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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!!
Day... what day is it? Day three? Whatever day it is is Epcot. We got a Lightening Lane for the same time as our reservation at Le Cellier, but we gave this up, choosing to run through a cellar in France instead of eating cheese soup and poutine in Canada. And after going on Ratatouie, guess what we found out was going on at Epcot??????? It's the Epcot International Festival of the Holidays!!!!!!! So of course we had to go from country to country seeing how much we could eat and write down our thoughts, starting with...
Le Marché de Noël Holiday Kitchen (France)
Dinde Forestière, Patates Douces Rôties
Nick: Hmm, all right. I'm not really a big turkey fan unless it's spectacular, and this was just okay. Sauce wasn't bad. Potatoes are basic sweet potatoes. Big ehh energy.
Katie: I must have been very hungry because I really liked the turkey. At most, I can usually only handle a slice or two of deli turkey before I get physically unable to eat more (same with all meats. I have a meat shut off switch after a small amount).
Mom: Very, very good.
Nick: Ahh, the ol' Christmas log! Everything about this was great except the raspberry cream, which was overwhelmingly bitter and nasty. Gonna have to say I did not enjoy this. Deep six the raspberry and you've got a winner.
Katie: Long time readers from this and the other blog may remember that I'm not a big chocolate fan, so it's no surprise that I wasn't super into this dessert. There's a good kind of chocolate that doesn't insist upon itself and this wasn't it.
Mom: Very good!
Frozen Hot Chocolate Martini
Nick: WHOOH boy, all I could taste here was the vodka. Frozen hot chocolate sounds delicious, but that vodka's hard to not notice. Yowza!
Katie: I, too, could not help noticing the vodka. If it had been non-alcoholic, I would have probably had more than a sip. It wasn't bad for a vodka drink though. Weirdly enough, I've always sort of liked drinks with vodka in them but I only ever have a few sips.
Mom: The vodka was all in the bottom. The drink was too creamy as well.
L'Chaim! Holiday Kitchen
Nick: I liked this a lot. Nothing fancy, just a pastrami on rye sandwich with mustard, but it tasted great. I also kind of liked how small it was; just a few bites of nice pastrami and mustard and you're done.
Katie: I discovered that I kinda like pastrami, who knew? However, this comes with the disclaimer that I will never want a full sandwich of it. See my previous meat comments. Snagging a bite or two of someone else's sandwich is the amount I would be comfortable with.
Mom: The sandwich was good but dry.
Potato Latkes (or as autocorrect keeps making it, Potato Takes)
Nick: Eehhhh. I thought I was going to really like these, but I think I would have preferred if they were done a little bit more. The taste was fine, but I was looking for a little bit more CRUNCH.
Katie: I think some more crunch would have made these amazing, as Nick said, but I was still happy to eat an entire latke by myself. I would like more of these some time.
Mom: I liked these.
Sufganiyot: Mini Jelly-filled Donuts
Nick: Eurgh. Something went wrong with these; they were like hard. I guess they're fried, but they came out really hard. Why are they so hard?? Also, I don't like jelly inside baked goods. Bad all around. Bad idea, bad execution.
Katie: I thought these were really good. They were like the fried donuts you can sometimes get at Chinese places. I even liked the goop inside!
Mom: I thought the jelly was good, but the outside was dry.
Grilled Kebabs with Carrot-Chickpea Salad and Garlic Aioli (Harissa Chicken Version)
Nick: Not bad! Basic chicken kebab with a nice sauce. I personally prefer my chicken a little more done, maybe blackened around the edges, but I recognize that's kind of weird. Not bad, but I'm not running out to eat a lot more of it. The salad was good except it had what appeared to be RAISINS, ew, although they may have been dates, to which I am ambivalent.
Katie: I thought the chicken was cooked very well and was delicious. The salad was definitely far sweeter than I would have thought but it was good. I wasn't sure if the little chunks were raisins either, so I pretended they were dates like Nick.
Stone-Baked Moroccan Bread with Hummus, Fig Tapenade, and Zhoug Dip
Nick: I really liked the bread, but I'm not so sure about the dips. The fig was okay, the Zhoug was a little too spicy, and I like hummus, but for some reason I didn't like it delivered via the bread. What I was really looking for was, like, butter.
Katie: I thought the bread was great! The Zhoug dip was like a weird pesto that I didn't enjoy but I thought the fig dip was kinda good. I used that more than the hummus. I would totally have the bread again and test it against other dipping sauces or even just the fig again.
Nick: Wonderful! Very light, sweet and tasty without being overpowering; for me this was right in the sweet, uh, sweet spot, where it's sweet enough to taste great without being so rich you're done after a bite or two. I don't know if you're supposed to eat the sesame tulle, but I did and it was delicious too, so there.
Katie: I really liked how pleasantly simple it was. I wasn't punched in the mouth with sugar nor was I wishing the chef had not left it out of the dish. I would seek this out next time we wander by Morocco.
American Holiday Table (America)
Slow-Roasted Turkey with BEN'S ORIGINAL™ Stuffing, Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans, and Cranberry Sauce
Nick: Like with France, the turkey is fine. I didn't eat the green beans or my enemy cranberry sauce. The mashed potatoes were good; the BEN'S ORIGINAL™ Stuffing was good. I tried a bite with both mashed potatoes and BEN'S ORIGINAL™ Stuffing on one fork and that was not so good.
Katie: I liked mixing the mashed potato and stuffing but I don't remember thinking much of the turkey.
Mom: I liked the turkey but the stuffing had too much sage.
Holiday Pot Pie with Jackfruit, Mushrooms, Carrots, Peas, Onions and Puff Pastry
Nick: You know, I don't know that I've ever had jackfruit before, and come to think of it I still think I haven't. Wasn't there meat in this? I swear there were big pieces of chicken or beef or something in this, which is why I didn't have more. I'm sure if you like holiday pot pies this was great, but I don't, so it wasn't.
Katie: I was grossed out by the chicken since I'm not used to dark meat (I know, I am a picky baby) and made Mom and Nick eat all of it. I liked the crust.
Mom: The crust was good but the rest of it was yucky.
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| Clockwise upper left: cheesecake, pot pie, turkey, cookie of ultimate power |
Pumpkin Gingerbread Cheesecake with Cranberry Whipped Cream and Candied Pumpkin Seeds
Nick: Well, this was good, but I think I've just come to the conclusion that I'm not a cheesecake fan. I might suggest deep-sixing the pumpkin seeds, the chewy texture doesn't really go with the super smooth cheesecake.
Katie: I didn't like the seeds (see previous picky baby comment) but I freaking loved this cheesecake. It was so light and creamy. The kind of creamy where you audibly go "mmmmm" in pleasure. 100% would eat again and pick off the seeds.
Mom: This was very good!
Chocolate Crinkle Cookie made with DOVE® Dark Chocolate
Nick: WHOOH boy, remember up in Morocco where I was talking about how I like baked goods that aren't too rich? This is too rich. It tasted great, but I could barely get through one single bite without feeling like I was about to die of chocolate overload. Just way, way too rich for human consumption.
Katie: The cookie was good and--as I think my fellow Mouseketeer will note--it was too dang big.
Mom: There was too much of it and it was so chocolatey. It would have been better as a few mini cookies to share.
And that's as far as we made it before getting full. Now it's on to other stuff at EPCOT, starting with...
Test Track
Whooh, we hadn't been on Test Track in years! Thanks to Katie and possibly spending $75, we were able to get on Ratatouie, Test Track, and Soarin' all in one day, which is three of the four big attractions; the only reason we didn't go on Frozen, the last one, was more disinterest (it's fun once or twice, but it doesn't have the staying appeal of a Test Track or Soarin'). Test Track is pretty much how I remember it - a thrilling, umm, thrill ride. I'll have to see if we can use photopass to get pictures of the ridiculous plasma-reactor fueled car we made (apparently Chevrolet has plasma reactor technology for cars???).
Mission Space
Is still exactly the same and we didn't take any cool pictures to post here (apparently snapping selifes during takeoff is discouraged). Oh boy, I sure hope there are some rides here that give me an excuse to post a ton of pictures!! Uh oh!!
Spaceship Earth
Spaceship Earth was supposed to be getting a refurb, but covid came along and derailed that. The last time we were here we rode this like six times while crying and bidding farewell to old Spaceship Earth, but here it is still here! There's not much to say about this since we've ridden it 10,000 times, but it is in the big iconic EPCOT ball, which means I can post a billion pictures of the awesome new lighting job on the iconic big EPCOT ball! Go, collage!
Living With The Land
Still the same boat ride through the jackfruit and monkey puzzle trees, although it has been given a charming Christmas overlay, complete with lights buried in the sand next to the dragon fruit. Oops, looks like I'll have to post a billion pictures we took here!!
All right, that's all for EPCOT. Tomorrow we're sitting around the hotel room to recover, so the most exciting thing I can hype up is a eggnog cupcake. Stay tuned!
