VDay Trip Dining Report highlights: Tea, Brunch with a Twist, V&A's UPDATE 5/13 Finished V&A's

[Gobbles!]

Hello! We just got back from a week stay at Disney: February 8-15th. This trip included myself, my husband, my mom, my DD5 and DS2. We are DVC members who are lucky enough to have visited Disney quite a few times. We brought my mom on this trip to mix things up a bit and because she hasn't visited Disney in several years. She turned out to be a bonus babysitter when we saw that the Brunch with a Twist was happening during our trip so we were able to jump on that reservation.

We planned to eat mostly counter service because that's always easier with the kids. However we booked a few table service restaurants as well. We travel to Disney every year but usually don't post trip or dining reports so please bear with me. I really wanted to do this report mainly because I couldn't find any reviews of the last Brunch with a Twist nor could I find a review of V&A's from a Valentine's Day meal. I thought it might be helpful for someone in the future.

Here's the list of places we shoved food in our faces:

Arrival day
D-Luxe Burger, Disney Springs
Paddock Grill, Saratoga Springs Resort (SSR)

Day 1
Sunshine Seasons, Epcot
Garden View Tea Room, Grand Floridian (GF)
Tangierine Cafe, Epcot, Morocco
Boulangerie Patisserie les Halles, Epcot, France

Day 2
Creature Comforts, Animal Kingdom (AK)
Restaurantosaurus, AK
Artist's Palette, SSR

Day 3
Joffrey's Coffee, Espresso and Pastries, Hollywood Studios
Brunch with a Twist, GF
Paddock Grill, SSR
Artist's Palette, SSR

Day 4
Festival of the Arts booths, Epcot
Lotus Blossom Cafe, Epcot, China
Spice Road Table, Epcot, Morocco

Day 5
Columbia Harbor House, Magic Kingdom (MK)
Pecos Bill's, MK

Day 6
Pinocchio Village Haus, MK
Capt Cook's, Polynesian
Victoria & Albert's, GF

Departure Day
'Ohana, Poly

I think that pretty much covers the main meals. We picked up treats along the way that I'll add in as I go. Hopefully I'll get my first actual review up soon. Well, as soon as I remember how to post pictures.

Here we gooooo!

 

[samsteele]

Following along! Sounds like a great assortment of restaurants.

 

[DisOrBust]

Following

 

[KacieD]

Well, I don't post much either, but there's no time like the present! Can't wait to follow along!

 

[ShelbyWagon]

Looks fun! You have quite a few places that I haven't tried yet so I'm looking forward to getting new ideas.

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

Sounds like a great trip! Bring on the pics

 

[Gobbles!]

Hi guys, thanks for following. Sorry for the slow start. Naturally my husband went out of town on business taking with him half of our dining pictures on the day that I wanted to start the report. I think I finally have all of the pictures that I want to use just about uploaded to a sharing site. I hope to get started on the actual reviews tomorrow. Possibly later tonight!

 

[wilma-bride]

Sounds good, looking forward to reading.

 

[TeresaNJ]

Can't wait to read all about it!

 

[MiracleCream]

Following! Love to read recent reviews so I know what to expect in the summer

 

[Gobbles!]

D-Luxe Burger

This was our first real meal of the day. We had some breakfast muffins on the plane, but that was about it. We were really looking forward to lunch in Disney Springs. After my DD5 saw the line at the Blaze we chose to walk on by to D-Luxe for quicker service.

I had the cheeseburger. My overall thought was: eh. They asked if pink was okay and I said yes. However it was pretty pink. I was picturing some pink, not rare looking in parts. It was also super juicy to the point of wet and sloppy. I immediately noticed the bun was soaked when I tried to pick it up. Unfortunately that was a big turnoff for me. I got halfway through the burger and couldn’t stomach the rest. I passed it off to my DH who ate the rest for me. I took care of most of the fries which I really enjoyed.


You can also see the kid size fries in the picture as well.

DH will take over the writing here in italics: Barbecue burger, sloppy burger almost in a good way. Presentation was pretty cool, with the burger tucked into a little burger box. I was a fan, until it came time to get it out. Then it was kind of hard to figure out how to get under the burger to pull it out of the box. Easy solution came as putting the box on its side and pulling the paper out. The burger itself is freakishly tall, probably a common theme among all of the full sized burgers there. As the burgers are in the ‘super fancy’ category, they come out a little pinker than you would see at your local burger shop. This really helped contribute to the biggest downfall of the D-Luxe burger in general: it’s stupid greasy.

The barbecue burger came with bacon, fried onion ring, and barbecue sauce. Also a fun cheese of some sort. The sauce had a good flavor. The bacon was tasty, because it was bacon and bacon is delicious, but it was a stiff thick cut bacon. Not crunchy so much as solid. I’m a fan of good, thick, fully cooked bacon, and would not have liked for a limp stringy bacon to be put on the burger, but the stiffness of the bacon actually made it a bit hard to bite through. Which gave me a good teachable moment about bacon: thin crispy is the way to go with burger bacon. And with burger toppings in general. If it doesn’t easily separate when bitten, leave it off. I ended up taking the bacon off the burger and eating it separately. It was tasty, and by far the driest part of the burger. I will admit the fried onion was not really noticeable in any fashion except that it made the burger even more freakishly tall than it would have otherwise been.


You can see the onion ring, a hint of bacon, and the smoked gouda.

But the overwhelming impression of the burger was that it was really wet feeling. One of those where you’re kind of scared to put the thing down because you don’t want to think about how to pick it up again. When the burger was gone, a big pool of wet was left behind. Not like barbecue sauce or anything recognizable. And not even a little greasy like the wrapping was shiny and see-through. It was a puddle of wetness on a paper. Almost like someone spilled a glass of lukewarm water on the wrapper after you picked up the burger.



Kids each got a Cheeseburger (slider variety), Fries, Danimals smoothie, and milk. I feel like we could have all split the kids’ fries and been happy without getting an adult fry to split. DS took a bite, but didn’t venture a second one.




Split a large fry with curry ketchup and garlic ranch dip. Could have gone with a regular size to split between the adults. I thought the fries were really good. Decent salt content without going overboard, nice crisp to them. There were just a lot of fries, and honestly I was probably a little more full than optimal by the time I finished my burger (which I couldn’t put down because it would be drowned in the water puddle that was my burger wrapper).

The curry ketchup had a really good and interesting flavor, but it lost its novelty about half way through. The garlic ranch had a nice garlicky flavor, which made the ranch pretty good. As a side note, we don’t very frequently use ranch dressing as a fry dip. So this was fun and different. The children had standard ketchup with their fries. Standard ketchup is always a hit with my kids.


Large fry with dipping sauces and the regular hamburger in the background, ordered by GM (Our kids call my mom GranMar so she will be referred to as GM). *I will apologize now for some of the pictures. We knew we wanted to do a report ahead of time but it was way more difficult than we expected keeping track of pictures with hungry children (and adults for that matter).

Re-reading what I’ve got up there, it sounds like a pretty hateful review. I will say if I’d just gone there for fries and dipping sauces it would have been a pretty decent meal. Probably if I’d gotten a kid’s meal I’d be talking about how their standard hamburger was a perfectly sized, delicious greasy burger. I think the problem I ran into with this restaurant was that their ‘human sized’ burgers are way bigger than they need to be and excessively greasy. Hands down the greasiest burger I’ve ever had. I don’t even have a problem with greasy burgers. But it’s like if I said I liked ketchup on my burger and someone poured a bottle of ketchup on the thing I’m not going to like it MORE because of the extra over the top ketchup.

 

[nco91590]

I don't think it's a hateful review! It's possible to make a burger that's not dripping with grease. It's good to know that they're cooked on the rare side. I like filet medium, but my burgers medium well.

I'm looking forward to reading more!

 

[Gobbles!]

I don't think it's a hateful review! It's possible to make a burger that's not dripping with grease. It's good to know that they're cooked on the rare side. I like filet medium, but my burgers medium well.

I'm looking forward to reading more!

We usually don't have anything bad to say, for the most part, about any restaurants so this one seemed harsh to us. I think I was mainly disappointed because I was imagining a nice charbroiled burger with grill marks on it. The kind you can almost taste just from the delicious smell. That's not what this was. If my expectations were different that might have helped a bit. But not for the super soggy part. I'm with you on the medium side for a filet and medium well for burgers. In most cases I go with chef recommended temperatures for meats, but if there's a next time here I'll definitely ask for a longer cook on the burger.

 

[Gobbles!]

Bonus Treats!

We always stop at Goofy’s Candy Co. while at Disney Springs. It’s DD5’s favorite place. Well, maybe after Once Upon a Toy and the Disney Store and… It’s up there though. We learned on our last trip in September not to buy the super awesome looking iced sugar cookies. Our DS2 picked out a football and it really didn’t taste that great. So we steered him past the basketball cookie (he’s really into balls) and pointed him toward the cake pops. DD5 is a huge fan of the cake pops. She has had an Olaf and a Maleficent in the past. This time she chose Minnie and DS2 chose Mickey. DD5 ate part of hers right after we bought and saved the rest to eat later in the hotel room. DS2 ate a few bites of his immediately and then saved the rest for later, or so he thought. I actually ate the rest a week later after we got home. He forgot about it. Well, maybe I didn’t remind him after a few days and decided it may have been compromised so I took one for the team and ate it myself.


He doesn't look that enthralled here, but he was.


DD was much more excited about her cake pop.

We stopped at The Ganachery for the first time ever. The kids had their Goofy stop and I wanted an adult chocolate stop. The shop is little and fancy, as are the chocolates. They are $3 a piece. We were happy to spend some ‘free’ Disney Visa Reward dollars on a box of six. The hard part was choosing just six. My mom (GM) came in handy here in that she offered to take the kids outside so that DH and I could peruse the chocolates in peace. It was a very important decision after all and needed our full attention. GM requested a raspberry chocolate on her way out of the store. We obliged.



Here are our six choices:

Raspberry-velvety raspberries with dark chocolate
Coffee-Italian Espresso roast with milk chocolate
Egyptian Sea Salt-dark chocolate with salt from the Red Sea
Coconut-Tropical flakes of coconut with dark chocolate
Chipotle Pepper-dark chocolate with a hint of Mexican red pepper
Orange-fresh Florida oranges with dark chocolate

They packaged them up very nicely and put them in a bag with tissue paper. (I was so excited about trying the chocolates I forgot to take a picture of the bag.) We felt so fancy carrying our chocolates back to our hotel, which was just a short boat ride away at Saratoga Springs. We opened our chocolates immediately after we returned to our room. We tried a couple there and the rest made it back home with us to enjoy later.

We were very happy with all of our choices. I’m a big fan of orange and dark chocolate so that was my first choice. DH is a coffee and pepper fan, so those were his two picks. The pepper had a very nice kick at the very end, not too spicy more of a smoky kick. We are also fans of dark chocolate and salt and though the Red Sea salt didn’t taste any different from other sea salt it was still fun to eat. The coconut was recommended to us and we enjoyed it as well. I’m pretty much a fan of chocolate in general with the exception of white chocolate. Not a big fan at all. Dark chocolate is my favorite.



Top: Raspberry, Orange, Coconut
Bottom: Coffee, Sea Salt, Chipotle

If you visit The Ganachery, pay attention to the displays around the store. DH noticed a BB8 made of chocolate. We asked about it and they happily told us how they made it. Naturally I don’t remember the details but it was pretty cool to hear about.

 

[Gobbles!]

Paddock Grill:

The adults skipped dinner on our arrival day after the lunch fiasco at D-Luxe. Even though we didn’t enjoy it that much, we were all still very full. I swear I ate 5 pounds worth of fries. I always find that I eat less on travel days. We woke up at 3:30am to catch an early flight so we were pretty tired too. We went swimming at the Paddock pool at SSR. My mom had a beer by the pool. She was enjoying herself very much and kept reminding us that she was on vacation and making the most of it. We ordered the kids each a chicken nugget meal with fries, grapes, and chocolate milk to take back to the room from the Paddock Grill. They were quite hungry so we forgot to get a picture BEFORE they attacked the meal.



DH and I actually shared “dinner”. DH went to Artist’s Palette and purchased two adult beverages. We saved the hard root beer for another night and split a grapefruit hefeweizen. I thought it was delicious! I like lighter beers and I really enjoyed the grapefruit in this one. My husband, who likes many different types of beer but loves dark beer more than anything, also enjoyed this after the initial grapefruit shock. I don’t think he noticed it was grapefruit despite the glaringly obvious can.

 

[KacieD]

Bummer about deluxe! Those cake pops are crazy cute though! I haven't been to the ganachery just bc it hasn't been open yet when we were in DS for lunch. I will put it at the top of my plans! Those chocolates look gorgeous! SSR is such a great place to stay to enjoy being at Disney Springs! We were there last April, and I loved walking across the bridge and having all those choices right there!

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

Oh man! Well at least I don't have to feel too bad about not being able to fit in D Luxe on this next trip

Those cake pops are adorable, as are the kids holding them!

 

[Gobbles!]

Bummer about deluxe! Those cake pops are crazy cute though! I haven't been to the ganachery just bc it hasn't been open yet when we were in DS for lunch. I will put it at the top of my plans! Those chocolates look gorgeous! SSR is such a great place to stay to enjoy being at Disney Springs! We were there last April, and I loved walking across the bridge and having all those choices right there!

I agree about SSR. One trip when we stayed there DH got up earlier and picked up breakfast pizza and waffles from Wolfgang Puck Express to bring back to the room. Pretty great to have that available.

Oh man! Well at least I don't have to feel too bad about not being able to fit in D Luxe on this next trip

Those cake pops are adorable, as are the kids holding them!

Thanks! Hopefully the burgers won't be quite so wet when you get a chance to try them out.

 

[Gobbles!]

Breakfast at Epcot, sunshine seasons:

Our first day at the parks was at EPCOT. We took advantage of the early access opening to book it over to the Soarin’ ride at Living with the Land. Good thing we did too. There was a pretty short wait for the ride compared to later in the day. DS2 was too short to ride the ride, so he and I got to go scavenge for breakfast while everyone else tried the ride out. Through the magic of baby swap, I got to ride later. I was very excited to see it since they expanded the Soarin experience beyond the state of California. However, as this is a dining review the most important part is that DS2 and I headed to Sunshine Seasons to see what breakfast items we could scrounge up.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Sunshine Seasons setup, during the lunch/dinner portion of the day, there are multiple different stations that serve a very wide range of food items. During the breakfast portion of the day, there is pretty much one station open serving food. They have a pretty good spread of typical breakfast items, including most things I would imagine would be breakfast items. We ended up getting three kid breakfast meals, which came with eggs, bacon, and a bread pudding type thing they called French toast.

I am more familiar with the French toast that is made by dipping bread in eggs and frying it. This one, as you can see in the picture, looks more like a cake made out of bread chunks. I call that a bread pudding. I also call it delicious. The eggs were also cooked well and the bacon was bacon. As I have said previously, that means it’s just tasty. This particular bacon was slightly less crunchy than I would prefer, but it wasn’t stringy or anything and it was on the thin side. If you’re going to have non-crisp bacon, it’s way better to be on the thin side.

DS2 and I enjoyed our breakfast in leisure while the rest of the group soared over the entire world. Which I suppose makes us pretty slow eaters. When they landed and made it through customs, they found us in the food court to have their breakfasts. The plan was for the two children to eat what they wanted, and the three adults would split the third meal and whatever the children left behind. This was a pretty good arrangement because we were at EPCOT where food flows like water. And the adults wanted to eat that food.

Both kids liked the eggs, bacon, and especially the French toast. There was plenty of food for all of us. None of us are big breakfast eaters while at the parks. It also helps knowing that a Mickey bar is never far away either.

 

[Mom2m&k]

Enjoying your report so far! I don't love super messy burgers, so good to know about d'lux!