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-Katie and Nick
Today is Epcot mop-up day, plus Space 220, the new fully-themed full service place at Epcot (next to Mission: Space). The theming here is no joke; you can't go in or leave without going up or down the space elevator, because the actual restaurant is 220 miles above the Earth (hence the name). This does give a great view of stinky ol' Earth, complete with astronauts and space ships flying by:
Well now what did we eat?? I'm glad you asked! Bring on the appetizers. Err, the "lift-offs"!
The atmosphere was the winner. The Caesar salad was okay but on the bitter side.
Katie: I tried some and liked it so I might consider this in the future if I didn't like my own salad so much.
I thought this was great! I appreciated that for once a restaurant didn't put one little sploosh of dressing on and called it finished. As you can see in the photo, they didn't skimp nor did they drown the bibb lettuce. I ate every bit of this salad and still wanted more.
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| WHY YES THERE IS ANOTHER COLLAGE OR TWO COMING |
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| AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH |
Today is a rest day between MK yesterday and EPCOT tomorrow. So I don't have a lot, but how about a picture of the creepy mist that formed overnight??
Our plan was to lyft over to Grand Floridian, get breakfast, then take a leisurely monorail tour before heading home. And what do they have at Grand Floridian? Micky waffle girlfriend!! Cue the photo up!!
Isn't that cute??? I ate his little face. Ears first, which I slathered butter and maple syrup on, cut off, chewed up with my teeth and swallowed.
The Grand Floridian is a very nice hotel, but it's almost too nice; I always feel like a scrub in my Disney T-shirt, standard issue Dad Cargo Shorts, and Mandalorian helmet baseball cap. For Christmas, there's both a gigantic Christmas tree themed around the 12 days of Christmas, as well as a huge gingerbread house. Let's cue up the gingerbread house first...
...and now let's see it with the tree!
Whooh doggies! We then got a bunch of pins and rode around the monorail. We found ourselves back at the Polynesian around time for lunch. Boring Boy got another Boring Burger, while Katie got some kinda noodle thing:
Katie: I spent several minutes picking off whatever those green beans are, then I cleverly stirred the noodles so the beans migrated to the bottom of the container. I was initially worried the noodles would be lacking in flavor, but I was happy to discover they were not. The sauce had a nice spicy element to it that provided a bit of heat without overwhelming my sensitive face.
The Polynesian is one of my favorite non-park locations in WDW. It's beautiful, really giving you the feel of being in a peaceful location far removed from normal life. I feel no trip is complete without eating at Kona Cafe or making a pilgrimage to the grounds to soak in the atmosphere.
Now Boring Boy got his Boring Burger, but what about DESSERT? Well. I got an item known as the ELF DOME. Do we have a picture of the ELF DOME? Let's see it!!
There we are!! What is the ELF DOME? My friends, the ELF DOME is, I shall tell you, a Vanilla Cake Dome, Egg Nog Filling, White Chocolate Ganache and Buttercream. I would not have guessed egg nog filling; the vanilla cake dome instead tasted kind of peppermint-y. Maybe it was my tongue being fooled by the green and red frosting, or because I'd already tasted the forbidden nog back at our resort in the eggnog cupcake, but I did not really get nog from the elf dome. And that's fine! I liked this, although it was super sweet. Need a big bottle of water when you ingest the elf dome. Might wanna write that pro tip down.
That's all for today; video games in the hotel room until tomorrow!
Originally today we weren't going to make any reservations, but then we thought we might try the Crystal Palace, a conceptually confused restaurant that's themed on the real life 1851 Crystal Palace, but is also a buffet restaurant but is ALSO a character spot for Winny the Pooh for some reason? I don't know. It's nice inside, aside from one squeaking door that sounds exactly like either a yelling little kid or a bird. As for the food, it's okay. Beats Sebastian's, anyway. The selection here isn't as big as I'd like - salad, corn ruined by being encrusted with parm (???), some okay meat I wasn't super interested in, and a make your own tater tot station that seems based around dumping a ton of shredded cheese on it. And mashed potatoes. I guess I got spoiled by the buffet at Hollywood Studios, which is like three times the size. Then again, that place has a DJ who won't stop playing the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme (It's the mickey mouse club-house! Come inside, it's fun inside! Repeat 500 times), so I guess it's kind of a trade off. We were so unimpressed we didn't even take pictures of the food.
After that we visited everywhere we didn't do during the party, plus a few repeats. Pirates is the same as always, although we met the REAL Jack Sparrow, which Katie got a picture of:
After that was People Mover, which is still nice and relaxing, then Carousel of Progress where the ride broke and we had to watch the final scene twice. "Those whom the gods destroy they first make proud," I noted sagely as the mother informed the father that the oven was now voice-activated, knowing, Cassandra-like, his joyous shout of "Nine hundred fifty points?!" later in the scene would scorch his Thanksgiving bird beyond the point of eating. Also I sang along really loudly the whole ride.
After that was Buzz Lightyear, where Katie eked out a higher score than me, plus the photopass captured this cute picture:
The upside of the new Lightening Lane system is that you can basically hop on almost all of the rides. Obviously not having to wait in line is wonderful, and it doesn't even have the time gaps of the old Fastpass system where you might have three rides over 4-5 hours. You can really cram a lot of rides into a short time. I think this is mostly a positive change, but I do almost miss the gaps with Fast Pass where you're like "Well, we have 25 minutes, let's just sit down," so we took a nice long break to eat french fries in Cosmic Ray's before going over to the last thing today, the Hall of Presidents, which is, you know, fine. The current president no longer gives a little speech, he just recites the oath of office, which I guess is to avoid the crowd getting too rowdy (I held back from booing Mr. T____, who got a depressingly large amount of clapping and cheering from the, I'm just going to say it, largely honky crowd.)
How about a cute picture of us hugging to close today out? Paste it in here! Go!!
First off today was the Polynesian where we got the dreaded (drumroll) T O N G A T O A S T
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| T O A S T |
This is kind of hard to describe. It's two absolutely massively thick pieces of bread with a layer of banana in between that's fried in batter with sugar on top, and it's served as a massive bread cube. As if that isn't enough, we then also poured maple sugar on top of it. I really hope my endocrinologist isn't reading this. Also, bacon. Here's a picture of what it looks like once the cube has been breached to try and help visualize it:
Then it was off to Hollywood Studios!
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| Is this Hollywood Studios? You can't prove it isn't! |
Here we started with Midway Mania, where I managed to beat Katie's score for the first time. Her strategy is rapid-firing, while my arm gets tired pulling the lanyard over and over again. Katie won all of the rounds except the last, where I managed to somehow pull the lanyard more than her at the stationary target and catch up and just nose past her. Or she let me win but is too nice to admit to it. 50/50 chance.
After that is Rise of the Resistance, which is just as great as I remember and I won't say anything more about for fear of spoiling the magic. After that was Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway where absolute buffoon Goofy almost killed us sending our train car flying. This ride is as close as you can come to riding through a cartoon and I won't say anything more for fear of spoiling the magic. Also, Goofy is a menace and should absolutely not be entrusted with the safety of passengers. How he got Employee of the Month at Runaway Railways is a mystery to me.
Last up was Star Tours. We could have stayed longer, but by this point we were sweating buckets. Wait, did I show a picture of the grenade diet coke yet?? No?? Katie!! Get the grenade diet coke picture in here!!
So we were sweating. Despite it only being 78 degrees, a little hit of direct sunlight will have you melting. Also, Mr. Genius Man here started getting low on blood sugar and then discovered that the high-sugar s'mores bars he packed specifically for vacation didn't actually make it into the backpack we took into the park. So I had no choice but to eat 2000 calories of funnel cake and powdered sugar. I really hope my endocrinologist isn't reading this.
Last up was Star Tours, which unfortunately seems to be locked in Rise of Skywalker mode - normally the ride cycles between 6-8 scenes, but the last two times we've been on it it's the wrecked Death Star moon and then the salt planet from the end of Last Jedi. I hope they're going to move it back into totally random mode; I wanna go to Kashyyk and meet those wookies! Also, we got 60,000 pins you're all going to see and have to pretend to be interested in. Hey, what's Katie up to while I'm writing this trip report? Oh, she's drawing something on her mother's town board.
OH, OKAY. Well, let's go eat dinner now. Tonight is Sebastian's Bistro, the sit-down place at our resort.
We ate:
Nick: I liked the bread. I liked the plant-based guava butter, which I could not tell was plant-based guava butter. The caramelized onion jam was NASTY. Who wants to eat fried onion on bread?? That's just weird.
Katie: I liked the rolls. I liked the jam (Ed. note: WRONG), but I liked the butter better.
Nick: Pretty good! I wouldn't have thought that key lime dressing would be good, but it somehow was. Tasted like key lime pie, except a kind of key lime-y dressing. I even ate a radish cut into a flower shape and a real flower, which was a little odd. I could have done without the pumpkin seeds, but they're not a huge problem.
Katie: It was fine. I enjoyed eating a flower. The radish was pretty good.
Susan: I was surprised the key lime dressing was decent.
Taste of the Caribbean: A selection of our favorite dishes inspired by the flavors of the Caribbean. Impossible™ Kabob, Fried Jerk Tofu, and Impossible™ Sausage served with Cilantro Rice and Red Beans, Vegetable Curry, and Grilled Broccolini
Susan: When the salad is the best part, it tells the whole story.
Katie: The sausage was such a good facsimilie that I hated it just like the real thing. The tofu was good with the mango sauce but it was almost the only thing Nick liked so I let him have it. The stick stuff (ed. note: Impossible™ Kabob) was a good imitation of meat and that would be why it was just okay. The vegetarian curry was great and mixed well with the rice.
Nick: UM.... The skewers tasted like real meat. The tofu, and get ready because this is probably the first and last time I'm ever going to say this, the tofu was the best part. It's fried (and jerked?? can you jerk tofu?), and it doesn't have the slimy texture I don't like about tofu. Kind of creamy, rice-like. It was, I don't know if I wanna say good, but not bad with the mango sauce that isn't mentioned up there in the meal description was the best part. I don't want to talk about the Impossible™ Sausage. Let's just all pretend the Impossible™ Sausage never happened and never speak of it again.
Susan: Tasted like my grandmother's. Not awful. They can put that on the sign. "Not awful"
Katie: Yuck!
Nick: Oh, no! Oh, no! This was real bad! We got the vegetarian version of this and I don't know what goes in coconut-pineapple bread pudding that is an animal product, but it had no taste except pineapple, which I do NOT like, no sir. Amazingly bad. I think this may be the worst thing I've had at Disney. Even the plant-based ice cream was bad. Sebastian, what are you doing?? What is this??
So in conclusion... uhhh. Well, now we know. If you want somehow 100% flavorless cake or plant-based, umm, skewers, you know. Here you go. You never know what's going to be good or not until you try it. Sometimes things work out, and sometimes, umm, yeah.
I guess that's kind of a depressing note to end on. How about another nice sunset resort picture?
Today is Animal Kingdom, which is kind of a quarter day park. Our plan is to do the safari, eat lunch at Yak and Yeti, and go home. In the telling, we'll do Yak and Yeti first because, as is proud tradition, we took a hundred mcbillion animal photos, many also featuring my thumb. I debated getting the Korean chicken, but eventually wimped out and got the sweet and sour chicken, which is the best I've ever had here (out of two locations):
Beyond that I don't really have a lot to say about this, except I liked it so much I ate the pineapple!!! Wow. So brave. So brave and handsome. Katie got the lo mein, and by the way I'm centering all of these images because there's no way I have enough to say to fill the text in to the side if they're to the left or right:
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| "It was good, but I think I like PF Changs" |
Katie liked hers except she wanted "More MSG," which I think means it wasn't as flavorful as other lo mein she'd had. Then it was time for desert. Katie got fried wontons filled with cream cheese and on a skewer with pineapple and also I think there's some kind of vanilla ice cream on there? Is that right? Sure.
Oh, and there's strawberries? I don't know if those are decorative. I wasn't going to get desert until I found out there's a special 50th anniversary desert that isn't on the menu. Here it is:
This is chocolate mousse with gold flakes, uh, some kind of vanilla straw thing? Honestly, it's mostly mousse. I don't really like chocolate mousse, but this was really good. I was only able to eat down to where the pastry is because this is a lot of chocolate mousse.
All right, that's enough of that! Let's see a collage of a billion animal photos. Here are the animals we saw:
Painted dogs
Giraffes
Big cow things
Adorable giant fruit bats!!!! Look at their little faces!!!!
Jeremy Renner! Look at his little face!!!!
Zebras running around like maniacs
Elephants
Hippos
A water buffalo named Mark Buffalo
Those otters are cuddling!!!!
Flamingoes I thought were going to be pink but were kind of white
Skeptical ostrich
What the heck is this thing? I think that's just my thumb. Is that a cheetah back there?
A goat on a roof
Goats not on a roof
Sleepy lions
Giant anteater
A peacock? Some kind of huge bird up a tree.
A dove who dive-bombed a nice lady with a super New Yawk accent
Over-it tiger
Yelling monkey who had a takeout container he either stole or ordered with monkey money
Collages, go!!!
Not a lot to report today; we needed to recover from 8 hours at EPCOT, so we had lunch at the hotel and went to Disney Springs to see Cirque, which was awesome. If you're imagining a surrealist French-Canadian circus show based on the history of Disney, you're not far off. Awesome show, although some of the performances had the performers getting so high, in particular the see-saw and swing routines, I almost had to look away. There are of course no pictures or video allowed during the performance, but here's a photo sphere I created of the set:
As for what we ate, here's a picture of my pulled pork sandwich and the real star, the eggnog cupcake. Let's get the pulled pork out of the way quick:
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| *yawn* |
Okay, now let's bring on the eggnog cupcake. (drumroll)
We ended up having to use a spoon to attack this from the top; the green wrapping doesn't seem to open, or if it does we couldn't figure it out. That being said, going in from the top with a spoon actually worked really well and prevented me from getting icing all over my face like I usually do when a cupcake is too big. As for how it tasted, supposedly there's alcohol in here somewhere, but all I tasted was eggnog. Whatever the signature item that gives eggnog its noggness, this had it spilling out the green skirt we couldn't figure out how to open. The true spirit of nog is captured in this cupcake, which I am definitely going to get again. NOG
Tomorrow is Animal Kingdom, which is a half-day (more like a quarter day often) park, where we're probably going to get a billionty pictures on the safari, scarf something down at Yak and Yeti and go home. Poor Katie got woken up at 1 am by fireworks!!
