Visions of Turkey Legs are Dancing in My Head - Christmas at the World

[EvilQueensRock]

GOOD MORNING!!!!

Today's the day we return to The World for the first time since 2006. DD is now 14 (Gosh I'm Old), and DH still loathes Disney World. (He does love him a Disney Cruise though.)

Me - I'm the Disney Lunatic in the house. This trip is to celebrate my 40th birthday (which was in July, but who's counting), my DD scoring her first 4.0 GPA ever (so proud!), and DH, well, he has no choice.

This trip was a little bumpy in it's evolution, as it started out as a Disney Cruise in October, and ended up being Christmas at Disney World instead.

And so, a Way Back Wednesday...
October 2013: I NEED A CRUISE. I ALWAYS TAKE A CRUISE IN OCTOBER. OK LET'S BOOK A CRUISE FOR NEXT OCTOBER.

July 2014: CRAP I AM UNABLE TO PAY OFF MY CRUISE IN OCTOBER. AND I CAN'T TAKE DD OUT OF SCHOOL THAT LONG OR THE TRUANT OFFICER WILL BE ON THE CRUISE WITH US. CANCELLED DISNEY DREAM DOUBLE-DIP HALLOWEEN CRUISE. FAIL.

August 2014: *opens mailbox* OMG A PIN CODE FOR FREE DINING WITH A STAY AT PORT ORLEANS FRENCH QUARTER (not included with the public free dining offer....) SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And with that development, plus a full refund from DCL (don't worry Double-Dip cruise, I WILL be back for you...) we were booked.

And we leave TODAY. And I somehow have to make it through the next 4.75 hours of work.

So I better get back to shuffling paper.

And BTW, this trip is ALL ABOUT THE FOOD.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

I really cannot focus this morning. Writing an in-progress trip report is so much more entertaining (and important!) than working in accounting.

Here's the game plan:

12/17 Drive to Chicago Midway, evening flight to MCO (that's Mickey's Corporate Office ya'll), check in at Port Orleans French Quarter

12/18 EPCOT - collectively, the fam's favorite park. Dinner at Biergarten and Candlelight Processional

12/19 Magic Kingdom - Breakfast at Cinderella's Royal Table, Lunch at Be Our Guest, and I dumped my 7 Dwarves Mine Train FP+ for Haunted Mansion. Yep, that's how we roll in da Region.

12/20 Animal Kingdom - no ADR's here, but we are meeting up with my SIL and her family, and she has little ones, so I'm very excited to relive that part of Disney magic. (And relieved to know they are not coming home with us when the inevitable meltdowns occur.)

12/21 Downtown Disney - Brunch at Raglan Road. I'm looking forward to this as DD has been an Irish Dancer since age 7.

12/22 EPCOT again! - Lunch at Akershus. DH's choice. He says it's for the food. He's full of crap. He just wants to see more pretty-pretty princesses.

12/23 Hollywood Studios - Dinner at Sci-Fi Dine-In Theatre.

12/24 Alas, we must leave and go get our dog out of hock. (She was NOT pleased when I dropped her off at the kennel last night. )

Once I figure out how to post pictures (!), we'll get this ball rolling, but for now, back to the grind. 3 hours 56 minutes to go until I'm released from prison. I mean, clocking out for vacation.

 

[thebigman65]

LMAO... you are too funny..... Posting pictures is easy.

- go to Photobucket.com and open an account (Free)
- Upload your photos.
- once they are uploaded, they will be in your Library. Hover your cursor over the photo you want to post and click on the gear at the top right corner. Choose Share. A box will pop up and have some choices on the right hand side. click on the one that says "IMG" then go to DIS where you make your post and right click to paste it in your post.
-Voila!

Have fun....sounds like you will have a blast.....not so sure about your hubby though.....

 

[EvilQueensRock]

THANK YOU SO MUCH! Heading to photobucket now. I've uploaded pics to my Facebook page but wasn't sure if I could pull them from there.

I'm going to be dreaming of running through Raglan Road's Scallop Forest tonight. OMG.

 

[thebigman65]

THANK YOU SO MUCH! Heading to photobucket now. I've uploaded pics to my Facebook page but wasn't sure if I could pull them from there.

I'm going to be dreaming of running through Raglan Road's Scallop Forest tonight. OMG.

You're welcome.....yes you an use them from FB as well...I just found that out.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

Here's the players!

From left to right:
Tim, DH, 43, likes to eat and drink his way through EPCOT.
Maddie, DD, 14, OBSESSED with Oswald. We bought everything Oswald we could find (except the Racer car and the knit-stuffed Oswald. Too weird looking for her taste.)
Andrea, ME, 40, I'm the Disney lunatic. My planning went pretty well, but the execution was a little bit off, and then my players didn't always like waiting for me to take a picture of their food, and then I got tired and started to forget to take pictures of food.... but I think for the most part, I did just ok.

So, here we are in the lobby of Port Orleans French Quarter:

 

[EvilQueensRock]

This is my third attempt at a post about the Epcot food, and I've been logged out twice. It's getting a little irritating.

Let's do this.

EPCOT.
Sunshine Seasons.

Breakfast Panini and Red Velvet Whoopie Pie.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

Wandering into World Showcase, we found this:

Which caused Tim to order THIS:

which he describes as Good, but just WRONG....

So then I went to France to get one of these:

Chocolate Crepe

Then we needed lunch, so it was off to Morocco, where the three of us split two Lamb and Chicken Shwarma platters. These were huge and we could have easily split just one.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

Oh, my Disney-Naïve husband. He obviously didn't listen to my incessant babbling and planning for the past 6 months. Otherwise, when we showed up for our 3:10 reservation at Akershus, he wouldn't have looked so shocked to find we were surrounded by little people and stressed out parents. He wanted to go here for the Traditional Kjottkake. The fine folks at Akershus did a good job though. They seated us at what is probably the worst table in the house. It's a three seater pushed up against the kitchen wall, right by the buffet. But for us, that was perfect.

Gratuitious Princess Picture with my Princess. She's 14, but she seemed ok getting Princess pictures taken.


Onto the food! Cold buffet plate:

Traditional Kjottkake:

Salmon with Cod-smashed potatoes


Here's the bad news: WE DECLINED DESSERT. Can you believe it???

 

[EvilQueensRock]

Ah, the battles we pick.

Maddie likes to march to her own drummer. She's very anti-Starbucks, as that's what The Common White Girl does, and she has an image to uphold. Unfortunately, for her, her Mom and Dad LOVE Starbucks, and so here's what went down.

Fountain View Café. Oh look a Starbucks. Maddie, what do you want? *grumble/argue/grumble/fightlosingbattle* Guess what? Grandma gave me Starbucks gift cards, so here's your Chai Latte and Mickey Cupcake. Go sit your butt down.

I win.

Mickey Cupcake, Banana Nut Bread, and Artisan Sandwich. YUMMO.




And in the end, the Chai Latte and Cupcake were gone. Must have been ok for my princess.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

I tried on both our past trips to get a ressie to CRT. This time, I was finally successful. It was lovely. We really enjoyed it, even with our Princess being too old for the costuming and sparkles. The food was great, the service wonderful.
Breakfast Pastries

Lobster and Crab Crepe

Spinach and Mushroom Quiche

My Birthday Cupcake!

 

[EvilQueensRock]

After reading all the negative reviews of Be Our Guest, I went in with positive vibes and had a positive experience. Woot.

Tim had the Braised Pork. It was phenomenal. Sorry for the blurry pic.

Maddie had the Quinoa Salad. She really liked it, but was picking out the peppers and olives, and there were so many she finally gave up on the salad.

I had the Roast Beef Sandwich. I liked it, but would have liked half the amount of bread, plus more horseradish. The fries were disappointing in that I was expecting more of a steak fry, but they did the job.

All three of us had the cupcake with the Grey Stuff on it. To quote Maddie: "This is amazing."

We were very happy with BOG and would do it again.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

Later we wandered around MK playing the Sorcerers game and we stumbled across Sleepy Hollow. This was Maddie's Bucket List Food pic: Nutella Waffle with just strawberries. She was quite pleased.

Tim loves ice cream sandwiches, so he got this. Unfortunately, the cookie tasted like it was missing something, so it ended up in the round file. (But it looks delicious!)

 

[EvilQueensRock]

We did not have any ADR's scheduled for our Animal Kingdom day, so we grazed our way through the park. It really is a half-day park. This was the day I wished I had gotten the park hopper or water parks and more added to our tickets.
Breakfast was at Pizzafari. Tim and I both got the Bounty Platter, and Maddie just picked off of ours. She's not a big breakfast eater.


Later we stopped for ice cream at Trilo-bites. Maddie and I split a chocolate shake, and Tim and I split a Waffle Bowl Sundae. Both were very good.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

Then we made stop at Tamu Tamu for Chicken Curry. Actually, Maddie really wanted Naan bread, but we couldn't get just that. Note: The Chicken Curry is FABULOUS.

Then we walked to Asia because I wanted to go to Yak and Yeti and get Sweet and Sour chicken. Photo fail on my part. I forgot. Probably because the sweet and sour chicken was awful. We also got two egg rolls. Those were delicious and I would get just those again.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

Here's a compilation of items from the Sassagoula Floatworks Food Factory. The pastries are very good. The hot items we all rated as meh.
Yummy Cheese Danish


Beignets! Ok. These are worth it.


Chocolate Croissant. Can't go wrong.


Pancakes with Fruit:


Build your own breakfast bowl. I had high hopes for this, but picked at it and Tim finished it off. Just wasn't what I thought it would be.


We also went for dinner one night. Tim had the jambalaya. He said it was average, and what he had in Shreveport was much better. (Go fig.) I ordered ribs and chicken and got just chicken. It came with mashed potatoes and gravy, a side of beans, and cornbread. It was ok. Maddie had a chicken quesadilla and didn't say one way or the other if she liked it, so I guess it was ok.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

We ate our way through Hollywood Studios, mostly in an attempt to burn up all our credits. Maddie shared a lot of quick-service meals with us, so we ended up with more than anticipated at the end of the trip. No worries, we knocked them out.

Lunch at Starring Rolls. We went here to get sushi. Turns out we were there about an hour prior to their sushi delivery at noon. So we went with the Black Forest Ham sandwiches and chips.

Maddie had a tiramisu and I got a Santa Cupcake. It was gingerbread and very good.


Tim had the Turkey Sandwich with the Banana Split dessert, which he said was awesome. No pics. We ended up having to sit on a bench to eat lunch while he ate off the top of a trash can.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

We took a break from DHS and took a DVC tour. We almost bought into it, but I wanted to take a harder look at our finances before committing to a 10 year contract at 17.5% interest. It's a good deal, but if we can get better financing elsewhere, we will. Adarsh Singh was our salesperson and he was great. We are definitely interested and see the value.

Commercial break over - we headed back to DHS and onto our dinner reservation at Sci-Fi. Now, we had a good experience here. I got the picnic burger and it was delicious. Tim got shrimp pasta and said it was really good. Maddie had the chicken pasta and said it was good but a little dry. I tried hers and didn't like it at all. For dessert I got the Candy Bar, which is the only picture that kind of turned out.


We also had frozen lemonades from Min and Bill's. This was much better than the frozen cups I saw elsewhere.


And now, here's the real reason to go to DHS. The Osborne Lights!

 

[EvilQueensRock]

Raglan Road. Best Meal of the Trip. Hands down. Why? These little beauties.


I've been dreaming of running through the Scallop Forest. Skip the provided sauces and dip them babies in the Guiness and Sugar Reduction that comes with the soda bread. OMG.



Soda bread. We do a lot of things Irish. Maddie was an Irish Dancer until recently (she's "retired", but I'm hoping she comes out of it soon) so we've spent a lot of time travelling to competitions and performing in Irish pubs and eating Irish food. This is, hands down, the best Irish Soda Bread for my palate. I don't usually like soda bread.


Maddie got the obligatory Fish and Chips.


I had the Chicken Sanger. Best part were the Chips. Best fries I've ever had. I would go back just for the fries and scallop forest.


Tim had the Chicken Curry. He said it was good, but he preferred the red curry we had at Tamu Tamu.


For dessert we split the Dunbrody Kiss, and Tim had the bread pudding. Both were amazing.

 

[EvilQueensRock]

I could have stayed another week, but alas, I must go to work tomorrow. We capped off our trip with Christmas Eve dinner at McDonald's off I-94. I didn't bother taking pictures.

Wrap up on the dining plan:

We had 21 snacks, 21 QS, and 21 TS credits.

Our TS credits went as follows:
Biergarten - booked the Candlelight Processional package, used 2 TS each
Cinderalla's Royal Table - 2 TS, included gratuity and a photo package.
Akershus Storytime Dining - 1 TS, included photo package
Raglan Road Brunch - 1 TS, included Irish Dancers and Band
Sci-Fine - 1 TS, included "atmosphere"

My take on table service: Give me a choice of either an appetizer or dessert. The past two trips were a long time ago, and we got both an appetizer and dessert, plus gratuity was included. It's free dining, so I'm not going to complain about the gratuity issue, simply because we did have bad service in the past when it was included, so I like having the option of tipping how I want to. (For the record, we are typically 20% tippers.) Tim made a good point with the gratuity issue however - lots of people from outside the US don't tip in restaurants, so having the gratuity covered is a good thing.

I got tired of dessert, and to once again quote my daughter: NO MORE DAIRY. She doesn't have a dairy allergy or anything, she just got tired of it.

Sci-Fi could probably operate very easily as a Fast Pass Quick-Service like BOG. If I had to pay out of pocket I would not pay $22 for a small plate of pasta that didn't come with any sides and bread.

Overall, we like the Free Dining because we love the all-inclusive feel of it.

Ok - now I'm off to update my Golden Spoon.
Merry Christmas!