"There's only ONE Wreck-It Ralph!" Our Oct 2012/F&W TR *3/11 FINAL update!*

[teekathepony]

Wow, you're off to a great start! I missed the very beginning but I'm here now and subbing!

 

[wendel]

Hey there. I'm enjoying your TR. It's interesting to see the way people do Disney. Everyone has their way of doing things. It's even more interesting when someone does things like I do....I always prefer to take my time checking out the resort and having dinner somewhere out of the parks, starting the parks on the next day.

Looking forward to the rest.
Wendel

 

[khertz]

Sounds like a really nice dinner to start off the trip! Too bad about where they sat you. I hate getting tables near the kitchen! Your entree and dessert look DELICIOUS! I'm getting hungry and it's not even close to lunch time yet!

 

[kdka421]

Sorry that it's been a few days since I checked in! I was away for a long girls-getaway weekend, and had a great time with 4 of my closest girlfriends just catching up. Hope to post another segment shortly.

One night at the Art of Animation in the Ariel rooms and the rest of the week at Old Key West in a dedicated 2 bedroom (we are going with my parents).

I can't wait to read what you thought of NFL. I could take or leave Belle (except for Gaston. I want a picture with him flexing and me swooning next to him) but the Little Mermaid? I'll take her in any way, shape, or form.

Sounds like you have a great trip ahead of you! You are going to love New Fantasyland. I'll be talking about it soon!

Wow, you're off to a great start! I missed the very beginning but I'm here now and subbing!

Thanks so much for joining in! So glad to have you here

Hey there. I'm enjoying your TR. It's interesting to see the way people do Disney. Everyone has their way of doing things. It's even more interesting when someone does things like I do....I always prefer to take my time checking out the resort and having dinner somewhere out of the parks, starting the parks on the next day.

Looking forward to the rest.
Wendel

I know, it is definitely interesting to see how everyone does things differently! This was even a little unusual for us - last trip, we got there about the same time, but went straight to the parks. This time we decided to try relaxing on the first day, and I thought it was a really good choice. Thanks for your comments so far!

Sounds like a really nice dinner to start off the trip! Too bad about where they sat you. I hate getting tables near the kitchen! Your entree and dessert look DELICIOUS! I'm getting hungry and it's not even close to lunch time yet!

The dinner was definitely delicious, but yeah, the service and stuff wasn't quite as awesome. I'd still recommend it though, and I think I'd try it again, but it isn't quite at the top of my list. Overall though, this was a really good evening, and a great start to our trip!

 

[kdka421]

Day 2:

Wednesday was our first park day, and we were starting at EPCOT! We got up around 7:30, but took a little longer than anticipated getting going especially since we were pretty tired from our travel day. So we made it to the park right at 9am, so the park had probably already been open for a few minutes. We fastwalked straight to Soarin', which claimed to be a 15 minute wait, but we walked right on. We also pulled some Fastpasses to use for later. We next walked over to Innoventions to ride Sum of All Thrills, which neither of us had ever done before. We designed a "jet" flight with a few inversions, and enjoyed the simulation.

We didn't have much that we wanted to do this morning until World Showcase opened - we planned to tackle as much of Food & Wine Festival as possible this day. So we wandered over to the Festival Center, part to see what was there, and also part because Aaron had never been inside this pavilion, and I hadn't been since it was the Wonders of Life pavilion. First as we walked up, we saw someone using a leaf-blower up on the roof, haha. Then we just wandered around the pavilion, took a look at the various merchandise for sale, etc.

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/59603_10100752963691525_858016137_n.jpg

After that, we wandered over and did the "easy" side of Mission Space. I don't love the ride (I think even the easy side is pretty intense) but it's one of Aaron's favorites. And after that, we went to use our Soarin FPs. I forget which of these 2 times, but we got to ride in the top row of the middle section, and that made the ride much more enjoyable, you really felt the sensations better in that position.

Once we were done with Soarin, it was 11am, and time for us to hit the F&W festival! I'll continue that in my next post since I know I have quite a few pictures from that...

 

[kdka421]

Day 2, continued:

Now began our adventures at the Food & Wine festival!

We had made our list of foods we wanted to try, so we knew which booths we wanted to stop at. First of all, the crowds were really minimal. Later in the week we hit EPCOT on a weekend, and the crowds were ridiculous. It was great advice to avoid F&W during the weekend; at most we probably waited behind 3 other parties, but most of the time we walked right up to order.

First stop, Hawaii, for Aaron to try the Tuna Poke. One of the only things that I very seldom try is raw fish, so this was all Aaron's. He said this was delicious.

Next, Canada, to try the mushroom filet with truffle butter. We shared this, and both agreed that it was okay, but not one of our favorite items of the day. It doesn't even compare to the actual Le Cellier dish.

Ireland, for the fisherman's pie. This was pretty good, quite a bit of seafood in it, served piping hot. I enjoyed it, but wouldn't rush to eat it again.

France, for both the escargots and the coq au vin. France turned out to be one of our favorite booths of the festival. Both of these dishes were wonderful. The escargots were a little out of my comfort zone, but I tried one, and really it just tasted like garlic buttery goodness! The coq au vin was tender as can be. Yum to both.

Belgium, for mussels, as well as a Leffe beer for Aaron. I don't recall what he thought of each of the beers he tried, but I do know he thought the mussels were just okay. It was a very decent sized serving for the price, but the broth wasn't very exciting.

Japan, for Aaron to try the spicy hand roll. Again, this wasn't something I tried, two major strikes against it: raw fish, and spicy. Aaron says it was extraordinarily spicy, so I'm really glad I didn't try it. This was one of his favorite items.

Hops & Barley for the lobster roll and the pumpkin mousse, as well as an Sam Adams cream stout for Aaron. This booth was a big hit as well. The lobster roll was wonderful, overflowing with tender lobster claw meat. And the pumpkin mousse lived up to all the great reviews I read of it. Weirdly that was the only dessert item I purchased from any of the booths.

Finally, our last stop for the afternoon was Germany, where we got the bratwurst, an Altenmünster beer for Aaron, and a Spatlese wine for myself. The bratwurst was fine, again nothing particularly noteworthy, and I know we both enjoyed our beverages.

Originally, I had hoped that we'd do about half of our planned booths for lunch, and the other half for dinner. However, as we were going around, we realized that this just "barely" cut it for lunch, and it certainly wouldn't satisfy us for dinner. So we ate at all the ones above during the lunchtime period, and abandoned our plans to do more sampling for dinner. We did end up finishing the booths later in the trip. And stay tuned to see what we did the rest of the afternoon and evening.

 

[saintstickets]

Originally, I had hoped that we'd do about half of our planned booths for lunch, and the other half for dinner. However, as we were going around, we realized that this just "barely" cut it for lunch, and it certainly wouldn't satisfy us for dinner. So we ate at all the ones above during the lunchtime period, and abandoned our plans to do more sampling for dinner. We did end up finishing the booths later in the trip. And stay tuned to see what we did the rest of the afternoon and evening.

I was wondering about this myself. DW and I are going to F&W next year and I wasn't sure how much time/how many days to allow for "food grazing" at the WS. Thanks for the info. Great TR! Can't wait to read more.

 

[beachmama3]

Just wanted to say hi- I am totally enjoying your TR so far. I LOVE the Food and Wine fest but it has been 2 years since we have been there. Next year I will catch the last weekend of it, so I am looking forward to trying lots of food. And wine. And beer. Of course.

Also looking forward to hearing more of your trip!

 

[kdka421]

I was wondering about this myself. DW and I are going to F&W next year and I wasn't sure how much time/how many days to allow for "food grazing" at the WS. Thanks for the info. Great TR! Can't wait to read more.

Thanks! It's definitely something that's hard to judge until you're there for yourself. Obviously it also depends on how much stuff you want to try! We had a list of about a dozen and a half things, so obviously it wasn't a huge amount. I thought it would stretch for 2 meals, but since we shared everything, as I said it didn't really last that long. Also, even though we had extremely short lines, it still does take time to get from booth to booth, so you're eating over a longer period of time than if you were sitting down to a meal.

Also, another thing I didn't mention above - this was a great way to use snack credits. But I would have a much harder time spending the money on these if I was using cash. The portions were really small for the price. Some items would have been easier to justify than others.

Just wanted to say hi- I am totally enjoying your TR so far. I LOVE the Food and Wine fest but it has been 2 years since we have been there. Next year I will catch the last weekend of it, so I am looking forward to trying lots of food. And wine. And beer. Of course.

Also looking forward to hearing more of your trip!

Hello and thank you! I think I'd definitely do F&W again, but I'd want to wait a few years, especially if the items don't change much from year to year. We did enjoy the event, it had its ups and downs, but overall a fun time. And also, most of the food we really liked; it would have been a lot worse if we weren't pleased with the food items we tried.

 

[teekathepony]

Wow, I'm so envious of you adventurous eaters! I'd love to enjoy the F&WF more but I'm just too picky!
I dislike Mission Space, even the green team, but it's DH's favourite so he usually ducks in and rides orange team solo!

 

[MEK]

Subbing to your TR. I was just at F&W and really loved it. I feel like I only scratched the surface with the foods/wines I tried, so I am really enjoying seeing your pictures and descriptions. I agree that Saturday was insane and hitting the booths in the afternoon was really the way to go.

Your pictures of CSR are so pretty. It really is a lovely resort!

 

[kdka421]

Wow, I'm so envious of you adventurous eaters! I'd love to enjoy the F&WF more but I'm just too picky!
I dislike Mission Space, even the green team, but it's DH's favourite so he usually ducks in and rides orange team solo!

Thank you! I didn't used to be an adventurous eater, but with my hubby being such a foodie, I've started trying more and more things. The F&W festival is a great way to try out some things that you aren't sure about, since you just get a little taste.

Subbing to your TR. I was just at F&W and really loved it. I feel like I only scratched the surface with the foods/wines I tried, so I am really enjoying seeing your pictures and descriptions. I agree that Saturday was insane and hitting the booths in the afternoon was really the way to go.

Your pictures of CSR are so pretty. It really is a lovely resort!

Welcome to my TR! I feel the same way about only scratching the surface; we did everything we wanted to do, but there's definitely a lot that we skipped. What were your favorite items from F&W?

Thanks - we loved CSR, and we'd definitely go back again!

 

[kdka421]

Day 2, continued:
After we decided to stop eating our way around the world, we started to head out of the World Showcase. On our way, we stopped in Mexico to ride the Rio del Tiempo (is that what the ride is still called? lol). I guess Aaron had never ridden it before, so we went on it to check off another 'first' from our list. Then we continued heading out, stopping again to check out the cranberry bog briefly.

We went back to explore Future World for a while. We first went on the Universe of Energy, then we took a few photopass pictures as we crossed across the Future World area. We went over to The Seas, and caught a showing of Turtle Talk (hysterical every time, both in the crazy questions the kids ask him, and Crush's quick-witted responses. I love that show!). We were out of Turtle Talk just in time for a dolphin expedition, which was very impressive to see the various stunts the dolphins could do.

At this point we were getting hungry again, and I knew we had an extra quick service meal that wasn't scheduled yet. So we decided on Fish & Chips in England. I wasn't sure it counted for counter service, but it did, so that was a pleasant surprise. We each got the same thing - Fish & chips, a soda, and a giant cookie. The meal was excellent, and it totally hit the spot. While we were eating there, we saw a rainbow start to develop across the lagoon, which was particularly weird since it hadn't been raining, but the sky had been gray for a while.

After this, we just felt like exploring around the World Showcase a little. We checked out some of the shops, and just took some pictures around the various areas. This is a picture in Japan, and then trying on tiaras in a shop in Germany. Also, at one point while we were wandering around, I noticed a large bird in the sky, which I later determine was a bald eagle, and then later on saw another join him. We saw the pair of eagles once or twice more throughout our trip. They must have a nest really nearby. Has anyone ever seen the bald eagles around before?

Around 7:40pm we were getting tired, we still were pretty tired from our day of traveling the day before, so we decided to just get a seat for Illuminations. We found a nice spot in between China and Norway, and just sat down and relaxed. Then we decided we were hungry again, haha. We thought for a while about what we wanted, and then I thought maybe we could find some chips and salsa in Mexico. Well Aaron found something even better! This was amazingly good, a great evening snack. (And my sweet hubby had them put the tomatoes and peppers on the side because I don't like them!)

At 9 we watched Illuminations, which was as wonderful as always. Most of my pictures (like any fireworks pictures) came out pretty blurry, but I got a few great ones:

After Illuminations it was evening Extra Magic Hours, so we decided we'd stick around for a while. Since we were right by Norway, we decided to ride Maelstrom since the line was so short. We took a while to just wander around seeing the World Showcase at night. When we got to that bridge over by the Africa area, they were just about to open it to bring the Illuminations globe through. We made it over the bridge just in time for them to close it off, then we stayed there to watch them open up the drawbridge and drive the globe through. It was really cool to see! The cast member there answered a few questions about it. It was funny to think that they do this twice a day, and in my 9 trips this is the first time (as far as I remember) that we ever saw this happen. Then we heard one of the guests say "Wow! This is a once in a lifetime experience!" Not quite, lady ;-)

After we were done in the World Showcase, we stopped by the Land pavilion one more time to see if the wait for Soarin' was short (it wasn't), so instead we just rode The Land ride, haha. We took a few photopass pictures at the park exit, and we left the park at 10:50pm. The park was still open until midnight, but we were just exhausted. And that was the end of our first park day!

 

[kdka421]

I just wanted to pop in to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! We'll be out of town with family for a few days. Hopefully I'll check back in with my next update sometime this weekend. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend!

 

[Disney9.9.10]

Joining in! We are staying at Coronado Springs on our next trip as well! You got some really great pictures from Illuminations. Looking forward to reading more

 

[teekathepony]

Aww the rainbow!
Oh how I love IllumiNations! It's definitely my favourite show. Until I see Wishes of course. Then that's my favourite show.

 

[kdka421]

Joining in! We are staying at Coronado Springs on our next trip as well! You got some really great pictures from Illuminations. Looking forward to reading more

Thank you so much for joining in, and for the compliments! I hope you love Coronado as much as we did! Have you decided if you're going to request any particular area? Let me know if you have any questions about the resort.

Aww the rainbow!
Oh how I love IllumiNations! It's definitely my favourite show. Until I see Wishes of course. Then that's my favourite show.

HAHA I know exactly what you mean. Most of the time I think Illuminations is my favorite as well. But you can't beat Wishes for fireworks. And Fantasmic just is so cool too.

 

[kdka421]

Day 3:

Our second park day we were finally heading to Magic Kingdom! This was our MNSSHP night, and we knew that we didn't have to go to MK this morning, but we were ready to tackle this wonderful park! We got on the bus to MK around 8:30, and just made it to the park at 9am, just barely missing rope drop (again). I let Aaron pick the first ride of the morning, which was....Space Mountain! That is probably his favorite ride in all WDW, and it was the very first ride he rode on his one childhood trip. So we headed over to Tomorrowland and walked right on to Space Mtn. I tolerate the ride (but I feel like having to brace myself the whole time makes it a little less fun). Once that was over, I voted for Buzz's space spin, which was still walk-on that early in the morning, and we did a quick trip through that ride as well. [Ack, I have no photos yet of this part of the morning!]

Next, I really wanted to get a look at the new stuff that had opened in MK since our last visit, so we headed over to Storybook Circus. WOW...what a cool area. I was so taken by the whole design, they really put a lot of thought (as they always do) into designing each aspect of the area (from the trash cans, to the pattern of the carpet, etc). We spent some time just looking around, going through the new gift shop, etc. We also got our first peek into the New Fantasyland area, but we'd get much better looks later in the trip...

Once we were done, we continued on across the park to Frontiertown, and the standby wait for Splash was still 5 minutes, so we walked right onto that as well. The wait for Big Thunder was a little higher, so we grabbed fastpasses to come back. When we got to the loading zone of Splash, we saw something we had never encountered before - a series of nets up over the loading area. We were trying to figure out what they might be for, with our best guess being to catch falling leaves...so of course Aaron asked a cast member what they were for, and her appropriate yet unhelpful response was "We've set a trap for Brer Fox". Oh well, lol.

After a wonderful ride on Splash, we headed over to Pirates, which was also wonderful as always. We caught our first glimpse of the new mermaid features that had been added into the ride a few weeks prior. We just barely caught the image in the water (this is really easy to miss), but easily noticed the mermaid skeleton. After, I had promised Aaron we'd walk through the Swiss Family Treehouse, since we'd never done that before and it was an old Disney movie that he'd seen as a kid. I think he was less than impressed, haha, but it's something I hadn't done as a kid so I guess it was worth doing again...

We got all that done before 11am, and were getting hungry, and our plan for lunch was......waffles at Sleepy Hollow Refreshments! We had never experienced these amazing items before, had seem them mentioned on the Disney Food blog, and knew we had to have them. It's a shame that you can't use the dining plan for them, but they were worth every penny. They were huge, filling, and absolutely delicious. Aaron stuck to the spicy chicken waffle, and I had the nutella with fruit, but we each shared a little of the other's waffle. I can't stress how good these were!

After our waffles, we headed back to use our Fastpasses for Big Thunder. Having knocked out the major attractions so quickly, we then went to wander Main Street for a little while, tried on some hats and explored the shops, as well as got some photopass pictures taken at the hub. [Note - our CD has been ordered, so I should have photopass pictures to add soon!] We then made another loop to catch a few more rides, hitting the Carousel of Progress and then the Haunted Mansion. Around 1:45pm we decided to head back to our resort, for a quick break and to change into our costumes for MNSSHP!

Up next: our amazing time at MNSSHP, plus the story behind the title of my trip report.

 

[khertz]

I've heard about those waffles from Sleepy Hollow on the DIS Unplugged podcast, but WOW! They look even better than they sounded from the description, especially the one you got with fruit & Nutella! I definitely need to put that on the list of things to try next time. Can't wait to see your costumes for MNSSHP.

 

[kdka421]

I've heard about those waffles from Sleepy Hollow on the DIS Unplugged podcast, but WOW! They look even better than they sounded from the description, especially the one you got with fruit & Nutella! I definitely need to put that on the list of things to try next time. Can't wait to see your costumes for MNSSHP.

The waffles are absolutely a must-do! And another plus, they are totally different than any other Disney meals, so they add some variety.

MNSSHP update coming soon, hopefully later tonight.