The Disney Files Part 2

Are you ready to hear about every single thing I ingested whilst at Disney?  I'm sure not, so I'll try to restrain myself.  I will share our experiences for the first few days in this post.  It's probably best to deliver my thoughts in bite sized chunks.  More palatable that way. Puns intended.  I'm sure there are more to come  :)

Once upon a time, we went to Chicago for a week.  Chloe and I crashed Frank's business trip, so our accommodations were covered and we still managed to go WAY over budget.  Food is expensive when you are on vacation, and I knew Disney would be at least as bad as Chicago, if not worse.  I didn't want any surprises, so in the spirit of go big or go home and we're probably never doing this again, I opted to purchase the Disney Dining Plan.  I had read many articles during my planning phase that said it isn't always the best value, but considering how much I love to eat, I figured we would easily get our monies worth.  I'm not sure that it panned out that way, but regardless, here's my play by play. Also, for the purposes of clarification: We were on the plan which allowed us (At first I typed -  afforded us, but then that made me laugh too hard to continue) one snack, one quick service meal, and one table service meal for each night we were there. When I don't mention breakfast, it's because we ate Clif bars in the room.  So... Yeah.  Nothing to see here.

As I mentioned in my last post, a huge portion of my planning energy went toward choosing restaurants, booking reservations, agonizing over my decisions, starring at menus again, changing reservations and then hoping I had made all of the right decisions.

One of the first things I did was ask my Facebook friends for their restaurant recommendations.  This was huge! Hearing from different people in varied seasons of life was beneicial. I knew I wanted to eat dinners at Sanaa, 50's Prime Time and  'Ohana.  Based on other things I had read online, I really wanted to eat lunch at Be Our Guest and dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table.

Day One - We arrived at our resort around 7:00 PM or so and opted to eat at our resort food court since we were, A. super hungry, and B.even more tired.  The Riverside Mill Food Court had many cafeteria style offerings and all of us opted for the pasta bar. It was far from the tastiest pasta I have ever eaten, but it was much better than what you would expect from a food court.  Overall, it worked for what we needed under the circumstances.

On Saturday (Day Two), we had planned to be in the parks all day, but the the Florida weather convinced us otherwise.  Fifty degrees and thirty mile per hour winds? Really, Florida?  Come on. We could have stayed in Michigan for that madness.

We ended up at Disney Springs and ate lunch there. It was underwhelming.  Due to some logistical errors, we had to split up for lunch lest anyone die of starvation. You know, the super first world version of starving to death. We are at Disney World but we can suck the magic right out of the happiest place on earth if our blood sugar dips ever so slightly.  In a not very shocking plot twist, no one absolutely loved what they had here, there and everywhere. But you know what they say.... Haters gonna hate especially when they be lunchin' late. To protect the (probably) innocent restaurants, I won't name any names. I'm sure it was us, not them. Honestly, I have to say I did enjoy my sweet potato tots from the Food Truck where I got my lunch. The buffalo chicken and waffles weren't all bad either.

Saturday evening we had a delightful meal at Sanaa.  Thankfully, I had read something about making sure to be there in the daylight, so despite the monkey wrench that it threw into my plans, I switched things around to make sure we could be there before sundown and I'm so glad that I did!!! Our table overlooked the savanna and there were zebra right outside our window while we were eating!  They could have served us Purina Dog Chow and it still would have been an awesome experience.  Luckily, they didn't. We started out with the Indian style bread service.  We went for it and ordered all nine sauces to dip the five different types of  of naan bread in, and we were impressed!  My entree wasn't the greatest, but again, this was probably me, not them.  Dessert totally made up for it.  Chloe was, shall we say, extremely disillusioned by the food but surprisingly Sanaa came through with an excellent burger and turned her frown upside down. Glory, hallelujah!  And the cookies and milk dessert was the literal icing on the,well, cookie.  The Hubster and I shared our desserts and they were divine.  Our awesome waiter recommended the kulfi, which was a super rich and delicious custard like ice cream.  I think it was strawberry.  I know for sure it was delectable. We also ordered the Tanzanian chocolate mousse and it was good, but paled in comparison to the kulfi. I expect most of the desserts would.

On Sunday (Day 3), we hit three of the four parks.  It was the only day that the Hubster could join us, so we had to make it count. We had lunch reservations at Be Our Guest (For a quick service credit! Such a phenomenal value and experience!), which was another highly anticipated meal and it completely delivered! Well, for two of the three of us, anyway.  Chloe, who is not usually that finicky, was NOT feelin' the food at Disney World.  Which was the only down side to our entire trip. She basically lived on ice cream and green beans. Chloe and I both had the braised pork and it was delicious!  The Hubster had the tuna nicoise salad and was equally impressed. We couldn't eat at the Beast's Castle without trying The Grey Stuff, which was indeed delicious, as promised. Spoiler alert:  It's the Oreos that make it both grey and delicious. What with Oreos bring one of my primary love languages, I was wishing I could have ordered a vat of it.

We did not have dinner reservations for this night, due to last minute juggling required to be at Sanaa before it got dark...  We went to Epcot knowing that we would be able to find something there. In my heart, I had known we would end up at the German buffet Biergarten, even though the Hubster never wanted to commit.  He is a huge fan of German food, so this surprised me, but we did, in fact, end up there, and I'm so glad we did. The food was just okay, for me, but the macaroni and cheese could go down in the record books for the most fattening (it was also delicious) thing I ate while I was there, which... considering I ate dessert sometimes as many as 4 times a day, that is really saying something!  Super yummy. The awesome part about our dinner was sitting with a family from England that was a true delight to get to know. Also, like most German restaurants, there was live entertainment!  Super fun. And let us not forget the hefeweizen. Yum.

I'd say that's enough food for thought for today, friends.  Next time, the rest of the story.  At least the rest of the food story.  I have a feeling this Disney Files series is far from over. Thanks for reading!!What is your favorite restaurant at Disney World?