Our Magical WDW Adventure ~ 23 Days of Fun, Food, Cocktails... London Trip 2/8

[ariel2007]

Narcossee's is great! We ate there for Mother's day in 2007 and was wonderful!

I've only been to City Walk once - we ate at Margaritaville, so I cannot help w/ Emeril's but I did walk by and it was packed!

I suppose it being packed is a good sign. I just hope its not too busy when we go. And I cannot wait for Narcossee's, it sounds great

 

[disneydusted]

ah, I see about the rudeness now. Seems like I remember you mentioning this earlier. That would make me very frustrated to think the lines would be orderly and then have people act this way.... hmmm, now I think if someday go there I will have to get my "pushiness self" on and shove them all too! I'm kidding, I don't think I could! Wonder why they do this?

 

[xoktenox]

Heyyy I missed a couple of updates so I'm caught up now! First off those pictures of Disneyland Paris are beautifullll! I have never seen any pictures of it there before and never really had much of an interest in it until now! Its so gorgeous how the DIsneyland hotel is over the entrance of the park, such amazing Disney imagineering.

Congrats on your second round of ADRs!! You're eating at so many places I really can't wait to read all your restaurant reviews and see all the food porn pics that you better take, I'm bullying you into taking them haha

 

[ariel2007]

ah, I see about the rudeness now. Seems like I remember you mentioning this earlier. That would make me very frustrated to think the lines would be orderly and then have people act this way.... hmmm, now I think if someday go there I will have to get my "pushiness self" on and shove them all too! I'm kidding, I don't think I could! Wonder why they do this?

Yes its annoying for people who have nice manners as you either get walked all over all the time or you have to lower yourselves to their standards. Nick just keeps his elbows out so if people try and push they walk in to them, it seems to work a bit. But they seriously don't get the hint, they are always right on your back and if you move forward to get some space they just move forward too. But the worse bit is when they are so blatently rude and then pretend they don't understand English

Heyyy I missed a couple of updates so I'm caught up now! First off those pictures of Disneyland Paris are beautifullll! I have never seen any pictures of it there before and never really had much of an interest in it until now! Its so gorgeous how the DIsneyland hotel is over the entrance of the park, such amazing Disney imagineering.

Congrats on your second round of ADRs!! You're eating at so many places I really can't wait to read all your restaurant reviews and see all the food porn pics that you better take, I'm bullying you into taking them haha

If you want to see some more pictures of DLP you can see some from our Halloween trip in my signature. Its under the Small World trip report, right near the end. There should be quite a few pictures of DLP there and Paris too.

Keep bullying away about the pictures, if you don't I might forget. When we went last year I generally remembered but a few times I got to the end of our meal and then remembered

 

[hlrababy]

Ahh thats a shame. But on the plus side in a month it would have all been over with if you went now, whereas you will still have it to look forward too So what do you think of our ADR choices?

I think they sound awesome! We love Planet Hollywood and I can't wait to hear about O'hana! I want to go there soooooo bad!

 

[OneTreeHillAddict]

Hey! Congrats on the ADR's. Are you going to be there on May 21st!? I might be bringing DS to Star Wars weekends....it starts on the 22nd. That'd be cool if we could have a quick Dismeet.

 

[CoP Luv]

Being in one of the races would be cool. Personally I really can't run, but would love to be able to. Can't wait to hear about it.

Have you seen the menu for the Wave, it looks really good. But its the desserts that got me. You get like 3 mini desserts and they have 3 or 4 different set choices, or you can mix it up and choose any 3 you like. They all look so good

Yeah, I can't run either!!! But I am going to try. The one that we want to do is called Expedition Everest Challenge so you do a 5K though AK, then an obstacle course in the parking lot, and finally you have to answer 4 clues in a scavenger hunt throughout AK. It sounds like a lot of fun! I started "training" last night! I know...who needs to train for a 5K?

I think I checked out the menu for The Wave once and it looked really good. I LOVE anything that has chocolate in it so the desserts must be awesome! I usually try and save room for dessert, but that usually never works out! So glad you are going to try it! You will have to let me know how it goes!

 

[kaysmommie]

Hi Ariel,
Just stopping in to see your ADR's and to say Hi . Your ADr's look great. California Grill is one of our favorites as well as 'Ohana. We are also thinking of trying Tusker House breakfast at AK. Have you been there before? Your trip is gettting closer .

 

[ariel2007]

I think they sound awesome! We love Planet Hollywood and I can't wait to hear about O'hana! I want to go there soooooo bad!

O'hana is so good, can't wait to go back. PH is always hit and miss for us. We went to the one in DTD last year as we had a $15 voucher to use and it was all surprisingly good. However we went to the one in Disneyland Paris on NYE a few years ago and then menu was different and not half as good. And we have been on the one in London twice and both times it was rubbish, once they even had a mouse running around

Hey! Congrats on the ADR's. Are you going to be there on May 21st!? I might be bringing DS to Star Wars weekends....it starts on the 22nd. That'd be cool if we could have a quick Dismeet.

Unfortunately not, which really sucks . The new ride opens at Seaworld on May 22nd too and we will have just gone home on the 18th. I have tried to make Nick stay a little longer but no luck

Yeah, I can't run either!!! But I am going to try. The one that we want to do is called Expedition Everest Challenge so you do a 5K though AK, then an obstacle course in the parking lot, and finally you have to answer 4 clues in a scavenger hunt throughout AK. It sounds like a lot of fun! I started "training" last night! I know...who needs to train for a 5K?

I think I checked out the menu for The Wave once and it looked really good. I LOVE anything that has chocolate in it so the desserts must be awesome! I usually try and save room for dessert, but that usually never works out! So glad you are going to try it! You will have to let me know how it goes!

That does sound like fun. And if your going to do a run somewhere Disney is the place to do it. If I could bypass the run the obstacle course and scavenger hunt sound fun. My brother did the London Marathon which is 26miles in 2007 and trained a bit for it. Then he did it again last year and literally did a tiny a bit of training 2 weeks before and that was it. Amazingly he completed it in quite a good time, despite the lack of training and fact he has asthma. How he did it I will never know

I will definitely let you know about the wave, lets hope it doesn't disappoint

Hi Ariel,
Just stopping in to see your ADR's and to say Hi . Your ADr's look great. California Grill is one of our favorites as well as 'Ohana. We are also thinking of trying Tusker House breakfast at AK. Have you been there before? Your trip is gettting closer .

Thanks, I am so excited about them all. I haven't tried Tusker House before, but we tried Donald's Breakfastosaurus a few times and loved it so hopefully it will be good.

 

[ariel2007]

Quidam in London
Another Mini Trip Report​

So as I mentioned before we had tickets to go and see Cirque du Soleil's 'Quidam' in London in February. Well yesterday was the day, and we were all looking really forward to it. Mum, Dad and Sophie traveled up to London on Friday afternoon, and Nick and I joined them on Saturday morning. It was touch and go for a while as to whether they were going to make it up as on Thursday night they had some really bad weather down by them, including a lot of snow (hundreds of people actually got stuck in their cars on this hill due to extreme snow and they had to be rescued and many spent the night in a church whilst their cars got buried under snow. Dad had got caught in it too, but luckily after a few hours got out). Luckily they made it up with no problems and we met them at the hotel on Saturday morning. This time we were staying at the Ramada Jervis Hyde Park, which was a nice hotel in a really nice location.

The room, quite small but nice

So after catching up with them and putting our luggage in the room we decided to take a walk through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The parks were very pretty and there was a lovely lake full of swans which Sophie loved as they are her favorite birds.

Some of the giant snowballs left in the park

We walked up to the Royal Albert Hall where the show was being held tonight. We wanted to see how long the walk is and whether we would be alright to walk there for the show later. It was only a mile from the hotel so not bad.

We decided to go over to the Natural History Museum for a while. We had originally planned to go to the Tower of London as its one of the only attractions in London we haven't done yet but we weren't sure we would have time as we were the other side of London. Dad wasn't with us last time we went to the NH Museum and the blue whale bit wasn't open when we took Sophie so I wanted to show her that. The museum wasn't too far from the Albert Hall and we walked there in little time. We entered the museum through the side so went up to The Earth section which you had to go on an escalator through a big earth to get too.

We had a look around, they had a section about volcanoes and then earthquakes which was quite interesting. When we had looked around we went through the main lobby and onto the Mammals section.

The main lobby, its such beautiful architecture

As we were coming up to the Mammal's section I could see the blue whale already, this thing is so, so large, its actually pretty scary

Sophie compared to the whale

After the mammal bit we were getting hungry so we decided to head out for a late lunch/early dinner.

The front of the museum

We had decided to go to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner as we all love it there. It was quite a walk from the museum but luckily Harrod's was on the way so we decided to pop in and get some Krispy Kreme donuts for after the show.

Sophie looking groovy in a KK hat

So after more walking we made it to HRC to be told the wait was 50-60 minutes. Luckily we had our HRC card so got a beeper and went to the shop. In less than 10 minutes we were buzzed, and seated downstairs. It was busy in there today. We all really enjoyed our food and delicious cocktails and had another great server in there. We then walked back to the hotel which took about 45 minutes, but was quite a nice walk as it was mostly through the parks.

The beautiful sunset

By the time we got back to the hotel we were all pretty tired of walking and only had 30 minutes before we had to leave again. So after a coffee and a quick change we set out to the Albert Hall. Unfortunately they had closed our main route through the park so we had to go up to the main road which was quite a way out of the way. By the time we got to the Albert Hall we were beat.
Anyway onto the show. The show was pretty weird to begin, I know Cirque is always a little out there but this was even more so. However, as usual the show was amazing. All the acts were unbelievable, they just completely push the limits of what they can do, and then go that bit further again, and the choreography is just so creative and unexpected. They had a few acts similar to La Nouba and ones we have seen in other shows but they always present everything in completely different ways. The music wasn't as memorable as some of the other shows, but still good none the less, and we all throughly enjoyed it. Awestruck we caught a cab back to the hotel and went for a drink in the bar. After a lass of wine we went up to Mum and Dad's room for some donuts and Sophie tried to reenact scenes from Quidam for us on the bed. I think she has a little way to go yet . Then it was time for bed.

Breakfast was included at the hotel so we met the others for a nice buffet breakfast. After breakfast we put our luggage in the car and then had a walk to Bayswater High Street which seemed to be a really nice area. Sophie took us to the ice rink there as she wanted to watch the skaters for a bit and then we walked back to the hotel. It was then time to leave so we said our goodbyes to Mum, Dad and Sophie and drove home.

Coming Up... Disney dream Number 5​

 

[ariel2007]

Disney Dreams...
... Part 5​

Now after my success in booking my ADR's, I thought we would stay food related for my next Disney Dream. And after the amount of ADR's we have booked for our upcoming holiday this one may come as no surprise.

Disney Dream Number Five...

Now you may have been able to guess by now that when were at Disney we love eating in the restaurants, so my fifth dream is to try EVERY Disney restaurant. Now we have tried quite a few already, many of which we have and are making repeat visits too, and plan to in future trips too. However, we like to try new things, and with so many lovely looking restaurants at Disney there are still many for us to try. Now I can't say we love the sound of every restaurant, but we are up for trying everything once, and those we are not to fussed about we will save till last. But there are some we are really keen to try and can't fit in this trip, so already have them on our list for our next visit. These are

Raglan Road
ESPN
Grand Floridian Cafe
The Plaza
50's Prime Time
T-Rex
Blue Zoo
Flying Fish Cafe (we want to try all the Signature restaurants)
Citrocos
Cinderella's Royal Table (trying to save this till when we go with Sophie again)​

We also have a tradition of trying one new World Showcase restaurant on each visit. So far we have tried - San Angel Inn, Restaurant Marrakesh, Le Cellier and after this visit Teppan Edo. On our next visit we plan to try one of the two following

Chef de France
Tutto Italia​

But there is one restaurant I am really hoping to try next time, if only I can convince Nick

​

Now we have thought about trying Victoria and Albert's a few times, particularly on our upcoming visit. However, I am a fussy eater, particularly when it comes to meat, so the menu is not the most appealing for me. But we really want to go there for the experience, and Nick would love the food, so will probably go on our next visit.

Coming Up... Disney Dream Number Six ​

 

[lmillercrew]

Oh my GOODNESS! Whew I can't believe how much I miss in a week. So, you and I will one day stay at the GF. You'll probably get there before me, but I'll get there.
Your snowMAN was great! How creative. Do you call your yards, gardens? Garden is much prettier word than yard. Your view out your front window is gorgeous! Your pic of your drive reminds me of the movie "The Holiday". I LOVE that movie.
There are a lot of restauraunts in Disney that I would love to try, but I know that I would waste my time and money because the kids wouldn't eat anything on the menu. So, I'll have to wait for those random trips alone with DH.
It seems like you had a nice little jaunt to London. A nice getaway.
You are getting so close to your trip!! My trip is June and I feel like it's right around the corner.

 

[ariel2007]

Oh my GOODNESS! Whew I can't believe how much I miss in a week. So, you and I will one day stay at the GF. You'll probably get there before me, but I'll get there.
Your snowMAN was great! How creative. Do you call your yards, gardens? Garden is much prettier word than yard. Your view out your front window is gorgeous! Your pic of your drive reminds me of the movie "The Holiday". I LOVE that movie.
There are a lot of restauraunts in Disney that I would love to try, but I know that I would waste my time and money because the kids wouldn't eat anything on the menu. So, I'll have to wait for those random trips alone with DH.
It seems like you had a nice little jaunt to London. A nice getaway.
You are getting so close to your trip!! My trip is June and I feel like it's right around the corner.

Yes we will both definitely stay there one day, hopefully it will be soon for both of us

Yes a garden is the same as a yard, I think. I love The Holiday too, I wish my house looked like that. Or the one in LA, I wouldn't mind that baby

Sophie gets a bit fed up with eating out all the time on holidays but we let her have lots of pool time and she agrees. That girl loves her pool time more than anything. And luckily she will eat pretty much anything, we eat quite varied stuff at home like Mexican, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai etc so she is used to try different stuff. She even tried some caviar when we went to Atlanta, she is braver than me . I hope you get to try lots of Disney restaurants, we have loved most of the ones we have tried. And yes, not long for us both now

 

[disneydusted]

Hummm, it looks like Victoria and Alberts to me.... I would love to go there. Everything I've read about the whole dining experience sounds wonderful! Do you think you would like to do the Chef's Table?
Your mini trip to London sounded nice. I'm glad your family was able to get there too.

 

[CoP Luv]

I can't believe that you haven't been to Tower of London yet! It is my absolutely favorite attraction in London and I cannot miss it! You must go on your next trip there!

Glad you had such a great time at the show! I really would like to see a Cirque show sometime!

I have never been to the Natural History Museum. It looks awesome by your pictures. We will have to go there the next time we are in London.

 

[Villainess]

Tower of London was one of my favorites during my visit. We didn't go to the museum though.

Glad you all had a wonderful time!

Victoria & Albert's seemed to be the missing restaurant. I would love to go there - once in a lifetime and do the chef's table too!

 

[ariel2007]

Hummm, it looks like Victoria and Alberts to me.... I would love to go there. Everything I've read about the whole dining experience sounds wonderful! Do you think you would like to do the Chef's Table?
Your mini trip to London sounded nice. I'm glad your family was able to get there too.

I just realised that I didn't put what the restaurant was, but yes it was Victoria and Albert's, opps . I don't think we would do the Chef's Table as I don't think it would be quite as romantic, maybe one day though.

I can't believe that you haven't been to Tower of London yet! It is my absolutely favorite attraction in London and I cannot miss it! You must go on your next trip there!

Glad you had such a great time at the show! I really would like to see a Cirque show sometime!

I have never been to the Natural History Museum. It looks awesome by your pictures. We will have to go there the next time we are in London.

Well we had kind of heard mixed reviews about the Tower and its not particularly cheap so we have always kind of put it off. And we weren't totally sure what there is to do and see there either. But our friends went there recently and really enjoyed it so we thought we would give it a go.

You and your sister should go and see La Nouba if you go to WDW this year, it really is an amazing show, I cannot wait to see it again. And you should definitely check out the History Museum, its really interesting. And all the museums here are free which is always a plus. The History Museum, Science Museum and V&A are all next to each other so once you have finished one you can walk across to another. The Science one is interesting too and has some great 3D shows and exhibits.

 

[ariel2007]

I thought I would just share with you all something Nick brought home the other night...

Baring in mind this boy moaned for England about going to see it at the cinema before we went to DLP and was even willing to go and watch a film by himself just to get out of it. And then he comes home having brought the 'Sing' It game . But it does mean my magic is working and HSM is growing on him (I think he really enjoyed the film he just won't admit it). Hopefully now I will be able to get him to watch the first 2 before we go.

 

[sugar1967]

Wow...I am finally done catching up on your TR and PTR. That is how I spent my weekend and my girls officially think I am crazy!! However, they loved looking at your pictures of your collection and your dream vacations. I have been thinking of starting a PTR for our upcoming trip but I don't think I could ever come close to the reports that you and Tammy (OneTreeHill) write...you guys are the most informative and entertaining

 

[ariel2007]

Wow...I am finally done catching up on your TR and PTR. That is how I spent my weekend and my girls officially think I am crazy!! However, they loved looking at your pictures of your collection and your dream vacations. I have been thinking of starting a PTR for our upcoming trip but I don't think I could ever come close to the reports that you and Tammy (OneTreeHill) write...you guys are the most informative and entertaining

Thank you so much, that is so, so sweet . I really enjoy writing a report, its a lot of fun and makes the time go quicker, but its always nice to hear that other people are enjoying it too, thank you . You should start a PTR they are fun to do, and you could get your girls to help. It also kind of gives you more reason to be creative and do things like make countdown calenders and pretty printed itinerary's, which is fun for the run-up. It does really help the time go quicker.