we're never meant to be together.
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