Two Weeks of Dining with the Aloha Crew, June 2013 - *Complete*

[Dislover1991]

Subbing in! We're trying Cape May for breakfast so reading your review got me excited!

Do they have a good amount of options for those who eat low carbs?

 

[AlohaAnnie]

Snacks:

After our Father's Day dinner we headed to Epcot to watch Illuminations.

The family had to have a snack even though they just ate that huge dinner.







They had the salted caramel and the caramel popcorn. The popcorn is a favorite of my husband and daughter. He loves almost anything popcorn. He says, you have to eat this the same day you get it or it may taste stale if you keep it too long. My son went to Fife & Drum to get his Mickey Pretzel. He loves these. I had nothing. I was still full from eating all the hummus I could eat at Cape May Dinner.

 

[tybrilinja]

Mmmmmm, that caramel corn looks delicious. Its on my "list" of snack to try! (I actually have a list, DH thinks I've lost it@ ) The pictures on here are killing me....lol.

Great reviews and pictures so far.

 

[AlohaAnnie]

So we decided to eat around world showcase on this day. It is a favorite thing to do: Ready for the marathon of food?


First up:

Yorkshire Fish Shop



Allison loves her Fish and Chips. I am always surprised she eats this because she is such a picky eater.



She said delicious as always! She let each of us have a small bite but not too much! haha!

Next up Les Halles:

I decided I wanted lunch from France today. So we flew over to France!



I loved how good this was, the croissant was buttery and delicious. The cheese and ham were melted and warm.



Then, I had the Lemon Tart. This was really good, it was cold which I love and it was tart. I love that is was sour. Very good.



The Boys had Nachos at La Cantina in Mexico:



They said they were good as always

 

[AlohaAnnie]

Hi Tina, I'm loving your report so far. We too are staying for two weeks and eating at a lot of the same places you did, so I'm interested in how your family liked them.

Great reviews and pictures so far, you have a beautiful family!

Thank You for following along

The kids meal in a bucket must be so much fun to eat at the BC sitting on the sand

They loved the bucket and used it to play in the sand. We had to have the bucket!

Joining in! I am loving your reviews so far!

BTW, I promise to have more substantive comments in the future - I hate joining late, I can't remember everything I want to say about the multiple reviews I've read.

That is ok and Thank you for joining me! I am not the best at description or words so we fit.

Subbing in! We're trying Cape May for breakfast so reading your review got me excited!

Do they have a good amount of options for those who eat low carbs?

I think there is a decent amount for low carb eaters. I hope you enjoy Cape May as much as we do.

Mmmmmm, that caramel corn looks delicious. Its on my "list" of snack to try! (I actually have a list, DH thinks I've lost it@ ) The pictures on here are killing me....lol.

Great reviews and pictures so far.

Nothing wrong with a snack list. I usually have a list of what I want to eat too!

Thank you everyone for reading. I am trying to keep up with my reviews.

Have a wonderful day everyone!

 

[DisneyJo]

Oh wow that caramel looks amazing

 

[wilma-bride]

We had the caramel from Karamell-Kuche this last trip and, boy, was it good. Mind you, it was very rich - we shared between four of us and it was just enough.

 

[RGirl]

Your Cape May dinner sounds and looks really tasty. We went there for the first time this trip but for breakfast- we are ALL about the characters!

GAH - the caramel treats look amazing! I always mean to stop there and NEVER do!!!

Yummy Epcot choices there!

 

[AlohaAnnie]

I had been seeing many reviews about La Hacienda de San Angel. We wanted to give it a try.

We were seated promptly and had a wonderful service.

They bring chips and salsa to the table.



This was good. I wouldn't say it was excellent or would give you a WOW! factor and you would love it so much you would want to try it again.


We had a wonderful view of World Showcase from our table:



For a starter, we ordered the Queso Fundido - melted cheese with poblano peppers, chorizo, and flour tortillas.



This was not what we were expecting. We were expecting cheese like you get at Chili's in the skillet. But this was much better to us. It is melted cheese but stringy good melted cheese. You have to spoon it out and it is thick and you have to pull it apart. The poblano peppers and chorizo really made this starter. It was delicious on the flour tortillas and we used some of the chips from the chips and salsa.

For dinner we chose two entrees:

The Del Mar which is a mixed grill offering shrimp, fish, scallops and vegetables, served with beans and fresh salsas.



This was not as good as I expected it to be. We really loved the shrimp. but the fish and scallops were just weird to me. I can't explain it. I didn't like the vegetables or the corn.

We also ordered the La Hacienda which is a mixed grill offering New York strip, chicken al pastor, chorizo and vegetables, served with beans and fresh salsas.



We really enjoyed the New York strip and the chicken was the winner on this dish it was moist and flavorful. We still dream about this chicken today. We didn't enjoy the chorizo, the vegetables or the corn. It just wasn't very good.

Here are the sides of beans and rice that came with the La Hacienda and the Del Mar. We did enjoy these and felt they were very good. So it made up for the vegetables and the corn not being to our liking.



Allison order of the kids menu but ate off our food also.

She got the kids cheese Quesadillas which is flour tortillas filled with monterey jack cheese and served with Mexican rice and vegetables.



She did enjoy this.

Overall, we did enjoy La Hacienda and would return in the future. I think I would try a different dish next time. I would order the queso appetizer again.

On the way back to BCV, my husband wanted a Grey Goose Orange Slush.

So we stopped at Les Vins des Chefs de France, the little wine kiosk in France.



He got the Grey Goose Orange Slush.



He enjoyed this, nothing like frozen alcohol in World Showcase!!

 

[AlohaAnnie]

Aaron and I were finished getting dressed and ready before Shawn and Allison. So we left them to finish and decided to go get breakfast at The Beach Club Market Place. Shawn and Allison had cereal back in the room.





This was good but a little dry. I would prefer if it was a bit more moist. I would get it again. We both enjoyed this small breakfast before hitting the parks. Aaron and I are more savory breakfast eaters where as Shawn and Allison like sweet breakfast.

 

[AlohaAnnie]

Aaron and Allison wanted their favorite for lunch Disney Chicken Nuggets so we headed to Restaurantosaurus because they have self serve refills and A/C.





Check out that refill station. It is great when you are really thirsty and we were it is June at Animal Kingdom Park. HOT!!

We ordered two of these and the kiddos were happy!






We were happy because we drank 4 beverages and then refilled and headed to Flame Tree BBQ for our lunch.



We ordered the Pork Sandwich, side of fries and a side of Onion Rings. Good as always. I really love the BBQ sauce here. We have visited Flame Tree almost every visit to Animal Kingdom Park and we will return in the future.



and I love this adorable shadow picture.



EARS!!!

 

[AlohaAnnie]

After our long day at Animal Kingdom we decided to swim in the evening and then head to ESPN for Dinner.



Here is our view from the table, it has started to rain pretty hard while we were sitting there and it didn't let up for a while.



Here is the family:



Shawn decided to get an Angry Orchard Hard Cider Apple Crisp. He really likes these.



Aaron ordered the ESPN Dingers, chicken breast nuggets coated in hot wing sauce. Which they loved! but Aaron felt could have been hotter! That kid has an iron stomach sometimes.



I got the chili cheese fries, these were very good. I really enjoyed them.



Allison got the kids hot dog:



She enjoyed it.


Shawn got the Red Wings:

He enjoyed these, after all they are chicken wings are we are chicken wing fans.



The boys also ordered a side of fries:



Overall, we really enjoyed ESPN. I highly recommend it, if you are staying in the Epcot resort area. ESPN doesn't require a reservation and it is a great place to get some sport food and beer.

After Dinner we did a bit of shopping because it was still raining very hard.



and then headed to the Boardwalk Bakery to grab so dessert for later!



I believe that is the lemon cake and chocolate peanut butter cake.



Strawberry Cupcake and an Oreo Cupcake:





These were delicious and we enjoyed devouring them later in the evening in our room!

 

[RGirl]

Wow - the food at La Hacienda LOOKS amazing! We are big fans of Mexican food - we really need to try this place. I think we would love the cheese "dip" just like you did. Too bad the platters weren't the best - I think sometimes when they do big platters with so many things, they just aren't as good. I've definitely read about some excellent entrees there. Mmmm - wish I was there now.

All the CS food at AK that you got looks and sounds very good - I mean, a kid's in the mood for nuggets, good nuggets; CS BBQ? good BBQ.

I don't think I've ever seen a review of ESPN club before - very cool to hear about it and see some pics!

 

[AlohaAnnie]

Wow - the food at La Hacienda LOOKS amazing! We are big fans of Mexican food - we really need to try this place. I think we would love the cheese "dip" just like you did. Too bad the platters weren't the best - I think sometimes when they do big platters with so many things, they just aren't as good. I've definitely read about some excellent entrees there. Mmmm - wish I was there now.

I would really like to return to try it again with different entrees next time. We really did enjoy our trip here and had excellent service.

All the CS food at AK that you got looks and sounds very good - I mean, a kid's in the mood for nuggets, good nuggets; CS BBQ? good BBQ.

Yep, your basic CS food. It was all good. You can have terrible CS food and we have experienced this more than one time.

I don't think I've ever seen a review of ESPN club before - very cool to hear about it and see some pics!

My husband is a sports fan and loves sporty food. So it is a normal in our house and being at the world for 2 weeks, we like to eat some of the same foods we tend to eat at home. Our next trip in 2014 is much more adventurous for the family. We are staying at AKL and we are going to try all the restaurants at Jambo and Kidani. So the family will be out of their element.

Thanks for responding

 

[AlohaAnnie]

Main Street Bakery, Oh, I mean Starbucks! Hehe!


Here are some menu pictures from June 2013.





I wanted a good caffeine fix so I headed to Starbucks for a Mocha Light Frapp!

Here is a display case picture:




We decided to have a Mocha Light Frapp and the Double Chocolate Chip Frapp and a Brownie.



Good as always, your usual Starbucks fare. I will be returning. I have to get my Starbucks fix while on vacation.

After a few rides and fun, we decided to stop by Sleepy Hollow and check out the Sweet and Spicy Chicken Waffle Sandwich.





Blurry Picture, Sorry! I really enjoyed the Spicy Chicken and the Sweet Sauce. I felt this was good. We ended up splitting it up a bit. I ate the greens and half the chicken. Aaron ate the other half of the chicken and Shawn & Allison shared the waffle. See we compliment each other!

 

[AlohaAnnie]

So after enjoying our morning of fun at Magic Kingdom we decided lunch was at a favorite for our family.

Casey's Corner

More Sports food, see the theme! We are actually kind of boring but that is us and we are not ashamed!

We ordered Ball Park Nachos:



We are a fan of Nachos as you will see, Nachos pop up a lot in this review. Just expect it. I really like these, the chips are thin and crispy, not the hard round chips. The chili is the basic chili Casey's uses for the chili dogs and we added the beloved plastic cheese on top.

We also order Corn Dog nuggets, love these little gems.



As you can see, more plastic cheese. That plastic cheese is a must-do for us!

Later in the day, the kids started getting hot and tired because we decided to stay at Magic Kingdom that day without a break. Out of the 2 weeks we were there we only did this 2 times. It was just too hot. So we decided to take a break in tomorrowland and grab 2 Coke Icees from the Lunching Pad.

Partial Menu Pic:






Must have for us when it is hot. Afterward we rode the tomorrowland transit authority and went to Carousel of Progress, since we were going to be there until late that night we decided to take it easy for while and cool off.

 

[AlohaAnnie]

Crystal Palace Buffet Dinner





My Plate:



Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans and an Olive Salad. I really enjoyed the Olive Salad and the Chicken.

Aaron's first plate:



A Better looking Olive Salad, Corn Bread Stuffing, Mashed Potatoes, and Turkey. My Family really enjoyed the turkey, they said it was moist and flavorful.

Aaron's second Plate:



mashed potatoes, sirloin, corn dog nuggets, and a lot of Asian noodles. He said they were stuck together and he couldn't separate them. Haha! Sounds kind of gross to me but he said he liked them.

Allison's Plate:



Chicken Nuggets, Mac & Cheese, and a roll

Shawn's Plate:



Sirloin, Mac & Cheese, Mashed Potatoes, and Green Beans. I must say, he was really excited because he asked the carving server if he could have this cooked so there wasn't any red and he really liked that.


Dessert pictures:



Dessert bread pudding, key lime square, and that scrawny little dessert. It had hardly any filling in it. We ran into this somewhere else. I can't remember where and I felt this was one of the silliest things I have ever seen. Really, could they have made more filling instead of being stingy with it.



Chocolate Cake.



Apple Crisp with vanilla ice cream, chocolate cake, and that ridiculous dessert fail again!!!!

Now for some Character Pics!!

Eeyore!




Piglet!




Allison loves Pooh and The Gang, this trip she bought Pooh to add to her collection. She bought it before we went to dinner so she could get a picture with Pooh holding her stuffed Pooh Bear!



Aaron with Pooh Bear!



I am pretty sure we seen Tigger also, but alas I can't seem to find that picture.

EDIT: I found the Tigger Picture:



Overall, it was a wonderful meal. As you can see we are not adventurous eaters. We would return again in the future but I really felt Crystal Palace was better when we went December 2011 than in June 2013. It could also have been we were so hot in June and in December we were not. I really love the character interaction here, it has always been wonderful.

 

[tluvstink]

Great reviews! I have to admit I'm a big fan of plastic cheese too

Terri

 

[RGirl]

The spicy chicken waffle sandwich thing always looks and sounds so good! I love the way your family could deconstruct it so everyone got what they wanted.

We have never been to Casey's - one day we will get a chance to try it!

The kiddos look so hot in the frozen coke pic - good call to stop for an icy beverage.

I just posted my Crystal Palace review too! Isn't it fun!

 

[vettegirl]

Following along

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