From a Former Whirlwinder - It's been a long, long time...A NOT so good start to this business trip. With pictures!

FSUpreach

Former Whirlwinder
Joined
Jul 10, 2012
Howdy y’all! You'll only remember me if you've been around the Disboards for a very long time. Like more than 10 years. I am 1/3 of the Former Whirlwind Trippers. If you don't remember me, keep reading. I tend to be pretty entertaining. If you do remember me, say hello! it's been a long time. When our son was in preschool, we had annual passes and went to Disney often. In those days, we lived about 5 hours away - which is nothing really. Now where we live is only 3 1/2 hours away, which is even more nothing – er. Our trips included us leaving on a Thursday after school (my day off was Friday and so was my wife's) then we'd return home late on Saturday evening because I have to work on Sundays. (I'm a Pastor). Truthfully, in those days we didn't need anything more than about a good free 24 hours to at least discuss making the trip down. Let's just say Visa loved us!!

Our son was the cutest kid in the Disney parks. Now, he's 17 and a senior in high school - I told you it's been a long time. I can't even remember how long its been since my last trip report. When he got older and school was more serious we didn't go as often. But, in his short life he's been to Disney well over 100 times. So, you see, we are Disney people. We get it. We know that special feeling when you’re driving on to property and you get the little chilly bumps on your arms. We have experienced all the magic Disney has to offer twelve times over and we are grateful for so many memories here.

Our trips now are very spread out though. One, it's crazy expensive these days. Two, pulling a 24 hour whirlwind Disney trip is a lot harder 13 years later. And D) We’re still paying off all the trips from before! (I’m just kidding. Or am I?!)

This time however it’s just me. Wy wife and son are both on a mission trip, and I came down today after church for a sermon planning retreat. I do these twice a year to get away from the phone and the office and the craziness that is working on a church staff (Y’all really have no idea!). Typically, I hole up in a hotel or rent a place on VRBO and write, write, write all day and then go over to Disney to eat at night. So I just got here today. And I’ve been inspired to write this trip report – but not for the reason you think.

These days we are serious Disney foodies. We all have our favorites. Mine include the Biergarten, California Grill, Morimoto’s, Boma, Cape May and well, most of the rest of them too. But, tonight I did something new. My first night on these things is almost always Boma. You can’t beat it most of the time. It’s meat. And it’s yummy. However, the last couple of years I have really gained an appreciation for the Clam bake at Cape May. But y’all – dang it’s expensive! Recently I read about the weekend seafood buffet at the Garden Grove. On here. Or somewhere. The comments were mixed. Some folks said it was a cheaper alternative to Cape May and the food was just as good. Other folks said the place is garbage. Because I love seafood (and my wife doesn’t) I decided to give Garden Grove a try.

Oh. My.

But it ain’t the good kind of Oh. My. The food was so bad I was inspired to write this trip report.

Y’all it was bad.

When I got there, the place only had about 4 tables. I expected that. Goofy was in the dining room just kinda hanging out. When they seated me he came right over to the table. I think he was bored. I’m pretty sure my server’s name was Madeline. She was nice, and probably the highlight of the meal.

In case you aren’t familiar. The buffet is $39.99 and includes a cold section, hot section, salad section, dessert section and a kiddie section. They also bring to your table a fried platter that has some fried clam strips (I think), some fried shrimp, a cheddar biscuit and some French fries. You can also add a half lobster for 5 bucks. Or I think all you can eat lobster for some unspecified amount. Madeline had a little accent and talked kinda quiet so I didn’t fully hear her on the cost. Plus it was hard to hear over the deafening silence emanating from the empty restaurant.

I had high hopes for the food. Cause, you know, there were a good number of people who said it was the best meal they had at Disney. But here’s what I learned about them. Wherever they are from, they must eat out of a pig trough at home if they think the Garden Grove food was their best meal at Disney.

I kid you not – in all my year’s of going to Disney, this was the absolute worst meal I’ve ever had. I’ve been to Disney A LOT. This was horrible.

So Madeline gives me the lowdown on where the food is. Cold section here, hot section there. And on and on. She leaves to go get my water. I leave the table to go pilfer the cold section. On the cold section, there was a couple different salads, a Caesar and something else. Some ceviche, peel and eat shrimp and a fish dip.

The Caesar had no flavor.

The fish dip, as it was, was a white, flavorless goop that I’m not really sure qualified as dip seeing as how there was nothing there to dip in it.

The ceviche was ok, but I’m not sure it had any seasoning at all except the lemon juice that was on it.

The peel and eat shrimp was peel and eat shrimp. It was covered in seasoning that got all over my hands. Which is ok, I guess. You kinda expect that with the old peel and eat. Except that when you peeled off the shell, a good portion of the shrimp came to. I haven’t had that before where the meat sticks to the shell. And I eat a lot of shrimp. Just not here.

So by the time I’m halfway through with my peel and eat shrimp, Madeline comes with my fried basket. She dumped it all out on a plate. Fair amount of unseasoned fries. The fried shrimp was ok. The clam strips were ok. Neither was great. The cheddar biscuit thing was dry.

I forgot to mention that I did order the half lobster – just cause it had been a long time since I’d had lobster, and I figured 5 bucks, why not? Yeah. Big mistake. When she brought it it was a lobster cut in half. You get half the tail. One claw. In the middle of the lobster was some kind of breading that I think was what made it ‘stuffed’. I pulled the tail out. It looked odd – some of the meat was still kinda opaque looking. Like it was either undercooked or had been sitting for a while. But I tried to cut the tail with my fork, because it was a pretty big piece. You couldn’t cut it. Well, maybe YOU could. But I couldn’t. And I’m a pretty big dude. It was so chewy that I couldn’t bite all the way through it.

(Yes, you read that right – I couldn’t bite all the way through it.)

So, because I had this half a lobster tail in my mouth (see earlier reference to not being able to cut with a fork), and since I couldn’t bite it apart, I just chewed on it for a while until I was able to swallow it. I am hoping I don’t regret that decision later tonight. The lobster claw was, undercooked. Parts of it were slimy and came sliming out on the plate. I was very turned off at that point and didn’t finish it. When Madeline came to pick up the plate, I told her it was bad. Very bad. Tough, chewy, etc. Madeline looked hurt. Like I said I wanted to kick her puppy. I never would of course, but she looked very sad that I didn’t like the lobster.

By this time, I’ve eaten what I was going to eat of the fish goop, I mean dip. Left some of the salad on my plate. It was now time for the hot section. It had to get better, right?

Yeah. Remember. I was inspired to write this trip report because of how bad the food is.

So on the hot buffet there were: mussels a couple different ways. All of them looked dried out and as if they’d been sitting there a while. After my fear of the lobster coming back later, I figured I’d leave the mussels alone. There was lemon chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and corn on the cob.

Just a quick aside. Do y’all remember the little pieces of corn on the cob that you used to get at school? Sometimes it was good, but most of the time it was so over done that the kernels looked like they had tried to pop and just gave up. You remember? School corn was sad. From childhood it had always wanted to be good corn – fine dining corn. But alas and alack, twasn’t meant to be. School corn was sad.

Well the corn on this buffet made the school corn look like corn from heaven or something. Some of it was all brown on the end, which was either burned or it looked like it should have been tossed in the trash 2 years ago. I left the corn in its sad little pan of water.

I got a piece of salmon, some crawfish el monica (or something like that) and then went to the carving station. On the carving station was roast beef of some persuasion and a seabass of some sort. With the seabass came a big slop of some more goop. The ‘chef’ said it was something. But I couldn’t hear him. Next came a piece of the roast beef. I took it medium rare, so he didn’t toss it on his little fry pan where he apparently made other people's meat medium. There were two kinds of horseradish there in front of him – out of reach of the front of the buffet. I had to ask for some. He asked me which one I wanted – real horseradish or this creamy stuff. Well I’m a redneck so of course I said – gimme the real stuff. He proceeded to give me a big slop of horseradish that would have sho nuff cleaned out my sinuses, yours and Madeline’s all in one fell swoop. It was a lot of horseradish.

I get back to the table looking at my plate with a wary eye. You know, one eye closed. Eyebrows raised. Wondering if I was going to regret this plate later. The salmon was dry. It looked dry when I picked it up. There was something on top that I think was probably butter at some point. It didn’t help. The salmon was bad.

Now the sea bass. It actually tasted like fish – unlike most of what I’d already had so far. Only, there were these HUGE bones still in the fish. Now, I watch enough Gordon Ramsey to know that you’re supposed to pull all the bones out of the fish when it’s served like that. So, my dander already being up, I started wondering how many little bones they’d missed if they missed these HUGE ones. I didn’t finish the salmon, I did actually finish the sea bass because it was really the first thing that had tasted like it was supposed to all night. The crawfish maniacal, or whatever it was called didn’t have a whole lot of flavor. I’m thinking someone needs to remind the kitchen about salt. I’m sitting here chuckling at this point thinking about how ol’ Gordon would have been yelling at these chefs. It wouldn’t have been purty, I can tell you that much.

So by this time, it was a quest. None of my plates were full – the food looked that bad. I’d just gotten tasting portions of most of this stuff. So at this point, I went back to get a piece of the chicken just to see how bad it was. And I got a little mashed potatoes. Cause, you know. You gotta.

Turns out that the mashed potatoes were the best thing on the buffet. Seriously. They too were a little goopy, but at least they’d remembered the salt. They were pretty good. Maybe a whole plate full of taters would have made this better. But at this point, I was just done.

Before I came, I read that the desserts were pretty good here. And honestly, they were pretty good. I got the chocolate pudding – and it actually tasted like chocolate pudding. So, score, right? The strawberry shortcake was good and tasted like strawberries. Another score. And then the banana bread pudding served in a mason jar. It was good. The highlight of the meal.

Now you may be wondering why I spent the last 45 minutes or so writing this. Basically, it’s a warning. Stay away. Maybe if people quit going to this place, they will get the hint that the food is awful and change it. It can’t get much worse than I saw it tonight. 4 families in a big restaurant with characters just doesn’t get it. It was so empty, at one point, Pluto was standing over by himself pulling on his ears and swaying to the music. That’s how slow it was. I will say a word of thanks to Madeline. She took the lobster off of my check because of how bad it was. For that I’m grateful. But it was still $51!! The only way I’m going to get that is when I get to enjoy the uncooked/overcooked lobster and fish goop later tonight for a second time.

So to recap. Former Whirlwinder. Business trip. Food so bad it inspired this. Madeline – good. Fish goop bad. Banana bread pudding – good. Everything else, bad. Very, very bad.

If you enjoyed this, say hi. I’ll be heading over somewhere tomorrow night. I haven’t made a reservation anywhere yet. I can already tell you though that it’s going to be amazing compared to the Garden Grove. I will, from now on, pay the extra $15 for Cape May. You should too.

Just don’t go when I’m there. Cause, crab legs. I’ll fight you. (Not really.)

Blessings!
Mark
 
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Wow! You are braver than I am--I would have been done by...well, the time I walked in.

And now I'm kinda sad thinking about poor Goofy.

Check back in and let us know you are still alive. I had food poisoning from some orange roughy once (once was E-NUFF) and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. (And I mean that--not just saying it because you are a pastor and I'm not supposed to wish bad things on anyone--not even enemies :sunny: Hey, I paid attention in Sunday school ).

I'd make sure you had some saltines and ginger ale on hand, all things considered...

Good luck, and PRAY!
 
Wow - thanks for the warning! I never really think of the Swan and Dolphin as true Disney - maybe Disney-lite? Sounds like a waste of money except for the few bright spots. Better luck on your next meal.
 
Here are pictures I took, just so you can see what I'm talking about...-1202521332405954322.jpg
This is the Fried platter. I think I had eaten a clam strip or two before the picture was taken.

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Desserts: Chocolate pudding, Banana bread pudding, and strawberry shortcake


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The cold plate - see the white fish goop?

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The handler got over and stopped Pluto from holding his ears and dancing before I could get the picture.

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Finally - the lobster. Look closely at the tip of the tail there - where the 'stuffing' starts. Opaque almost.

Blessings!
Mark
 


Sure sounds like a terrible meal, and there is something definitely off about that lobster...

I had actually never heard of this restaurant, had to google it. Now I'll know to never go there!
 

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