Amy7979
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 31, 2007
- Messages
- 473
Day 1 continued:
Bill and I decided that since we hadn’t eaten much during our day of travel, that we would get something at the resort to tide us over until our dinner ADR at Grand Floridian Café. We left our room and headed to the main building of PO-R. Once we were in the Riverside Mill food court, Bill’s suspicion that he had been there before was confirmed. Turns out that when his sister danced at Disney World while in high school, her dance group stayed at PO-R and Bill and his mom had visited her there.
Anyway, we grabbed some food – Bill had a double cheeseburger and fries and I had chicken strips and fries. We considered using counter service credits, but decided not to because we weren’t going to eat dessert and figured we’d have better use for the credits later in the week. Bill asked about getting the refillable mugs, but to be honest I’ve never understood them. Who wants to bring them back to the room, and who wants to carry them around all day?
We sat and enjoyed our lunch and then headed to the Magic Kingdom – our first park of the trip!
As an aside, I’ve been working on a cross-stitch of Cinderella Castle for a couple of years and before our trip I joked to Bill that it was a good thing he had seen the cross-stitch, so that he would recognize the castle when he saw it in person. (I’m a dork, what can I say?) Well, we get a bit down Main Street when Bill stops us and pulls out his phone. He looks at it, looks up at the castle, and says, “yeah, that’s it!”. He had taken a picture of my cross-stitch before leaving home just to be able to do that.
We had decided to get as many Photopass pictures as possible, as our plan is to buy the CD and we wanted to get as many pictures as possible for the price. So we stopped and got our first Photopass shots of the trip. I don’t have them yet but I’ll add them into the trip report once I get them.
We headed straight for Pirates of the Caribbean, since I knew Bill was excited to see it, and we had probably about a 15 minute wait. We definitely noticed that the wait times and crowds were worse over Labor Day weekend, but they drop off significantly later in the trip. Pirates was fantastic as usual; Bill really enjoyed the enhancements from the movies.
After Pirates, we didn’t have too much time before our dinner ADR, so we headed over to the Grand Floridian by monorail – I figured we could spend some time looking through the shops there before dinner.
The Grand Floridian was beautiful as usual – I think Bill was impressed. We stopped in Basin, as I ALWAYS stock up on the loofah-filled soaps while I’m there, but they didn’t have any! (Not to worry, I found some at the Downtown Disney Basin later in the week!) We browsed through some of the other shops, and I showed Bill the Victoria & Albert’s menu. (V&A is awesome. I’ve been several times with my parents, and my mom really wanted us to go there on this trip, but we just had so much else going on, not to mention other expenses.)
Finally we headed over to the Grand Floridian Café and checked in for our dinner ADR. This was during the rehab of 1900 Park Faire, so the character dinner was being held in the Café. This was the one ADR Bill insisted on coordinating through our travel agent – he wanted to plan our first night. (You see where this is going, don’t you?) After planning this one evening, he handed the planning reins back over to me, admitting that planning a WDW trip was harder than he thought.
While we waited to be seated, we went outside and took some self-portraits.
It wasn’t long before we were seated and being visited by Suzy, Perla, and the Fairy Godmother. A woman sitting nearby kindly took our picture together with the Fairy Godmother, but… maybe she was drinking the Year of a Million Dreams Glowtini that Bill had, because I’ve never seen a shakier picture. But it was nice of her nonetheless. During the meal, we were visited by Cinderella and Prince Charming. The cutest part of the whole experience was how obviously in love with them both the little girl at the table next to us was. Her brother, not so much.
We used one table service credit each for this meal. Bill had his Glowtini (a choice that would be repeated by each of us throughout the week, I really think we were just trying to get a collection of the glowing cubes)
and I had Pinot Grigio. For appetizers, Bill had a salad and I had the spicy shrimp over a grit cake – and they were absolutely not kidding about the spicy part. The appetizers were okay, nothing spectacular. For dinner, I had the shrimp penne pasta, which again was okay – not bad but not the best pasta dish I’ve ever had, either. Bill had prime rib, which he liked – he ate pretty much the whole thing. The dessert was the best part, in my opinion. They served it family style – there was a bread pudding (which I normally don’t care for but this was quite good) and a selection of other pastries. Bill let me have the whole chocolate mousse all to myself.
The service was good; the only hiccup was that our server forgot (twice, oops) about bringing my second glass of wine, but it turned out okay as I just enjoyed it with dessert. The total that was covered by the dining plan was $72.19; we paid a $28.96 bill for Bill’s Glowtini and my two glasses of wine.
Coming up: What do we do after dinner? Get engaged, perhaps?? (Jeez, how am I going to get people to keep reading after the engagement part is over?)
Bill and I decided that since we hadn’t eaten much during our day of travel, that we would get something at the resort to tide us over until our dinner ADR at Grand Floridian Café. We left our room and headed to the main building of PO-R. Once we were in the Riverside Mill food court, Bill’s suspicion that he had been there before was confirmed. Turns out that when his sister danced at Disney World while in high school, her dance group stayed at PO-R and Bill and his mom had visited her there.
Anyway, we grabbed some food – Bill had a double cheeseburger and fries and I had chicken strips and fries. We considered using counter service credits, but decided not to because we weren’t going to eat dessert and figured we’d have better use for the credits later in the week. Bill asked about getting the refillable mugs, but to be honest I’ve never understood them. Who wants to bring them back to the room, and who wants to carry them around all day?
We sat and enjoyed our lunch and then headed to the Magic Kingdom – our first park of the trip!
As an aside, I’ve been working on a cross-stitch of Cinderella Castle for a couple of years and before our trip I joked to Bill that it was a good thing he had seen the cross-stitch, so that he would recognize the castle when he saw it in person. (I’m a dork, what can I say?) Well, we get a bit down Main Street when Bill stops us and pulls out his phone. He looks at it, looks up at the castle, and says, “yeah, that’s it!”. He had taken a picture of my cross-stitch before leaving home just to be able to do that.
We had decided to get as many Photopass pictures as possible, as our plan is to buy the CD and we wanted to get as many pictures as possible for the price. So we stopped and got our first Photopass shots of the trip. I don’t have them yet but I’ll add them into the trip report once I get them.
We headed straight for Pirates of the Caribbean, since I knew Bill was excited to see it, and we had probably about a 15 minute wait. We definitely noticed that the wait times and crowds were worse over Labor Day weekend, but they drop off significantly later in the trip. Pirates was fantastic as usual; Bill really enjoyed the enhancements from the movies.
After Pirates, we didn’t have too much time before our dinner ADR, so we headed over to the Grand Floridian by monorail – I figured we could spend some time looking through the shops there before dinner.
The Grand Floridian was beautiful as usual – I think Bill was impressed. We stopped in Basin, as I ALWAYS stock up on the loofah-filled soaps while I’m there, but they didn’t have any! (Not to worry, I found some at the Downtown Disney Basin later in the week!) We browsed through some of the other shops, and I showed Bill the Victoria & Albert’s menu. (V&A is awesome. I’ve been several times with my parents, and my mom really wanted us to go there on this trip, but we just had so much else going on, not to mention other expenses.)
Finally we headed over to the Grand Floridian Café and checked in for our dinner ADR. This was during the rehab of 1900 Park Faire, so the character dinner was being held in the Café. This was the one ADR Bill insisted on coordinating through our travel agent – he wanted to plan our first night. (You see where this is going, don’t you?) After planning this one evening, he handed the planning reins back over to me, admitting that planning a WDW trip was harder than he thought.
While we waited to be seated, we went outside and took some self-portraits.
It wasn’t long before we were seated and being visited by Suzy, Perla, and the Fairy Godmother. A woman sitting nearby kindly took our picture together with the Fairy Godmother, but… maybe she was drinking the Year of a Million Dreams Glowtini that Bill had, because I’ve never seen a shakier picture. But it was nice of her nonetheless. During the meal, we were visited by Cinderella and Prince Charming. The cutest part of the whole experience was how obviously in love with them both the little girl at the table next to us was. Her brother, not so much.
We used one table service credit each for this meal. Bill had his Glowtini (a choice that would be repeated by each of us throughout the week, I really think we were just trying to get a collection of the glowing cubes)
and I had Pinot Grigio. For appetizers, Bill had a salad and I had the spicy shrimp over a grit cake – and they were absolutely not kidding about the spicy part. The appetizers were okay, nothing spectacular. For dinner, I had the shrimp penne pasta, which again was okay – not bad but not the best pasta dish I’ve ever had, either. Bill had prime rib, which he liked – he ate pretty much the whole thing. The dessert was the best part, in my opinion. They served it family style – there was a bread pudding (which I normally don’t care for but this was quite good) and a selection of other pastries. Bill let me have the whole chocolate mousse all to myself.
The service was good; the only hiccup was that our server forgot (twice, oops) about bringing my second glass of wine, but it turned out okay as I just enjoyed it with dessert. The total that was covered by the dining plan was $72.19; we paid a $28.96 bill for Bill’s Glowtini and my two glasses of wine.
Coming up: What do we do after dinner? Get engaged, perhaps?? (Jeez, how am I going to get people to keep reading after the engagement part is over?)
Can't wait to read more!
