Category Archives: Disney

1900 Park Fare

1900 Park Fare is an old favorite buffet-style restaurant at the Grand Floridian hotel at WDW.  As far as I know, they only do character dining, and they do it well, along with truly fantastic food served buffet-style.  We went with our extended Florida family, and had a blast.  Here is Prince Charming, or at least a charming Prince with Kaitlyn and Kacie.  You can see that he’s honored by their presence, as it should be.  A very fine time!

Here is the same fine fellow in good form with Callie, who seems equally pleased to see him.

Callie and her mom Nancy are giving or getting tips on princess posing from Cinderella, if I’m not mistaken.

Here are Bob and Paula and Donna, not royalty as far as I know, but fine company for dinner, and enjoying the combination of royalty and fine food.  By the way, the food really is awfully good!So in addition to the royal frivolity, Callie had this college graduation thing that was quite a big deal, and Disney made a very nice cake for the occasion, far to big for us to eat.  Here it is before we tried:

IMG_0384So somehow Cinderella and Anastasia Tremaine (check me on this, she was created for film by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston) confronted Callie with the fact that since she was a college graduate and princess in her own rite, that she should be able to eat cake however she wished.
IMG_0386So on further goading they told her she should just bite the cake

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Which she did, whereupon Anastasia (who is not supposed to be a very nice person) seemed to be in a celebratory mood.

IMG_0389Anyway, it was great fun, and we still have half of the cake, which was also quite good, chocolate with buttercream filling.  And I’m as proud of Callie for graduating as Anastasia is proud of her for biting her cake.  Maybe moreso.

Cranberry Bog

I kind of jumped the rails back to Epcot, but I forgot to mention the cranberry bog.  They have a pretty large cranberry bog where some entertaining and informative folks from Ocean Spray tell you all about cranberries.  If you can answer some questions afterwards, they give you free Craisins.  So now I know what a craisin really is, and where they product the most cranberries in the US, and how a bog works.  I got lots of free Craisins!

Hollywood Brown Derby

We ate at the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant as part of our Fantasmic Dinner Pkg.  It was pretty good.  It’s not my favorite place at WDW, but the food was good, the service was great, and the place itself is very reminiscent of old Hollywood, which is cool.

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Paula appears to have made a decisive dinner choice, while Nancy continues to study the many delicious items on the menu.

Callie is apparently equally studious.

Here’s their crab cake appetizer, which was better than most crab cakes I’ve had back home, but not the best I’ve ever had.  I think Boston might have that distinction.

This was a lobster bisque appetizer, which looked good.  I didn’t get to taste it, but it looked even better in person than in this fuzzy photo.

The entrance to the Hollywood Brown Derby.  One of several table service restaurants at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, as I’ve said, it wouldn’t be my first choice in this park for table service, but it’s certainly good.  I think I would prefer the 50’s Prime Time Cafe or the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant.  We’ve liked Mama Melrose’s too, though some report mixed results there.

Frozen

When we were here last December, we tried to get into the Frozen Sing-Along, which sounded like fun.  Clearly it was because the crowd in front looked like Times Square on New Years Eve.  So we didn’t get in.  But this time we got a Fast Pass and got in for real, and it is pretty fun.  Of course most parents are probably sick of Frozen, but this fast-paced and fun re-telling of the story through live performances mixed with movie clips was worth the time, and I think most of the packed theater enjoyed it.  I managed to snag a few shots, here’s Anna (in case you didn’t know)

Here are two very entertaining actors who carried most of the show through narration, and they were funny and skilled, leaving us with the impression that they did a great deal of ad-libbing, but I’ve heard that everyone thinks that, so it might be that they’re just good at it–acting!

Here’s the other one, the queen…what’s her name?  Oh yeah- Elsa.  She showed up pretty much just in time to sing Let It Go, which was a great endingAnd with typical Disney theater craft, the ending was pretty spectacular, including snow and REALLY cold air mixed with fog and (so it seemed) frost.  Anyway it was a wintry ending for sure:

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Like it says

OK, this was pure marketing, but we got to see a preview of a new Disney CD (also available on iTunes) called We Love Disney.  It is a bunch of classic Disney music re-imagined by more contemporary artists.  I see that Disney is having to put effort into being relevant for younger people, and although I’m not part of their new demographic, I think they’re doing a good job.  The album looks interesting, featuring artists like Ne-Yo, Tori Kelly, and Kacey Musgraves doing old-time Disney songs.  It looked pretty cool, but it won’t be available for sale until October 30th.  It was interesting getting a preview tho.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios is a little wet today

Disney’s Hollywood Studios is one of my favorite Disney parks.  It has a lot of movie nostalgia, combined with fun entertainment and some newer movie stuff that probably isn’t properly considered to be nostalgic.  Today we had several Fast Passes and we had a package dinner reservation at the Hollywood Brown Derby combined with priority seating at Fantasmic.  Fantastic is something everyone should see at least once, it’s a magical combination of Disney storytelling and theater craft that’s just pretty cool.  The thing is, getting a good seat involves lots of waiting in the hot sun, but with either a Fast Pass or a Dining package that includes Fantasmic tickets, you can get good priority seating.  We were in the second row.  I didn’t get any pictures at the show because I thought it would be a waste of time as so many of the effects involve back-lighting and water, so to avoid getting a bunch of sub-par pictures and a wet camera, I passed on that photo op – but it is very cool!

 

Anyway, the headline mentioned a wet park, and it was wet–poured buckets for over an hour.

But we had fun anyway, as you can see.  Callie was in good sprits despite her soggy shoes.  Notice that she had a poncho too.  Bringing ponchos to WDW would save about $10 each, but it has to be pretty wet before I’ll wear one because it’s like a sweat lodge and I don’t love it.  But today, I bought one and wore it anyway.  Did I mention it was wet?  Weeeeeeet.

Sights of the Food and Wine Festival

So if you were out and walking around the Food and Wine Festival, here are a few of the things you’d see.  Or things we saw, anyway!  I didn’t take pictures of even a large percentage of the menus or pavilions, just a random selection.  Who wants Haggis!!!

 

I ordered the Kalua Pork Slider.  I could eat a bucket of those, no problem.

I also had some pineapple tropical fruit wine that was pretty interesting.  The pineapple flavor was fairly subtle, and it was a sweet wine that was distinctly fruity.  Good to sip, no bucket for me, but I’m glad I tried it.  The best from Hawaii!  Or pretty good, anyway.

This was a potato pancake from Scotland with smoked salmon on it.  Really tasty, good salmon.

So we stopped by the Dominican Republic, which was located where Puerto Rico was last year.  I wonder what happened to Puerto Rico?  Oh well..

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This was Lechon Asada, roasted pork with Mangu, pickled red onions and avocado.  Oh and I also had a Frozen Sugar Cane Cocktail featuring Ron Barcelo Blanco rum.  Pretty tasty. 
Here’s an unfortunately blurry picture of the New Zealand menu.  I think it was the rum from the DR.IMG_0320Here’s an interesting selection from Ireland, which, I’m sad to report, I didn’t even sample.

IMG_0318Great Greek food, from the look of it.  Lots of people enjoying it but not me 🙁

IMG_0316So like I said, mostly random, but just a few sights of the festival.  Good eatin’!

A note about technical issues with da blog

I’ve had a WordPress problem for some time that makes uploading pictures difficult.  I found a workaround but as a workflow issue I’m forced to send pictures to the blog throughout the day and then organize them at night.  So if you check in and see a bunch of random looking junk at the top, scroll down a bit and you should start to see organized posts.  There are a couple of ways I could avoid this chaos, but I AM on vacation, so this allows me a good balance between having fun and blogging, which is fun, but you  know what I mean.  So if it looks random and makes no sense, scroll down until it does, and hopefully the next day I’ll impose some kind of order on the photos I’ve uploaded.

Nicholas Crispino prepares Fillet Mignon with Mushrooms and Sauce Ponot Noir

Another cooking demonstration, this one rocked even more than the donut holes.  Nicholas Crispino, who has sizzling cred based on his work at Disney’s most popular restaurant, Be Our Guest in the Magic Kingdom dished out a great steak, made with fingerling potatoes, asparagus, and a great sauce.  This was a particularly interesting preparation because it only took a few minutes and came out looking and tasting fantastic!  Not only did he serve a great steak, but he also let us in on the fact that BOG is changing their menu substantially in the next few days, and offered some tips on how to get into this ultra-busy restaurant!  

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Here is the filet with mushrooms, and arugula and that great sauce.  Seriously fast and fantastic!

Epcot Food And Wine, Donut Edition

We would do more of these if we had time, but they have great cooking demonstrations during the Food and Wind Festival (this one is the 20th anniversary event).  This one was by Jason Stricker who is the executive chef of the Production Bakery at Epcot, and he demonstrated Vanilla Bean Donuts with White Coffee Anglaise paired with Martini and Rossi Asti Spumante.  I have the recipe if you want it.  It’s always fun to listen to these guys because they have lots of anecdotes and know their stuff where cooking is involved.  I learned a lot about vanilla sugar, which is actually kind of interesting.  And of course you get to eat the stuff too, which is important to some people, but not me. 🙂

Callie being a professional cake baker had lots of technical questions for him, that put me to sleep, but I think they both enjoyed it.
Oh, and here’s a picture of the donuts.  Had to take it fast because they didn’t last long.  Really more of a donut hole than a donut, but they were liberally covered in hand-made vanilla sugar and the white coffee anglaise was just about lethally rich and tasty!

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