"You're killin' me with all these buffets!" 12 days filled with yummies 11/8-11/19

[TinkerKeeks]

Hi all
Welcome to my very first dining report
I have been lurking and sometimes commenting on all of yours for years, and finally decided to take the plunge and write my own.

We ate a lot, A LOT, on this trip lol To the point where my husband told me i was killin' him with buffets lol We had some really magical and amazing experiences, and also some less than magical experiences. I promise to be as honest as possible and include it all in this report, so lets get to the food!

But first let me introduce myself. This is my family

I am Kristie. I don't eat any kind of seafood whatsoever, or eggs. Other than that I am pretty much open. My husband, Chris, is pretty basic as well and seems to only consume chicken and beef. The littlest ones, our twins, are still on mostly formula and baby food. And my preschooler Gabe tries a lot of foods, but consumed massive amounts of popcorn on this trip
We went were visiting the world from 11/8-11/19. We stayed offsite so we were not on the dining plan and everything was out of pocket.

Without further ado, here is our dining line up

11/8 Earl Of Sandwich - Dinner
11/9 Cape May Buffet - Breakfast
11/9 Be Our Guest - Dinner
11/10 Akershus - Lunch
11/10 Food and Wine
11/11 Sleepy Hollow - Lunch
11/11 Ohana - Dinner
11/12 Hollywood and Vine - Lunch
11/12 Chilis (Off site) - Dinner
11/13 The Plaza - Lunch
11/13 Margaritaville(Universal Citywalk) - Dinner
11/14 50's Primetime Cafe - Lunch
11/15 Restaurantasaurus - Lunch
11/15 La Hacienda de San Angel - Dinner
11/17 1900 Park Fare - Breakfast
11/17 Chuy's Mexican(Off site) - Dinner
11/18 Crystal Palace - Lunch
11/18 Pizza Hut (Off site) - Dinner
11/19 La Cantina de San Angel - Lunch

Woohoo Let's get started

 

[TinkerKeeks]

So here we are at day one. We arrived in Orlando in the afternoon after a VERY long drive! Our plans for the evening were downtown disney. Which I immediately regretted after arriving to the ClusterBleep of the situation going on there. Nevertheless we were troopers and braved the very crowded disorganized downtown disney. We were starving so our first meal of the trip was Earl of Sandwich!
I had eaten here once before with my grandmother, who I affectionately call Nanny and will refer to her as that for the duration of this report. I got something I didn't really care for, but this time I was educated and knew to order the Holiday Sandwich. I ordered DH the philly cheesesteak, and we split a Broccoli and Cheddar Soup. I ordered a kids pizza sandwich for my older DS.
I waited online and ordered with the twinnies, while my DH took our older DS, Gabriel for about a million spins on the train. I got us a table, our buzzer went off, and it was time to chow down!!!
Here is the broccoli cheese soup

I apologize for the less than stellar pictures for this meal. We were starving at this point because we had not eaten all day, and I remembered half way through that we were on vacation and I needed to take pics lol
I really didn't care for this soup. It more broccoli, and less cheese, and overall just kind of watery. Very disappointing, but we ate it, because we were starving.

I have no picture of DH's cheesesteak. He ate in about .03 seconds. He said it was just okay, not the best cheesesteak he ever had, not the worst.

Then I ate what could possibly be the best thing I have ever eaten. The Holiday sandwich, which consisted of turkey, stuffing, and some sort of cranberry sauce. I hate cranberry sauce, but I LOOOOVE this sandwich. It was moist and creamy and dreamy and tangy and just soooo good. My only wish was that DTD wasn't a giant mess so we could've gone back there for a second round.
I truly apologize for this disgrace of a pic, I was enthralled with this sandwich and thoroughly pigging out when I remembered to snap a pic, and I clearly just wanted to get back to eating this sandwich cause the pic stinks lol


And then there was Gabriel's pizza sandwich. Which pretty much was pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese on a toasted bun. I can't remember if there was pepperoni in there. He seemed to enjoy it though, he ate about half, which is pretty good for him.


A bonus pic of Gabriel on the train

 

[btk2333]

How old are your twins?! We're taking our twins down in February!

 

[TinkerKeeks]

How old are your twins?! We're taking our twins down in February!

The twins just turned 10 months, they were about 9 1/2 months on our trip. They were really good on our trip, I was so nervous traveling with 3 little ones, but it all worked out. It was definitely a lot of juggling but we expected it and we really just went with the flow.
How old are your twins? If you are planing on doing a lot of table service, my suggestion would be make sure you change them in a bathroom before you get to the restaurant. We found the restaurant bathrooms to be really small (most only 3 stalls) and most had a line of people waiting to go and the changing tables were not in great locations. The Crystal palace bathroom was the worst, the changing table was right next to the door where people were lined up waiting, I couldn't even get to it

The best bathrooms were the family/ multi person ones.

 

[btk2333]

The twins just turned 10 months, they were about 9 1/2 months on our trip. They were really good on our trip, I was so nervous traveling with 3 little ones, but it all worked out. It was definitely a lot of juggling but we expected it and we really just went with the flow.
How old are your twins? If you are planing on doing a lot of table service, my suggestion would be make sure you change them in a bathroom before you get to the restaurant. We found the restaurant bathrooms to be really small (most only 3 stalls) and most had a line of people waiting to go and the changing tables were not in great locations. The Crystal palace bathroom was the worst, the changing table was right next to the door where people were lined up waiting, I couldn't even get to it

The best bathrooms were the family/ multi person ones.

Our twins are 8 months old now- they will be 10 months at the time of our trip but they were two months early so they'll be more like 9 month olds probably. Good tip on the changing tables! We do have quite a bit of TS scheduled (DW and I are kinda WDW foodies...) and we'll keep that in mind.

I am impressed by you making everything work with twins and another child! Zone defense! We are planning to take things at their pace and just enjoy the nice weather (we live in Iowa so escaping the snow will be fantastic).

Did your babies eat a lot of kinds of food? Ours are just starting to explore all kinds of food and it will be interesting to see what they want when we are in Florida!

 

[TinkerKeeks]

Our twins are 8 months old now- they will be 10 months at the time of our trip but they were two months early so they'll be more like 9 month olds probably. Good tip on the changing tables! We do have quite a bit of TS scheduled (DW and I are kinda WDW foodies...) and we'll keep that in mind.

I am impressed by you making everything work with twins and another child! Zone defense! We are planning to take things at their pace and just enjoy the nice weather (we live in Iowa so escaping the snow will be fantastic).

Did your babies eat a lot of kinds of food? Ours are just starting to explore all kinds of food and it will be interesting to see what they want when we are in Florida!

Aw my twins were born two months early too. I had them at 32 weeks. We went through a lot with them, so a lot of this trip was about celebrating how far they have come. They still have some issues and both receive occupational and physical therapy and are working on catching up.

Right now we are just on pureed baby foods, so I brought food for them. Since neither of my twins is sitting unassisted yet the disney highchairs were a no go. They did not provide enough back support, we had to bring our stroller in the restaurants for them to sit in.

 

[TinkerKeeks]

We woke up bright an early for our first park day! The day before was filled with travel lag but this day I was raring to go.
Our first ADR of the trip was for Cape May Buffet Character Breakfast. I was really excited to see the beach club, as I have not visited many disney resorts. Let me just say that this resort is beautiful. Even though it was drizzly and overcast, it did not take away from the beauty of the resort.
We walked in and the lobby was bustling. It was a sunday so I'm assuming a lot of check ins and outs. We checked into the restaurant and then realized we had forgotten an autograph book for my son, so we headed to the gift shop.
I got the basic disney autograph book for him, and he also picked out the 3 pack set of disney busses. My son has a bad car obsession, he loves any kind of vehicle, and he will play cars just about anywhere.

We finally got called and took our seats. This was our first attempt at dining at disney as a family 5, and I have to admit it was a little hectic at first. We didn't really know what to expect. So I apologize that this review doesn't have too many pics, we were just trying to find our groove still. I promise I took a lot better pics at our other meals.

Now my husband and I made a mistake of assuming that the twins would be able to sit in high chairs. So we tried it out and it was a disaster. They were slumping over and had no support. So we kindly asked our waiter if we could bring in our stroller for them instead and he was happy to let us. Also my husband forgot the diaper bag with bottles in the car. So that resulted in some baby crying while he ran to the car to get it.

Despite the craziness, I found the staff at Cape May to be one of the best restaurant staffs we have dealt with all trip. When I finally made it up to the buffet, this was my first plate.

Sorry this pic stinks. I promise the quality of pics goes up.
I got my favorite biscuits with sausage gravy. I love love love sausage gravy and its so hard to get in New York. There is also bacon, and I think some kind of lemon poppy muffin.
Here is my DS's plate, which consisted of mostly fruit. The fruit was very fresh and delicious.

There was bacon on there too, but he gobbled it up.
Here is the obligatory mickey waffle pic. My husband ate about 5 mickey waffles lol

Matteo got to try his first pineapple. He just mostly sucked on it, as he only has two teeth. He was amused though.


The characters were really great, and my son was completely amazed. His face meeting the characters made all the stress worth it.
Here are some character pics:




While this was one of our more stressful meals, as were still getting the hang of things, I really enjoyed it. I felt it was a great way to kickstart our vacation. I would definitely eat here again, the buffet food was some of the freshest we had, and the character interaction was great.

Up next we are headed to Magic Kingdom!!!