12.4 Animal Kingdom Safari and Yak and Yeti

 

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:

"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!!!

12.3 Disney Springs Cirque de Soleil

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:

*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!!

12.2 Epcot: Festival Holidays

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.

Bûche de Noël Chocolat Blanc, Framboise

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 

Pastrami on Rye with House-made Pickles and Deli Mustard

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.

Tangierine Café: Flavors of the Medina (Morocco)

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.

Almond-spiced cake with ginger mousse, orange ganache, and sesame tulle

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.

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!

12.1: Off day at Disney Springs

Stitch spit on me :(

Not much to report today; we went to Downtown Disney, ate a ton of food, purchased a ton of Disney swag and came home. The American dream, basically. We'll go over what we ate at Rainforest Cafe, but I can't really show what we got because most of you are going to be getting it as gifts. All we got for ourselves is that I got myself a pair of swank gold sweatpants (this is not a joke). So here's what we ate:

Nick: South China Chicken Salad

Pretty good! I don't know if the picture does justice to how huge this is, but it's a big huge massive bowl full of lettuce, potato sticks, sesame seeds, carrots, rice noodles, scallions... and one extra ingredient that isn't listed and I wasn't expecting: Love. No, actually it's little orange pieces. I liked everything except the orange pieces, which were mushy and very odd to bite into. I didn't eat all the chicken, which could be fried (It Could Be Fried: The Nick Hammer Story), but otherwise I gulped this all down real fast. Not the best salad out there, but in the top five for sure. Fry up that chicken, deep six the orange and you've got a champ. Oops, I need to fill up a little more room to get past the image. Harb a blarg a blarb a zarp. Did that do it? Ah, almost. There we go. Okay, Katie!

Katie: Chicken Quesadillas and House Salad

The chicken quesadillas were good, a few slices had pieces of chicken that were too thick for me but overall I liked it. The house salad was good for what it is and much bigger than I thought it would be. I chose the China Island dressing, which is so good I found myself stealing things from mom's big appetizer plate just to use as a dressing delivery system. 

Mom: Big appetizer plate I already forgot the name of and house salad

Surprisingly enough, I liked the spinach artichoke. I like spinach but not artichoke. I really liked the chicken tenders. The other stuff was okay, it wasn't great but it was okay. 

As for the house salad, I liked that a lot. 

Nick's thoughts: The big appetizer plate is chimi-cha-chas (light, crisp wonton skin embraces roasted chicken breast, sweet corn, onions, black beans, fresh lime, roasted red peppers and our four-cheese blend. served with fresh guacamole and pico de gallo), spinach & artichoke dip with tri-colored tortilla chips, cheese sticks and chicken tenders. served with fresh guacamole, marinara and coconut curry sauce. I had a chimi-cha-cha and a tendie, both of which were good. The chimi-cha-cha tastes like a spicy eggroll from City Line, if you want to re-create the Rainforest Cafe experience without being in a rainforest with screaming monkeys. The chicken tender and the honey mustard were also good, kind of, I want to say, spicy? Maybe it's that thing where the honey mustard is more mustard than honey. Good, though, and the only reason I didn't have more was because I had to face off with my gigantic salad.

After that we went shopping at Goofy's Candy Co where I got I can't tell you, then the world's largest Disney store where I got none of your business (Katie's note: they no longer ship to your resort so keep that in mind when you shop). Except for this one thing I got for myself. May I present my super swank set of 50th anniversary sweatpants (huge dramatic fanfare as a curtain rises on the following picture):

So, a pretty successful day! Now it's back to the resort to drink Coke Zero and play Animal Crossing. Katie's designing a beach-themed cafe called Sandi Buttz.

11.30: Magic Kingdom, Liberty Tree Tavern & Mickey's Magical Christmas Party

It's Mickey's Magical Christmas Party, bitch!!! During the Christmas party you can walk on almost anything. We ended up going on the Haunted Mansion, It's A Small World, Mickey's Philharmagic, the bathroom, Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid, the bathroom, the bathroom again, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, the bathroom, fireworks, the bathroom and then home. As you may have been able to tell from the repeated bathroom stops, something we ate at Liberty Tree did not agree
with mom and me. I'm told Minnie's firework spectacular that I heard from the bathroom was amazing.

It's a Small World

At the 2016 inauguration of Mr. T____, former President George W Bush, seated on the dais, was heard to say: "That's some weird shit." This ride is some weird shit. It's the same as it always has been, a long river ride in the dark while creepy dolls shriek at you. Highly recommended.

Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin

Katie cheated and got a higher score than the two other of us put together. I don't know how she cheated, but I'm going to find out. This is like the opening of a crime show where we see the crime (Katie cheating somehow), and now it's up to the handsome detective and his scrappy partner to figure out how she cheated. Here's the evidence that she cheated:

C H EA T E D

If you take Katie's score of 128400, add the word "CHEATER," and subtract 128400, what do you get?? The word "CHEATER", which I think we can all agree means that Katie is GUILTY. Case closed.

Liberty Tree Tavern

Like the last time we were here, this is now a pre-fixe place where you get "all you care to enjoy" of two choices. Mom got the Patriot Plate, which is a "declaration salad" with honey shallot dressing, then the main course of Roast Turkey Breast, Pennsylvania Pot Roast, and Oven-roasted Pork with Mashed Potatoes, Seasonal Vegetables, Herb Stuffing, and House-made Macaroni & Cheese, finished off with Johnny Appleseed's Warm Apple Cake with Caramel and Whipped Topping. 

Mom's Thoughts: I thought the salad was the best part. It was okay but not great. I'm disappointed there wasn't more on the menu and you had to just take it or leave it. The dessert was disappointing as well.

Katie and I got the America-Hater Special, which is the same declaration salad, followed by Impossible™ Plant-based Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes, Mushroom Gravy, and Seasonal Vegetables finished off with Ooey Gooey Vanilla Toffee Cake, Chocolate Sauce, and Vanilla Ice Cream. 

Nick: Like last time, I'm amazed at how the Impossible™ Plant-based Meatloaf really smells, feels, and tastes exactly like real meat. That being said, I feel like the novelty may have worn off a little bit on this and revealed the fact that I don't really love meatloaf. It's fine, but 100% accurate plant meatloaf that's just like something I'm not a super huge fan of is at the end of the day something I'm not a huge fan of. The ooey gooey toffee cake was delicious, but even with a lactaid I'm looking askance at it wondering if this is what poisoned me. We have another reservation here next Monday, but I think we're going to cancel it; this is a fun place to go to have something different, but I don't feel the need to really go more than once a year.

Katie: I found I liked mixing a bit of the Impossi-loaf with the macaroni and cheese our server kindly procured for us and a little dab of mashed potatoes was very tasty. However, I agree with Nick in that the novelty has worn off and I miss the more varied menu. This restaurant has gone from a must-do with multiple visits a trip to a spot I want to give a few years before swinging by again. 

Despite two of us getting tummy aches, from what we're still not sure (possibly being too cool, powerful and attractive), we did a bunch of cool rides and had fun and went home and stayed up until 2 am watching old Simpsons episodes before going to sleep. Tomorrow's a rest day!

11.30 Lunch at the hotel

This year we're staying at Caribbean Beach, so we're going to be doing a lot of eating at the Caribbean Dining Hall which I'm sure has a name I'm not aware of. We're going to Mickey's Christmas Party in the evening, but today during the day is just recovering from yesterday's travel day and getting ready to stay up late at the Christmas party. Here's what we had for lunch:

Nick: Fried Yucca and 50th Anniversary Desert 

Glistening Golden Goop

This is the first time I've ever eaten yucca, which as everyone knows is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Agavoideae. Duh. The fried yucca bowl is fried yucca, which of course every human knows is native to the hot and dry (arid) parts of the Americas and the Caribbean, along with pico de gallo and cheese. It's pretty good! The yucca itself, which as even the dumbest idiot in history already knows is notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flowers, doesn't really have much of a taste itself; it's kind of like a spicy potato, with most of the flavor coming from the pico and cheese. I don't think I would get this every time, but it's a very interesting change of pace. The 50th anniversary dessert I didn't know what it was until I got it, and it turned out to be white chocolate cheesecake with a golden glittery coating of raspberry, uhh, coating. Good, but very rich - the raspberry coating is super sweet. Another nice change of pace that I don't know I would get super often.

The non-yucky yucca

Katie: Romaine salad, fried yucca bowl, key lime tart

I tried to be responsible and get the Romaine Salad (imaginatively named) with the Green Goddess dressing. The salad itself was fine but I definitely ruined it with the dressing. It tastes like the color green and blandness. It was so aggressively bland I ordered something else: a fried yucca bowl. It was good but I'd already filled up on fries, which were also good. 

The key lime tart was the real star of my meal. It was deliciously tart and creamy, with the whole table attesting to its scrumptiousness. I would definitely order it again.

Key lime tart

Mom: Good Girl's Chicken Tendies and Fries

Excellent! Mom says she would order both again and, in fact, liked them so much she ordered them again to stock her room with leftovers.

2015: Magic Kingdom

(Ed. note: There's a bunch of missing pictures here I'll try to fix later.)

The Magic Kingdom is the oldest park at WDW, featuring a charming mix of incredibly lame old crappy rides, princess towers to pee in, awesome new rides I didn't take any pictures of, and theater shows where you can sit down for a while and try to stop sweating. Most of it has been covered in previous years, so feel free to skim or just look at the pictures for the first half; the second half is about new places to eat that I took a billionty pictures of. 

Katie wore this hat to every single one.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Pirates of the Caribbean re-opened during our trip. There's not much new - I think the only change is a new boat at the beginning of the town scene and some more mist during the creepy opening scene. This is still one of my favorite rides, from the beginning with Davey Jones projected on a water screen to the end when you pass a amazingly life-like Captain Jack Sparrow in a treasure room overflowing with loot. Idiots still take flash pictures during the ride, but what can you do? (Leave a suggestion in the comments!)

Country Bear Jamboree

We actually went on this twice. This is a real experience and I'm not sure I can do it justice; if you're imagining a bunch of drunk hillbilly robot bears singing country music, you're right on the money. I just wish they'd upgrade the sound system; between the bears being soused and their accents it's sometimes hard to figure out what exactly they're singing. I made sure to shoot some video so everyone can share the magic!!!!!1

** update **
can't just drag the video into blogger :(

Hall of Presidents

Sadly, this is the last time we'll be able to see Obambi as the current President in the Hall of Presidents; I'm still pretty amazed at how good the animatronics are, although I'm sure that's helped by keeping the lights very low. Like other theater shows, this is a good way to get out of the heat for 20 minutes, and unlike The American Adventure at Epcot, it doesn't have a horribly catchy song at the end for you to go to your grave humming. I didn't get any pictures, possibly because of that Simpsons episode where they go to Itchy and Scratchy Land and Bart is like "Let's see if they wore underwear back then" and pulls down George Washington's pants and the robots try to kill the Simpsons. Remember that? Man, I'm old.

Here's Some Castle Pictures

Rapunzel's Tower

This isn't really a ride, it's a bathroom. Poor Rapunzel. To be fair, Disney is responsible for making this into a restroom, we weren't like "Hey princess, watch this!!" although that probably would have been kind of funny. Anyway, here's a picture Katie took, including some people looking uncomfortable at being photographed leaving the bathroom. We all know what you were doing in there. Disgusting.

It's A Small World

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL,

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL,
IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL,
IT'S A SMALL SMALL SMALL SMALL WORLDDDDDDDD
(two second pause)
IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL,
IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL
Seriously though, we saw something new on It's A Small World: There's a clock that opens on the hour and some little figures come out and dance. That's about it. Oh, look, though, we got some extremely creepy pictures!

Peter Pan's Flight

This is a very hard ride to get on where you fly over day-glo miniature London and then Neverland in the dark. It's pretty cool. That's what I did at Peter Pan's Flight. Any questions? Okay.

More Castle Pictures Required By Law

Ariel's Mermaid Ride Whose Full Name I'm So Tired of Typing

This is one of the new awesome rides, and I already used my joke about not getting into giant clams last trip report so I don't really have much to say here. Next time I'm gonna try to get a picture of Ursula during the scene where she's mugging her way through her song (and do I help them?/yes I doooooooooooooooooooooo). This ride is also right next to the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train rollercoaster. We did not go on the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train rollercoaster, but we did go on Ariel's ride where you ride a giant clam through singing fish and undersea invertebrates multiple times. No regrets!

Picture I Took in Tomorrowland of the Sun Beating Down on a Unattended Baby Who I'm Sure Was Fine Guys

And some miscellaneous hits:

Gaston's Tavern:

We stopped at Gaston's Tavern and got frozen apple juice, which is just as delicious as it sounds; nothing hits the spot like this when there's 100% humidity. (The mango foam on top was nothing to sneeze at either, although it was in a weird spot between liquid and solid that made it a little tricky to eat). I may also only be mentioning this so I can drop in a picture of the statue of Gaston out front.

Be Our Guest:

One of the new things at Magic Kingdom is the Be Our Guest restaurant (Be Our Guest-arant??), themed on the Beast's castle. For lunch it's a quick-service restaurant - you place your order on a touch screen, then find a table and a cast member somehow finds you (I asked ours how she did it and she said "magic". I knew it!!!) with your food. I got a turkey sandwhich and fries that made me reconsider my distaste for turkey; whatever they put on this was amazing, and the nice thick crusty bread didn't hurt either. Katie got a salad (with quinoa!!) that was pretty good I think.
For desert I got the chocolate cream puff, which is, um, a giant cream puff full of chocolate (and vanilla). Katie got a strawberry cupcake she ate with a fork that looked really tasty.

For dinner this transforms into full service sitdown restaurant, complete with the Beast himself walking through the dining room (he's a bit of a ham; the first two times he was very stoic, but the third time he stopped to wave and bow). You can meet the Beast himself in his study, the area where you order your food for lunch service, but I didn't want to risk getting mauled, so we just peeked in.
I was a little worried that this was going to be too fancy for us, but it turned out to be one of the best meals we had the whole time. Katie got ratatouie (with more quinoa!!!!) and I got pan-seared chicken. I'm used to chicken not having much of a taste, but this was great; I suspect it had something to do with the skin, which gave it a wonderful crunchy, savory garlic sensation. I even liked the spinach cream sauce on the side, which is like, uh, me liking something I normally don't like.
For desert, we had to go for the grey stuff (it's delicious! Don't believe me? Ask the dishes!). I don't know what exactly this was, but it was grey and tasted wonderful. It was served on top of a oreo cake and was very smooth and creamy. Our waiter drew a B on Katie's plate for Beauty, and a B on my plate for Beast, which I guess means I need to shave.

Inside Cinderella's Castle:

On one day, and to my everlasting amazement, we actually got into Cinderella's castle; as long as I've been going to Disney it's been closed from the front, but Katie showed me that you can actually go into the castle itself through the back door. There's a bunch of really nice mosaics telling the story of Cinderella in here, and it kind of seems like a waste that the area is only being used as stroller parking. They're doing some work on the castle ("PARDON OUR PIXIE DUST") and the concept drawing showed a castle you can walk through from the front, so maybe next trip.

Here's the mosaic pictures - please pardon any camera tilting, we had to avoid getting run over by strollers.

And that's it for the magic kingdom!

Goodbye, Magic Kindgom! Goodbye, person's face I'm too lazy to crop out!