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Helllooooo, happy-almost-Halloween!
We did do the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot last weekend, and ended up really doing 3 fairly full days in the parks + the drive to/from, so this whole week has been an insane exercise in trying to catch back up. Work is also crazy-busy and now my f-i-l is in the hospital with an infection from a nasty cut he got out on the farm. I am indulging myself with a long and rambling Disney post, cut for your skimming convenience.
I'd been holding a ridiculous number of hotel options, mostly because half my family could not figure out if they wanted to go, so I had 2 rooms at All-Star Movies (which equals 4 dbl beds/2 bathrooms, small square-footage, for if everyone came or dropping down to 1 if just BabyBoy & I went), 1 room at Coronado Springs (2 queen beds, 1 bath, for if 2/3 of the boys came with me), and then 1.5 weeks before, I was able to snag a family suite at Art of Animation (1 queen bed, 2 doubles, 2 bathrooms + kitchenette, with room for an air mattress if everyone came.)
All of these were booked at various times with the fall Disney discounts stacked with an extra 10% off from Orbitz/Travelocity. We ended up going with the family suite, which, with all the discounts ended up being around $250 including tax, which was a little bit more than 2 rooms at ASMo, but did have the kitchenette going for it, which saved close to $50 on feeding the mob breakfast. Plus, we'd never stayed there before and D loves him some Disney theming, so we actually ended up walking all over the damn resort looking at how the plants and landscaping changed from Nemo to Cars to Lion King to Little Mermaid (because we didn't have enough walking on tap for the rest of the weekend.) Nice resort, nicer than the All-Stars and much prettier than Pop Century across the lake. A little more in-your-face with the theming than the Moderate resorts, and while the doors in the suite buildings opened to an interior hallway, there's not a super-fancy lobby area. Really good food court, too, with lots of options.
Once we finished with the walking tour and the boys threw each other into the main pool a couple of times and they made a blitzkrieg through the food court (ugh, Disney food prices), we shifted over to the Beach Club villas for the rest of the weekend. We managed to get checked in with no drama other than D opening a Coke in the car and having it explode right as we pulled up to the entrance. The girl running the valet parking was pretty awesome, though, and had a towel and a bottle of water for me almost before I could ask. (It was real Coke, too, so the stickys were everywhere.)
After a couple of years of *always* having issues with Magic Bands, this year ended up almost entirely smooth. This particular trip is always a test case of multiple rooms, multiple cards to charge against (often with multiple cards in the same room, so that 2 bands go to one and 4 go to another, etc), people with annual passports mixed in with other people on free tickets left over from performing arts events and others needing to buy there at the concierge desk, etc, etc, but aside from my band, which I'd had activated and assigned to me the night before (on a completely different reservation) not wanting to open the door at first and L's AP issues, which she's had right from the start of her AP year, we had absolutely no disasters with any of 13 we had running. \o/ (So I think the Great Magic Band Migration has mostly smoothed out the wrinkles.)
The other thing is that I was able to book FP+ for a fair number of things even only doing it a day or two ahead of time. This did not count the killer FPs, like the 7 Dwarves Mine Train/Soarin'/Toy Story but it did count Space/Splash/Big Thunder at MK & Tower of Terror/Rock'n'Rollercoaster at DHS. Not bad for deciding to hit the parks at noon on Friday and booking rides on the boat to DHS shortly thereafter.
We do go down for the F&W Festival after all, so shifting gears to the food, yow, but the new Morimoto Asia is awesome. The sticky ribs are insane. We had 2 orders for the table (lots of now-grown kids), plus 2 Peking ducks, plus everyone ordered entrees and I don't think anyone was even mildly disappointed. Aside from the ribs and the duck, I think the winners were the miso-marinated black cod and the pepper steak. BabyBoy and I want to go back for the omakase at the sushi bar, too, because while the sushi in the main room was fine, we stood and watched the chefs at the bar work and it all looked amazing.
All of Saturday was dedicated to F&W (with a sidestep at the start of the day to L'Artisan des Glaces in France for 3 or 4 croque glace (think a warmed brioche ice cream sandwich.) The clear favorites there were caramel fleur de sel w/chocolate sauce and the cinnamon apple crumble with caramel sauce. Talk about your breakfast of champions. Thus fortified (and with pomegranate kirs in hand) we set off to throw ourselves off the cliff of insanity that is F&W. I think the super-high points included the olive oil poached salmon and the zucchini ravioli at the Chew booths, the cheddar cheese soup and mushroom beef tenderloin at Canada (as always), the cheese plate at the Cheese cellar (people were contemplating licking the plates), the pierogie and kielbasa in Poland, and the margaritas at the San Angel Inn, inside the pyramid at Mexico, not the frozen margaritas at the booth outside (which we have done before.) We desperately needed a break at that point, and while waiting to get a table at La Cava Tequila, I metaphorically smacked myself upside the head, pulled up the WDW app and discovered that the actual restaurant had a reservation available in 15 minutes. The app runs in real time, but the hostess stand doesn't--the poor woman almost had a stroke when I handed over my phone with the app up, showing a reservation for 12 that she didn't know about. (Bad Disney tech, no cookie.) One round of avocado/jalapeño/classic margaritas and several tasting flights of tequila later, we were much refreshed by the AC and snacks and food, and threw ourselves back out in search of more crazy things to eat/drink.
The banana soju milkshakes were not a good idea, but the mango boba tea was lovely. And there were some very nice purses on sale at the shop in Italy. :D
Somehow, after all of that, BabyBoy actually ate a chicken parm that was as big as a dinner plate and was not sick. (And seriously, he has to wear a belt or jeans with 28" waists fall off him. It's ridiculous.)
If you read all that, you're awesome. (Even if you didn't, I am, as always, available for WDW consults. ♥)
We did do the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot last weekend, and ended up really doing 3 fairly full days in the parks + the drive to/from, so this whole week has been an insane exercise in trying to catch back up. Work is also crazy-busy and now my f-i-l is in the hospital with an infection from a nasty cut he got out on the farm. I am indulging myself with a long and rambling Disney post, cut for your skimming convenience.
I'd been holding a ridiculous number of hotel options, mostly because half my family could not figure out if they wanted to go, so I had 2 rooms at All-Star Movies (which equals 4 dbl beds/2 bathrooms, small square-footage, for if everyone came or dropping down to 1 if just BabyBoy & I went), 1 room at Coronado Springs (2 queen beds, 1 bath, for if 2/3 of the boys came with me), and then 1.5 weeks before, I was able to snag a family suite at Art of Animation (1 queen bed, 2 doubles, 2 bathrooms + kitchenette, with room for an air mattress if everyone came.)
All of these were booked at various times with the fall Disney discounts stacked with an extra 10% off from Orbitz/Travelocity. We ended up going with the family suite, which, with all the discounts ended up being around $250 including tax, which was a little bit more than 2 rooms at ASMo, but did have the kitchenette going for it, which saved close to $50 on feeding the mob breakfast. Plus, we'd never stayed there before and D loves him some Disney theming, so we actually ended up walking all over the damn resort looking at how the plants and landscaping changed from Nemo to Cars to Lion King to Little Mermaid (because we didn't have enough walking on tap for the rest of the weekend.) Nice resort, nicer than the All-Stars and much prettier than Pop Century across the lake. A little more in-your-face with the theming than the Moderate resorts, and while the doors in the suite buildings opened to an interior hallway, there's not a super-fancy lobby area. Really good food court, too, with lots of options.
Once we finished with the walking tour and the boys threw each other into the main pool a couple of times and they made a blitzkrieg through the food court (ugh, Disney food prices), we shifted over to the Beach Club villas for the rest of the weekend. We managed to get checked in with no drama other than D opening a Coke in the car and having it explode right as we pulled up to the entrance. The girl running the valet parking was pretty awesome, though, and had a towel and a bottle of water for me almost before I could ask. (It was real Coke, too, so the stickys were everywhere.)
After a couple of years of *always* having issues with Magic Bands, this year ended up almost entirely smooth. This particular trip is always a test case of multiple rooms, multiple cards to charge against (often with multiple cards in the same room, so that 2 bands go to one and 4 go to another, etc), people with annual passports mixed in with other people on free tickets left over from performing arts events and others needing to buy there at the concierge desk, etc, etc, but aside from my band, which I'd had activated and assigned to me the night before (on a completely different reservation) not wanting to open the door at first and L's AP issues, which she's had right from the start of her AP year, we had absolutely no disasters with any of 13 we had running. \o/ (So I think the Great Magic Band Migration has mostly smoothed out the wrinkles.)
The other thing is that I was able to book FP+ for a fair number of things even only doing it a day or two ahead of time. This did not count the killer FPs, like the 7 Dwarves Mine Train/Soarin'/Toy Story but it did count Space/Splash/Big Thunder at MK & Tower of Terror/Rock'n'Rollercoaster at DHS. Not bad for deciding to hit the parks at noon on Friday and booking rides on the boat to DHS shortly thereafter.
We do go down for the F&W Festival after all, so shifting gears to the food, yow, but the new Morimoto Asia is awesome. The sticky ribs are insane. We had 2 orders for the table (lots of now-grown kids), plus 2 Peking ducks, plus everyone ordered entrees and I don't think anyone was even mildly disappointed. Aside from the ribs and the duck, I think the winners were the miso-marinated black cod and the pepper steak. BabyBoy and I want to go back for the omakase at the sushi bar, too, because while the sushi in the main room was fine, we stood and watched the chefs at the bar work and it all looked amazing.
All of Saturday was dedicated to F&W (with a sidestep at the start of the day to L'Artisan des Glaces in France for 3 or 4 croque glace (think a warmed brioche ice cream sandwich.) The clear favorites there were caramel fleur de sel w/chocolate sauce and the cinnamon apple crumble with caramel sauce. Talk about your breakfast of champions. Thus fortified (and with pomegranate kirs in hand) we set off to throw ourselves off the cliff of insanity that is F&W. I think the super-high points included the olive oil poached salmon and the zucchini ravioli at the Chew booths, the cheddar cheese soup and mushroom beef tenderloin at Canada (as always), the cheese plate at the Cheese cellar (people were contemplating licking the plates), the pierogie and kielbasa in Poland, and the margaritas at the San Angel Inn, inside the pyramid at Mexico, not the frozen margaritas at the booth outside (which we have done before.) We desperately needed a break at that point, and while waiting to get a table at La Cava Tequila, I metaphorically smacked myself upside the head, pulled up the WDW app and discovered that the actual restaurant had a reservation available in 15 minutes. The app runs in real time, but the hostess stand doesn't--the poor woman almost had a stroke when I handed over my phone with the app up, showing a reservation for 12 that she didn't know about. (Bad Disney tech, no cookie.) One round of avocado/jalapeño/classic margaritas and several tasting flights of tequila later, we were much refreshed by the AC and snacks and food, and threw ourselves back out in search of more crazy things to eat/drink.
The banana soju milkshakes were not a good idea, but the mango boba tea was lovely. And there were some very nice purses on sale at the shop in Italy. :D
Somehow, after all of that, BabyBoy actually ate a chicken parm that was as big as a dinner plate and was not sick. (And seriously, he has to wear a belt or jeans with 28" waists fall off him. It's ridiculous.)
If you read all that, you're awesome. (Even if you didn't, I am, as always, available for WDW consults. ♥)
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I'm glad you all had such a good time. And I hope your FiL will be better soon.
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We're going down to see the in-laws tomorrow, so we can see everyone and see how they're doing. I hope it was just that the infection knocked him for a loop.
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It really is a withdrawal, isn't it? We've been doing these quick in-and-outs lately and I really want a proper, multi-day trip, with time to go up and see HP at Universal. And let's not talk about Tokyo...
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Glad you had a good trip though. :)))
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I can definitely talk hotels and dining plans and reservation strategies!
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But that is for later. Right now, I just want to bask in your post, because of the vicarious glory that is eating Disney food and enjoying all the atmosphere. :D
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Plus, lots of new things are coming online in the next year--nighttime things at Animal Kingdom (not the Avatar stuff just yet, but that's on the way, too) and more new 'experiences' at the revamped Downtown Disney (I am eyeing The Edison (what exactly *is* an industrial goth bar and how did it end up on Disney property?) and the speakeasy they are apparently building under it.)
Shutting up now!
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Also, the things I saw from the Dominican Republic looked wonderful, too, but I only got the tiniest taste (I got sucked up into the Cheese Lab half of our group.)
It felt more crowded this year, but that might have been because we delayed at France for the ice cream at the start and didn't get to many booths in the first hour. (The ice cream was totally worth it, though.)
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The lag between what people cam reserve on their phone & the hostess stands is just mean to the CM's. Hope they get that taken care of soon.
Needed a Disney fix today, this was perfect.
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The castle is almost entirely done now, with just the ramps up to the passageway still being refurbed. The rest of the new courtyard looks lovely and feels so much less cramped.
I really felt sorry for the hostess at San Angel Inn--they had just made the announcement that they were not taking any more walk-ups and the crowd was restless and there I was with that phantom reservation... But yeah, if I can make an ADR in real-time, her system should update in RT. But it all turned out fine, with margaritas for all!