Aaaaaaaaand we're off!
We started our drive from South Jersey at 7pm on Friday and had a pretty decent drive for a change and arrived at SSR just before 10am on Saturday.
With some help from a great CM at the front desk we were in our room in the Springs section in no time.
We were feeling very grungy after our long drive, so after much needed showers we were hungry and in search of our first meal of the trip. I never know how we'll feel after the drive, so I never usually plan anything our first day. The tentative plan was no parks today. We have 12 days at WDW, but only 8 day passes, so we had to skip a few days in the park and I thought today would be one of them. I figured we would end up at DTD for lunch. I pulled up all the restaurants with current lunch ADRs available on the Disney World app. A very convenient feature that helps us be slightly less indecisive. I saw there was a reservation available for Trail's End. Now, if you've read my other DRs you'll know we LOVE Trail's End for breakfast and dinner, but we have never tried their lunch. No time like the present!
We are all cleaned up and ready to start our trip!
I drove us over to Fort Wilderness and we made our way back to the restaurant on one of the internal buses. We arrived at TE in no time and checked in.
And then we waited. And waited. And waited.
No sure what the hold up was. I guess maybe they were short staffed, because once we were finally seated we could see that the place was almost totally empty. There were maybe 20 people seated in the whole place. Our server came right over and took our order which came out very quickly.
I started with an appetizer. I loved the fried green tomatoes that Kona Cafe used to serve with their Tuna Oscar, so I have been wanting to try the ones here for some time.
Southern Fried Green Tomatoes with crawfish remoulade
So, the fried tomatoes are on the bottom of the plate. They are quartered tomatoes which were then fried in a very odd type of breading. On the top of those are fried pickles. This was nasty. Totally inedible. I promise this is the ONLY bad food of the trip, but it was SOOOOOOO bad. The crawfish was cold and way too fishy tasting. I love crawfish, but these didn't taste right. And everything tasted like the pickles. I only had a couple of bites and pushed it away. Our server never asked about why I didn't eat it, but he did take it off our bill, so bless his heart!
Rob however, loved his appetizer. He tried the Smoked Cheese-stuffed Jalapeno wrapped in Country Bacon with Peach-Pepper Jelly.
He was raving about these and felt bad that I was so disappointed with my appetizer.
Moving onto the entree I had Chicken and Waffles. Buttermilk Fried Chicken Fillets and Buttermilk Waffles with warm Buttered Rosemary-Maple Syrup.
Yum!!!! I have never had chicken and waffles before, but now I understand why they're so popular. It seems like an odd combo in theory, but it totally works. I liked the little pieces of strawberry on the plate too. They added a nice layer of flavor. The waffles were definitely a little overdone, but I still very much enjoyed this.
Rob had the Shrimp Po' Boy with Lettuce, Tomato, Spicy Remoulade, and Bread & Butter Zucchini, served with House Fries.
Sorry, not the greatest picture. He said it was just okay and was pretty plain. He was disappointed with this. So, we each had one great dish and one not so great dish, but at least his was edible.
I was definitely happy that the server removed the tomatoes from our bill and we got 10% off by using our Disney Visa. No TIW this trip. We really debated about upgrading to APs and then getting TIW this trip, but we ended up not doing it. It worked out though. We were still able to get 10% at a few locations during the trip with our Visa. Also, our Discover card is getting 5% in cash back this quarter, so we burned up our Discover cards this trip.
We were very full and exhaustion was setting in, so we traveled back to SSR and took a nice long nap!
Where will we end up for dinner?
