My first dining review report!

[Dislover1991]

I decided to do a dining report from our trip this past week. The trip was absolutely incredible!!

I didn't really take photos except of the delicious Christmas goodies Not sure how quickly i'll be able to update, but i'll try my best to post a report each day!

Here are the restaurants we went to (not including all the different snacks we tried):

Landscape of Flavors - breakfast & dinner
Les Halles Bakery - lunch/snack
Garden Grill - dinner
Backlot Express - lunch
Sci Fi Dine In Theater - dinner
Ohana - breakfast
Captain Cook's - snack/early dinner
Olivia's Cafe - breakfast
Earl of Sandwich - lunch
Boardwalk Bakery - snacks, dinner
Cape May Cafe - breakfast
Sunshine Seasons - dinner
Kringla Bakeri - lunch/snack
Kona Cafe - breakfast
Columbia Harbor House - dinner
Wolfgang Puck Express - breakfast


I guess i'll begin first with a little info about my family - we are a family of 3. There is my mom (53), dad (51), and me (22). This was our 5th trip to Disney World. We checked into AoA on 12/13 then switched to BWV from 12/14-12/21 thanks to an RCI exchange! You won't hear much about me splurging- I try to eat pretty healthy. But my parents indulged...hey, it's Disney after all This was our first trip to Disney during the holidays and we enjoyed it so much!!

My dad is a VERY picky eater. He watches cooking shows all the time and is a huge food critic. It's pretty hard to please him when it comes to food so if he likes something, then it must be pretty darn good I will try to include a few photos. We didn't really take any photos of our meals, but I did take photos of snacks we ate so I will post those.

Hope you guys will join me! It was a great trip and we really enjoyed most of our meals!

 

[Dislover1991]

Landscape of Flavors - dinner

This was our first Disney meal after checking into AoA. Me and my mom both ordered a salad - I can never say no to a "build your own salad" section, especially when you can choose unlimited toppings for one price (we even were allowed to get both chicken & shrimp!)! The salads were huge and delicious! I wasn't able to eat all of mine- I probably should have gotten a kids size salad. My dad bought the surf and surf burger and loved it! He wasn't too sure about it since it did contain so much breading (bun, fried shrimp, crabcake) but he said it was great and definitely not too much breading! Overall, we really enjoyed our meal and would probably eat at Landscape of Flavors everyday if we could!

 

[Dislover1991]

Landscape of Flavors - breakfast

We were getting ready to check out and after a walk around the resort, we decided to stop for some breakfast at Landscape of Flavors. Me and my mom decided to go for the build your own omelet and added a side of oatmeal. My omelet contained feta cheese, a bit of turkey bacon, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and spinach. I headed over to the build your own parfait & fruit cup station to get some oatmeal. I expected just a small cup of oatmeal but the CM actually asked if I wanted any fruit on it, so i'm assuming you can add anything to the oatmeal that you can add to the parfaits and fruit cup? I asked for strawberries and she loaded up the oatmeal with strawberries.

My mom ordered an omelet as well. Her's contained basically the same thing as mine and she also ordered oatmeal with brown sugar. My dad ordered the World Flavors Breakfast platter which contained scrambled eggs, potatoes, Portuguese sausage, bacon, and naan bread.

How did we like our meals? Mom and me agreed that the omelet was delicious! It had a great taste and contained just the right amount of ingredients considering we chose alot of ingredients! The oatmeal was great too, although i've never met oatmeal I didn't like My dad liked his breakfast but didn't go on about it. He didn't really care too much for the sausage and he found the bacon too thin (that's how most Disney bacon is though). He said the eggs didn't taste fresh but I think that's because his meal came out faster than ours since me and mom had to wait in line for our omelet to be made and he waited on us for about 10-15 minutes (it was a long line!).

Would we eat here again? YES! We loved it. Breakfast was actually better than dinner the night before. Overall, we loved Landscape of Flavors.

Coming up next - a review of our meals at Epcot!

 

[chinarider]

Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to reading more

 

[pumba]

sounds like you all had a good start to your vacation..

thanks for the first reviews.

 

[tluvstink]

I'm in! You're off to a great start

Terri

 

[Dislover1991]

Boardwalk Bakery

I hope everyone had a great and safe holiday season!!

Since we stayed at BWV the entire week, we went to Boardwalk Bakery quite a bit for breakfast- pretty much every morning we didn't have a TS breakfast planned. Since we tried a few things here, i'll just do one post from the bakery. I honestly didn't try much from the bakery - I can't eat sweets that early in the morning So me and my mom stuck to some oatmeal in the room while my dad indulged in the pastries.

Jersey Crumb Cake - my dad tried this because it looked GREAT! When they handed it to him, the bag was very heavy. That was seriously one heavy pastry! Unfortunately, my dad didn't enjoy it too much. He said it was "just ok". He said he expected more cinnamon and a softer texture.

Blueberry Muffin - my dad is a huge fan of blueberry muffins so this definitely received a thumbs up. He said it was full of blueberries and very moist. I believe he ate this on more than one occasion, so it must have been good

Holiday cupcake - I did take a photo of this before we began eating it but since we sort of tore it up, it wasn't presentable enough for a photograph.

It looks big in the photo, as most Disney cupcakes are, but this one was HUGE. The 3 of us split this, although me and my mom ate the majority of it. The cake was chocolate and the frosting was a whipped peppermint frosting. It looks as though it's lined with coconut, but they are actually white chocolate shavings - yum! And of course it's topped with peppermint bark. Since I read the review on Disney Food Blog beforehand, I knew about the peppermint filling inside and immediately sliced the cupcake in half so I could reach the filling first The cake was very moist, which is surprising since chocolate cake is rarely moist. I'm not a huge fan of whipped frosting, so I was a bit disappointed in the frosting alone. However, when I took a bite of the entire cupcake together, it balanced out perfectly! I do think a buttercream frosting would have been too much so the whipped balanced out the filling and the chocolate cake well. Plus the white chocolate shavings and peppermint bark were a great bonus! Overall, we enjoyed the cupcake and would definitely eat another one!

Eclair - my dad is a huge fan of eclairs and I honestly don't get the hype. He liked this one but said the eclair at Les Halles was better. He did like the cream better in this eclair, but preferred the actual pastry portion at Les Halles better.


Apple Mixed Greens Salad w/ Chicken - this was split between me & my mom one night as a late dinner. Thank goodness we split the salad because it was huge! It contained chopped apples, goat cheese, chicken, and dried cranberries. The dressing was served in a small container and was a pomegranate vinaigrette. I didn't care too much for the vinaigrette so I picked up a pack of the Ken's dressing that was near the microwave & toaster. The salad was really good. The goat cheese and apples tasted great together. The chicken was grilled and had a good taste to it.

Mozzarella Sandwich - my dad had this while me & my mom split the salad. He said the sandwich was good, but nothing to rave about. It smelled great though and was a decent size.

I was very upset to see that the coffee mocha cupcake was not available. I tried it last year and loved it- the filling inside was incredible! All they had were the holiday cupcake, oreo bon bon cupcake (which I regret not trying), and the strawberry shortcake cupcake. Most of the time we were so full from dinner that we never even tried any of the other desserts- I was looking forward to trying the cheesecake brownie & Mickey tart. Oh well, maybe next time!

 

[Quin]

Boardwalk Bakery
I was looking forward to trying the cheesecake brownie & Mickey tart. Oh well, maybe next time!

That's the spirit!

Enjoying your posts; glad your dad suffered no ill effects.

 

[Dislover1991]

Les Halles

Sunday was our Epcot day. We had the Candlelight Processional Dinner Package for Garden Grill and since we wanted to attend the 6:45 show, our meal was at 3:45. We decided to stop into Les Halles for a small lunch to do us until our dinner at Garden Grill.

Let me start off by saying that this place is huge now since the remodel! I like that they have 2 different queues because despite the extremely long lines, the lines seem to move pretty quickly. They also had alot to choose from besides desserts. If we didn't have an ADR at Garden Grill, we probably would have come back for dinner.

Anyways, we agreed on the jambon beurre (ham & cheese on a baguette), a vanilla eclair, the Buche de Noel Christmas dessert, and a glass of Bordeaux Rue (a red wine).

We had the ham & cheese sandwich heated up and oh goodness was it incredible! The 3 of us split it and I was seriously wanting more. The menu indicated it came with a Dijon mustard but I didn't taste it at all. I was fine with that though because the baguette was soft and buttery so no sauce was needed. They toasted it just perfectly so that the bread was still soft but the ham & cheese were warm and melted. My dad thoroughly enjoyed the vanilla eclair, so much that he actually ordered another one later that week when we went to Epcot again. I am usually not an eclair fan but found it to be really tasty! I read about the Buche de Noel Christmas log on Disney Food Blog and was looking forward to trying it. I have no idea what exactly it consists of- I just knew it looked delicious! I asked the CM and she said it contained a chocolate sponge cake with a chestnut cream and chocolate ganache. Since i'm allergic to all nuts, this was off limits to me, sadly However, my mom assured me that it wasn't as good as it looked. Since it looks similar to the cheesecake brownie at Boardwalk Bakery, I think she expected it to taste similar to that but she was disappointed in it, especially for the price ($5.75!).


L’Artisan des Glaces

Since I was unable to try the Buche de Noel (yep- I was pretty upset) I decided to go for some of the gingerbread ice cream at L'Artisan des Glaces. Afterall, I didn't have as much dessert as everyone else at Les Halles I just ordered a single scoop, which was plenty of ice cream! Let me tell you, this doesn't deserve to be a seasonal item- it was great! I loved it so much. It was a very strong gingerbread taste, which is fine with me since I love gingerbread but it wasn't too sweet. You could definitely tell it was homemade, authentic ice cream. I was definitely not disappointed


Up next - dinner at Garden Grill

 

[Dislover1991]

Garden Grill

This was done as part of the Candlelight Processional Dinner Package. It was one of the more inexpensive choices and featured Chip & Dale, Mickey, & Pluto so I was excited to try it out. Based on reviews, I expected mediocre food but excellent character interaction - we actually received great food and just OK character interaction. But more on that later! The meal is served family style so they bring platters out to you and you can request more of what you want.

We arrived at 3:20 for a 3:35 ADR - we got through the FP+ line of Soarin more quickly than expected! We were seated at 3:30 and the restaurant was relatively empty. After the chef spoke with me about my allergy, we received a bread basket. The rolls were good but when dipped in the butter, wow they were delicious! The butter tasted like it had a honey drizzle over it. I loved it! Next we received the salad. The salad contained a boiled egg, chopped bacon (which tasted better than most Disney bacon), cucumbers, tomatoes, and a bacon-ranch dressing. The salad was great and luckily didn't contain too much dressing. I am definitely not a big fan of an overly-dressed salad!

Now the characters began to show up. Dale was first and was great!

And next was farmer Mickey.

By this time the main course came out- steak with mashed potatoes, tilapia with seasonal vegetables and a mango salsa, and turkey with gravy and bread pudding. Since I had seen reviews stating that the beef was often near rare, we requested beforehand that it be cooked medium well since my mom isn't a huge fan of rare. We cut into the beef and while the inside was pink, the outer edges were well done so my mom ate those with no issue while me & my dad ate the the less well done portion I usually don't eat beef but I believe I had over half of the portion of beef and even asked for another plate of it - I was very hungry The beef was delicious and very tender. The mashed potatoes were great! I believe my mom's meal mainly consisted of those. The fish was great too! I was the only one who enjoyed the fish. I will say it didn't have much flavor but was great with the mango salsa. And the vegetables- best part of the meal! They were great. I think it was zucchini and perhaps butternut squash? I'm not really sure. But they were grilled and just perfect. The turkey was surprisingly very tender and the accompanying bread pudding/dressing was great too. It was just the perfect side item. I'd have to say my favorites were the beef and vegetables- which is a huge compliment to the chef considering I rarely eat beef. I've actually craved nothing but this beef since i've been home

Pluto decided to make a stop!

Mickey stopped by again and took another photo. Chip walked past us and waved but didn't even stop for a photo. I was a bit disappointed- I mean, it's Chip & Dale's Garden Fest- I wanted to meet both Chip & Dale. Character interaction wasn't bad at all, I just felt that the characters didn't spend as much time at the table as what I had read in past reviews. And the place wasn't even busy! Besides Dale, the others stayed long enough to snap a photo. Maybe it's because we were a table of 3 adults? But I had my camera lying on the table so I figured Chip could have seen that and would've stopped for a quick photo. Oh well.

And now to dessert - the berry cobbler! We were all so full that we could barely even eat this but it was delicious. The filling was blueberry. The crust portion had a consistency of carrot cake- very soft and moist. The vanilla bean whipped cream was amazing! It tasted great as it melted over the entire cobbler. My dad thought the whipped cream was ice cream so he was a bit disappointed

Overall, we enjoyed the food and the time we actually had with the characters. Me and my dad agreed that it was our 4th favorite meal of the trip. Was it worth the price? Honestly, no. The price of the dinner without the package would have been $42 since we were there during peak season but due to the package, our meal was $57.50 EACH. I mean, the food was good but $175 for a dinner for 3 was a bit steep for the meal. But later, once we saw the standby line for CP and showed up 20 minutes before and received a great seat, we all decided the $57.50/each was worth it

 

[RGirl]

Oh, I’m glad you decided to do a DR!

I love build-your-own-salad options too!! They are dangerous though with all the tasty stuff you can put in there. I’m really glad to know that the AoA version is good.

Your AoA breakfast sounds perfect to me - I love your omelet choices, and how great to get some fruit with the oatmeal.

Over all, Landscapes of Flavor sounds like a VERY good new WDW option.

Wow - the holiday cupcake sounds perfect - I just love chocolate and peppermint. Mmmmm

Oh, it sounds like everything you tried in France was great!!!

I’m sorry that you didn’t have better character interaction at GG. That was our best character interaction of our trip in August. At least you enjoyed the food!

 

[Dislover1991]

Backlot Express- lunch

Since the only Fantasmic show was at 6:30, we scheduled an early dinner at SciFi so we just split something at Backlot Express to hold us over until dinner. We haven't been here in quite awhile, probably at least 12-14 years.

After seeing how large the salads were, me and my mom split the cantaloupe and cucumber salad. It contained tomatoes, onions, green peas, and of course cantaloupe and cucumbers. The dressing was a zinfandel vinaigrette and it was delicious! I could have just eaten the dressing alone. I'm also not usually a huge fan of cantaloupe but it really gave the salad alot of flavor. For $6.50, this salad was not a bad deal at all! It was huge and definitely kept us satisfied until our ADR!

My dad oddly craved the grilled vegetable sandwich with fries. I figured he would want a burger but i'm guessing he was saving his burger fix for SciFi. The sandwich was on what looked like ciabatta bread with melted cheese and some herbs. It contained mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, and provolone or mozzarella cheese (I don't remember which exactly, sorry). I had the vegetable sandwich last year at Studio Catering Co. and Cosmic Ray's and i'm pretty sure this is almost the same version, if not the exact version. I thought it was good- I loved the bread and mushrooms. My dad said it was just ok. After looking at the menu later he noticed it contained pesto, which he's never tried so maybe that's what he didn't like about it? Me and mom thought it was tasty though.

Overall, we liked Backlot Express. The 2 entrees were plenty to hold us over for a few hours and the prices weren't bad. I also like that it contains alot of seating- both indoor and outdoor seating. It's your standard counter service at a park. Plus I think Hollywood Studios is the most difficult park to dine at- there just aren't many choices that really stand out.

Next- dinner at Sci Fi Dine in

 

[Dislover1991]

Oh, I’m glad you decided to do a DR!

I love build-your-own-salad options too!! They are dangerous though with all the tasty stuff you can put in there. I’m really glad to know that the AoA version is good.

Your AoA breakfast sounds perfect to me - I love your omelet choices, and how great to get some fruit with the oatmeal.

Over all, Landscapes of Flavor sounds like a VERY good new WDW option.

Wow - the holiday cupcake sounds perfect - I just love chocolate and peppermint. Mmmmm

Oh, it sounds like everything you tried in France was great!!!

I’m sorry that you didn’t have better character interaction at GG. That was our best character interaction of our trip in August. At least you enjoyed the food!

With the salad, I do believe I added too much- I wasn't able to finish the entire thing! It was way too big but a great deal. I think I added 90% of the options to choose from

 

[pumba]

Your review of Garden Grill..has made me rethink some of our reservations for April...and also to give a heads up to our granddaughter and her to be husband for their May trip on their honeymoon...the food sounded delicious..and I like RARE...hahaha..

Thanks for your reviews

 

[Dislover1991]

Your review of Garden Grill..has made me rethink some of our reservations for April...and also to give a heads up to our granddaughter and her to be husband for their May trip on their honeymoon...the food sounded delicious..and I like RARE...hahaha..

Thanks for your reviews

The beef really was seasoned just perfectly! I didn't think anything was bad or just ok at all- it was all great! The fish was a bit tasteless without the salsa but they provided a large amount of salsa so that was remedied

 

[Dislover1991]

Sci Fi Dine In - Dinner

We first tried Sci Fi on my 3rd trip back in 2000 and really enjoyed it. After a long 12 years of no Disney vacation, we decided to try it out again when we went back in 2012 and enjoyed it (yet again) so we booked it for this past trip. The food is typically pretty good but we absolutely love the atmosphere- even though the movie clips really don't entertain us much

You'll notice in the photo above just how dark it is in here- and that was taken with flash on! My dad actually decided to put his new iPhone to use and turn on the flashlight function to view the menu

Here is a photo without flash:

Our waitress was great and very quick. My dad decided to order the onion rings as an appetizer. He tried a small plate of them last year (our server brought him out a small sampling of them) and really enjoyed them. When the app was brought out, he received 6 onion rings- basically the size of the sampling he received last year. He said the breading had a good flavor but there was very little onion inside. Overall, he was disappointed that he had paid $8.99 for such a small appetizer.

Both my parents decided to order the build your own burger - all with tomatoes, lettuce, onion, pickles, and cheese (both chose cheddar I do believe). My dad requested fries and my mom subbed her fries for sweet potato fries. I saw someone else with a huge deli type sandwich and it seemed to call my name so I ordered the smoked turkey sandwich but asked for no avocado mayo and chose the cucumber salad as my side. A dessert menu was brought to us since my dad had already inquired about the milkshakes

When our food was brought out, we were surprised by the size considering how small the appetizer was. The burgers were very large and they were generous with the fries! My sandwich was huge! It was on a multigrain bread that contained sunflower seeds- I have no idea how they found bread that huge. It contained a thick layer of thinly sliced turkey. The turkey was basic deli turkey but I had been craving that, so it was delicious to me. It also had bacon, lettuce, and tomato on it and I requested mustard as well. The bread was absolutely delicious, as was the sandwich. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it definitely filled me up! The cucumber salad was good as well. I could have gone for a bit larger of a bowl since it didn't contain too much. Now to the burgers- my parents really liked them. They said they were some of the best they've had at Disney and were barely able to finish them. Since we were all so full, we skipped dessert even though the peppermint shake sounded delicious

While we enjoyed our food and the atmosphere, we all agreed that we may try some place new on our next trip. Sci Fi is kind of our tradition, but we all mentioned how limited the menu is. And I do believe we have all tried everything that sounds good to us on the menu and nothing just absolutely stands out. We may give 50s Prime Time or Mama Melrose a shot next time - but we still enjoy Sci Fi, just want to try something different

We then attended the 6:30 show of Fantasmic- which let me just say that FP+ is an absolute waste for Fantasmic And then we headed off to Sweet Spells to try some goodies before heading over to the Osborne Lights.

Here are some photos of the goodies.

I thought the cake pops were adorable and had to take photos of those!

We really wanted to try the gingerbread cupcake after seeing it all day. But of course, we waited too long and Starring Rolls was closed. So we chose this cupcake instead (we're big fans of cupcakes!)

While this one didn't look as decked out in holiday decorations as the others, I had read a review on the Disney Food Blog a few weeks ago that talked about how the red frosting was disgusting- so we skipped those. This cupcake was good, but was just a basic vanilla cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting. It was good, but nothing special. I did enjoy the chocolate molded bow on top It was a nice snack to enjoy before heading over to all the gorgeous lights!

 

[Dislover1991]

Ohana - breakfast with Lilo & Stitch

'Ohana is our must do breakfast each trip. April 2012 was our first time back at Ohana since 2000 and we liked it, so we booked it for this past trip.

We typically do the breakfasts early so we can make it to rope drop, but since we were attending MVMCP that night, we decided to sleep in a bit late, go to Ohana, and tour some of the deluxe resort decorations.

We arrived for our 9:45 ADR at 9:30 and were seated immediately after having our photo taken. Usually the person seating you brings out some bread, but since I had an allergy, they had to confirm that the bread was safe before bringing it. Our server introduced herself, took our drink orders, then brought out the chef. He noted my peanut/nut allergy and told our server I requested the light meal and that all the food on the breakfast menu was safe for me. Well, we expected her to bring us bread at that point but we had to ask for it instead.

There are 2 types of bread - a pineapple bread and a cinnamon raisin bread. Last year we loved the bread and had 2 baskets of it- it was addicting! But this time, the bread was pretty dry and lacked flavor. I tasted no pineapple in the pineapple coconut bread. We didn't request another basket of bread.

A fruit plate was brought out with what tasted like strawberry yogurt for dipping. The dip was good but the fruit plate was TINY. Me and my mom fought over the 2 pieces of pineapple on it It also contained 2-3 pieces each of some honeydew and cantaloupe. Considering we all emptied the fruit plate within seconds, I would have thought that the server would bring out another one when she refilled our drinks, but we had to ask for another serving. It was finally brought out with the main entree- a huge platter of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage links. The server then told one of the cooks that I wanted the light platter- I was surprised that she was just now telling him this considering we had been there for at least 20 minutes and my parents had already received the main platter. But my light plate was served within 5-10 minutes. It contained scrambled egg whites, turkey bacon, chicken sausage, and some veggies. We also received Mickey waffles. Someone brought them out and we only received 1 at a time, which seems different from last year. I do believe they use to be served on the platter with the eggs, bacon, and sausage. I disliked that we had to wait about 20 minutes to receive another waffle- that's the best part of the meal!

How was the food? The egg whites were good after drenching them in salt and pepper but a bit runny. The veggies were very oily, so I didn't even really eat them. The turkey bacon was good but the chicken sausage- it was HORRIBLE I took maybe 2 bites of it and that was it- absolutely terrible. My parents said the regular platter was ok but they didn't request another serving. We loved the Mickey waffles and the fruit but everything else was just ok- nothing special. Definitely not as good compared to last year!

The character interaction was also lacking. Mickey was the first to arrive and seemed to be in a hurry, but was happy to take photos with each of us. Lilo & Stitch were great! Stitch was very interactive. And then there is Pluto- he came to the table & stood there until I got up and took a photo with him then he rushed off. He did that with basically all the families. It kind of made me mad.

Would we go back to Ohana? I really don't think so. The food was lacking in flavor and was just poorer quality than what we've had there in the past. I also became ill just 10 minutes after leaving the restaurant. My parents were completely fine but I had symptoms of food poisoning- maybe it was from the lighter plate since my parents were fine But I ended up in a wheelchair throughout MVMCP so that put a damper on the night.

It is sad that one of our must do restaurants is not on the list for next trip, but we've found other breakfasts to replace it