The Most Magical Week EVER! A belated Food and Wine trip report

[AwkwardTurtle]

Hi! Welcome to my belated trip report. We went to the World the first week of October, and we came back to a flooded apartment and other craziness, which, combined with my laziness in uploading photos, has really delayed this trip report. However, I spent so much time on other people’s reports in my planning stages, so I was determined to give back to the community with my own trip report. I hope you all enjoy, and without further ado, the introductions!

First, there is me! I know, aren’t you all surprised that I was on the trip about which I am writing a report?? Totally shocking . I’m 26, and at the time of this trip I was working the admissions office of a very small private university. I currently work retail. I love Disney, a lot. I’d been to Disney World twice before. The first time was when I was about 5, and I went with my family. We stayed at the Poly, and it’s still probably the best family vacation we ever took. The second time I was 13 and I went with summer camp. It was not my favorite experience, and I don’t really remember much of that particular trip.

Then we have my husband, Max. Max is 27, and he works as a computer programmer, but don’t hold that against him. Max is why we can afford nice things. He also really likes Disney, although he is not quite as intense about it as I am. But he’s generally a pretty mellow kind of guy anyway. I am not. I am super neurotic, so we balance each other out, I suppose. Moving on.

We live in Southern California, and have Disneyland annual passes. We go a lot.

Some short background on this trip. We started planning this trip in February. We were originally going with some friends and staying in Boardwalk Villas on their DVC points. However, do to some crazy unforeseen circumstances of the if-you-weren’t-there-you’d-never-believe-it variety, our friends were left sadly unable to go, and with flights purchased and 3 weeks to go we had to completely re-plan our trip. Fortunately, free dining was going on so we were able to take advantage of this and salvage our trip. So, we booked into All Star Music, and upgraded to regular dining plan. Then, about two days after we booked, we got a very generous gift that allowed us to upgrade to Coronado Springs. Which we LOVED.

This is getting absurdly long, so I’m going to leave it here for now. Next up, ridiculously early departure and a super shady long-term parking lot. Will my car be there when we get back?

BUT FIRST a quick itinerary.
October 1 - Travel day and the Magic Kingdom
October 2 - Magic Kingdom, Dinner at Kona
October 3 - Epcot, Food and Wine Festival
October 4 - DHS, Epcot, Dinner at Cape May, Fantasia Gardens Mini Golf
October 5 - Pool Day, Dinner at Artist Pointe, Epcot EMH
October 6 - Animal Kingdom, Dinner at Yak and Yeti, Downtown Disney
October 7 - Magic Kingdom, Dinner at Boma
October 8 - Departure Day
Recap: Two Disney World newbies spend 8 days/7 nights at Coronado Springs with park hoppers and the regular dining plan to relax and hit up food and wine.

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

October 1st – Travel Day!!​

Our day started at the ungodly hour of 4:00 am. We only got about 4 hours of sleep, but frankly I’m amazed I slept at all. We were leaving from LAX, which isn’t too far away, but LA traffic is silly, so I wanted to be on the road by 5 for our 8am flight. We did exciting last minute chores like taking out the trash and running the dishwasher, did the last minute packing of all the electronics, put the Magical Express yellow tags on the bags, spent some time snuggling the cats and then we were off, right on time! Of course, we listened to Disney music on the way.

We decided to drive the LAX and leave the car in long-term parking. I booked a well-reviewed place near the airport, but when we got there I was very close to just driving and parking at the LAX lot, regardless of it being more expensive. And if I had had any idea how to actually get to the LAX lot, I probably would’ve. This place was super sketchy. It was in this industrial side street with a totally unmarked lot, which we actually drove past it twice I think. It just did not inspire confidence. But we were running on the high spirits of going to Disney, so we took our chances, left the car and got on the surprisingly comfy shuttle for the short ride to the airport terminal. We had checked in early for our flight on Virgin America (I think I checked in online at the 23 hour and 58 minute mark) and bag check went smoothly.

NOTE: Our yellow Magical Express tags still said All Star Music. I had called Guest Services, and been told that the barcode would have our most updated reservation info, so I didn’t need to worry about our bags, they would get scanned and end up in the right place. This becomes important later.
Security was a breeze. We were through by 6:30, so we had an hour before boarding, which was perfect. We got some mediocre fast-food breakfast at the Burger King in our terminal (I would’ve preferred Starbucks, but was trying to stay away from caffeine in hopes of napping on the plane) and then bought some water and snacks for the flight, and then sat patiently waiting for the flight to board, where we snapped this excellent photo

Where we don’t look sleepy at all….
Boarding also went smoothly. I will spare you the picture of us on the plane. It looks like the one of us on the airport, except with plane in the background instead of airport terminal. There was a screaming baby in the row ahead of us, which was preferable to screaming baby in the row with us. I watched some Disney Channel and read some Disney books on my Kindle, in between attempts at napping. Flight was smooth and we landed on time!

I was beginning to get suspicious of all of our smooth and on-time happenings. But this is Disney! Things are magic. Pretty soon we were here!!!!!!!!!

Where the cast member tries to send us on the bus to All Star Music. And then scolded us for not having re-written our luggage tags. Public Service Announcement: If you change your resort reservation, and the wrong resort is written on your luggage tags, you should cross it out and write in the correct resort.

But no matter. We sorted it out, and then we got to go in this line

Where we waited for about 30 seconds, and then got on our bus! It was unfortunately one of the ugly yellow Mears busses, and I was sad as I watched the pretty Magical Express and Cruise Line busses pulling out of the terminal. But not that sad, because it was taking us to DISNEY WORLD!!!!

See! Not sad at all.

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

October 1 Continued​

So we were on our bus and it took us to DISNEY WORLD!! I had so much fun looking out the windows, but unfortunately we were sitting pretty far to the back on the left side, where there was no hope of getting a picture of the arch. Again, I had a mini sad, but not really. Pretty soon we were here!

I basically ran off the bus before it was stopped. Since we did not have our bags with us, we were able to zip ahead of the crowd right to check-in

and did not have to utilize this area at all

which was probably for the best, because, while I’m obsessed with the little chairs I don’t think I would quite fit in them
Check in was super smooth. Our cast member was awesome. It was Max’s first visit, and he got this:

I suppose they didn’t want me to feel left out, so I got this:

Which made my day. It was awesome! We had requested a room in Casitas 4 or 5. Max wanted to be near the gym, because he had some crazy idea about working out on vacation. The only working out I intended on doing was working on my sitting-by-the-pool-drinking-pina-colada skills, but I made the request. And we got it! I’m sure being near the gym is not a request they get a lot, but it actually worked out nicely for us, because we felt really centrally located.

We were in room 5244, which is the back of the building but it was really close to the elevator and the quiet pool, and the bus stop, and not really too far a walk from anything. I liked the view as well. If you looked down, you saw parking lot, but if you looked forward you had a nice view of trees. And since you couldn't really see anything from the room anyway, it really didn't matter. We weren’t too far from El Centro, and we were only a little far from the dig site pool. And that was really because we would swim late at night, when I didn’t want to walk at all anymore.

We had a basic room with 2 queen beds, and it was fine. Some things were a little bit weird though. For example, we wanted to sleep in the bed farthest from the door so that we wouldn’t be right under the air vent, but that bed was too close to the wall, so you could only get out of it from one side. And the bathroom door was a little bit of a tight fit to shut. But the beds were comfy, and things were clean. We loved the mini fridge. Some room pictures:

I thought I had more than that, but I guess not

After seeing the room, we rearranged our bags and walked back to El Centro to grab some lunch at

Pepper Market! I had chicken quesadillas, which were delicious. And so much food! Here is a picture of them from later on in the trip. I liked them so much, I had them twice!

They were really fantastic and filling. Max had the Mozzarella Chicken Sandwich with fries, which was also really tasty. I have no picture of this, because I totally forgot, and was way too excited, and also hungry. We also picked up these guys

which came in handy, especially because Max drinks a LOT of soda. We definitely felt that we got our money’s worth from the mugs. We paid out of pocket for this meal.

We finished eating, refilled our mugs, and then headed out to the bus stop, because we were headed to…

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

The Magic Kingdom!!! We didn’t have to wait too long for the bus at all, and this was one of only two times on the trip we had to stand on a bus. But at the beginning of the trip, who cares about standing on the bus! Originally, we had planned to do downtown Disney on arrival day, but then we realized that it was going to be the 40th anniversary, and we just couldn’t miss it. Going through the turnstiles was a little bit confusing, because we don’t have the finger scan at Disneyland, and the Cast Members were not terribly helpful. We figured it out though and then we were IN and seeing this

Magic Kingdom was really disorienting, because we’re so used to Disneyland and Magic Kingdom was trippy, because nothing was where we expected it to be. All other things aside, I was glad we had decided to check it out a little this night so that we weren’t all confused the next morning when we wanted to hit the ground running. We wandered down Main Street a little bit, and snagged and AWESOME spot in front of the castle to watch the electrical parade and the fireworks. I don’t know what time it was, but I think we probably ended up with an hour to an hour and a half to kill. We spent this time soaking up the up the atmosphere, chatting with people next to us, and taking a zillion pictures of the castle.

I like this one, because it’s pink. Then the parade started, and it was lovely. My pictures are mostly terrible, but here are some anyway.

I especially loved the Cinderella float. After the parade ended, we watched the Magic, Memories and You show. I did not have high expectations for this, but it was fantastic. This is a must see; the effects on the castle were just amazing. I’m so glad we saw this, it was one of the best shows of the trip. The only decent picture I managed of the show:

Then was Wishes, with an extra bang (or 50) at the end to celebrate the anniversary. I love the music for this show, and I cried. After Wishes was over, we were way too pumped to head back to the hotel, so we headed towards Tomorrowland, and rode the PeopleMover, just to get a feel for things. We tried to do some shopping, but I was totally overwhelmed, so we headed out to the bus. This was one of the very few times we waited for a bus, and it wasn’t that bad at all. Maybe 10, 15 minutes at most? And we got to see some of the Electric Water Pageant while we were waiting.

We got off the bus at El Centro, and grabbed a Chicken Caesar Wrap from Cafe Rix to share, and filled our mugs. The wrap was surprisingly tasty! There was a good amount of chicken, and the tortilla, though cold, wasn’t stale. We were happy. We took our wrap and some sun chips and sat at one of the little tables by the water and it was just perfect. After eating, we filled the mugs for the final time that night and wandered back to our room. Where we did not find our bags. We called bell services, and they had no idea what was going on, so I explained to them about the hotel switch, and they figured it out. They wouldn’t admit it, but given the time frame, I’m 99.99% sure the bags had gone to All Star Music, and they had sent someone to get them. The only slightly frustrating thing was that it took another 30 minutes for them to deliver the bags to us after they had supposedly arrived at the resort. This was only frustrating because I wanted to pick them up so I could unpack and go to sleep and they were all, no no, they’ll be right there! So I was getting cranky. But our bags made it, and then I saw our message light was flashing on the phone, and we had a 1st visit welcome call from Goofy. We unpacked the bags, put some rum in our mugs, and wandered a bit down to the pool, and then came back to sleep after the most perfect day ever.

Up Next: Our first full day of touring in the Magic Kingdom.

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

October 2 – First Full Day of Touring in the Magic Kingdom!​

We set the alarms for 7, because I wanted to make rope drop. I was so excited to see the welcome show, and I wanted to be there to miss some of the crowds. Max was not sold on waking up at 7 on vacation, but he went along with no complaints, just a bit of sleepiness.

One of the nice things about our room location was that we were fairly close to the first bus stop at Coronado, which is

I loved the bus stop signs. I also loved that even the vending machines were themed.

After taking pictures of important things like signs and Coke machines, I thought it might be nice to have some pictures of us, so here is the early morning camera turned around picture!

Anyway, we were on the bus at 7:57, (not that I was checking my phone like a crazy person the second we sat down so that I could check or anything) and before we knew it, we were pulling through here!

We made it through bag check by around 8:15. At around 8:30 they let us in the train plaza, and we scoped out a spot in the center at the back, where we could sit on the planter. It was lovely.

Empty plaza

These fools again

One thing I really liked was that they had a cart of maps in the plaza, so you could get yourself situated when you were there early. It was very helpful. Shortly before nine, some cast members went around handing out Mickey confetti, and then the show started!
We saw these guys

And these guys

And then the big cheese (clearly, I am the first person to have made this joke ever) himself

Group Picture time!

The show was super sweet. I cried. Then I tried to be artsy

and it didn’t really work. But I did pick up a bunch of Mickey confetti to take home and possibly scrapbook. We’ll see if that actually happens. Anyway, once we got in, we headed right for Frontierland! Since we’re so close to Disneyland, we tried to prioritize doing things that we don’t have access to here, or are different, or generally agreed to be “better.” For example, Space Mountain is one of my favorite rides at Disneyland, so we didn’t bother riding it at Disney World. This made it a little bit easier for us. Our first stop of the day was to big up some Fast Passes for Splash Mountain. We were really excited about riding this. First, we walked on to the wildest ride in the wilderness!

(I took this picture later on the riverboat, since we were so excited this morning I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures at the time.) We loved this, as usual. This is one of the few things I remember from my first trip with my parents, so it was nice to ride it again. Especially with no wait! Then we swung back around to hit this baby

I really enjoyed playing in the new queue, but again we basically walked right through it. Haunted Mansion is such a fun ride, but I felt that it was really dark on this ride! I know it has to be, but there were some areas that were just very lacking in lighting. After Haunted Mansion, we headed to Adventureland and hit up Pirates. I love all the queue spaces, it was so much fun. The wait was about 20 minutes, I think? It felt long, but the ride is always good times. Then we saw there was only a 5 minute wait for Jungle Cruise, so we hopped on for a spin. I enjoyed our skipper. It was about 10ish at this point, so we decided to wander back to Main Street to grab some breakfast at the bakery. On the way, we ran into the trolley show!

I was so excited, because I had really wanted to see this, so it was a nice surprise to run into it just as it was starting. Then we joined the line at the bakery, which was just about at the door, and used some snack credits, I think. I got the cheese Danish, which I was super excited about, and Max got the ham, egg, and cheese croissant. We also got an iced mocha.

And apparently a diet coke.

I LOVED my cheese Danish. It was gooey and sweet, but not too sweet. I love cheese Danish, but Max does not so we hardly ever have them. Bonus was I didn’t have to share :-D Max’s croissant was also really tasty, although the cheese was clearly super processed American cheese, which is tolerable to me only in small doses. This dose was perfect. We were both really disappointed in the mocha, it was just not good. I have written down that it tasted like bad chocolate milk. And have no idea how you even make chocolate milk bad, so it must have been really offensive. I think we ended up throwing it out, to be honest. The diet Coke tasted like diet Coke.

After breakfast, we decided to head to Fantasyland, and caught the beginning of Dream Along With Mickey. I think we had missed maybe the first minute or 2, so really nothing. It was so fun!

After this happy break, we continued back into Fantasyland and rode Winnie the Pooh. This was really the only line mistake we made. I wanted to go standby to get a look at the interactive queue (and after about 30 seconds by the bouncing radish machine, I realized what a mistake that was )and since the posted wait time was only 20 minutes, I figured it would be okay. Well, the wait was closer to 40 minutes!! And while the queue is adorable, especially the storybook pages, it was not worth 40 minutes. Especially because I think the guy in line in front of us was purposely standing in front of everything I tried to take a picture of. Anyway, I had time to take a lot of pictures of the Winnie the Pooh line. Here are some of them!

We did like the ride though, so that was good.

Then we went over and saw Mickey’s Philharmagic! Which I also apparently don’t have a picture of. I enjoyed this, but the 3d did not agree with me. Then we went on one of our home town favorites,

We were in the first row of our boat, which apparently did not have that much leg room

I did not have that problem. I love Small World though, it makes me so happy.

All this excitement, before lunch time! Wherever will we eat??

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

Columbia Harbour House! Another place I apparently don’t have a picture of, I have no idea what’s up with that. This was one of the places I was really excited to eat, and our first real dining plan meal. I had

the fried shrimp basket, with French fries and coleslaw, and the apple crisp for dessert. Max had

The fried shrimp and fish basket, also with fries and coleslaw, and the chocolate cake for dessert. We both had large diet cokes to drink. We took our tray to sit upstairs by a window where we could people watch and see the riverboat dock.

The upstairs seating was pretty full, so I think the secret is out on that one. But it was still cozier and quieter than the downstairs, and it was really nice to be by the window and get to see out. We really enjoyed our food here. My shrimp was crispy and delicious and the coleslaw wasn’t too soggy, and I really enjoyed the apple crisp. It was just one of those frozen apple blossom things, but very yummy. I just wish I could’ve gotten it after I finished my shrimp, because I’m a slow eater and the apple crisp was lukewarm at best by the time I got to it. Still yummy though! Max also really liked his shrimp and fish. I had a bite of the fish, and I thought it was cooked really well, and it wasn’t soggy at all. He also liked the chocolate cake a lot. It was moist, and very chocolatey. I thought it was good as well, but I’m actually not much of a sweets person, so I tend to stay away from things that are primarily chocolate. We had a nice leisurely meal, and when we saw the Liberty Belle coming back around, we cleaned our table and walked outside just across the walkway to

So we could ride

It was a nice way to relax after lunch, and we got some great pictures of Tom Sawyer Island. I’ve always loved Tom Sawyer, and we never quite made it to the island, so I’m glad we at least got to see it.
First, Aunt Polly’s

Those rocking chairs look super comfy.
The famous fence

Other assorted things

After our nice journey along the river, it was just around 2:00 pm, and time use our fastpass at

​

We were really excited about this ride, but had a less than stellar experience on it due to a lap bar malfunction. Apparently, the lap bars on Splash don’t go down that far, but we didn’t know that, so we pulled it down, but didn’t feel it lock into place and when we went to let go it would spring all the way back up. I am somewhat sensitive about my weight, so this was really distressing to me. I didn’t feel unsafe, I just felt upset, and I spent the whole ride clutching the lap bar to me so that they wouldn’t stop the ride, or something. So I was just not able to enjoy it as much as I had hoped, even though it’s a super fun, gorgeous ride. At the end, we finally just let the bar go up, and realized that it had locked into place, it was just locked way higher up than we anticipated. So then I felt relieved, and also silly. At this point, I was ready to go find us a spot for the Celebrate A Dream Come True parade. We ended up in almost the exact same spot that we had watched the Main St. Electrical Parade from the night before – on the hub between the castle and Tomorrowland, but basically right in front of the castle. We got to see a high school marching band (go band!) and then we saw this guy!

I’m not even exaggerating when I say that Push was one of the highlights of the trip. I had heard of Push, but didn’t really have a clear idea of what to expect, and it was a complete surprise for my husband. Push was hilarious, and so great interacting with the people waiting for the parade. The Main St. Philharmonic came by while Push was there, and that was also great. Even though we waited something like 40 minutes, it really flew by. Disney does a great job of keeping you entertained! Then along came

I loved the Celebrate parade. Unfortunately, that’s basically the only picture I have. One of the bad things about watching from the hub is that you’re on a curve, so if a couple of guys stand at the edge next to you, and then, for some inexplicable reason because there’s no one in front of them, they put their kids on their shoulders, you can’t really see anything until it’s right in front of you, which makes it hard to get pictures. And also to really see things. So, sorry about that.

After the parade, we were able to walk through the castle. There were absolutely gorgeous murals inside.

More castle pictures:

At my picture limit, continued in new post!

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

We also wandered a little bit back behind the castle, and in the shops

Then, we walked back down Main St. for something else the Dis had gotten me excited about –

Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich!! As you can see, this thing was HUGE. Basically the size of the plate. It was pretty good, but a little hard to eat because a) HUGE and b) the cookies were a little crispy, so things were a touch messy to bite into. If the cookies had been warm and/or softer, this would’ve been the most amazing thing ever. As it was, it was pretty good. But definitely for sharing, in my opinion. We used a snack credit for our ice cream sandwich.
We did some more shopping, then got on the Railroad at the Main St. station. This was nice and relaxing. First, we went to Frontierland

Then, we swung back around and saw some of the construction for the Fantasyland expansion. I was having camera issues, so no pictures. We rode the full loop, and got off back at Main St. We wandered back up, and got some good Halloween decoration pictures

And stopped off at City Hall to pick up my Visa rewards card in preparation for Food and Wine snacking the next day. This was a very easy and painless procedure.

We went back to the Liberty Square area to do Hall of Presidents, which was really cool. The animatronics are amazing. Then we headed over to Frontierland and the Country Bear Jamboree.

We still had some time to kill, so we walked back to Tomorrowland, and rode Carousel of Progress. I really enjoyed this. I love the song. When we got off the Carousel of Progress, it was just before 6. We saw that the People Mover had no line, and figured we had time to take a quick zip on that before heading out for our dinner reservation at Kona Cafe. Unfortunately, we ended up getting stuck in Space Mountain. It was really frustrating, because they kept announcing that the ride would begin moving “momentarily,” and it was not moving. I was trying to keep calm, but I am crazy about time, and also slightly claustrophobic, and it was not going well. Max and I kept quoting the exchange from The Princess Bride about words not meaning what you think they mean, at which point we got to talk about how momentarily actually means for a moment, and not in a moment, which is how it’s commonly used. Because we are language dorks.

Anyway, we finally ended up getting walked off the ride, which would have actually been super cool if I hadn’t been stressing about dinner. Now, we still had plenty of time to make it, and I know that being a little bit late wouldn’t have been a huge deal, but I still hate, hate, HATE being late. Once we got off the ride, we power walked over and got in line to take the boat to the Polynesian. This was also not the world’s best idea. We had just missed a boat, so it took awhile for another to come, and those boats are tiny. I think they held like 20 people? We were literally the last people on, which was good because I probably would’ve had a meltdown otherwise. Please note, I know this is not a reasonable reaction, and I was just being quietly stressed, so my insanity didn’t really bother anyone. Except my husband, but he’s wonderful and puts up with me. Consequently, I didn’t really fully appreciate the beautiful sundown at the boat dock.

Nautical Mickey says safety first!

We stopped at the Grand Floridian, then at the Polynesian. Unfortunately, we didn’t really have time to wander the resort and just headed straight to

We checked in 20 minutes early, and were seated about 10 minutes past our 7:40 ADR. We were led to a table towards the back of the restaurant, and we sat there for 10 minutes before our server came to take our drink order. They were out of pineapples, so no Lapu Lapu for me and I was very sad. Max and I both ended up with delicious rum and fruit juice drinks though, so all was well. Except we waited ANOTHER 10 minutes before we got any drinks or bread. Seriously, we sat for 20 minutes before we had anything on the table other than silverware. I was not a particularly happy camper.

My drink

Kona bread, macadamia butter, and Max’s (totally manly) drink

We both really enjoyed the bread and butter. I don’t usually like sweet butters, but this was amazing and I could’ve eaten the whole thing. But I did not, because at the same time as our bread came our appetizer

Crab Cakes

These were delicious. Lots of crab, just really, really good.
For our entrees, I had the Ginger Crusted Ribeye, with Tamarind jus, mashed potatoes, and stir fried broccolini. Max had the Teriyaki-style New York Strip Steak, with the same sides. Sorry, I was too hungry at this point and forgot to take pictures. I really liked my ribeye, it had a yummy grilled flavor. However, there was absolutely NO ginger flavor, and I could have used some more of the tamarind jus. So it was good, and I really liked it, but it didn’t really taste as described. Max loved his steak, and was really happy with it.

For dessert, we ordered the banana chocolate crème brulee to share.

This was a layer of banana custard over a layer of chocolate custard, with a bruleed banana and a chocolate swirl on top. It was fairly meh. It had clearly been sitting out too long, and the brulee was soggy. I ate the banana, Max ate the rest. All in all, we liked Kona and will most likely go back, despite the lackluster service.

After we paid, we hopped on monorail blue back to the Magic Kingdom, and then hopped on a bus back to Coronado. We opted to get off at El Centro, so that we could do some shopping in panchitos, and re-fill our mugs. We also got some drinks at the little bar outside. Then we went back to the room, changed and went swimming at the dig site pool. It was a lovely end to a lovely day, and we were both excited and exhausted at the prospect of doing it all over again the next day!

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

October 4 – EPCOT​

We were up early again, and getting on the bus at 8:07, where we then took the early unattractive early morning turn the camera around photo

We really enjoyed being the first bus stop in the mornings, because we never had to worry about finding a seat. Although to be honest, the bus was never full enough in the morning that anyone had to stand. We skipped breakfast this morning, in anticipation of all the eating we’d be doing later. Pretty soon, we were seeing

And, after listening to a cute little message saying hello in all sorts of different languages (which totally didn't make me get teary-eyed...), we were through the turnstiles at 8:50, and headed straight over to

Where we walked right on. Max and I both really enjoyed Test Track, but I felt it was a really short ride. If we had actually had to wait to ride it, I would’ve been really annoyed. As we got off, we grabbed some Fast Passes for later and walked back over to

Where we also walked right on! Spaceship Earth was super fun and relaxing, we both really loved it. Max wasn’t really into the survey at the end, but I had fun with it

After getting off Spaceship Earth, we walked over to the Seas and walked onto

I really liked the outside of this building

And I loved the queue design. The ride itself was fine. My favorite part was Peach stuck on the glass at the end. When the ride was over, we hung out in The Seas and watched the manatees, and the sea turtles, and the dolphins. It was really neat. We stayed awhile, because things were supposed to get fed, but I think they were having some problems, and eventually we just left.

After we finished playing in The Seas, we walked next door (well, next door-ish) to the Land pavilion, where we rode Livin’ With the Land. We skipped Soarin', because we get to see it all the time at Disneyland and I had been reading a lot of negative things about the screen quality at the EPCOT version, so we didn’t bother. We both really enjoyed Livin’ with the land, I thought it was a lot of fun. We especially enjoyed the lady in the row in front of us complaining that Disney “cheaped out” on the rain in the rainforest scene. Because it wasn’t REAL rain. Seriously.

Then we headed over to a fancy event

I loved the old Figment ride last time I was there. This one was still fun, but I think it was because of the nostalgia factor.
It was 10:55 when we got off Figment, which means…time for Food and Wine! We headed over to Canada, because I was dying to try the famous cheddar cheese soup.

I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit disappointed by the soup. I found it to be a little bit nacho cheesy. Also, I was bummed by the lack of pretzel breadsticks.

We also got the Chicken Chipotle sausage with sweet corn polenta

We both thought this was delicious. The sausage was nice and spicy and it went perfectly with the sweetness from the polenta. Loved it, I wanted to have more immediately. We then went to watch the O Canada movie. It was fun, but if I had known it was a standing movie, we probably would’ve skipped it. It did make me want to go to Canada though, so mission accomplished Canadian board of tourism.

After Canada, we took a trip to the land of the red phone booths.

It was also the land of the Lobster and Scallop Fisherman’s Pie

Which we both really liked. There were nice big pieces of lobster, which is never a bad thing.

And a cheese plate!

Mmmmmmm, cheese. I love cheese. I was not a huge fan of the chutney though, it just didn’t do it for me.

We wandered the stores, where I am to be applauded for avoiding all the good British sweets, and then we also wanted to try

Because Max loves him some fish and chips, so we shared an order and a diet coke.

We took them down the stairs just to the right of the fish shop, and sat at a bench right on the water. It was beautiful, and still not too hot, even though we were in the direct sunlight. I liked it quite a bit. The fish was crispy and flaky and the chips were fantastic. But I’m an American, so what do I know? It was yummy.

And now, my non-existent readers, I have a confession to make. At this point in our trip, my camera died. I had forgotten to charge it the previous night, and that was apparently a bad thing. So for the rest of our EPCOT day, you get only words. Sorry .

At this point, we were focused on working our way around world showcase and eating lots of things. We did not do as much drinking as we intended, first because it got really freaking hot between the UK and France, and second because the drinks at the booths were expensive, for little teeny glasses. The beer seemed to be a good value, but we don’t really drink beer, and the wine and mixed drinks were just not worth it to us. You know what was amazing though? Three words: Grey. Goose. Slush. Oh man, those things were fantastic. Of all the highly recommended things we tried this week, these were most worth the hype. In France, we also shared an order of the escargot, which we enjoyed. They were nice and tender. We had just missed the impressions of France show, so we skipped it this time around and just poked around in the shops.

The rest of my notes were written when waiting for Illuminations, so they’re mostly about the Festival booths.

Belgium: we got the steamed mussels with garlic cream. The mussels were cooked nicely, but I was not too impressed with the sauce. I thought it tasted like the flour in the roux hadn’t been cooked properly, and I was really surprised to see that the recipe doesn’t actually use flour.

Portugal: Linguica sausage with onions, peppers and olives – this was okay, but a little bit salty. And I really like salt. Max doesn’t like olives, so he wasn’t too crazy about this
Calamari salad – we really liked this. It was nice and refreshing, and the calamari wasn’t chewy at all

Morocco: Kefta pocket – it was good, but it wasn’t really assembled well, so the slaw was all at the bottom of the pocket instead of alongside the meat. It probably would’ve tasted better to eat them together instead of separately.

Harissa chicken roll – this tasted basically like a curry egg roll. It was yummy, but a little bit dry.

We also got the sangria here, which we loved. Then we spent a good bit of time just wandering around the Morocco pavilion. It’s fantastically gorgeous.

At the New Zealand booth we got the seared sea scallop with red curry and apple radish salad. The scallop was meh. It had no flavor, and we both normally love red curry, so we were sad. The apple-radish salad was legitimately bad. Nothing about it worked.

We were really excited to visit the Japan pavilion, since we love Japanese food. We spent a good deal of time in the store, and Max bought a new Pokémon for his desk. I successfully avoided the Pick-a-pearl counter. We also visited the sake bar, where I was not a fan of our choices, which makes me sad because usually I like sake. We got to watch the drummers a bit, which was really nice, and then got some more food! We skipped the sushi, and instead got the tuna and salmon sensation, which was fantastic. It had really yummy avocado and a soy/wasabi dressing. The fish was fantastic, and so refreshing, as it was HOT at this point. I thought it was a little heavy on the avocado, until Max told me that he had just been eating the fish and leaving the avocado, so I was getting all of the avocado, but only half the fish. He’s a cheater. We also got the pork kakuni, which was also delicious.

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

EPCOT, Continued. With a lot of words​

At the Singapore booth we had the shrimp cake on sugar skewer with Singapore noodles. We really liked the shrimp cake, and the sugar cane was cool. I have nothing written down about the noodles, so they were apparently neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally bad.

We stopped by the America pavilion, and got there just in time to see the Voices of Liberty, who are just fantastic performers. Definitely worth a listen. We skipped the show, and instead went to Hops and Barley to get some lobster. We had the Lobster Claw Cuddler, which was interesting because you had to basically tear it apart with your hands, which is hard to do when standing, and the Lobster Roll, which we LOVED.

Max got me a cannoli from Italy, and it was yummy, but I wish it hadn’t been covered in chocolate. I was pretty overheated at this point, and a little bit cranky. But the eating must continue! We went to Poland, where we got the Kielbasa and the pierogies, which were really yummy, and the gloabki (cabbage roll), which we loved. Max said it tasted just like his Polish grandma’s, so that was exciting. I’m excited to try this recipe from my food and wine cookbook, I just haven’t had a chance yet. I have no idea why I didn’t get a strawberry balsamic martini, and I’m sad about that. I imagine I was too cranky and hot. There are some very theoretical talks about going back for Food and Wine 2012, and I think if that happens we might go a little later in the month in hopes that it is slightly cooler and we can drink more! Although that might mean less swimming, which would be sad In Germany, we got the sausage in the pretzel roll. I loved the pretzel roll, but did not really care for the fact that the sausage was like 3 times as long as the roll. I wanted to go into Karamel Kuche, but it was way crowded. We did take some hilarious pictures for our German friends in the store here.

At this point, I was basically ready for a nap (I’m slightly high maintenance, if you can’t tell. Not on purpose, I’m just really tightly wound) so we went back to some nice, air conditioned rides. We rode Maelstrom, which was ridiculous. Then we went to Mexcio to get some tequila, because tequila makes everything better. We stopped in La Cava del tequila for drinks. This was probably the biggest mistake of our trip. I got an avocado margarita, because I thought it sounded interesting. Max got the blood orange margarita. We both hated our drinks. I thought Max’s was okay, but that might have only been because mine was so bad. I figured out about halfway through that they had made me a cucumber margarita instead. I suppose I could’ve gone back in and had them make me something else, but didn’t really feel like it. Even knowing it was a cucumber margarita did not make it better. This was not a good drink. Also, what kind of place charges $12 for a shot of 1800 Reposado??? You can buy a 375 ml bottle of 1800 reposado for $15. This is perhaps the first time in my life where I did not finish a drink out of grossness.

To make up for disastrous margarita time, we went on the three caballeros ride, which was fun. Then, we trekked back to future world to check out Ellen’s Universe of air-conditioned-sitting-down-for-an-extended-period-of-time. Also known as Ellen’s Universe of had too much to drink and need to sleep it off. I enjoyed the air conditioning, and the sitting down, and Max also enjoyed the dinosaurs, but I’m not convinced it had anything to do with energy. Except I had more energy after riding than I had before, so maybe that’s it? We wandered around Mouse Gears, where I wanted to buy everything, checked out the pin trading kiosk (we were not able to find a food and wine pin we liked, which made us sad) and then went to club cool. We liked the Ginger Ale.

After our short trip back to the future (see what I did there?) we were ready for some more eating! The sun was going down and it was cooling off at this point. We hit up Hawaii, and had the tuna poke , which was great. Big chunks of tuna on some yummy seaweed salad. From Australia we got the shrimp with pepper berry citrus glaze. Max liked this, but I thought the glaze was weird. We got the empanada from Argentina, which w as good but nothing special, and then swung by Mexico for a shrimp taco, which we really liked, and got some frozen margaritas from the margarita stand, which made up for the evil ones we got from La Cava del tequila earlier in the day. It was about 7:40 at this point, and we were ready to rest, so we went and claimed a spot at the railing right across from the margarita cart to wait for Illuminations. I went and got us the taste of Scandinavia plate, which was one of my favorites of the night, and Max ran and got the Black Pepper Shrimp with Sichuan noodles and the pork pot stickers from China, and the lettuce wraps and bulgogi from South Korea. We really enjoyed both of these plates. I think there also may have been a second round of margaritas in there somewhere….

We watched Illuminations at 9, which was beautiful. I especially loved when all the countries lit up around the lagoon. We were at the bust stop by 9:30, and seated on a bus at 9:35. We got back to the hotel, did some swimming, and collapsed to get ready for another awesome day!

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

I have neglected this report shamefully, but holiday time in retail makes a girl crazy busy, and every time I would think about writing the sleeping cat on my lap disagreed. So. Sleeping kitties always win.

October 4th, 2011 DHS

Today we set the alarm for 7:30, and were on the bus at 8:23. And my camera was charged, so you get pictures again! We walked right through these guys

And pretty soon we were seeing the mob getting ready to do the Toy Story dash

Oh look, another early morning turn the camera around picture!

Those glasses broke later on in the trip, and that made me sad I really should replace them…

Anyway, as soon as the mob cleared out a bit, we went to get Fast Passes for

Woohoo!! We were so excited for this. Well, I was. I don’t think Max was awake yet. Then, we walked right over to

I loved the queue line here, it really felt like actual hotel grounds. I don’t have any other pictures though, because we were able to walk right on! It was really fun. One of my favorite things about it was that the line after the pre-show area was much shorter than the one at Disneyland. After Tower of Terror, we wandered back to the central area, took a cute picture (I wish we had bought the photopass cd, because a lot of our pictures actually came out really cute)

And then went to ride the great movie ride, where we got the gangster show.

It was cute, but it’s a sloooow ride, and they really packed us in the car, so I was a little antsy and claustrophobic. I think Max liked this better than I did, especially the Alien sequence. After our trip through the movies, we got Toy Story Fast Passes. It was 9:55, and there was no line for the Fast Pass distribution, and our return time was 2:35, so all in all, not too bad! We went into

One Man’s Dream, which was awesome. I love all the recreations and the models, and the movie used some footage I hadn’t seen before so it was really just a nice story. After the movie let out, we headed back to Rock N Roller Coaster, with a quick pit stop to get a soda from Fairfax Fare and eat some of our nutritious beef jerky breakfast, so that we weren’t looping and corkscrewing on an empty stomach. We also saw these guys

And that was really cool.

And then we were here!

Why yes, I did just use that picture. Sorry.

RNRC was really fun, but I thought it was really short. We got to walk right on, but I would’ve been annoyed if there had been a long wait. Kind of like at Test Track. After the roller coaster, we walked over to catch the 11:30 Beauty and the Beast show.

Theater

We sat here!

I think it was a little bit after 11 at this point. We got 2 seats on the end right behind the sound booth, which was awesome, because it meant no one was in front of me. I caught up in my journal a bit, I think Max may have taken a little snooze. Everything started right on time. Here are some assorted pictures!

The show was cute, but there were certain plot holes. And the Beast was just not threatening at all; Max and I kept cracking up at his roaring. But the cast was fantastic, and we enjoyed it quite a bit.

After Beauty and the Beast, we wandered over to take the tram tour. It was super lame, actually, but the initial stunt show part was neat.

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

Tour pictures:

Look, it’s the backside of water!

The catastrophe canyon bit was extra not-fun, because I was in the sun the whole time. It was really, really hot. The best part of the tram tour was the prop warehouse that you walk through between the stunt show and the tram portion, but you get hardly any time to look at anything!

When we got off the tram, it was time for lunch, so we headed to the ABC Commissary. We waited for a really, really long time to get our food, and there’s really nowhere to stand between the register and the counter so it was crowded.

Max got the chicken blue

Which is a chicken sandwich inspired by Chicken cordon blu, not chicken with blue cheese, which is what we thought it would be. It was good though.

I had the surf and turf burger

​

Because I really like shrimp. My burger was cold, but tasted fine. You can also see the desserts we got, which were a chocolate mousse and the strawberry parfait. They were both very tasty.

After lunch, we went back to see the few exhibits we had missed in One Man’s Dream, and then went over to

Voyage of the Little Mermaid! The opening puppet number was fantastic, and so were the theater effects, although we were in the very front and missed some of the details. Really fun though. We walked over this way

To go here, of course

Sidenote: I was super bummed that the Prince Caspian attraction was gone. I realize I’m probably the only person in the entire world is sad about that, but I LOVE that movie.

Ahem. Back to things that still exist!

We got to use our best friend the Fast Pass. When we got the stairs, we told the cast member there were only 2 in our party (thanks for the good advice, DisBoards!!) and were sent up the right side of the staircase. There was a slight technical difficulty while we were waiting, but we still only ended up waiting around 10 minutes. When we got off, the posted standby wait time was 100 minutes. Crazy. This ride was fun, as usual. And I lost, as usual. I have no hand-eye coordination. After Toy Story, we were done with Hollywood Studios. Star Tours makes Max sick, so we didn’t ride it (plus, we have it at Disneyland) and we weren’t feeling MuppetVision, so we decided to hop over to EPCOT. On our way out, we got the Pixar Play Parade (Which is coming back to California Adventure apparently, yay!) which was so fun! We watched it from under the hat, so that we could stay shaded. Love this parade, it’s so fun and the characters are awesome.

When the parade was over, we made our to the front of the park, stopping to peruse the stores. Bye

And then made our way to the EPCOT bus stop. Where we waited. And waited. And waited. This was by far our worst bus experience of the trip; I have no idea why we didn’t just take a boat. I think I was still bitter from the Magic Kingdom to Kona boat experience. But this bus stop was awful. There was no shade, and my shoes had given me terrible blisters. They are great walking shoes, but apparently they need socks. Oops.

When we got to EPCOT, we sat in Innoventions on the nice comfy couch in the lovely air conditioning for a bit to regroup. Then, we decided what we really needed was Grey Goose Slushes. So we really should’ve just taken the boat. In retrospect, I’m really annoyed we didn’t do that, lol. En route to France, we stopped for these

Look at my cute red shoes. I love them so, even though they were mean to my feet this day.

Eventually we made it to France, had delicious slushes, and watched Marie be adorable

After our little pick me up, we went over to the Beach Club to get ready for our dinner at Cape May. A Grey Goose slush in the present, and Oreo bon bons in my future, what more could a girl ask for?

We walked around the Yacht and Beach Club a bit, which I loved. I would really like to stay there one day. We checked in at 6:20 for our 6:50 ADR and we were seated almost immediately. We were very excited for this dinner, because we love seafood, and it was calamari night, which is one of our favorite things to have. A kid at the table next to where we were seated had a whole plate of calamari, and it looked awesome. We were seated in a little alcove type area to the right of the entrance. It was nice being secluded, but we had to walk through the entry every time we wanted to get to the buffet, which was not ideal.

We started with some of the best clam chowder I’ve ever had

And then I moved on to salad.

Max did not have salad. Instead, he got started on filling our bucket with shells of delicious things.

Bucket pre-meal

Here are some food pictures!

The pasta on this plate was really good

The potatoes on this plate were really bad

You might notice none of these plates have calamari on them. Apparently, they had run out calamari. At 6:30. On calamari night. But it was okay, because they were substituting fried shrimp. Fried shrimp might have appeared at some point that night, but not while we were dining. Grrr. However, I offer you this

The oreo bon-bons were sooooooo good. NOM.

And also this

So, as you can see, despite the very disappointing lack of calamari, we did not go hungry. Overall, this dinner was okay. We were really excited about it, and it was good, but not great. We’ll probably do it again if we have the dining plan, but I certainly wouldn’t pay out of pocket for it, and there are other things on the list to try before we repeat this.
I think I’m just about at picture limit, but next post will have our trip to mini-golf!

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

After leaving Cape May, we took a leisurely stroll over to Fantasia Gardens Mini Golf. Here are some really bad pictures I took along the way!

And we’ve arrived!

We were so excited for this!! Again, most of my pictures are inexplicably awful, I have no idea why. I am usually a passably acceptable photographer. I blame Max, for leaving me in charge of the camera.

Fantasia Gardens has two different courses, the Gardens course, which is traditional putt-putt gold with Fantasia theming, and the Fairways course, which is like a real golf course, just scaled down. Apparently, I wouldn’t know. We played the Gardens course. When we went in, it was a cute little convenience store type area. They let us pick our golf balls. Mine is hot pink, duh.

Look at the ceiling!

We waited something like 10 minutes, so they could space the players out, and then took off. Each course had a little description in front of it, like this

That gives a little hint about the hole. I did not realize this until hole 5 or something. So quick PSA: remember to actually look at things while snapping a bazillion pictures. Here is the tee, or whatever it’s called.

And a picture of the obstacle

More pictures!!

This hole was cool, because the steps on the way down were musical.

I got a hole in 1 on #5, so clearly it is the easiest hole there.

The rest of my pictures are pretty bad, so here’s a dancing hippo

Brooms spilling water on you

Mickey causing trouble

And Yen Sid making things right

I clearly lost this game (final tally was Max 49, Me 64) but it was so much fun. SO MUCH FUN. The theming was fantastic, and it was just the right amount of challenge vs. fun. There were a lot of really clever touches. We will DEFINITELY be doing this again next time we go, maybe earlier in the night though. It was one of the highlights of the trip.

Afterwards, we took a cab back to Coronado (the Cast Member called one for us, it was super nice) which was ridiculously fast, got some drinks at the Laguna Bar and sat outside to drink them

Then went for our nightly swim, before turning in. Another highly successful day!

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

October 5. Lazy, relaxing take-it-easy day, followed by the best dinner ever

Today we had planned a nice and easy day to rest a little bit, so that we wouldn’t be too burnt out by the end. We woke up around 10, at which point I realized that, despite checking and re-checking approximately 124,655,823,467,547,332,434 times, I had actually made our much-anticipated dinner reservation at Artist Point for the following Wednesday. However, the lovely Cast Member at the concierge desk fixed it for us in about 5 minutes. The perks of going at non-peak season. We had lunch at Pepper Market again, where I had the quesadilla (again)

And Max had some manner of burrito

For dessert, I had the strawberry shortcake

And Max had some kind of Oreo cake

Everything was really yummy. I’m pretty bummed to hear that they turned Pepper Market into a buffet. After lunch, we went over and a good relaxing time at the pool swimming around, going down the water slide, and lounging in the sun. With plenty of beverages, of course!! They have lots of activities for the kids around the pool during the day, so that seemed nice. After we had our fill of sunshine (as if you can ever get enough sitting by the pool) we got ready for our fancy dinner. We took a bus to Magic Kingdom, and then took the boat over the Wilderness Lodge. This was a much less stressful boat ride, I really enjoyed it. Here are some pics from the water!

That’s one of my favorites. At one point the water actually goes OVER the roadway – how cool is that??

Pretty soon we had arrived. Here, look at some Wilderness Lodge pictures.

It was kind of windy, so were getting some nice mist from the geyser. It felt nice and refreshing, although I don’t think my makeup liked it that much

Okay, that’s a lot, but we really liked Wilderness Lodge. If we ever stay deluxe, it’s going to be the first place we try, I think. Although we were somewhat concerned that the pool was kind of small, but we’ll cross that planning bridge when we come to it.

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

Pretty soon, we arrived at Artist Point. I think we were about 20 minutes early for our ADR, and we were still seated right away. We had a seat near the front of the restaurant, right on the window overlooking the walkway, which I liked, because I greatly enjoy people watching. We started with some drinks (big surprise, right?)

I had a delicious martini with blue cheese olives

While Max enjoyed a totally manly and non-pink drink

Then came the amazing bread and butter

NOM. I love bread and butter, and could eat it forever, but this was soooooo good. Delicious sourdough, and yummy butter with a little crunch from the salt. We followed it with the Smoky Portobello Soup to share.

Holy deliciousness, Batman! It was fantastic. As another really nice touch, they split the bowl for us.

For the main course, I had the salmon

And Max had the Buffalo

Again, so amazing. My salmon was fabulous. Seriously, my mouth waters thinking about how perfectly it was cooked and seasoned. I recall Max really loving his buffalo, but I was too busy with my salmon to really notice.

For dessert, I think I had the peach upside down cake, and Max had the chocolate indulgence. Both amazing.

There are just no words for how fantastic this dinner was. I loved every bite of it. This was our only signature dining experience on this trip, so I was so glad it was amazing.

After dinner, we took the bus over to Epcot for evening extra magic hours. First, we rode Spaceship Earth, then we circumnavigated world showcase, with a stop in France for Grey Goose Slushes. I could really use a Grey Goose slush right now, as it so happens.

We thought about doing Text Track again, but it had a 40 minute wait, so we skipped it. Instead, we rode Living with the Land, then Nemo. When we got off Nemo, it was midnight, so we headed out. We went right to bed when we got back to our room.

Up next, Animal Kingdom!!

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

October 6 – Animal Kingdom!!​

Today was our Animal Kingdom day! Some background: I had gone to Disney World with summer camp the summer right after Animal Kingdom opened. For some reason (probably because we didn’t have park hoppers) our planners had us spend an entire day in Animal Kingdom. It was AWFUL. There wasn’t a lot to do, and I was there with a bunch of junior high girls, so we were too cool to do everything, basically. I remember riding Dinosaur like 10 times, or something. However, I was optimistic that this experience would be much better. Was I right?

Max and I woke up at 7, but were a little bit slow this morning. Here’s the backwards at the bus stop picture!

At around 8:30, we had arrived!

We got to see the opening show. It was so cute! I’m really sad they’re not doing it anymore

We joined the (fortunately slow moving) mob past the tree

Into Asia

to the safari, and we picked up some Fast Passes. Then we wandered over to Asia

To ride

Everest, which was AWESOME. We only rode it once, and I really wish he had ridden it again. Oh well, there’s always next time! And I thought the Yeti was plenty scary, even being in B mode. Also, I loved the line for this ride. It was gorgeous, and there was a ton to look at. Since there was no line, we mostly glanced at the line.

After Everest, we headed to

So we could ride Dinosaur. Max LOVES dinosaurs. I made him wear his dinosaur shirt to the park that day, and the cast members in the store at the end of the ride got a huge kick out of it. We enjoyed Dinosaur, but it was not as much fun as I remembered it being. After Dinosaur, we backtracked to ride

Kali River Rapids! Protip: there’s a giant plastic thingy in the center of the raft. This is actually a container where you can keep your bags! The plastic top lifts up, and then is held down by magnets, keeping your stuff dry. MAGIC. The first time we rode, we did not get wet at all. So, we asked the cast member if we could stay on again, and, since there was no line, we could!! This time, we got SOAKED. Seriously. You can kind of see how wet we are here.

It was actually okay though, because we had previously been on the hot and sticky side, so the wetness was mostly welcome. Our safari fastpass return time was open, so we moseyed on over to the safari, by way of a Mickey bar (which I was way too excited to eat to take a picture of, but I’m assuming anyone reading this has seen one) and it was DELICIOUS. Yum. I want one now. Also en route to the safari, we saw some awesome streetmosphere

DeVine. I love just running into cool things, like DeVine here, and the trolley show in Magic Kingdom. My very first trip to Disney World when I was a wee child the characters still wandered around randomly, and, while I understand the benefits to both guests and characters of having set meeting places/times, I really miss the magic of just going around the corner and seeing Goofy. So it’s cool that some things are still random. Well, random-ish, since I guess they also have set times. BUT STILL.

Ahem. Sorry about that, folks. So, before I went cuckoo bananas, we were heading towards the safari. We soon embarked on our 2 week tour

I liked our Safari driver. His name was Patrick, and he was pretty dry. I really feel like I got some awesome (for me, anyway) pictures. So now I will photobomb you.

We had so much fun on the safari, that we got another set of fastpasses. I was really hoping to see some lions. Then, it was time for some lunch! Where else would my dinosaur-loving husband want to go but

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

Restaurantosaurus!

But before lunch, we stopped to take some photopass pictures in front of the tree.

I had kind of wanted to try Flame Tree BBQ, but Restaurantosaurus was also on my list. In the end, I think this was a better choice!

I got

The shrimp po-boy! I have no notes on it, but I remember it being tasty. Max got

The cheeseburger, and he quite enjoyed the toppings bar. All in all, this was a successful meal! We were able to make it just in time to see Finding Nemo: The musical. We were running a little bit late, so we have no pictures. Sorry. This show was lovely, although I was freezing, because the theater had wonderful air conditioning, and I was still quite damp from our trip down Kali. I highly recommend seeing this show. One thing I really liked, was that the song from the finale of this show is the same as the song at the end of the Nemo ride in EPCOT. Nice tie-in.

After Nemo, it was off to see the Festival of the Lion King! First, we saw cool things on the way.

Then we were here!

We were seated in the Giraffe section. The seating here was a little bit frustrating, because the first cast member was doing the whole go all the way to the end of the row thing. So we did. Which was great, because the seating is a little extended on the ends, because It’s like Christmas-tree shaped, so we chose strategically so that I could see (reminder: short. Sometimes people forget that short adults have just as much trouble seeing as children) and then, with like 2 minutes left, another cast member came from the other end and was telling everyone to move over to the other side and fill in the empty spaces. And that annoyed me. Because it would’ve put my right behind several tall people. And I had followed directions to begin with. It all ended up working out fine, of course. It’s Disney World, everything always works out! We really enjoyed the show. I loved the tumble monkeys. It was a pretty loose concept, but it was entertaining, and the performers were all amazingly amazing.

After Festival of the Lion King, we headed over to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. Riding the train over was fun, but we basically, rode the train, and rode right back. I wish he had taken the time we used for this and done of the trails instead. After this, we took our second 2-week safari. I think our driver was more knowledgeable this time, but less fun. Still good, just a different experience. Which is how it should be, I think. At one point there was a delay while the giraffes were crossing the road. Here is more photobombing!

LIONS!!!!!!!!!

LOVED the safari. After we got off the safari, there were about 15 minutes until Mickey’s Jammin Jungle Parade! We found ourselves a lovely shady spot right on the parade path, just over the bridge from Tusker House, across from an ice cream truck (I think). It was awesome! I love parades, and I thought this one was super fun. Especially because we were in the shade, and hadn’t been waiting that long, that always helps. Here, share my fun!

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

After the parade passed by, we slowly wandered down around the trails by the tree. It was really cool to see all the animals, both real and the ones carved into the tree. It was like one of those hidden eye puzzles, and everywhere you looked there was another really cool thing to see.

How cute is this guy??

I love turtles. This is possibly a tortoise, but I love them too.

Ducky!!!!

:ed from cute::

And now, some things in the tree:

After our leisurely walk, we ended up in

For our dinner reservation at….

Yak and Yeti! I was excited for this one. We had a 4:45 reservation, which was perfect. It wasn’t crowded, and we got to sit in a room towards the front.

Of course, we started off with some beverages. I had

The Yak Attack! Which the internet reminds me was mango daiquiri, rum and “wildberry flavors.” It was delicious.

Max had

Something else! I think it was the Shanghai Express, which is Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, Banana Liqueur, Peachtree Schnapps, and Tropical Fruit Juices. His drink was also tasty.

To start with, we shared the Dim Sum Basket for two

Which came with pork pot stickers, shrimp siu mai, cha su bao and pork sie mie, and a yummy soy lime dipping sauce. It was delicious. I especially liked the siu mai. NOM.

For the main course, Max had the shrimp lo mein, which is basically like his favorite food ever. Not surprisingly, he really enjoyed it.

Look at all the shrimp! And all the lo mein!

I had the MalAsian Seafood Curry, which was scallops, clams, mussels, shrimp, some vegetables in a red coconut curry served with jasmine rice.

I LOVED this SO MUCH.

For dessert, I had the Fried Wontons.

That’s not the most attractive picture of them.

Max had the mango pie.

I don’t remember anything about the mango pie, but I’m assuming it was also delicious.

I loved this whole meal. Everything was so, so good. The only downside was that I was so full of deliciousness that I only had room to eat like one of my wontons. We will definitely go back to Yak and Yeti again.

By the time we were done eating the park had closed, so we made our way back to the front entrance. There was a cute little dance party/goodbye show thing going on.

It was a great end to the park day, but the day was far from over! It was time to head out to Downtown Disney! Originally, we had planned to go to Downtown Disney on our arrival day, but our plans changed once we realized that it was Magic Kingdom’s 40th anniversary. Since it was so dark, I have only some pictures.

These are just from around

The next two are from the pin trading store

After that, I put the camera away, because it was dark and we’ve seen my night time photography skills… We wandered around World of Disney, but did not really find anything to buy. We’ve gotten spoiled having the premium pass discount at Disneyland, so it was hard to stomach paying full retail price. We went into the LEGO store, but since it was so dark, we didn’t really get to appreciate the sculptures it was really crowded, and I was tired, so Downtown Disney was both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. Next time we go back, I’m really looking forward to going to Downtown Disney earlier in the trip, and during the day time. I’ve also been so bummed about not getting to go to Earl of Sandwich, but we’re getting one out here in Disneyland’s Downtown Disney, so I’m super excited.

After Downtown Disney, we went back to Coronado to get ready for some night swimming! There were a bunch of annoying conventioneers smoking the hot tub, so we stuck to the big pool. Which was funny, because we were barely dry from our drenching at Kali. Another excellent day!