Mmmm....Cake, 9 nights of Deluxe Dining w/Pictures *Big Update 8/29 GF Wishes DP, CRT

[gilsan]

We just returned from our 11 day trip to WDW. We arrived on April 22 and spent the first night at Pop century before moving to the Grand Floridian and starting our package which included 9 nights of deluxe dining. The trip included me and my husband and our 4 year old daughter.

First I will give you a little back story into the trip planning. I wasn’t sure I would feel like or remember to take pictures so I did not do a pre-trip report.

This was our second trip to WDW. We were there last September during free dining, (stayed at POFQ), and had upgraded to Deluxe dining so we knew how much food we were in for this time. The trip in September was hectic and we went with the attitude that we had to do everything because we probably would would not come back anytime soon, but in October we received a PIN and thought we could go back and do the vacation right this time, so we planned a trip for April.

Since we had been to WDW in September I had a good idea of what restaurants we wanted to eat at again and what we wanted to try for the first time. I was able to start making ADR’s on October 27 the day that the dining window moved from 90 days back to 180. I got early to do the online booking but the system was down and I didn’t have time call in before work. So I did not make my reservations until the next day, but had no trouble getting what I wanted.

Where we dined in the end is probably quite different than what I had originally booked, but here is where we ate. I will add links once each post is made.

Day 1: Travel Day
Tim Hortons
Pop Century Food Court (Dinner)

Day 2: Check in at GF/Animal Kingdom

1900 Park Fare (Breakfast)
Flying Fish (Dinner)

Day 3: Epcot

Kona (Breakfast)
Teppan Edo (Lunch)
California Grill (Dinner)

Day 4: Hollywood Studios

Chef Mickeys (Breakfast)
50‘s Prime Time Cafe(Lunch)
Ohana (Dinner)

Day 5: Epcot

Akershus (Lunch)
Le Cellier (Dinner)

Day 6: Magic Kingdom

Crystal Palace (Breakfast)
Grand Floridian Tea Room (Late Lunch)
Wishes Dessert Party

Day 7: Pool Day

Boma (Dinner)

Day 8: Hollywood Studios

Hollywood Brown Derby (Lunch)
In Room Dining from Narcoossee (Dinner)

Day 9: Magic Kingdom

Cinderella’s Royal Table (Breakfast)
Artist Point (Dinner)

Day 10: Magic Kingdom

Boma (Breakfast)
In Room Dining from Narcoossee (Dinner)

Day 11: Last Day Pool and Travel
Gaspirilla Grill (Breakfast)
Grand Floridian Cafe (Lunch)

Trip Snacks


For those photogs reading the pictures were taken on Canon XS with a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens, Canon PowerShot SD1200IS, or our Canon XT with a Sigma 10-20mm ultra wide angle lens. I liked the look of the photos taken with the 50mm lens, but the powershot was quick and easy and not as conspicuous.

 

[gilsan]

Tim Hortons
On our way to the airport we stopped at a Canadian Institution to pick up a couple snacks for the ride. I had a lovely tea biscuit, DH had a sour cream glazed doughnut. I believe DD had a gingersnap cookie.

You can see her practicing her meditation on the way to airport after dropping our two dogs off at the kennel. One of her favorite movies right now is the Fanastic Mr. Fox and she enjoys copying Kristopherson the fox.

Once at the airport we did share a couple meals there.I don’t hae any photos of the food. It was not remarkable, except for the fact it came in compostable packaging, but there were no compost bins anywhere in the waiting area. Nova Scotia has a strong recycling program and most bins have a spot for recyclables, paper, garbage, and compost. So we were excited that are packaging could be composted but sad when we had to throw it in the garbage.

 

[nov02mom]

Can't wait to read your reports!! You did most of the restaurants we're doing in October!

 

[gilsan]

Pop Century

I didn’t have any firm plans for dinner tonight. We arrived in Orlando around 6pm by the time we picked up our bags, our rental car, and arrived at Pop Century it was getting close to 7pm. We had a room in the 80’s section facing the lake.

DD wanted to walk to the room and DH was going to bring the car to closest parking lot and meet us at the room. Pop Century is quite a big resort, the layout is a bit confusing and I had in my mind that we were in a 70’s building because we were in building 7. So it took us a little while to find the room. For some reason I didn’t take a key with me and left them all with my DH. When I arrived at the room I knocked and received no answer. I was concerned that I had the wrong room, or that I had misunderstood my DH and we were going to meet at the parking lot. DD and I wandered around for 45 minutes until we finally spotted DH. At this point DD had seen the pools and had started in with the chant we heard so much of on the previous trip “I want to go to the pool”.

My hope for the evening was to drop off our bags and head to Downtown Disney to pick up something to eat, but after the 45 minute search and the constant “I want to go to the pool” chant we decided to head to the pool and then pick up something at the food court. DD changed into her swimsuit and we headed down to the kiddie pool. While DD swam DH headed over to the pool bar and got me a Strawberry frozen drink and a beer. When DD finally decided she had enough of swimming we headed to the food court.

We had a least 2 cameras with us but did not take a single picture of the food court or the food. DH had a turkey ciabatta sandwich, I had a cheeseburger with fries and DD had a kids hamburger with fries and grapes. It was close to 9pm and the food court was still very busy, I would hate to see it at a peak time.

We decided to take our food back to our room. DH thought his sandwich was good very large and filing. My cheeseburger and fries were all right but not great, I would imagine that they are the same at any of the WDW eateries. DD seemed to enjoy her hamburger and ate most of it. I like that they include 2 sides with the kids meals, she always wants fries but rarely eats more than one or 2, but she did eat all of her grapes.

I don’t have the exact totals for the food and drinks I did see that our card had been charged $51 CAD for our stay at Pop and that would include our drinks from the pool bar, my DH had another beer with dinner and I think we also bought a cookie for DD so price wise it wasn’t too bad all was OOP since we did not start our package until the next day.

I just wanted to comment about our stay at Pop Century, our room was clean and very quite except you would hear every toilet flush. I did find it to be crowded and I would not want to have to make the trek from our room to the front a couple times a day, but given the choice of staying at Pop or POFQ I would probably pick Pop. Our room was as nice and Pop has 3 pools that seemed to have plenty of available seating. During our stay at POFQ we had a lot of trouble getting a chair or a lounge and when we did we couldn’t see the pool from where we were. I don’t think that POFQ was worth the extra cost.

Here are couple pictures from the pool area.

 

[gilsan]

Check in at GF/1900 Park Fare

After a fairly restful sleep we packed up our things and headed to the Grand Floridian. We gave bell services our bags and checked in. It was around 10am and our room was not ready yet, but we were early for Park Fare.

My DD received Alice in Wonderland for Easter and was looking forward to meeting Alice and the Mad Hatter Our reservation at Park Fare was for 11am but we thought we would try checking in early. They took us right away. We declined having the picture taken outside the restaurant. We were sat at a 4 top table and our server was quick to take our drink orders.

Tigger was the first to stop at our table, when pooh arrived he stopped shook DD hand and than left we didn’t even have a chance to take a photo. We let our waitress know and the character handler made sure Pooh stopped by for a second time. Mary Poppins, Alice, and the Mad Hatter were all great. WE had very good character interactions here. I made a photobook from our previous pictures with the characters for DD to use as an autograph book. We did get a lot more time with some characters because of the book. I got the idea from another Diser on the boards and it does make a nice keepsake. I also noticed the later the reservation the better the interaction. I think the characters have more time to interact later in the day.

The food was a little better than some of the other character buffets. I had french toast with banana foster sauce, I found the sauce to be a little bitter, bacon, pineapple, breakfast potatoes, and lobster eggs benedict. The poached eggs had a cooked yolk a prefer a runny yolk on my poached eggs so I didn’t love it.

DD had mickey waffles, strawberries, bacon, and smoked salmon.

DH had bacon, a pecan roll, scrambled eggs, ham, breakfast potatoes, smoked salmon, and lobster eggs benedict. He also did not like the fact that the yolks were cooked through. He did however really enjoy the scrambled eggs.

We also shared some strawberry soup.

Overall we enjoyed our breakfast at 1900 Park Fare and would eat there again. I lost the receipt from this meal but based on the cost listed on allears it was $68.12 including tax plus tip.

From here we headed out to Animal Kingdom to spend the afternoon.

Coming up next our room at GF and the Flying Fish.

 

[emmabelle]

thanks for the reviews! Love the pictures! The quality of the character pictures is really cool.

 

[scanne]

I'm in....love the picture of the GF lobby! Gorgeous...I hope to get to stay there again someday.

Thanks for taking the time to post your reviews! Looking forward to reading more!

 

[adsrtw]

Oh wow! I will join in. Many of the restaurants you are visiting are on tap for my September visit.

 

[choirchic]

Ok...Count me in! You went to a lot of GREAT places! Can't wait to hear more!

 

[vinotinto]

Definitely in! Would love to know what your original plans were and what you wound up changing them to. Trying to figure out how far to space out meals with our 3 and 5 year olds.

 

[princessallegra]

Signing on! Great reviews so far! LOVE the photos, especially of your adorable DD "meditating"! SO CUTE! It's funny what you say about choosing Pop over POFQ again, because we feel the SAME way. We stayed at POFQ one trip, and realized that we don't find any value to a Mod over a Value. If we're on a budget trip, we stay ASMu or Pop (in off season). In a "nice" trip we stay Deluxe. It's interesting to see someone else who feels the same way!

Your pics of the GF lobby are just stunning. Also what a neat idea about the photobook/autograph book, your DD is really lucky Can't wait to read more of your reviews!

 

[emmabemmainc]

Wonderful reviews so far!
I felt the same way about the poached eggs--so I was also disappointed.
I can't wait to read more!

 

[vettegirl]

Looking good so far

 

[danielle.st]

Tigger was the first to stop at our table, when pooh arrived he stopped shook DD hand and than left we didn’t even have a chance to take a photo. We let our waitress know and the character handler made sure Pooh stopped by for a second time. Mary Poppins, Alice, and the Mad Hatter were all great. WE had very good character interactions here. I made a photobook from our previous pictures with the characters for DD to use as an autograph book. We did get a lot more time with some characters because of the book. I got the idea from another Diser on the boards and it does make a nice keepsake. I also noticed the later the reservation the better the interaction. I think the characters have more time to interact later in the day.



The food was a little better than some of the other character buffets. I had french toast with banana foster sauce, I found the sauce to be a little bitter, bacon, pineapple, breakfast potatoes, and lobster eggs benedict. The poached eggs had a cooked yolk a prefer a runny yolk on my poached eggs so I didn’t love it.

I think we had breakfast there the same day, but ours was earlier! I also really disliked the yolks on the lobster eggs benedict. It was way too dry in combination with the biscuit. Also, did you see any lobster pieces? Shouldn't there have been some?
Did you like the breakfast potatoes? Mine were undercooked and too spicey which was disappointing because they looked really good. I hope you got a better batch!

 

[Linda67]

Great reviews so far
Your line up sounds great, can't wait to hear more

 

[CanadianPaco]

Any dining report that begins with Tim Horton's is going to be GREAT!
Can't wait...

 

[oldhag]

Your report is great - keep it coming.

 

[chocolateMinnie]

fantastic start - subscribing

 

[gilsan]

Thanks everyone for reading!

vinotinto as far as the changes we made to our original plans, at the beginning of the trip we had too many 3 meal days We were happier with 2 meals a day and had a snack either for breakfast or midday. As the trip went on we cancelled some reservations and did walk up or in room dining instead.

danielle.st, emmabemmainc I glad that we were not alone about the over cooked eggs. The breakfast potatoes were cooked. I did find that the breakfast buffets were hit and miss.

CanadianPaco Tim Horton's the only way to start any road trip!

princessallegra I got the idea for the photobook from someone else on the disboards it was great and I love making photobooks.

 

[slk537]

I'm in! Can't wait to hear how you liked DDX!