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?

Must Share... The Disney Files (Part 1)

After much planning and anticipation, we went to Disney in January.  I had myself convinced it would be a one time deal, so we went the go big or go home route and stayed on Disney property, did the dining plan and hopper passes.  The whole she-bang!  We had so much fun and I just can't bear the thought of not sharing every detail with you, so here we are with the first installment.

Part One - The Planning

I'm not gonna lie, the planning was exhausting.  I'm an over-thinker, so planning can be a real love/hate thing for me.  I'm pretty sure you could get a PhD in Disney planning, and since I didn't have one, my head was smoking at times. I read books, blogs and pinterest, polled the facebook audience, enlisted the help of a travel agent and probably spent as many hours planning as we spent in total on the actual vacation.  By the time we left for Florida, a huge part of me was excited for it to be over with so I could STOP THINKING ABOUT IT ALREADY, FOR THE LOVE OF MICKEY MOUSE.  Seriously.  It's a lot of planning.

I had been twice before, when I was 5 and 16ish, so I had no experience with the planning end of things.  The unknown factor always makes things more difficult, but my WORD.  Not having a grasp on things where researching a Disney vacation is concerned really puts you at a disadvantage.  Next time will be so much easier!

I began reading and researching about a year and a half before our trip.  Yes, you read that right.  We knew the Hubster would be down there for work at a certain time, so we had a lot of notice. We also had a baby and no plans for any fun vacations in the meantime, so I had a lot of time, energy and vacation anticipation to devote to this one!  I had been pinning things on a Pinterest board I had entitiled Someday.  It was so exciting when I could finally start reading those with an actual trip in mind!

The first choice that had to be made was where to stay. This was one of the easiest decisions for me and I'm very happy with how that turned out.  More details on that in a future post. I knew that I wanted to stay on property, because I had my heart set on using the Disney Dining plan and that's only an option for Disney Resort guests. Based on information from friends who had recently stayed in a value resort, recommendations from my agent, and the fact that a Deluxe resort was not within our budget,  we opted to stay at Port Orleans Riverside, a nice moderate choice. We loved it.  Again, more details to come.

The next most pressing item of business, since we were using the Dining plan, was restaurant reservations.  These can be made 180 days in advance.  In fact, it is strongly recommended to make them as soon as your window of opportunity opens up, especially for some of the more popular restaurants.  This is where I spent TONS of my time.  I'm a huge fan of food, so I really enjoyed this part of it.  Once my reservations were made, I took a big long break from thinking about Disney! Which was fine, since I still had 6 months before the trip!

The next time sensitive item on the to do list was fast pass reservations. I bought a book for my daughter and we read through that together to decide what we wanted to do at each of the parks.  This was our main source of information on the attractions, shows and all the parks had to offer. The reviews in the book were by kids for kids and that was good and bad.  In some ways, I felt it was a little misleading, but that is one more thing that you don't really know until you experience it for yourself. The day I was able to reserve our fast passes, If all of these things sound foreign, crazy or ridiculous to you, I know exactly how you're feeling.  There were so many things I didn't know about, understand or want to figure out!  I'm telling you, once you've been and have seen the importance of the different requirements, options, etc., it really all makes sense.  Unfortunately, your first time planning it, you have to go by other people's advice and experience and basically feel your way in the dark and go into it somewhat blind.  I was lucky to be there at a very slow time (late January) so I was able to move some things around once I had a better idea of things, but most people will not have that luxury.

What are your best Disney planning tips?  When are you going?  I would go back next month if I had a Disney Money Tree growing in the back yard!!!

Next up, Part 2 Disney Dining!

Greater Love Hath No Mom than to Watch Treasure Buddies with her Daughter

Have you seen that movie?  I do not recommend it.

She gave me a choice between Horton Hears a Who, Despicable Me, and Treasure Buddies.

I chose Despicable Me and she said, "Aw.... I thought you'd choose Treasure Buddies!"  (Really?!?!?!? It's like you don't even know me!) So, I say, "Is that the one you want to watch?" I already knew the answer... "Yeah..."

And that is how I came to spend 93 minutes cuddled up watching one of the dumber movies of all time tonight.  All in the name of love.  Where do I collect my Mother Of The Day Award?

And a looooong day it has been, too.  Someone must have found out there was a plot afoot to sleep in and at 6:15 AM decided he had had enough sleep.  I won't mention any names, but it was the one person who requires my assistance when conscious, so that basically crushed my dreams for the day. Sigh.

I still love ya, summer - but let's aim for 8 tomorrow, shall we?

In Which I Attempt to String Words Together that Adequately Express my SHEER JOY Regarding Summer Vacation

Spoiler Alert:  It can't be done.

There aren't enough words in the English language (nor the 4 words I know in Spanish) to express the joy that my heart feels about not getting up at 6:30  AM and not packing a lunch.  Not even the Emoji's can communicate my happiness.  I checked.

Oh, summer!  How I've missed you!  Not that I really enjoy hot weather or being outside or the assortment of pests that you bring along with you, but all of that is beside the point. I don't have to wash school uniforms, commute to school in another county, or single handedly fill a landfill, WEEKLY, with obscene amounts of school assignments. So I will squash bugs with a smile on my face.

While sweating.

Outside.

Not that I kill bugs outside.  Mostly, only if they insist on living in my house. Because, no.  You have an entire planet to live in, so get out of my house or die. I'm getting off topic, though.

Speaking of off-topic.

My air conditioner in my car is not working correctly and it is creating a First World Problem of Epic Proportions over here.  The only thing worse than being outside on a hot summer day, is being in a car without air on a hot summer day.  You've been there.  Back soaked with sweat, hair in tiny knots that make that pixy cut that you can NOT pull off seem like a brilliant idea. That last part is probably just me.

Here's the funny part.  Ironic, really. The air does work.  Just none of the vents that can actually be pointed in my direction.  The driver.  Who is always in the car.  So, I pity the fool who sits in the passenger seat, because that person will be needing a cardigan, for real.  I have to BLAST the air over there and then WILL it, through intense prayer and supplication, to circulate and eventually cool my quadrant of the vehicle, in the hope that I won't spontaneously combust whilst driving down the expressway.

I should get that checked out, spontaneous combustion would put a serious damper on summer vacation.

Happy Sleeping In, friends!  What are your big plans for the summer?