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

[tigerlilly]

Great Report! I am enjoying reading

 

[Gobbles!]

Garden View Lounge/Tea Room:

I thought I had planned it perfectly. We’d be at Epcot the day of our tea so we could take the monorail to the Grand Floridian for a super easy and fun ride. After enjoying a great early morning at Epcot we hopped a monorail to the Grand Floridian for a noon tea, or so we thought. We made it the ticket and transportation center but the resort monorail was down. Fortunately we left ourselves lots of time to make it to the Grand so we decided to walk from the TTC to the Floridian. Later in our trip we were going to stay at the Polynesian so we thought it would be nice to walk through it to get the lay of the land. It was very sunny and quite warm so we worked up a bit of a sweat as we quickly hustled to our tea. We made it with plenty of time to spare. We were able to catch our breath and cool down in the lobby for a while. The kids enjoyed watching cartoons on the kid sized furniture. My DD5 thought the small furniture was the best. “It’s like real furniture but for kids!”

As soon as we saw the restaurant was open for business we walked over to check in. We were seated shortly thereafter at a large round table by the windows. I made sure to seat my DS2 by the window to hopefully keep him contained. He doesn’t use a high chair anymore and we usually skip the booster seats. My DD5 LOVES tea parties and this was her first official tea at a restaurant. We’ve had several tea parties at home with actual tea sandwiches and tea so she sort of knew what to expect. She was quite thrilled with the whole experience.

My mom and DH both ordered the Derbyshire Tea. “I’m on vacation, I’m going to have champagne with my tea!” My mom really enjoyed herself. I figured I could share the champagne with my mom and DH so I ordered the Bedfordshire Tea. I love the champagne and tea but I also remembered from a previous visit that I probably wouldn’t finish all of the tea without adding another glass of champagne to the mix. It worked out well. DD5 had the Mrs. Potts Tea and we asked if DS2 could have chocolate milk and just the tea sandwiches.

Here’s the breakdown on the teas:

Derbyshire-1st-Medley of finger sandwiches accompanied with berries, cheese, and lavosh; 2nd-buttery scone and jam tart; 3rd choice of house made pastries, strawberries and crème, or English trifle; accompanied by your choice of tea and a glass of Veuve Clicquot Champagne

Bedfordshire-same as Derbyshire only without the champagne

Mrs. Potts Tea-1st-assorted tea sandwiches (tuna salad, ham and cheese, PBJ); 2nd-jam tart; 3rd-house made pastries; chocolate milk

I chose Jasmine Pearl tea, DH had the chakra silver, and GM chose Perfect Afternoon Tea. The tea food has changed slightly since our last tea several years ago so we were excited to try the new offerings. The sandwiches included a curry chicken salad, cucumber sandwich, egg salad, and golden beet and goat cheese. There were also a couple of cheeses, a cheddar and a sage something or other and a cracker. The plate was rounded off with an onion tart and some grapes, raspberries, and blueberries. DD5 isn’t a fan of tuna salad, well not that she knows of anyway, we can’t get her to try it. We swapped out the tuna salad sandwich for an extra PBJ. She had 2 PBJ sandwiches and a ham and cheese sandwich. She enjoyed them. DS2 ate one of his 3 PBJ sandwiches and we later spread some apricot jam on another for him to try as well as some lemon curd.


Tea and Champagne

Egg salad, chicken curry, cucumber, open faced golden beet

Onion tart, cheese, fruit

Kid sandwiches plus teapot cozies

Our server, Patrick, was really great. He did a fantastic job of pouring the kids’ chocolate milk with amazing flair. The kids were both thoroughly impressed. Well, DS2 was more impressed with his plastic lid at first. DS2 didn’t quite sit in his chair the entire time. He climbed out of his seat several times. Fortunately he was seated by the window so he wasn’t close to anyone but me and GM. He threw his napkin on the floor a couple of times and took his shoe off a couple of times. The second time I just kept it. Two older ladies seated at the table next to us thought he was pretty cute, fortunately. I was worried about disrupting others but both kids were at least quiet and kept their shenanigans to a minimum.



I really loved this plate of food. I was a big fan of everything on it. I was happy to see they kept the onion tart from the last tea menu. It’s sweet and tasty. My two favorite sandwiches were the egg salad and the golden beet. The egg salad was so simple and delicious. I’m weird in that I have loved beets all of my life. My mom grew them in our garden when I was little. I loved them then and I still love them now. I do realize that many people don’t like them. I’m not a big fan of goat cheese but when it’s paired with beets I think it’s delicious. The curry chicken sandwich was also really good. It was the perfect blend of curry spices and chicken salad. I don’t remember what exactly was on the cucumber sandwich besides cucumber and cream cheese? Something like that. Maybe DH will remember when he adds his two cents. I enjoyed the cheeses. I shared most of my cheddar with DS as well as most of my fruit.

The next plate and dessert were all brought out at the same time on a nice little tiered tea stand. Up next was the golden raisin scone and jam tart presented with a dish of creamy butter (clotted cream?), lemon curd, and apricot jam. Unfortunately I was a bit distracted with DS when every course was presented so I missed all of the finer details of the offerings. The jam tart is delicious but I prefer the scone. I like it with all of the toppings, individually or together. GM and I both shared our scones with DS since he just received the sandwiches. He really liked the scone. I missed out on whether or not DH shared his with DD. She really liked her jam tart. The food is all so delicious that I would forget all about my tea. Fortunately I had an entire pot hidden under the pot cozy that was still hot to warm up my forgotten tea.


Presentation


DD and GM's tower


Scone, tart, toppings

Lastly, we had the desserts. DH and I both chose the strawberries and cream. GM chose the English trifle. Normally that would be my choice as well, but today’s trifle was a banana trifle so I passed. GM did not hear that it was a banana trifle so she was slightly disappointed. She shared with DS and he loved it. I also shared some of my strawberries with DS. He was definitely taken care of during this meal. DD had the pastries which included a chocolate covered strawberry, a lemon swan cream puff, and two macaroons: coffee and pistachio. She was not a fan of the coffee but the rest of us enjoyed it. She adored the swan and bit its head off first, naturally.


Another view of the strawberries and cream with the GF logo on top

We were all pretty full and very happy afterwards. When our server brought out the check he also paid us a compliment. He said that there were more kids at the start of service that day than usual and ours were the best behaved. I did notice quite a few kids and a few kids that were a bit loud. However I wasn’t sure if that was just something servers said. He gave our DD5 a pink rose for her great behavior and DS2 a Mickey Mouse pin. I was quite impressed and proud. I know that I have received a rose at the end of tea before but couldn’t remember if that was because we were celebrating something or if it was just common practice. DD was really thrilled with her rose, mainly because it was her favorite color. I’m glad she enjoyed it because I was thinking of how she might react in the future when she realized her brother still had his Mickey pin and her rose had faded away. Turns out that never turned into an issue at all.

Overall it was a wonderful time and I can’t wait to go back again. I would probably share the champagne again and spend the saved money on bonus Mickey bars. I was pretty full with the food and all of the tea. However I really like the extra touch of the champagne. As my mom says, “I’m on vacation!” Great times had by all. I’m just happy no one noticed our son wasn’t wearing a shoe for most of the tea.

 

[tigerlilly]

Lovely tea report! Your children are absolutely darling and sound like they were very well behaved...missing shoe and all!!

 

[Gobbles!]

Note: My DH and I both want to work on our dining report together but we haven't quite coordinated our efforts yet. I didn't want to keep everyone waiting until we both found time to write our thoughts together. I was able to get him to write up his part tonight. So you are about to hear about the tea from my husband's perspective. Sorry, no additional pictures. Surely we'll get it together for the next big review. He does a lot of technical writing in his day job so likes to embellish when he's not working. Enjoy!

Tea at the Grand Floridian:

I had started writing a review of the tea from my perspective to add in with DW’s in a thoughtful and well coordinated post, but then I fell asleep. As a result, DW had to go ahead and post her tea review without me. To try to compensate for that, I’ll give my thoughts about the tea. You’ll notice I will probably end up using phrases like “in the picture she posted…” and “she was right about…”. I might even get to sneak in a “that’s what she said” if I’m clever enough. Because the world can never have enough of those.

As DW mentioned (i.e. “that’s what she said.” NAILED IT! ), DD5 adores tea parties. I know this might come as a shock to anyone who doesn’t have a daughter, hasn’t seen commercials featuring female children at play, or paid any attention to any other such “girls must love to play tea party” narrative. It turns out to be a real thing. As far as it goes with my daughter and tea parties, if I have anything to say about it we don’t fake it; we make it. And by that I mean we come up with little tiny sandwiches, fruit/cheese trays, actual tea, and dessert. And we serve up on our fancy china and from tea pots and everything. The whole nine yards. One time, we actually did the super fancy formal wear option where I was in my suit and DW was in a bridesmaid dress.

We take our teas very seriously, but DD5 hadn’t ever had the pleasure of doing a ‘real’ tea yet. Much like in the movies where sports teams sneak in to see the pros play (or where Oozma Kappa sneaks in to the scare floor to get inspiration for the scare games), it was time to take Jane to see the big show. While both DW and I enjoy a good formal tea as much as the next person, I felt like it was time for DD5 to see what was up. In no small part because she always gives me super weird looks when I say things like “let’s make a cucumber sandwich”, “maybe this time we’ll do radish sandwiches”, or “let’s get some super moldy bleu cheese up in this piece. I mean cheese so nasty that it’s described as bleu instead of blue”. The idea is that when she sees this in practice, I don’t look quite as crazy. Even if I do still get the same responses to each of my suggestions (in this case that would be “no”, “dad, that’s not a thing”, and “ewwwwwww. That’s Disgusting.”).

Anyways, as DW said above we left EPCOT to head to the tea super early. This was mostly due to excitement but also due to our inherent fear of things going wrong with transportation at Disney. When we got engaged at Disney World back in 1809, we had the traumatic experience of being stranded at Downtown Disney and being 2 hours late to a dining reservation. Since then, we tend to err toward being insanely early. Because if you’re early, you get to rest. And nobody gets to rest at Disney. It’s a built in secret tactic.

The transportation gods were laughing this particular day, as we discovered the monorail that would take us to the Grand Floridian was out of service. However, since we had left insanely early it seemed like a good excuse to take a stroll. It was either that or take the boat to Magic Kingdom and then another boat to the Grand. And DD5 was having none of the boat ride idea. She emphatically stated that we should walk. And I pointed out to her that that was big talk from a little girl riding on my shoulders who wasn’t walking anywhere. But since we were soooo early, DW in her infinite wisdom elected to take a stroll. By the time we walked to the Grand, we were maybe 15 minutes early. And by ‘early’ I mean ‘before any of the cast members started showing up and setting tables’. This was plenty of time to cool off in the spacious lobby before start of tea.

As a side note for those of you who don’t know how the pedestrian system works around the Magic Kingdom area (which I assume is probably most people), the Ticket/Transportation center has a little walkway to the Polynesian, which has a walkway to the Grand Floridian. The Grand Floridian does NOT have a walkway to the Magic Kingdom, and there is not a path (as far as I know) to the Contemporary. The Contemporary is the only hotel on the Seven Seas Lagoon that has a path to Magic Kingdom. So now you know, and knowing is half the battle, G.I. Joe.

At about this point in time, you are probably realizing why DW decided not to wait for me to put in my two cents. To make a long story shorter, we arrived at tea and were seated by a window as DW stated. What she was too polite to say was that she not only cornered DS2 between her and GM, she also wisely and strategically boxed him out away from the table next to us. That table was a beautiful table displaying the tarts/scones/et ceteras that were to be consumed. If DS2 had seated himself next to those… God help us all. Fortunately, DW has Mom level awareness for ‘bad stuff going down’ potential and kept him by the window. Because what could go wrong over there? … Which is about the time he decided it was a good idea to stand IN the windowsill. The windows in the Tea room are floor to ceiling, and it wasn’t THAT big of a deal. But he was quickly gotten out of there and DW and I exchanged dark looks that said “crap, will we survive this?” SPOILER ALERT: we did.

Just as DS2 was stepping out of the window, Patrick came out to introduce us to the tea. I’m sure he had much trepidation about us with our window standing, napkin throwing child. However, he did not let it show and he was a consummate professional. After explaining the setup (as outlined above by DW), he gave us time to decide our tea plans. This leads me to the most difficult thing about the Grand Tea: choosing the tea. There is a menu with exactly eleventy billion teas listed. The teas are broken down as black teas, flavored teas, white teas, green teas, Ice T’s (but not iced teas), and so on. Very difficult choice, as there is a very nice range of tea. If you showed up and they said “black or green tea?” you could just lay it out there like “green tea please, BAM!!!” Since there is such a nice selection, you really have to think about what mood you are in. I was in a white/green tea mood so I got the Chakra Silver tea, as stated above. And as expected with any tea place that has more than four types of tea available, it was very good. The pour was very light, but the flavor and aroma was refreshing and earthy, with an ethereal whisp of whimsy. Ok, the tea tasted like a good white tea. And I am ashamed to say that I may have marred its flavor profile with some sugar. But there were sugar cubes and a little sugar tong thing and we were at a Tea, so when in Rome… load that cup up with cubes! They had both brown and white sugar cubes, for those of you keeping score at home.

As far as the food offerings, the selection and execution was very good. I implied earlier that I have a love of eccentric sounding sandwiches, especially at a proper tea. They did not let me down, and I got to say “see, I told you so” when the cucumber sandwich came out.

Their version of the cucumber sandwich is a little different from mine in that I am fairly sure they did a quick pickle on their cucumbers. Freaking brilliant move. So you get a bit of a vinegar dress to the sandwich.

I also enjoyed the curry chicken sandwich. In the realm of curry things, there are curry things that have a nice curry smell and a little hint of the flavor that pairs nicely with the food and then there are CURRY things, where you are showing up to eat curry and there happens to be chicken present. Or fish or tofu or beef. But you really don’t care what’s IN the CURRY. This sandwich was definitely on the curry side of things. The texture and ‘chicken-ness’ starred, with some curry spice seasonings that really took it to the next level and kept it from being bland.

The egg salad sandwich was executed at a high level, with an emphasis on good texture and homogeneity. However, I am personally from the egg salad school where you throw lots of seasonings and maybe some relish in there… so I appreciated the technique but I preferred the cucumber sandwich.

I was a little sad that DD5 traded out her tuna sandwich only because I was planning on stealing it and seeing what they were like. She had a love for the ham and cheese sandwich that I hadn’t seen coming and I was pleasantly surprised when she sampled and then devoured it. FIRST. I was like, “get it girl!” but all quiet. I actually tried to high five her for eating her ham sandwich and trying some other ‘gross’ looking stuff from my plate. She looked at me in horror and said “Dad, you aren’t supposed to high five at tea. It isn’t proper.” Touché. We fist bumped instead.

The scones, tarts, clotted cream (confirming from above, the clotted cream is the one in the middle of the lemon curd and jam) were all delicious, as they should be. I won’t say much more about them because DW did such a good job above. But for the record, I did offer DD5 some of my scone. She was very suspicious because I also had offered her other things that were a bit outside of her comfort zone, but reluctantly tried some of the scone. She then proceeded to eat about half of my scone because they are good. Especially with the accompaniments.

The strawberries and cream was something I had been looking forward to having for a long time, because it’s delicious. The first few times I’d seen it on the menu next to whatever the other options were at the time, I thought it was the weakest link. However, I actually got it once and it is very good. It’s simple (only two ingredients) but the combination of delicious food and fancy preparation make this my ultimate tea time dessert.

That is about all I have to add about the Tea, but I do want to add my two cents in about the way we did meals this trip at Disney. You’ll notice that DS2 didn’t get a ‘meal’, but instead got a few basics and shared everything everyone else had. There is so much food at any given restaurant in the Disney World area that one person doesn’t really need three meals a day, especially considering the always present availability of snacks. Some people may feel a little weird about splitting orders or abstaining from eating and instead sleeping (DS actually slept through an entire meal and it was less weird than you might think). Some people might think that as soon as they say, “my 2 year old is going to just have pbj, chocolate milk, and some apple sauce that I brought. Oh, and by the way we’re feeding him from our meals too” that the server will automatically check out and write you off as a cheapskate ****** who won’t be worth the effort. To that, I want to share a story:

Once upon a time, years ago, my dearest DW and I were at the Disney by ourselves (pre-children days) and having a splendid time. We had planned to visit a restaurant that was known for its delightful stuffed French toast and super good coffee. On the day of our reservation, we showed up and were seated. The waiter came out and asked what we wanted to drink. As we had planned this trip well in advance, we were fully ready but as soon as we mentioned drink items he left and wasn’t seen or heard from for like 20 minutes. When he came back, he gave us our drinks and then promptly left again. As I remember it, we were about one hour into our meal before the order was taken, and once we got our food, the guy didn’t come back for another 30 minutes. He was very dismissive and was very clear that he probably half expected us to do a dine and dash. At one point, we almost did because we had to leave to catch the magical express. Now the point of this story is not that he was a jerk (because maybe he was having a bad day and maybe a couple matching our description was wanted for petty larceny in the area), or that the food and coffee there was really good (it was). The point is that two adults went to a restaurant and got two meals with real drinks. They didn’t make a big fuss. They were looked down upon and didn’t get good service. MEANWHILE a family with a little boy of questionable integrity went to a fairly fancy restaurant, didn’t order full meals for the table, customized orders, and got great service and never were made to feel marginalized. Don’t feel like you will be looked down on because you split a meal or have weird requests. Go on and do it. Honestly, the way you are treated for saying that you don’t want to consume 4,000 calories a day says less about you as a person than it does about the person who is responding to it. And that’s my rant.

 

[Gobbles!]

Bonus Treats:

After tea we went swimming back at our hotel and then headed back to Epcot for a lovely afternoon. Then we had our first Mickey bars of the trip! DD, DH, and I all had a Mickey bar. DS chose the Olaf bar which was a strawberry-lemonade popsicle. GM said she didn’t want anything but ended up eating some of DS’s bar and some of my Mickey bar.

If you haven’t had a Mickey bar, they’re worth getting. And tasty. Anyone who tells you differently either doesn’t like chocolate covered ice cream on a stick or is a close follower of Anton Ego. I will not say this is the best dessert/cold snack option in the world, but it is a classic, and a must have dessert/snack in the World. If only for the picture of you or a loved one eating a mickey bar. Once we got a great shot of DD eating one while she was sitting on my shoulders. It was dripping all over my head. Great picture, tasty hair.

 

[Gobbles!]

Tangierine Café:

Our favorite quick service restaurant is in Morocco. The Tangierine Café is great. We never stray from the shawarma platter though. I’m sure some of the other selections are tasty but we always get the shawarma platter. This trip we ordered the chicken and lamb shawarma platter. It’s served with hummus, tabouleh, couscous salad, and Moroccan bread. We just ordered one platter to share. We also ordered the kids chicken nuggets with apple sauce, chips, and apple juice.


This is one of those times that I have to apologize for the picture. I remembered a little too late to get a picture. Sorry for the partially eaten food, but trust me that this platter is so delicious that you'll forget to stop for the picture first too.


Also hungry kids plays into the lack of picture first. You can see DD5's hand jumping in for the quick nugget and ketchup swipe. They didn't care that we hadn't taken a picture yet. Missing from the picture is the apple juice. For some reason I kept forgetting that juice boxes don't always come with the meals. In this case it was a full small cup with lid and straw of juice! Way more than a kid or an adult needs for the entire day. So it was great for sharing with everyone since we just opted for the free ice water with our meal.

I have no idea what a real Moroccan person would think of the shawarma platter if they came to EPCOT and thought, “I’ll play it safe and eat something local to my home country instead of some weird food like funnel cake or ham burger.” This is mostly because I have no clue how authentic it is as a food item. It is really really really good though. If I were to ordinarily go to most restaurants as often as we end up at the Tangierine Café, I would have tried the entire menu several times because of my love of variety. But the Shawarma platter is so good I don’t know if I’ll ever branch out. The Restaurant Marakesh is the place where I branch out. It is very good and I always make it a point to try something new every time. But we didn’t get to go there for this trip, so I’ll stop talking about it.

I really can’t say enough about the shawarma platter. Chicken or lamb, you can’t go wrong. The sauce on it is great and the red onions add even more flavor. Delicious! I wish I had some now. I like the sides as well, though the tabouleh is my least favorite only because I’m not a big fan of parsley. It’s still good, but I can only eat so much parsley. Everyone else happily finished it off for me. DS2 tried some of the lamb and chicken and he seemed to like it a lot too. DD5 was perfectly fine sticking to the nuggets and chips.

I agree with the description except I really like the parsley mixed in there. I think it gives the tabouleh a nice bitter counter to the lemon in there, and gives the hummus a nice punch of fresh over the top.

 

[Gobbles!]

Boulangerie Patisserie les Halles:

I made sure to save room for the quiche in France. I couldn’t remember which quiche I liked better so I ordered both the quiche Lorraine (ham, gruyere cheese) and the quiche Florentine (spinach and goat cheese). We also ordered the Macarons collection, a box of six. Our DD remembered getting these on our last trip and insisted we get them again. I’m not complaining.


Quiche Lorraine


Quiche Florentine

I keep forgetting which of the two quiches I prefer until I have them. And true to form, I have forgotten again. They are both very good, and it probably comes down to which kind you are in the mood for. The ham and gruyere is a nice smoky/salty flavor, while the spinach and goat cheese has the salty/sour flavor. Their crusts have the flaky crispy thing going for them. Unfortunately I was exceptionally full at this time, so I didn’t mind too much when the others at the table ate it up quickly.

For the record I really like both types of quiche. I will stick to ordering both of them. DD5 decided to try the quiche Lorraine. Even though it was ham instead of bacon, she ate it up and asked for more. She turned her nose up at the green stuff in the other quiche. DS2 ate a few bites of both. While we enjoyed the food, GM walked over to the wine shop and bought a glass of red wine. This was her first trip using magic bands and she really liked being able to charge things on the band. I was glad I gave her charging privileges. It really added to her “I’m on vacation” fun. She could spend money on things and not really feel like she was spending money. Hmm, dangerous. However she spent wisely and enjoyed herself at the same time.

Back to the food! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to remember or guess at the kinds of macarons we had. Have you noticed the spelling of that word has changed from the tea post to this one? I’ll take a stab at it: Raspberry (DD ate this one super quick without sharing because it was pink), lemon, pistachio, coffee, orange, lavender. They are beautiful, light, crisp, airy, and tasty. I think I’d enjoy them much more if we all decided to do as my daughter did and just grab a whole one to enjoy a piece instead of trying to split them. You really need to take that first bite yourself to break through the crisp outer shell of the cookie to appreciate it’s crispness on the outside and the light airiness on the inside. It’s very delicate. We kept the container. Not sure how we are going to reuse it but we are. Last trip we brought home the container but didn’t pack it very well in the suitcase and it cracked. This one came home successfully.


Box of Macarons


Raspberry/strawberry?, lemon, pistachio, coffee, orange, lavendar

As DW said, macarons are tasty but very tough to share. The first bite kind of smooshes the cookie together, making the second bite change in texture a little bit. If you were smart (or didn’t have kids along, making you feel the obligation to pass things around so they can broaden their horizons), you would split up the box so that each person gets their own macaron. For those of you macaron lovers out there, these taste like other macarons I’ve had locally. They’re not better or worse.

 

[tigerlilly]

I think I will just post every day on your thread lol... your reviews are so fun! I love that your DH is joining in. Maybe I can get my husband to do the same with our August trip
Can't wait for more!

 

[Gobbles!]

I think I will just post every day on your thread lol... your reviews are so fun! I love that your DH is joining in. Maybe I can get my husband to do the same with our August trip
Can't wait for more!

I'm glad you are enjoying it! I always enjoy reading my DH's perspective on things. We write the report in Word. I write mine up then when he gets a chance he adds to it. I don't read what he's written until I get around to posting it. Then it's like reading someone else's dining report about my own trip!

 

[Mocharilla]

Loving this so far Great photos and I love seeing both perspectives. Your kids are adorable!

 

[FSU Girl]

All this food looks delicious!

 

[Gobbles!]

Loving this so far Great photos and I love seeing both perspectives. Your kids are adorable!

I'm glad you are enjoying it and thank you!

All this food looks delicious!

Thanks! It was.

 

[Gobbles!]

(Sorry for the long delay in posts. Life got in the way a bit. Also I remembered that I needed to finish editing and download our Memory Maker photos before I forgot. Now, on with the food!)

Creature Comforts:

Animal Kingdom day! GM is a morning mocha person and needed coffee. I forgot about that pretty much every morning. I was busy trying to hoof it to the safari ride at rope drop when I got side tracked by a short line to meet Flik. He was right by Creature Comforts so my mom took advantage of the stop to get a drink. I knew that we might as well stop for food for the kids too since my mom would have to finish her drink before the ride anyway. GM and DH both got coffees of some sort. We also ordered two blueberry scones and milk. Even though there weren’t many people in line it still seemed to take a while to get our order. I think DD was upset about something so we forgot to get a photo of the scones before we handed them over to the kiddos for destruction and hopefully some eating. My daughter loves anything blueberry so she really liked the scones. We actually had some pieces leftover that the kids ate later in the day.

Just a heads up before you get to my DH's experience...He didn't/doesn't realize (or probably forgot) that Creature Comforts is now a Starbucks. Take a look at the pictures and then enjoy his take on breakfast.


Apologies, again, for the partially attacked food. I promise we will have some pristine food pictures when it really counts. This is part of a blueberry scone after it was divvied up between the kids.


Just proof that coffee was ordered.

This stop really seemed like a classic snowball case. We had stopped for the picture, as we do. Then GM went in for coffee. I was ready to wait and then head out with the coffee. While waiting for the mocha to happen, the food order was added. I took that as a good time to make a coffee order. But in creature comforts, food and coffee are all handled separately. You order your pastry setup and wait for it, then go check out, which is where you order the coffee. Service is approximately Starbucks speed. Oddly, while Starbucks is known for its service and speed, its speed does not match what you become accustomed to when you deal with Disney World speed. So this whole chain of events ended up taking rather longer than DW would have preferred, especially considering she probably wasn’t all that hungry, didn’t want coffee, and we had to finish everything we got before we were set to get on a ride in what would take us about 5 minutes sans food/coffee. I think she handled it rather well.

The coffee I ordered (a flat white) was Starbucks good. This is rather high praise considering it is a coffee place at a theme park. It is not a boutique coffee shop that single sources and roasts in house. It does not have an espresso machine that was saved from a historic Coffee Shop under cover of darkness during the London bombings in World War 2. It is nothing more than what it is: Rather good coffee. Probably more expensive than you’re used to if you’re used to getting Starbucks at home. I’m not used to getting Starbucks at home, so I have no idea.

 

[Gobbles!]

Restaurantosaurus:

Before Tusker house turned into a buffet it was our go to counter service in Animal Kingdom. I really miss it. We’ve been kind of lost without it. I’m not a big bbq fan so after trying Flame Tree once or twice we haven’t been back. My DH likes Flame Tree though. Lately we’ve been on a Restaurantosaurus kick. The kids like the sand buckets that their meals come in and I love the black bean burger. DH ordered the grilled chicken BLT sandwich (topped with tomato, garlic and basil relish and cheddar), I ordered the black bean burger served with southwest salad and fries, DD had the kids cheeseburger meal (fries, grapes, carrots), and DS had the kids chicken nuggets (fries, grapes, carrots).


Kids burger meal


Kids nugget meal

Restaurantosaurus has a great location above all else. The food is pretty good, and very child friendly. This is exactly what you want when you have children with you at the parks and you have pushed through Asia instead of stopping for lunch there. Also, the way the kid’s meal comes with a shovel and bucket is very nice if you want to make a stop at the archaeology area after lunch. The sand buckets have a little shovel attached, and both items are very handy when you go to the dig site. Also, the dig site give parents a very handy place to leave the buckets behind so that others can use them. Synergy! I am not sure if it is just coincidence, but usually we end up at Restaurantosaurus about an hour before our fast pass comes up at Dinosaur. Anyway, the point is that the location is really great for the way we typically work the park.

The menu here is pretty straightforward in general, and I would say that if you were of a mind to split a meal with someone but were afraid of missing out on exotic variety this is the place you want to start splitting meals. There’s nothing on the menu that screams “these two items look so amazing, you two must get one of each!!!!” Rather, the items say more things like “hey there, I’m tasty if you want a grilled chicken sandwich. Just thought you’d like to know.” That’s what the grilled chicken sandwich said to me, anyway. Having said all that, we obviously didn’t split our meals here, and we each got something different. (Not true. DH forgot or didn’t notice that I split my black bean burger with my mom.)

I got the grilled chicken sandwich, and it was good. I liked the lettuce/tomato/all that jazz on the chicken to help feel like I was eating a little more healthy than if I’d had something else. The chicken was nicely sized. I’ve had similar chicken sandwiches where it was obviously a pressed meat conglomeration or the cut came from the small edge of the breast, and those have been quite unsatisfactory (overly dry, weird texture, odd flavor, no flavor, etc.). THIS chicken was not that. It was a good thickness, salt seasoned, and not dry. The bun was fresh without being gummy. All around good sandwich. I also stole some of the kids’ fries. They were good too. (Edit: He didn’t have to steal the kids’ fries because he got some too.)


Chicken BLT, thought it's impossible to tell that

As I write this, I’m checking online menus that say all the meals come with fries. I remember looking at the menu while we were there and DH’s grilled chicken showed that it didn’t come with fries, I’m guessing because it was one of the ‘healthy’ options, so no fries. I was kind of glad because we didn’t need to be fried out. However the restaurant was so busy I think the lady preparing our meals was just shoveling fries in all directions. We got fries with everything. I’m pretty sure we had fries left over. The kids never finish all of their fries.

A few trips ago we found ourselves at this restaurant and I wanted to try something different so I ordered the black bean burger. I’m not usually someone who orders veggie burgers but I was ready to branch out. This burger is fantastic! It has tons of flavor. The bonus is that it comes with a southwest salad which is basically a bean and corn salsa type salad served in a little cup. This has been my go to meal in Animal Kingdom since that first time ordering it. The burger itself has a black bean, cumin, smoky ish type flavor. I highly recommend it.


Black Bean Burger

We also ordered the Cretaceous Cooler to drink. We thought it was about time for an adult beverage. If you are the parent of a preschool age child you are probably an expert (or at least your child is) on dinosaurs. Naturally we had to get the dinosaur drink. It’s made with Parrot Bay coconut rum, Midori, and pineapple juice. I enjoyed it. I am always a fan of trying a new drink.


Cretaceous Cooler

Overall a good meal that we all enjoyed.

 

[tigerlilly]

OH Yay!! You are both back lol!!! I must say your husbands reviews crack me up. I commend your calmness with the coffee adventure...it's hard to stop for coffee and scones if you are in hot pursuit of a rope drop safari...lol. But I have been there...when my children were little (18 months and 6) we had to stop for socks for our 18mo. old because he managed to get his shoe off and his sock while we were walking in to Disneyland during preopening before arriving at the "rope" for rope drop..we found the shoe... sock was gone forever lol... anyway no Peter Pan for us as the rope dropped as I was in the clothier store hunting down socks lol... but I remember that sock finding expedition more then I might have remembered Peter Pan lol!

Anyway again...great reviews. Restaurantosaurus is on our list of possible counter service locations for our August trip as I think we would enjoy air conditioning more then Flame tree BBQ. We are going with our children also. But they are going to be newly turned 21 and almost 16 this trip. It goes so fast!

Restaurantosaurus is air conditioned right? And it has alcoholic beverages!
I thought about Nomad lounge for us also but I am thinking this summer will find Nomad Lounge slammed with the new Pandora opening...

Can't wait for V&A

 

[Gobbles!]

OH Yay!! You are both back lol!!! I must say your husbands reviews crack me up. I commend your calmness with the coffee adventure...it's hard to stop for coffee and scones if you are in hot pursuit of a rope drop safari...lol. But I have been there...when my children were little (18 months and 6) we had to stop for socks for our 18mo. old because he managed to get his shoe off and his sock while we were walking in to Disneyland during preopening before arriving at the "rope" for rope drop..we found the shoe... sock was gone forever lol... anyway no Peter Pan for us as the rope dropped as I was in the clothier store hunting down socks lol... but I remember that sock finding expedition more then I might have remembered Peter Pan lol!

Anyway again...great reviews. Restaurantosaurus is on our list of possible counter service locations for our August trip as I think we would enjoy air conditioning more then Flame tree BBQ. We are going with our children also. But they are going to be newly turned 21 and almost 16 this trip. It goes so fast!

Restaurantosaurus is air conditioned right? And it has alcoholic beverages!
I thought about Nomad lounge for us also but I am thinking this summer will find Nomad Lounge slammed with the new Pandora opening...

Can't wait for V&A

Sorry for the long wait! Hopefully we'll get some more written this weekend. I was going to say something early on about my DH being the funny/witty one in writing but I didn't want build it up and then his reviews came off super lame to people. He always cracks me up.

In the moment the long waits for silly things like breakfasts or socks in your case seem agonizing or at least annoying, but you're right, they are definitely more memorable than the actual ride or attraction that was missed or put off. I try to appreciate those things in the moment and say that I'll laugh about them later. Sometimes it's hard to do that. I'll have a story about that in an upcoming post about our brunch. Hopefully we'll get to the brunch this weekend. Unfortunately V&A's happened at the end of the trip, so it will be a wait. Thanks for reading!

I forgot to add that it IS indeed air conditioned! Hopefully you guys enjoy it if you try it out on your trip.

 

[Gobbles!]

Bonus Treats:

We stopped for a couple of Mickey Bars, a Mickey ice cream sandwich, and a mango bar. GM and DD both got Mickey bars, I got the ice cream sandwich, and DH got the mango bar. DS got the best of everything and walked around getting bites from everyone. Well, except his sister. I’m a big fan of the ice cream sandwiches. I’m a big fan of ice cream sandwiches in general though. These aren’t any better (or worse) than others. Though they are Mickey shaped, so that’s always a fun plus.


Mickey Ice Cream Sandwich


Mickey Bar


Mango Bar

The benefit of being a kid younger than school age is that you can pretty much do whatever you want and get away with it. There is a common theme throughout our story wherein our DS eats everyone’s food. I hope he is enjoying how good life is now, because there’s no way he gets away with wandering around and taking bites from everyone else’s frozen delights forever. He may not have known exactly how good his situation was during this trip, but I know he thoroughly enjoyed wandering around and taking bites from everyone’s frozen delights. I was feeling like trying something new for this particular bonus treat section, and got the mango bar as noted. It was one of those treats that is especially good in an animal-centric park. It is much like an orange-cicle, but with the fruit flavoring distributed throughout the bar, instead of the orange outside/cream center. For those of you who don’t know mango, I would describe it as kind of a super low acid peach flavor. For those of you who DO know mango, it tasted like a mango cream-cicle. I was really curious how it would work out as a frozen treat, and I liked it a lot as a cool refresher. On my list of frozen treats at Disney, I’d rank it with the frozen strawberry-cicle (probably not what it’s called). I would get it again for sure on a hot day for a cool treat that didn’t involve chocolate. I do believe I have seen it for sale at the local grocer, but we don’t buy a whole lot of ice cream unless we’re on vacation. If you see a Helados mango bar for sale at your house, it’s probably the same one. But it’s delicious.

 

[Gobbles!]

Artist’s Palette

We ate dinner back at our hotel, Saratoga Springs, if you’ve forgotten by this point. We dined at the Artist’s Palette. GM ordered the pepperoni flatbread and a beer. DH ordered the Lobster Club Sandwich. I had the Saratoga Salad without chicken. DD had the kid’s macaroni and cheese. DS had the kid’s hotdog meal.

GM seemed to enjoy her flatbread. The flatbreads are quite big no matter where you order them. You could easily get one to share between two people. I thought it was alright. I’m not a big pepperoni fan unless it’s super crispy to the point of tasting more like bacon. DH liked the flatbread pretty well. We did a weird sort of switcharoo sharing. My mom offered part of her flatbread for part of my salad but I didn’t like her flatbread that much. So DH took part of the flatbread and I took part of his lobster club. It was confusing but it worked out well for everyone I think.


Pepperoni Flatbread and beer

I really wanted a salad after eating a bunch of heavier food since we had arrived. I craved something fresh and the Saratoga Salad was just what I needed. It’s a salad of field greens, dried cranberries, dried blueberries, apples and walnuts with a lemon-poppy seed dressing, and crispy ciabatta croutons. It was really, really good. The dressing was pre-tossed throughout the salad and I didn’t find that it was overly dressed. Just right. I ordered it without the chicken and saved a few dollars. I thought it was a very filling salad and quite large.


Saratoga Salad

The kids enjoyed their respective dinners. They were the typical macaroni and cheese and hotdog that you would find most places around the World. The both had grapes, apple juice, and a chocolate chip cookie with their meal. Since this was a counter service at a hotel we had to grab our own juice, so it was a juice box. That’s why I kept picturing a juice box with other counter service places and was always surprised when it was an actual cup of orange juice. So. Much. Juice.


Mac Cheese, juice, cookie, and grapes


Hotdog, grapes, juice, and cookie

DH had the Lobster Club which was lobster salad, smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato, and lemon mayo and house made chips. I really liked the house made chips. The thicker cut potato chips with season(ed) salt. Delicious. I’m not normally a fan of lobster, but I enjoyed this lobster salad. I’ll let him speak more on his sandwich though.


Lobster Club

One of the great benefits of the Disney hotels is their quick service hotel restaurants. These places may not be a big enough standout to make me travel to the World searching for good food, but they are easily good enough to make dinner an enjoyable meal after a long day at the park. For some reason that I can’t explain, on this trip I was determined to try ‘lobster things’. For those of you who eat ‘lobster things’ on a regular basis, it may not seem like I was doing this, but throughout the trip I seemed to be drawn to such items on restaurant menus. I am by no means a connoisseur of lobster, and don’t really encounter it much in my everyday comings and goings (i.e. I am not from a New England state. We’re from Oklahoma). Having properly qualified my judgment for what it is, I must say that this was a pretty good sandwich. I was surprised by how much lobster is actually involved in a lobster club. I think I even identified claw meat. For some reason, I was expecting there would be a sandwich with ‘lobster’ that would essentially be something like maybe an egg salad with ‘lobster flavoring’. I was possibly also expecting the sandwich to be more mayonnaise heavy than it was, like one of those super thick chicken salad sandwiches where the chicken seems to swim in the sauce. This sandwich was way higher quality than that. It was much more a case of there being sauce present to support the lobster. Again, I will freely admit that I might not know what I’m talking about from a ‘lobster sandwich’ experience standpoint. But it was a good sandwich and they didn’t hold back on the lobster. I thought the smoky bacon was a nice earth tone that played to the cheesiness of the lobster (again, sorry if I’m hosing the lobster reference. I’ve always associated lobster with kind of a havarti flavor, and I don’t usually get the opportunity to enjoy it). Also, I liked how the lettuce gave it a supporting crispness and the tomato gave it a brightness that really steered it away from being ‘some mayonnaise based sandwich’.

As far as house made chips go, I DO have experience. And my experience has shown me that house made chips are never a bad idea, unless the batch you get isn’t fully cooked. These chips were on the thicker side, but cooked excellently. By excellently, I mean they didn’t stick together. Sticking together, while good for some things (like the United States of America, magnets, and children’s macaroni art), is awful for house made chips. Really the bane of the potato chip existence. The way the cut goes on chips super thin usually end up super delicate, while super thick is on the super hard side. Essentially, I like to think of the potato chip hardness scale as running from Lay’s (fragile) to cardboard (super strong and GREAT for holding dip without breaking, but don’t ever eat it). When chips cook together, you get cardboard. These chips were on a stronger than Ruffles level, but didn’t have ridges. Almost begged to be thrust into a nice spinach or artichoke dip. They could have taken any dip at all, but thanks to good seasoning they didn’t need a dip. Bravo!

The seasoning was good, in that it kept the chips from being bland fried potatoes but otherwise stayed out of the way. For the record, my favorite house chips are those from Which ‘Wich. Those are seasoned with salt and pepper, and that’s it and they are freaking awesome.

 

[Gobbles!]

Joffrey's Coffee, Espresso and Pastries:

Hollywood Studios and the day of our Brunch with a Twist. It’s morning thus GM needs some coffee. So after hitting two of the three rides we were going to do the entire day (Great Movie Ride and Toy Story Mania) we stopped for some coffee. Oh yeah, and breakfast for the kids. I just wanted a couple of bites of something to hold me over until our brunch at noon where I knew we were going to be eating five courses. However no one else was thinking about that. To be fair, only DH and I were going to be enjoying the brunch so GM and the kids didn’t care. GM and DH ordered their coffees: a mocha for GM and a coffee of some kind with a shot (or 2?) of whiskey(?) for DH. I tried DH’s drink and immediately regretted it. I was thinking a shot of bailey’s not straight Irish whiskey. So I was unpleasantly surprised by the black coffee and the double hit of fire in my throat that made me cough right after swallowing.

The official ‘name’ of this coffee was a latte with a double shot of Jameson. I should note that at the time I ordered my drink I thought this coffee was a SUPER good idea. I mean, booze and coffee. What could go wrong? As it turns out… a lot can go wrong with this. I thought it was tasty, but it is totally unnecessary to get a double shot of Jameson in coffee when you are on vacation at Disney World. [Insert joke about how if you believe that, you don’t go to Disney with kids.] No, seriously. You don’t need the second shot of Jameson (and I keep saying ‘Jameson’ instead of ‘whiskey’ because I know there is a difference between ‘whiskey’ and ‘whisky’ but I forgot which was which). Like I said, I thought it was great. But humans in general should probably get something different. It was Very alcoholic tasting, and didn’t balance well with the coffee. Don’t tell DW I said that though. Wait, she’s reading this isn’t she? BLAST!!!!

I ordered a couple of donuts: a chocolate one and a pink one with sprinkles. GM called over my shoulder to order a cinnamon roll. We should have stuck to one donut and one cinnamon roll. Those donuts were the size of the kids’ heads…put together! Well not that big. Just the size of one head. DD saw the pink donut before we ordered so there was no getting around that one, we HAD to order it. Meanwhile I had my eye on the chocolate one. We did not finish all of the donuts. I think someone finished the donuts on a later day. However they were flat donuts at that point after riding around in the backpack.


Double shot coffee and chocolate donut


Pink donut


Coffee and Cinnamon Roll

I will say it was another of those waiting on GM moments. Poor lady just wanted to enjoy her morning coffee while I was always saying “let’s go!” She had to wait outside One Man’s Dream to finish her coffee before finding us in there. My DH’s super power is inhaling any kind of food or beverage really fast so despite the fact that he’ll join in with my mom and order a coffee too his is always gone very fast. She got smarter later in the trip and ordered an iced mocha so that she could drink it quicker.

As a side note, we went through the One Man’s Dream exhibit and it was kind of fun showing the models to DD. At the end, we saw the Bonjour scene from the upcoming Beauty and the Beast live action movie featuring Hermione Granger. It was pretty impressive, but I was mostly amazed by how it almost EXACTLY followed the animated version. I left that viewing with mixed feelings about how the live action movie would be.

Up next will be Brunch with a Twist...as soon as we get it written. Yikes! We'll try to hurry. Hopefully tomorrow.

 

[HolRae]

Loving the double report. Looking forward to reading more.