It all started with a … Missing Alien? - May 2017 PTR

[PrincessAshlee]

It all started with a … Missing Alien?

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Hello and welcome to my second Pre-Trip Report. If you didn’t read my first PTR, my name is Ashlee. I’m 29 and I love all things Disney! My traveling partner for this trip is my wonderful husband Corey. He doesn’t love Disney as much as I do, but he is definitely coming around.

Me: Ashlee
Favorite Park: Tie between Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom
Favorite Ride: Mad Tea Party
Favorite Restaurant: Kona Café (breakfast) and Ohana (dinner)
Favorite Movie: Lilo & Stitch
Favorite Character Meet: Stitch

DH: Corey
Favorite Park: Magic Kingdom
Favorite Ride: Tower of Terror or Toy Story Midway Mania
Favorite Restaurant: Ohana
Favorite Movie: Lion King or Pirates of the Caribbean
Favorite Character Meet: Queen of Hearts (Club Villain)​

We were last at Disney World in October for our honeymoon! We had a wonderful week and are really looking forward to going back.

We will be there April 29 – May 6, 2017 and we will be staying at Pop Century.


79 Days to Go!!! I Can’t Wait!!!

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Table of Contents

How It All Started

Pop Century - Our Home Away From Home

Things That I Learned From Our Disneymoon

Let's Talk About Food

Week 1 Status Update

Show Me The Waffles

OK, So Here's The Plan...

There's So Much More Time For Activities

Happy Fastpass Fat Tuesday!!

Mousellaneous Updates

It's A Small Update After All

Expedition Update - Legend of the Lost PTR

So Much to Do and So Little Time to Do It

Single Digit Dance

Blast From the Past

I'm Going to Disney World Today!!

I Survived My Sister's Wedding!

 

[PrincessAshlee]

How It All Started​

In case you didn’t read my update on my last PTR, here’s the story behind the title of this PTR…

While we were at Disney World in October, DH and I decided that even though we love WDW and were having a great time, we would have to wait until 2020 to go back (there’s a long story behind why we decided on 2020, but I’ll skip that part).

For the next couple of months, we talked about planning a small trip in April to celebrate our 6 month-iversary. We discussed several different locations, but I kept finding something wrong with each of them. I just couldn’t find anywhere that I was as excited about as WDW.

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Fast forward to this past weekend when… I went to have coffee in my Stitch mug from my trip to WDW in 2014. I noticed right away that Stitch was missing! That mischievous alien had escaped! Well it turns out that he had some help. Not thinking, DH had put it in the dishwasher. So jokingly, I told DH that we are just going to have to go back to WDW, so I can get a replacement and to my surprise, he said Yes!!

One of the reasons that were waiting to go back was cost, so after he said yes, I decided to see how much it would actually cost us and we decided that we can afford to go again this year!! We will have to stay at a value resort and scale back our other spending a little, but it’s so much better than not going at all!

We ended up having to move our vacation until the first week of May, but I’m so excited to be going back!!

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Pop Century - Our Home Away From Home​

We are officially booked for our May vacation! We will be spending 7 nights at the Pop Century Resort!!

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For our Disneymoon in October, we stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort. I won’t go in to all of the details now, but I was not a fan and did not feel that it was worth the extra we paid to upgrade from a value to a moderate. For that reason and some others, we decided that the next time we went to WDW, we would save up and stay at one of the MK area resorts. (That was one of the reasons that we were waiting until 2020.)

There was no way that we could afford to go again this year and stay at one of the Deluxes and I really didn’t want to take a chance on another Moderate (even though I had heard great things about Port Orleans), so we decided to save some money and go with a Value this time. It had been in my head for a while now that we would stay at Pop someday, so this seemed like the perfect time.

I can’t decide which section I want to request, they all seem so fun!​

For my girls only trip in Feb/Mar 2014, I stayed across the lake at Art of Animation and I really liked it. We actually had lunch at Pop one day, but then it started to rain, so we didn’t get a chance to walk around and explore the resort. I am very excited to go back and see it all this time!

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I am slightly concerned, because they will be right in the middle of scheduled refurbishments when we go, but I have read that they are room only renovations, so I’m hoping that it will not be too loud. Also, there’s a chance that we could get lucky and get a newly renovated room.

Since we are already way past 180 days , I am now frantically trying to pull together a rough schedule and make some ADRs. Stay tuned for an update on that soon!


79 Days To Go!!! I Can’t Wait!!

 

[Chelley00]

We will be there the same time! Looking forward to seeing your plans.

 

[Sarahh1027]

Hi! I went to Disney the first week of May in both 2015 and 2016. The weather is beautiful (low humidity) and the crowds aren't too bad.
I stayed at Pop back in 2012 in a preferred room (50's building) which was lovely!
Good luck with ADRs!!

 

[Raeven]

Following along!

 

[PrincessAshlee]

We will be there the same time! Looking forward to seeing your plans.

That's so exciting! I'm headed over to read your PTR now, so that I can see what you have planned!

Hi! I went to Disney the first week of May in both 2015 and 2016. The weather is beautiful (low humidity) and the crowds aren't too bad.
I stayed at Pop back in 2012 in a preferred room (50's building) which was lovely!
Good luck with ADRs!!

I am really hoping for nice weather! When I went in Feb 2014 it was amazing weather, but when we were just there in October, it was soooo hot and humid!

Following along!

I just read your update on the Flower & Garden Festival food and it all sounds so good!! We hardly tried anything at the Food & Wine Festival because the lines were insane! I am hoping that we have better luck with F&G.

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Things That I Learned From Our Disneymoon​

I haven’t gotten around to starting a trip report for my last trip yet, but here are some things that I learned from our Disneymoon:

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1. We are not morning people. I knew this, but thought that being at Disney World would be an exception. It’s not!

2. When DH says he has to eat breakfast every morning, he means a hot breakfast. He will not accept granola bars or cereal in the room as breakfast.

3. As a result of the first 2 things, we cannot plan on being at the park for rope drop. (We made it only one of five planned days.)

4. Transportation takes longer than I planned. This is mostly attributable to the fact that our bus had numerous stops to load and unload before we could even leave the resort. I am hoping that this will be less of an issue this time, but I need to remember to plan more time for travel.

5. In general, we run late A LOT and running to make it to ADRs and Fastpasses is not fun or magical!!

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As a result, I have decided to plan a lot less this trip. I still want to make at least one ADR per day, since we did really enjoy the TS meals that we had, but this time half of them will be for breakfast.

Also, there will be no plans before 9:30am. If we happen to have a day where we wake up early and actually make it to rope drop, that’s great, but I can’t plan on it.

Finally, last time we used our Fastpasses in the afternoon, but this time I am planning them for the morning, because we found that the parks were starting to get pretty crowded by the time that we get there. Plus, we will still have the option to add more for the afternoon, if they are available.

Next up ADRs…


78 Days To Go!!! I Can’t Wait!!

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Let's Talk About Food​

This week has been such a rush! I still can’t believe we are going back to WDW in less than 3 months!!

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In the past, I’ve started planning my trips about a year in advance. That gave me plenty of time to create a schedule of which days I want to go to which parks and look over all of the dining options to decide which ADRs I wanted to make before the 180 day window opened.

But not this time! Being that we booked this trip with under 90 days to go, it feels like everything is moving crazy fast! In the last 5 days, I’ve booked our vacation package, purchased our flights, and made most of our dining reservations. I’m actually thankful that I have a couple of weeks to slow down and decide on Fastpasses.

I’m also thankful that DH seems to want to be more involved in helping to choose the ADRs and Fastpasses this time around. Last time, he didn’t really have many opinions, but this time he has a much better idea of what wants based on what he liked and disliked from our last trip. So far, we have two restaurants that we have agreed on, two that he picked, and two that I picked.

Must-dos from our last trip:

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Ohana (dinner) – I can’t believe that I considered cancelling this for our last trip. I’m sooo glad that I didn’t!! The food was amazing and we both agreed that it is our favorite dinner spot at WDW! However, since it is so good, I knew that finding a reservation for this trip would be a challenge. They had plenty of ADRs still available for after 10pm. We are night owls, so this actually wouldn’t be a problem for us, except that I know Ohana traditionally runs late with their ADRs and with people prolonging their reservations to watch the fireworks, I knew that it was very likely that we wouldn’t be seated until after 11pm. Ideally, I wanted to find an ADR for around 4:30pm, so I put in a reservation finder request on the touring plans website and amazingly within 24 hours it alerted me that there was an opening. I quickly signed on and we now have a 4:25pm ADR at our favorite restaurant!

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Kona Café (breakfast) – Another one of our favorite spots from our last trip was also at the Polynesian Resort. I am now obsessed with their pineapple macadamia nut pancakes! We do not have a set ADR yet, but there are plenty available on the day that we are considering, so I just need to pick a time.

DH picks:

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Teppan Edo @ EPCOT – I am not a big fan of Asian cuisine, so I wasn’t sure about this one, but DH’s boss has been telling him how great this hibachi style restaurant is, so he really wants to try it. I have looked up some reviews and it seems like even if I don’t like my food, it should be a fun time. I was hoping for an ADR around 6:00pm, but the only times available are 5:10pm and 7:00pm. I am also considering moving the plans around to go for lunch instead.

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Crystal Palace (breakfast) – This choice surprised me a little, since he was not a fan of the Tusker House character breakfast that we did on our last trip. However, he read about their puffed French toast and now he really wants to go there, so that he can try it. (He really wanted to try the Tonga Toast at Kona, but he is allergic to bananas, so he decided that he will try this instead). I sure hope that they still have it when we go! I really liked this meal when I went in 2014, so hopefully it’s just as good as I remember. We have a 9:55am reservation on our first park day.

My picks:

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Mama Melrose – I have never heard great things about the food at Hollywood Studios (other than Club Villain, which had amazing food!!), so I typically avoid the TS restaurants there. However, this time we were looking for an Italian restaurant and the food here looks really good. I’ve read that it can be inconsistent, but I’m hoping that we will get lucky and it will be good. We have a 5:50pm reservation. I considered reserving the Fantasmic! Package, but we enjoy going back to the room for a break in the middle of the day and the latest reservation for the package was 2:30pm.

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Trattoria al Forno (breakfast) – We were looking for another non-buffet breakfast and the food here looks really good. The waffle with the Espresso-Mascarpone Cream looks delicious! Then when I heard that they were making it into a character breakfast with Rapunzel AND Flynn Rider, it quickly became a must do! Tangled is my favorite Disney princess movie! I am hoping that they don’t change the menu too much, but I think I will still want to go there, even if they do. Unfortunately, the website isn’t showing any breakfast ADRs for all of April and May, so I am hoping that they are just not released yet.

Bonus:

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After reading @Raeven 's Dining TR review of Chef Art Smith’s Homecoming at Disney Springs, we both agreed that we would really like to go there. Ideally, we will get to the hotel by 8pm on our arrival day and be able to take a bus over to Disney Springs for a late dinner. However, I am reluctant to make a reservation, in case our flight is delayed or we are feeling too tired to go to Disney Springs. So I am hoping that we get lucky and they will have day of availability, if we do decide to go.


78 Days To Go!!! I Can’t Wait!!

 

[Raeven]

1. We are not morning people. I knew this, but thought that being at Disney World would be an exception. It’s not!

Same here! Well I can be a morning person if I have to be, but there's no hope to getting Josh up in a timely fashion at Disney.

Crystal Palace (breakfast) – This choice surprised me a little, since he was not a fan of the Tusker House character breakfast that we did on our last trip. However, he read about their puffed French toast and now he really wants to go there, so that he can try it. (He really wanted to try the Tonga Toast at Kona, but he is allergic to bananas, so he decided that he will try this instead). I sure hope that they still have it when we go! I really liked this meal when I went in 2014, so hopefully it’s just as good as I remember. We have a 9:55am reservation on our first park day.

Yay Crystal Palace! We're going there again too in May.

Unfortunately, the website isn’t showing any breakfast ADRs for all of April and May, so I am hoping that they are just not released yet.

They haven't released them yet. I can't wait for more info!

After reading @Raeven 's Dining TR review of Chef Art Smith’s Homecoming at Disney Springs, we both agreed that we would really like to go there. Ideally, we will get to the hotel by 8pm on our arrival day and be able to take a bus over to Disney Springs for a late dinner. However, I am reluctant to make a reservation, in case our flight is delayed or we are feeling too tired to go to Disney Springs. So I am hoping that we get lucky and they will have day of availability, if we do decide to go.

Yay! You'll love it!

 

[Chelley00]

Another set who is not morning people.

Well, I'm not. Dh gets up at before 5am every morning so he is. I could sleep until noon and be perfectly happy

 

[kesha]

We are going in May also but we will arrive the day you leave. Early May is our favorite time to go. Looking forward to your ptr report.

 

[MummyButterfly]

How exciting to be so close to going!! Following along.

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Same here! Well I can be a morning person if I have to be, but there's no hope to getting Josh up in a timely fashion at Disney.

Another set who is not morning people.

Well, I'm not. Dh gets up at before 5am every morning so he is. I could sleep until noon and be perfectly happy

DH and I can both pretend to be morning people when we have to (especially if there's coffee), but we've found that we're really more night people. We enjoyed the parks the most after dark.

We are going in May also but we will arrive the day you leave. Early May is our favorite time to go. Looking forward to your ptr report.

Yay for May!!! There are so many from the Disboards going in May this year. I've been twice in April, once in February, and once in October, but never in May. I'm excited to see how it compares.

How exciting to be so close to going!! Following along.

Thanks for joining in!

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Week 1 Status Update

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Happy Valentine’s Day!! or as I like to call it this year “Two Weeks Until Fastpass Day!” DH and I celebrated Valentine’s Day this past weekend because he has to work until 8pm today. We went to dinner at my favorite restaurant and then we watched my favorite Disney princess movie, Tangled!! I can’t believe that in the 2.5 years that we’ve been together, he had never seen it!! (Although he also claims to have never seen Lilo and Stitch and I know for a fact that he was in the room when I’ve been watching it, at least a handful of times) Anyways, we watched Tangled and he seemed to really like it. It also made me really excited to hopefully get to have breakfast with them, while we are there in May. I wish that they would hurry up and release the details already!

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It has been one week since we decided to go for it and booked our WDW vacation and I’ve already accomplished so much planning!

Trip Dates? April 29 - May 6, 2017

Resort? Disney's Pop Century Resort, 7 nights

Park Tickets? 6 Day Tickets w/ Park Hopper

Memory Maker? I love Memory Maker! Despite DH deciding halfway through our trip that it would be soooo funny to make crazy faces at me, we really did get some great pictures. This is a must have for us.

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MYW Package Payment Progress? 100% paid for with our Disney Visa (so that we get the 2% back); however, the money is in the savings to pay the card off when the statement comes

Airline Tickets? Purchased! We are flying Southwest this time. I usually prefer to fly Delta because they have direct flights and you get to pick your seat, but we had a not so great experience with them in October, so we decided to give Southwest a try this time. Unfortunately, Southwest did not have any direct flights from any of the airports near us, so it will take us a little longer to get there. When we first talked about going to WDW again, we had originally planned to fly out on Sunday morning, but due to the long flight times and the fact that we would have had to get up at like 4am, we decided to fly out Saturday afternoon instead. This is why we won’t arrive until about 8pm, but actually I am getting more Disney time.

Itinerary? Even though I said that I wasn’t going to plan as much this trip, I still have a general itinerary/spreadsheet planned out. But really it’s more like a checklist of things that I would like to do sometime during this trip.

ADRs? 5 out of 6 booked; still waiting on Trattoria al Forno. Also, I’m always so full at the end of our TS meals that we don’t order dessert. I’d like to make one or two reservations for later in the evening, where we would just have dessert. They always look so yummy!

FastPasses? Will be made on 02/28/17… DH and I came up with a list of FastPasses for our must-do attractions, but we found that there are really only one or two that we want for each day, so hopefully I won’t have any trouble reserving those.

Shirts? If you read my last PTR, you may remember that DH was not a fan of the matching shirts when I first brought it up to him. Well after he saw them made, he really liked them, so talking him into wearing Disney shirts again this trip was pretty easy. None of the designs that I have picked out so far match exactly, but they keep with a theme, so they go together. Right now, I’m still in the planning stage and trying to finalize which designs that I want, so that I can order the shirts and heat transfer vinyl that I will need.

Mickey Ears? I made a couple of Mickey/Minnie ears for my last trip and they turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself. I was debating making more for this trip, but then I am also considering just buying the traditional Minnie ears at the park. They are so cute and I kind of wish I would have just bought them last time.

Packing? We still haven’t completely unpacked our bags from October! Last trip I ended up being so busy with wedding stuff the month before our trip that we didn’t end up packing until 10pm the night before we left for Disney. That was really stressful and I spent a lot of the week trying to remember where I had put stuff, since there was a lot of last minute “just put it anywhere!”** This time we will start packing much earlier! We’ve already made a list of things that we want to get from the store and another list of things not to pack (things we took last time and never used).

**I’ve noticed that a lot of my comments about our last trip are somewhat negative. We really did enjoy our Disneymoon! That’s why we can’t wait to go back! It’s just that there are a lot of things that I learned from that trip that I plan to do differently this time.

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Somewhat ... Last time, I was planning our Disney trip while also planning our wedding and this time, I’m planning our Disney trip while helping my sister plan her wedding! I am her Maid of Honor (she refuses to accept that the correct term would be Matron of Honor, but it's her wedding, so I guess she is allowed to call me whatever she wants ). She is getting married June 17th, but her bridal shower is the day after we get back from Disney! I made sure that it was OK with her that we went that week and thankfully she didn’t have a problem with it. I just have to make sure that everything is ready before we leave and hope that there are no flight delays on our return trip. This isn’t completely non-Disney related though, because we’ve agreed on a Beauty and the Beast theme for her bridal shower! That is her favorite Disney movie and I think that I am going to take her card with us to Disney and get Belle to sign it.

My sister meeting Belle on our trip in Feb 2014 and then her dressed as Belle for Halloween 2014.​

 

[Raeven]

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We went to dinner at my favorite restaurant and then we watched my favorite Disney princess movie, Tangled!! I can’t believe that in the 2.5 years that we’ve been together, he had never seen it!! (Although he also claims to have never seen Lilo and Stitch and I know for a fact that he was in the room when I’ve been watching it, at least a handful of times) Anyways, we watched Tangled and he seemed to really like it. It also made me really excited to hopefully get to have breakfast with them, while we are there in May. I wish that they would hurry up and release the details already!

Josh hadn't seen it before the first time we went and PP photographer told him he looked like Flynn and he said who? I had him watch it when we got home. He is the same way with movies! He's been in the room a few time when The Incredibles is on but claims he's never seen it. I can't wait to book that breakfast either!

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Southwest did not have any direct flights from any of the airports near us, so it will take us a little longer to get there.

Boo that's one of the reasons we try to book Southwest because of the direct flights from here (it's one of only 2 that do dirext flights from our airport).

Shirts? If you read my last PTR, you may remember that DH was not a fan of the matching shirts when I first brought it up to him. Well after he saw them made, he really liked them, so talking him into wearing Disney shirts again this trip was pretty easy. None of the designs that I have picked out so far match exactly, but they keep with a theme, so they go together. Right now, I’m still in the planning stage and trying to finalize which designs that I want, so that I can order the shirts and heat transfer vinyl that I will need.

Josh wasn't either but he didn't seem to mind when we did wear them.

**I’ve noticed that a lot of my comments about our last trip are somewhat negative. We really did enjoy our Disneymoon! That’s why we can’t wait to go back! It’s just that there are a lot of things that I learned from that trip that I plan to do differently this time.

Same here I always feel like I'm being negative about things, but there's a lot you learn to do differently each time even if you had a good time.

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Unfortunately, I've hit a bit of a planning lull, until we book our Fastpasses on the 28th, so I've decided to finally start writing a trip report for our Disneymoon trip this past October. There is a link in my signature, if any of you are interested.

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Really there is nothing new to update. Less than a week until Fastpass day! Unfortunately, I just found out that I have to meet with a co-worker that morning, so I'm going to have to be up early, so I can get ready before I make my Fastpass reservations, so that I'm not late to my meeting. There are only a few that I really care about though, so even if I can just get those made and make the others on my phone later, that would be OK. I made a list of ones that I wanted to make and approximate times, but now I'm thinking that I may want to make a couple changes. I want to discuss it with DH later tonight.

I guess I do have a mini update... I ordered some shirts for DH and they came today! I also ordered a couple for myself, but judging size and color online is difficult and now that they are here, I don't like either of them, so I've ordered a few more and I'm waiting for those to come.

But now for the real reason that I decided to post today... It's Throwback Wednesday!! (I couldn't wait until Thursday )

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Three years ago today, I had just arrived at Disney World for my third WDW vacation!! I went with my sister and my two cousins (who were 7 and 12 at the time). It was the first time that I was the "adult" and got to make all the decisions on where we went and what we did. We had the best time and this is when I really started to love Disney World!

I am so excited to be going back for my fifth trip to WDW in just 66 days!!!

 

[PrincessAshlee]

Show Me The Waffles

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So I was online during my break this morning and found out that reservations for the Trattoria al Forno Character Breakfast had opened!! I rushed over to the site, but unfortunately the exact time that I wanted was not available. They did have some times that were only a half hour off though, so I quickly chose one and clicked reserve. I went through the different steps, but then on the last page, I got an error message. I tried again a few times, but then it said that none were available at all. I signed onto the the Disboards and it seems that lots of people were having that problem and that there was a glitch in the system.

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While I obsessively checked to see if the glitch had been fixed, I found an article from Kenny the Pirate that had more details about the menu. It looks like they are keeping some of the original breakfast options, but not all of them. They still have the breakfast calzone that DH had planned to try, but the waffles with the espresso mascarpone that I wanted are no longer on the list! Disney has not posted the menu on their site yet, so maybe this is just an error, but none of the other options listed really appealed to me, so it got me to thinking. I had chosen Trattoria al Forno, because I liked their food options; meeting the characters was just a bonus. Did I really want to go just to see the characters? In the end, I decided that even though I love Tangled and was really excited to meet Rapunzel and Flynn, I just wasn’t as excited about it as I was before.

We still want to go to go to breakfast that day, so I decided to look for other options. Ideally, I wanted to find somewhere else still in the Boardwalk area, since I had planned for us to go to EPCOT to explore the World Showcase after breakfast. I searched the Disney dining site for any available breakfast reservations at the hotels in that area and that’s when I came across the Captain’s Grille at the Yacht Club. I don’t know why I hadn’t come across it before, but quick look at the menu and I decided that this was the restaurant for us. What’s better than waffles with the espresso mascarpone? Dark chocolate waffles with the espresso mascarpone!!!

Between having a buffet AND a la carte options, deciding what to have is going to be so hard!

They also have Mimosas!!
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65 Days To Go!!! I Can’t Wait!!