"See the Line Where the Guests Meet the Mouse? It Calls Me..." March 2017 *New Post 7/4*

I love that you both took advantage of the outdoor kitchens at the Flower and Garden Festival. They are probably one of my favorite parts about the Festival (aside from how beautiful Epcot looks during the season). I'm really glad to hear the grits were cooked correctly. There's not a lot of forgiveness when it comes to grits. You either get them right and they taste delicious or they aren't prepared correctly and end up nasty. ::yes::

That ice cream shop in France is amazing!

I'm pretty sure we're all guilty of sleeping through the American Adventure show. It's difficult not to when it's dark and comfortable.

Sorry that you weren't able to ride Test Track; I can only imagine how long the line must have been during EMH.

I'm going to Disney in July, as well, and I've done it a few years ago. I think when you go into a trip knowing what temperatures you'll be facing, it's not as bad as it seems. You know it's going to be hot and muggy, but the advantage to that is it's pretty easy to pack lots of cool clothing. Certainly easier than making sure you have jackets and pants and then a backup pair of shorts just in case it warms up.
 
I realized on our last post that I forgot to list everything we were able to accomplish on our EPCOT day. From when we left our room to when we got back was about 14 hours. We experienced eleven attractions and shows, and used eight Fastpasses. We had food and drinks eight times (thanks Flower and Garden Festival!) and watched the Fireworks.


We are headed to Key West soon, so I want to try and get up a couple posts this weekend so we don’t run out of time to finish this report before we are back at WDW again!



Wednesday, March 15th: A Hollywood Studios Park Day



Our fourth park day started off very cold. I was wearing jeans, a shirt, a sweatshirt, a flannel over it, and at some point in the day I put my rain jacket on over all of that! Hollywood Studios opened at 9, and we were on the bus at 8:15, and at the park at 8:35. Our plans for the day looked like this:






Since we didn’t have a Fastpass for Rock ‘n Roller Coaster, we decided to start our day there, as did many other people. We waited behind a rope on Hollywood Boulevard until the park opened. It was bitter cold, and Scott and I noticed at some point that the huge crowd of people waiting to enter the park was silent. We felt like we had to whisper to talk to each other. I don’t know if it was the cold, but until the rope was dropped and we were walking, no one was talking at all!


This morning wasn't the coldest of our trip TECHNICALLY, but it felt that way. However, it filled me with a warm joy that, for the first time since I don't know how long, I was able to look down Hollywood Boulevard and see a *mostly* unobstructed view of the Chinese Theater. I was never a fan of the Sorcerer Hat, and I was even less a fan of the stage, but this new stage left the view fairly open.







The posted wait for Rock ‘n Roller Coaster was 55 minutes, but the line only took about 25 minutes. It was not an easy 25 minutes though; we were frozen for the entire outdoor portion, which is 95% of the wait time. We always have so much fun on RnRC! I don’t know if it had something to do with the cold weather, but my eyes watered to the point of crying during the ride, and afterwards Scott told me that it happened to him too!











Screen_Shot_2017_03_19_at_1_50_34_PM.png


After that, we were very ready for some breakfast, however Hollywood Studios was not ready to serve us any! With Starring Rolls closed, the only option for breakfast was Starbucks and the line wound far out the door. So we walked around trying to see if there was anything else at all that we could eat. Writer’s Stop came to mind, but that’s closed right now. We walked by Sweet Spells and decided to make something in there work. We ended up getting one of those huge carrot cake sandwich cookies and Scott got a coffee. This made for a pretty good breakfast.


This carrot cake cookie sandwich was amazing, and I will be getting it when we go back. It was huge, and filled with cream cheese icing. Highly, HIGHLY recommend if you like carrot cake and cream cheese. I apparently was so excited about it that I failed to take any pictures of it.


We used our Toy Story Midway Mania Fastpass at 10:00, and then our Star Tours Fastpass at 11:00. We didn’t write down anything that happened between then, so we were probably just walking around.







Leave a comment if you want a detailed description of my TSMM secrets. I don't care if I'm sharing a car with kids. I'm getting best in vehicle. Every time. Except for one time when Alli beat me and we don't talk about that.













We don’t love Star Tours, because it makes us sick, but the queue is always fun. We wanted to see if we could get one of the new scenes, but we didn’t, so we closed our eyes for a lot of it, ha!


Closing my eyes makes it worse. I just deal with it. It feels like theres no AC in those pods and by the middle of the 2nd scene, I'm over it. So why do I always ride it? The 3-D is fantastic. I can't ride it more than once though. I'd surely vomit. Anyone ridden Flight of Passage yet? If Star Tours makes me sick, will FoP?


After that, we were in search of somewhere else to stay warm. As we walked by the Hyperion Theater, there were Cast Members outside saying that there was a show starting soon, so we just ran on in haha. The Frozen Sing-a-long was enjoyable and kept us warm for a while.







I really love Let it Go.. I love it. And you should too.


We watched Captain Phasma march down Hollywood Boulevard with her troops, which was cool. It’s funny how Hollywood Studios is doing so much filming and then playing it on the large screens by the stages, we watched them do this several times throughout the day.




Next, we headed to use our Tower of Terror Fastpass around 12:00, and we were able to pick up another RnRC Fastpass for 2:20! Woo, we were excited about that!













Tower of Terror is one of my favorite attractions. I love the way the building looks outside, and I love walking through it. I made Scott stop and take a picture in front of the Tower, because it was the first place we ever took a picture together. There was an extremely terrified little girl in the library with us. She was sobbing hysterically, so her mom offered her some sort of coloring app on her phone. The little girl continued to wail, but did start coloring on the app, which we found really funny. She was still screaming as we left the library and entered the boiler room, and when we got to the point where the two lines split, two guys in front of us said to each other that they wanted to follow that family just to see what the little girl did on the actual ride, haha.


Screen_Shot_2017_03_19_at_1_50_55_PM.png


Can we just all agree as a community to keep our hands down on these rides unless you're in the back row? Ruining our pictures. Jerks.


We traded for some pins at some point. I was able to find another pin in the Ratatouille series we were collecting, and Scott found a pin that goes with a Pirates series he’s been collecting for awhile.


 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: DLo


After the ride, we were ready for some real food, and we went to the Hollywood Brown Derby Lounge for lunch. We were able to get a table in the sun, which made the experience perfect. Typically, I would not even consider sitting at a table in direct sunlight, but on this trip, you had to take what you could get! We started with drinks, and I had the Grapefruit Cake Martini and Scott got the Derby Cocktail.






I loved my drink. Scott’s drink came with a tiny Derby hat glow cube, so we had a lot of fun with that little hat, haha. Scott ordered the Derby Sliders, and I got The Famous Hollywood Brown Derby Cobb Salad.







I’ve always heard about the famous Cobb salad and how it was invented at the original Brown Derby, so this way a great way to try it out for only $10. We would definitely go back, I just hope that we can find a table in July, since there aren’t that many tables in the area.


After lunch, we decided to suck it up and wait for The Great Movie Ride. We had to do it, and the wait was an hour. We didn’t have much else to do though while we waited for our RnRC Fastpass, so we got in line. A lot of the line was outside, and it was shaded. Which would normally be a great thing, but today made it difficult! At least this is a nice long attraction though, so it was worth the cold in the queue.
















Next we went to use our RnRC Fastpass we picked up earlier, and we had an amazing time as always!




We got a Fastpass for TSMM for 6:40. Then we walked around for a while, and we ended up being able to bump our Fastpass time up to 4:00! That was awesome luck. It always paid off for us to check on Fastpass times on the app, and it saved us a lot of time waiting around to use them.


Since it was already 3:45, we headed to TSMM to use the 4:00 Fastpass. Once we had tapped our bands, we looked on the app and got a RnRC Fastpass for 4:20. After the ride, we ended up changing it to TSMM for 4:45, and then we were able to move that up to TSMM at 4:25! So wow, we were able to pick up and use two TSMM Fastpasses from 3:45-4:25, and this was a super busy day! I simply love Fastpass+ and using the app to manage it!






So we rode TSMM once again, which really tuckered our shooting arms out! At 4:27, we checked the app and picked up a 4:30 Fastpass for Muppets. Since we were by One Man’s Dream and we hadn’t been in there this trip, we decided to spend some time looking around.













We then left to go to Muppetvision 3D, where we used our Fastpass but didn’t need it.




By this time, we were basically ready to go, as we didn’t see waiting around for Fantasmic! as an attractive option. Especially since the show itself would probably be a bit miserable to watch in the current weather.


The one thing we had left to see was the Star Wars Launch Bay, since we had never been in there. So, we walked around in there for some time, and saw all the various things they had set up, which was pretty cool.
















This little Jawa was in a basically abandoned area, and they were being very ignored. I stopped to take a picture, and they waved at me very excitedly. I hope my acknowledging them made their day. Try trading something with them. I'm too scared.




After that we had done everything in the park that we wanted to, and a lot of things multiple times, and it was still freezing, so we decided to head back to Pop. We had wanted to get dinner at Pizzerizzo, but apparently it was only open for lunch on this day, which seems pretty ludicrous to me. I know that the Muppets area probably doesn’t have a ton of people in it at night, but it was a bummer that it was closed.




We walked across Hourglass Lake to the Landscape of Flavors food court at Art of Animation, because we had looked at the menu online and saw they had Chili Cheese Fries listed.




Well…thus ensued a big nightmare surrounding these fries! The line wasn’t moving at all for quite some time. We were at the station to order them, where they were clearly listed on the menu right above. However, the cast member we ordered from had no idea how to ring them up, because they weren’t in the computer. So she just rang up fries I guess, without our knowledge. Then, when they gave us our food, they just handed us one small plate of fries. So I said that they were supposed to be chili cheese fries and another cast member poured us big cups of cheese and chili on the side. So we take this to go check out, and the cast member at the register couldn’t find chili cheese fries either and charged us a different amount than either of the two menus we had previously seen had listed, though it was less, so that was fine, just weird. The fries tasted good, but it was a lot of trouble along the way to get them!


When we walked back, we stopped in the Everything Pop food court so Scott could get a Tie Dye Cheesecake.


As you might be able to tell from my love for the Carrot Cake Cookie, I love cheesecake. The Tie Dye Cheesecake is another thing that I told myself I'd have to get. I've heard so much about it, and I didn't get it on our last trip, so I just had to have it. It was just regular cheesecake. And not even that great of a regular cheesecake. It was ok.


There was evening EMH at Magic Kingdom this night, but we just couldn’t drag ourselves out of the warm hotel room to get there! I felt really guilty about it, but I didn’t think we’d enjoy ourselves if we spent the time going, and I knew we had a really fun day to look forward to. So, we ended up just having an early night in.


So on this day, we spent about nine hours at the park. We experienced eleven attractions, and two “walk-throughs.” We used seven Fastpasses, and got food and drinks three times. Hollywood Studios was really lacking in the food department on this trip! They had bars set up everywhere, but just very few unique food offerings. Actually, I just remembered that at some point on this day we stopped to get a soda and some popcorn. We intended to get some cotton candy with the popcorn, because I like to mix the popcorn and cotton candy together to eat. I know that’s a little bizarre, but it’s a really good salty and sweet combination. (Tastes like kettle corn) However, we could not find one bag of cotton candy anywhere in Hollywood Studios. We even asked a few cast members and they didn’t know where to go other than the prepackaged cotton candy in the plastic containers at the candy shops. That small container is actually more than the large fresh bag, so that was a no go. I’m not sure if there was a cotton candy shortage, but we ended up not being able to find cotton candy in any of the parks until the last day of our trip! The next day of our trip was absolutely amazing and we did a big variety of activities, which was really fun! We got really lucky with an awesome Fastpass that made our trip! I can’t wait to tell you all about it! Thanks for joining us and I hope that our words and pictures brought you some Disney magic, wherever you’re reading from.

Skip to our next day of adventures here!!!
 
Last edited:
I am amazed at how many Fastpasses you guys were able to pull on this trip. It has really made me realize that I need to check the app more often once I use my 3rd pass. Being able to get both TSMM and RNRC (and then changing it to another TSMM) late in the afternoon is fantastic. I hope that method hold true in July when it's going to be very busy.

As you might be able to tell from my love for the Carrot Cake Cookie, I love cheesecake. The Tie Dye Cheesecake is another thing that I told myself I'd have to get. I've heard so much about it, and I didn't get it on our last trip, so I just had to have it. It was just regular cheesecake. And not even that great of a regular cheesecake. It was ok.

The cheesecake recipe was changed a few years ago! It used to be so much better! A perfect blend of red velvet cake and cheesecake, now it's just average. My husband and I used to go out of our way to go to Pop to pick up a piece to take home with us, but since we tried the new version in 2013 we haven't ordered it since.
 
I realized on our last post that I forgot to list everything we were able to accomplish on our EPCOT day. From when we left our room to when we got back was about 14 hours. We experienced eleven attractions and shows, using eight Fastpasses. We had food and drinks eight times (thanks Flower and Garden Festival!) and watched the Fireworks.

When you put it that way it's apparent just how much you did at Epcot! Wow!

This morning wasn't the coldest of our trip TECHNICALLY, but it felt that way. However, it filled me with a warm joy that, for the first time since I don't know how long, I was able to look down Hollywood Boulevard and see a *mostly* unobstructed view of the Chinese Theater. I was never a fan of the Sorcerer Hat, and I was even less a fan of the stage, but this new stage left the view fairly open.

I also have a preference for the new unobstructed view of the theatre. I didn't particularly dislike the Sorcerer hat, but I wasn't in the camp of people who were disappointed to see it go either.
 


I am amazed at how many Fastpasses you guys were able to pull on this trip. It has really made me realize that I need to check the app more often once I use my 3rd pass.

Most people may not like the idea of constantly checking their phones, but for us it was almost like a game. And you don't even have to wait until you use all three to start moving stuff around. If I use a FP at 10:00 and my next one isn't until 11:00, I'm going to be checking the app to see if I can bump it up. A lot of times, we were able to bump them up at least a half hour.

But honestly though, the trick we used the most is just picking up whatever we could and then bumping them up throughout the day. If it were noon and we had used our third fastpass, and we wanted to ride Splash Mountain but the next fastpass wasn't until later in the day, we would just pick up the later one and, without fail, we'd be able to bump that later fastpass up like 2 or 3 hours. I'd say this worked every time.

The cheesecake recipe was changed a few years ago! It used to be so much better!

That is SUCH a bummer. All I'd ever heard about was the Tie Dye Cheesecake, and it was just meh.

When you put it that way it's apparent just how much you did at Epcot! Wow!

Yea we crushed it. And we ate a stupid amount of food. An unnecessary amount.
 
We are headed to Key West soon
I love Key West! Have a wonderful trip! :goodvibes

I loved my drink. Scott’s drink came with a tiny Derby hat glow cube
Thanks for adding that bit, because I was trying to figure out what the heck was in his drink! :laughing:

We used seven Fastpasses
You really gave the FP app a workout that day and it sure paid off! Impressive, especially given the crowd size.

Anxious to hear about your next day... sounds like a good one! And hopefully the weather was better for you, too. :thumbsup2
 
Thursday, March 16th: An Adventure in Parkhopping


Hello Everyone! We just returned from Key West and now we have 15 days until our next trip to Walt Disney World! HAPPY DANCE! We did a huge variety of things on this day of our trip and it might’ve been my favorite day! It was just so delightful, and I’m so happy to be telling you all about it! Wednesday had been a bit of a bummer due to the weather, we had a great time at Hollywood Studios, and we were really lucky with getting to repeat ride TSMM & RnRC several times thanks to FP+, but we were really bummed that we spent a big portion of the evening/night just in the room because we were way too freezing cold to do anything else! The good news, is that while the day we’re about to tell you about was technically the coldest day of our trip temperature wise, the winds we experienced on previous days had gone away, so we finally got a bit of relief from the harsh weather!


When we were planning our trip, we knew that the Fastpass Tier Structure at EPCOT would be a bit challenging. We wanted to be able to ride Frozen Ever After more than once, since this was our first trip to WDW since it opened. So on our first EPCOT day, we went to Soarin’ at rope drop, and rode FEA with FP+. Since we had six day parkhoppers, we decided that one of our bonus days after we had been to all four parks would be an additional rope drop in EPCOT. Our overall plan for the day looked like this:





The good news about our early night in is that it set us up to be at the park bright and early for 8am EMH at EPCOT. We were in line for the bus at 7:40 and in the park gate at 8:10. We got in the Test Track line at 8:15, which took a bit of time, but Scott and I agree that the Test Track standby line really isn’t bad, and we’ve waited in it many times. We tried to make the best car we could and we did pretty well and ended up with a score of 219.







*Hidden World of Motion symbol. Y'all know I love these.*
I'm not sure how this system works, but while we were standing there checking our score, there was another guy who had a car with a HIGHER score than the "Highest of the Day" car, yet his car did not replace the current winner. I don't know.

When we left TT, we were ready for a warm drink! We went to a Joffrey’s stand.


I got a hot chocolate and Scott got a coffee. These stands always seem to take quite awhile because there’s only one person working at them at a time (at least, that was our experience). During Flower and Garden, they had different alcoholic beverages at each Joffrey’s location in EPCOT, where it seems like there are a lot more stands than in the other parks. Some of them sounded pretty good, but we didn’t try any from Joffrey’s.

Hot drinks in hand, we ran around and took a couple quick pictures at topiaries that had long lines on our first EPCOT day. We also stopped off to sit in Innoventions for a bit while we drank our drinks.




Then we headed to use our Spaceship Earth FP at 9:30. Yay, warmth!



We ran around to take pictures at a couple more topiaries.














With how much we had done on our first EPCOT day, we decided to just go for something we had never done before: The Pixar Short Film Festival! The short films we saw were La Luna, Get a Horse, and For the Birds. However, people online are saying that some of the films are going to change when this attraction comes back up from its short refurbishment. The 3D in Get a Horse is very impressive and I love the mix of new meets old. This was a great way to spend some time, and I highly recommend it! On this day, it was a perfect way to escape the cold, and I imagine that in July we’ll be back in the theater escaping the heat!

At this point, we were hungry and we didn’t have another Fastpass until 11:55, so we did what we do best, ate a bunch of food around the world in EPCOT!

Our first stop was for a Violet Lemonade ($3.50). This drink is one of Scott’s favorites, so even with the cold temperature outside, he didn’t want to miss out on it!


Worth it.

I love Winnie the Pooh, so I couldn’t pass up this photo op.


Obviously that tiny Violet Lemonade didn’t fill anybody up, so we had to get one of our all time favorite combinations: the Bisque de Homard (Lobster Bisque, $4.90) and the Roule Lard and Fromage (roll with bacon and cheese, $3.95) which we always get warmed up. I implore you to get these things together and enjoy some serious bread dipping in soup deliciousness! The only thing I don’t like about this, is that finding seating in Les Halles can be difficult, and you need somewhere to rest your soup!




Next up, we wanted to try something that we always hear about and see pictures posted of: Frushi ($5.75) from the Hanami stand in Japan.




For us, this item was a big disappointment. I love fruit and I love sushi, what could go wrong? Well, there was just no discernible flavor at all. The rice just tasted like plain white rice, and the fruit was entirely flavorless and not ripe at all! I still think we must’ve gotten a bad batch or something, because people rave about this dish so much, they couldn’t have tasted what we did! This was really the only item that we got from Flower and Garden that we thought was actively bad. The Beijing Candied Strawberries were so many leaps and bounds better than this Frushi, I wish we would’ve just gotten another round of it!

This was by far the biggest upset of Flower and Garden. Totally flavorless. It may have helped if they put the red sauce on the top instead of underneath. I really think the issue was unripe fruit, and this wouldn't be the last time we'd encounter this problem today.

We wanted just one more thing before our Frozen Ever After ride, the Beef Brisket Burnt Ends Hash with White Cheddar Fondue and Pickled Jalapenos ($6.25) from the Smokehouse in America. This was so delicious! It definitely made up for the tasteless Frushi, and it was a great portion!


I know that burnt meat covered in cheese may not sound that appetizing to everyone, but I had to try this dish. And it was excellent. Really smoky and cheesy. Amazing.

Alright, I’m going to leave off there for now! This day is going to continue in EPCOT and then move onto resort hopping around the monorail, and a night spent in another park where we stumbled into an awesome surprise! Of course, it also includes a ridiculous amount of food and drinks! Thanks for joining us and I hope our words and pictures brought you some Disney magic, wherever you’re reading from!
 
Thursday, March 16th: An Adventure in Parkhopping


Hello Everyone! We just returned from Key West and now we have 15 days until our next trip to Walt Disney World! HAPPY DANCE! We did a huge variety of things on this day of our trip and it might’ve been my favorite day! It was just so delightful, and I’m so happy to be telling you all about it! Wednesday had been a bit of a bummer due to the weather, we had a great time at Hollywood Studios, and we were really lucky with getting to repeat ride TSMM & RnRC several times thanks to FP+, but we were really bummed that we spent a big portion of the evening/night just in the room because we were way too freezing cold to do anything else! The good news, is that while the day we’re about to tell you about was technically the coldest day of our trip temperature wise, the winds we experienced on previous days had gone away, so we finally got a bit of relief from the harsh weather!


When we were planning our trip, we knew that the Fastpass Tier Structure at EPCOT would be a bit challenging. We wanted to be able to ride Frozen Ever After more than once, since this was our first trip to WDW since it opened. So on our first EPCOT day, we went to Soarin’ at rope drop, and rode FEA with FP+. Since we had six day parkhoppers, we decided that one of our bonus days after we had been to all four parks would be an additional rope drop in EPCOT. Our overall plan for the day looked like this:





The good news about our early night in is that it set us up to be at the park bright and early for 8am EMH at EPCOT. We were in line for the bus at 7:40 and in the park gate at 8:10. We got in the Test Track line at 8:15, which took a bit of time, but Scott and I agree that the Test Track standby line really isn’t bad, and we’ve waited in it many times. We tried to make the best car we could and we did pretty well and ended up with a score of 219.







*Hidden World of Motion symbol. Y'all know I love these.*
I'm not sure how this system works, but while we were standing there checking our score, there was another guy who had a car with a HIGHER score than the "Highest of the Day" car, yet his car did not replace the current winner. I don't know.

When we left TT, we were ready for a warm drink! We went to a Joffrey’s stand.


I got a hot chocolate and Scott got a coffee. These stands always seem to take quite awhile because there’s only one person working at them at a time (at least, that was our experience). During Flower and Garden, they had different alcoholic beverages at each Joffrey’s location in EPCOT, where it seems like there are a lot more stands than in the other parks. Some of them sounded pretty good, but we didn’t try any from Joffrey’s.

Hot drinks in hand, we ran around and took a couple quick pictures at topiaries that had long lines on our first EPCOT day. We also stopped off to sit in Innoventions for a bit while we drank our drinks.




Then we headed to use our Spaceship Earth FP at 9:30. Yay, warmth!



We ran around to take pictures at a couple more topiaries.














With how much we had done on our first EPCOT day, we decided to just go for something we had never done before: The Pixar Short Film Festival! The short films we saw were La Luna, Get a Horse, and For the Birds. However, people online are saying that some of the films are going to change when this attraction comes back up from its short refurbishment. The 3D in Get a Horse is very impressive and I love the mix of new meets old. This was a great way to spend some time, and I highly recommend it! On this day, it was a perfect way to escape the cold, and I imagine that in July we’ll be back in the theater escaping the heat!

At this point, we were hungry and we didn’t have another Fastpass until 11:55, so we did what we do best, ate a bunch of food around the world in EPCOT!

Our first stop was for a Violet Lemonade ($3.50). This drink is one of Scott’s favorites, so even with the cold temperature outside, he didn’t want to miss out on it!


Worth it.

I love Winnie the Pooh, so I couldn’t pass up this photo op.


Obviously that tiny Violet Lemonade didn’t fill anybody up, so we had to get one of our all time favorite combinations: the Bisque de Homard (Lobster Bisque, $4.90) and the Roule Lard and Fromage (roll with bacon and cheese, $3.95) which we always get warmed up. I implore you to get these things together and enjoy some serious bread dipping in soup deliciousness! The only thing I don’t like about this, is that finding seating in Les Halles can be difficult, and you need somewhere to rest your soup!




Next up, we wanted to try something that we always hear about and see pictures posted of: Frushi ($5.75) from the Hanami stand in Japan.




For us, this item was a big disappointment. I love fruit and I love sushi, what could go wrong? Well, there was just no discernible flavor at all. The rice just tasted like plain white rice, and the fruit was entirely flavorless and not ripe at all! I still think we must’ve gotten a bad batch or something, because people rave about this dish so much, they couldn’t have tasted what we did! This was really the only item that we got from Flower and Garden that we thought was actively bad. The Beijing Candied Strawberries were so many leaps and bounds better than this Frushi, I wish we would’ve just gotten another round of it!

This was by far the biggest upset of Flower and Garden. Totally flavorless. It may have helped if they put the red sauce on the top instead of underneath. I really think the issue was unripe fruit, and this wouldn't be the last time we'd encounter this problem today.

We wanted just one more thing before our Frozen Ever After ride, the Beef Brisket Burnt Ends Hash with White Cheddar Fondue and Pickled Jalapenos ($6.25) from the Smokehouse in America. This was so delicious! It definitely made up for the tasteless Frushi, and it was a great portion!


I know that burnt meat covered in cheese may not sound that appetizing to everyone, but I had to try this dish. And it was excellent. Really smoky and cheesy. Amazing.

Alright, I’m going to leave off there for now! This day is going to continue in EPCOT and then move onto resort hopping around the monorail, and a night spent in another park where we stumbled into an awesome surprise! Of course, it also includes a ridiculous amount of food and drinks! Thanks for joining us and I hope our words and pictures brought you some Disney magic, wherever you’re reading from!
 
Thursday, March 16th: An Adventure in Parkhopping Part Two


Hello Everyone! Where we last left off, we had started out at EPCOT for EMH and we had ridden a couple rides, and of course we had already sampled several food items.


We were in the World Showcase and we decided to use our Fastpass for Frozen Ever After at around 11:55. My thoughts are still basically the same on this ride. I love the animatronics and the scenes that are there, but I think the landscapes etc could have been better developed.


Though, we did find something cool in the queue on this go around! I love when there are references to past attractions!


MAELSTROM!!!







Also, now that the outdoor queue for FEA is pretty lengthy, many of you may have seen the Vikings that entertain the guests waiting outside. Well, one of the Vikings may look familiar to you if you ever watched Mulch, Sweat, & Shears at Hollywood Studios.




He was the front man for the band, which we used to love watching and I miss having that live music around the Studios! I wish we could get the 5 & Dime band from California Adventure!


Afterwards we headed to try out another drink that Scott’s sister had mentioned trying a few months prior: the Tipsy Ducks in Love from the Joy of Tea in China. The drink is Bourbon Whisky, coffee, black tea, cream, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream on top. It was $8.95. If you like iced coffee type drinks, I think you would enjoy this!


VERY chocolatey. The chocolate syrup is very prevalent. The other flavors are there, but the choco syrup is the star. Super tasty beverage.

Afterwards, we headed inside to check out the Shanghai Disney Exhibit, which is really cool!






At this point we had an upcoming reservation that we would need to leave the park for, but we had just one more thing we wanted to try before we left EPCOT for the last time this trip. So yes, even with a dining reservation looming, we went to try the potato pancakes from Bauernmarkt, and obviously we needed to try both the savory and the sweet options!




The Potato Pancakes with House-Made Apple Sauce ($3.75) were my favorite, but I just love the combination of those two foods in general! The other option was the Potato Pancake with Carmelized Ham, Onions, and Herb Sour Cream ($4.25). This was Scott’s favorite and it was delicious! I recommend picking these up as they’re both tasty and inexpensive!

The applesauce pancake may not look appetizing, but it was pretty good. The savory option was far superior, but I know Alli loves her potato pancakes and applesauce.

After that is was about 1:30 and we walked out of the park, to the Monorail, and headed on to our next destination!


We had a reservation for Afternoon Tea at the Grand Floridian’s Garden View Lounge at 1:45. I have been to tea at the Grand Floridian three times now, and I really enjoy it! It’s a really special and relaxing time to share with people you love! Though, it’s probably most enjoyed by people who love tea.








Tea at the Grand Floridian is truly an experience, with a lot of attention to detail! It’s a little pricy, depending on which package you choose, but you get your own pot of tea and lots of different foods to try. Plus, the view out of the windows is incredible!

After you choose which tea package you want, you choose your type of tea, which we should’ve made a note of, but we didn’t. We chose the Bedfordshire Tea, for $35 apiece. Since we had already had a few things to eat that day, we didn’t feel like we needed the extra courses and we had plans following tea that meant that we didn’t need the extra glasses of champagne at that time!




Our first course were finger sandwiches, which included a variety of things to try.


We each got a plate like the one in the picture. Then, they brought us a tower with our second and third courses. The second course was a scone and a jam tart with Devonshire cream, lemon curd, and jelly (I don’t remember what type). Delicious!


For dessert, you have a choice of house made pastries, strawberries and cream, or English trifle. Scott chose the pastries and I chose the strawberries and cream, which I had gotten on my prior two visits but it was the wrong choice today!


Just like in the Frushi, the strawberries were very unripe and devoid of flavor! Scott made the right choice! He got two macarons, a chocolate covered strawberry, and a swan puff pastry. My advice is to go with the pastries, even through the strawberries are really pretty, love that stenciling! It does seem like the menu has changed somewhat since we ate there, based on the menu I looked up to write this, so the food may be served a bit differently.

The macarons were perfection. One was mocha and the other, I believe, was lemon. The chocolate covered strawberry was, once again, very unripe. Curse all of these unripe berries. But I have to talk about this swan...


It was filled with an EXTREMELY minty cream. It was the 2nd most refreshing thing I've ever had in my mouth. 1st is toothpaste. It was like all the refreshing properties of toothpaste, but delicious and edible. I felt like I could breathe ice. The girl at the table next to us took one bite of hers, said "WOAH. That is quite minty...", and then put it down.


Afterwards, we spent some time walking around and just enjoying being at the Grand Floridian. I spent awhile looking around in Basin and I considered buying one of their solid perfumes, because I never have perfume to travel with but I didn’t end up getting one.




We got back on the Monorail and headed to the Polynesian, which we were really excited for because we hadn’t been there since the reimagining of the lobby.




I think the changes at the Poly were definitely for the better and brought it more up to date. Thank goodness those mirror walls in the lobby are gone!

I totally agree. I love the new lobby. I know there were practically riots about the update, but it's so open and airy now! And it doesn't smell like a musty waterfall.

I’m sure you can guess why we were at the Poly, we had to hit up Trader Sam’s!


We’ve been to the Trader Sam’s in Disneyland a couple times, and we’ve always enjoyed their food and drinks, so we knew this would be a good spot to hang out. Based on concept art, I thought that Grog’s Grotto would be a larger space than its Disneyland predecessor, but it is not. Luckily we were able to get spots at the bar. Also, this place is hidden behind a very non-descript door, which is pretty fun! Though, we got worried and were sure it was closed before we read the hours and stepped inside.




lamp










more lamps

Usually, I prefer to be at a table and not sit at the bar at most places, but sitting at the bar here was really fun! It gives you a good view for a couple of the special effects that go along with drink orders. Scott chose the Polynesian Pearl (RumChata Cream Liqueur, Grand Marnier, and Cinnamon with Tropical Juices $17).


If you get this drink, you have to purchase the cup as well, but not all of the drinks in souvenir glasses require you to purchase the class. I got the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Rum (Pyrat XO Reserve Rum, Cream of Coconut, and pineapple and orange juices dusted with cinnamon and nutmeg $12). The drinks here are always delicious! They can be strong though, be warned!


We decided to go ahead and order the Headhunter Sushi Roll ($14.99) as well. I can’t find a description online, but I loved this and I thought it was very unique and delicious! Scott didn’t care for it as much, but I liked the combination of the traditional sushi roll flavors with the twist of the pomegranate soy sauce and flavored rice. Yum! I want one right now! The fish on top was great quality as well.


After Trader Sam’s, we were walking through the hallway looking around when we noticed this framed album cover. Does the location of this photo look familiar to you? It is located somewhere in the parks! If you guess correctly, we’ll let you know!


We walked outside of the Polynesian to head to another location, our fourth of the day! We decided to take a bus from the Poly, which always seems to take a little while. I’ll wait until our next post to tell you what we did, but we were able to find a very secluded area of a park that made for an awesome photoshoot with a park icon and no one else in our pictures! We also picked up a super clutch Fastpass that made our trip!


Thanks for joining us and I hope our words and pictures brought you some Disney Magic, wherever you’re reading from!


CLICK HERE to finish reading about our park hopping day.
 
Last edited:
We were in the World Showcase and we decided to use our Fastpass for Frozen Ever After at around 11:55. My thoughts are still basically the same on this ride. I love the animatronics and the scenes that are there, but I think the landscapes etc could have been better developed.

Now that you say this, I'd have to agree. That's a pretty accurate assessment. And I really like the Frozen ride, though I'd never want to wait too long for it, but I miss...

MAELSTROM!!!

...Maelstrom! So I think it's super cool that they've thrown in a little reference here. We'll have to keep an eye out for this next time.

Afterwards we headed to try out another drink that Scott’s sister had mentioned trying a few months prior: the Tipsy Ducks in Love from the Joy of Tea in China. The drink is Bourbon Whisky, coffee, black tea, cream, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream on top. It was $8.95. If you like iced coffee type drinks, I think you would enjoy this!

I'll have to keep this in mind for my fiance. He's a sucker for a sweet frozen coffee beverage.

Just like in the Frushi, the strawberries were very unripe and devoid of flavor! Scott made the right choice! He got two macarons, a chocolate covered strawberry, and a swan puff pastry.

That's so disappointing about the strawberries! You're in Florida of all places! You should be able to have delicious ripe strawberries all year! But the pastries do look delish.

It was like all the refreshing properties of toothpaste, but delicious and edible.

Can't go wrong eating edible toothpaste!

I’ll wait until our next post to tell you what we did, but we were able to find a very secluded area of a park that made for an awesome photoshoot with a park icon and no one else in our pictures!

I'm intrigued. How exciting to get more private park icon pictures!
 
Hello and Welcome to our Walt Disney World Vacation!

1415wew.jpg


Hi! We are Alli and Scott (alligirl and FreddyMercury here on the boards). We have written three other trip reports about our Disneyland and Walt Disney World trips:

"It's So Clean!" First Timer's July 2014 Trip Report

Former Cast Members Take Back the Parks! (A June WDW Vacation TR)
How to Plan a Disneyland Trip in One Hour (Labor Day 2015)


We are just about to leave for our trip to the vacation kingdom, and we wanted to start this right before our departure, so we’d be all ready to start posting upon returning.


First, in this post, I’ll give some information about how our trip came to be, and then I’ll break down our more specific plans in the following post, and throughout the trip report, we'll see how they compare to what we actually do throughout our trip. We are rope drop to park close types, but we always leave room to change our plans based on what we feel like doing next. We also have a couple fun surprises that we planned for each other to share with you guys, and since I love reading about how people get themselves and their bags ready for their trip, I'll share some information about that as well.


Your Ghost Hosts:

t9b0no.jpg


Scott and I at a very different castle, one that serves wine.


Scott and I met while on a Disney College Program starting in January of 2013, and we’ve been stuck to each other’s hip ever since.

15mg26f.jpg


When you live at Walt Disney World, you even get your haircut on Main Street.

4ht8it.jpg


I opted to get my hair done at the Whispering Canyon Salon instead.

zxtn6f.jpg



I sunk, I mean STEERED, boats at the World Famous Jungle Cruise (just don't ask about the whereabouts of the Kissimmee Kate, and we're all good) while Scott swabbed decks and raised sails at the Pirates of the Caribbean. We worked at Walt Disney World from January 2013 – January 2014. We left Orlando so that Scott could finish his degree and I’m proud to say that we are both educating the moody pre-teen youth of this country. Sure, it may not be quite AS fun as dressing in head-to-toe khaki and training elephants to speak on command, but hey it’s paying for this awesome trip to our favorite place and we didn’t even have to ask for a single day off, because we just get weeks of work off at a time.


35kuyz6.jpg


You may have seen Scott and I moonlighting in various other roles. Including the ever fulfilling stroller parking shifts.

mim03q.jpg


vzabmb.jpg


You may have even seen us in our favorite role, highly enthused Disney fans who spent every waking moment at a park!



When and How This Trip Came to Be:


Scott and I last visited WDW in May of 2015 with a friend who was on our DCP with us. Since then, we have visited Disneyland twice. We always crave magic, and we had a big trip in mind: Tokyo Disneyland. I adore Japanese food and culture, and TDL is the international park that we’ve most desired a trip to see, mostly because of DisneySea, and because Tokyo is somewhere we’d love to vacation anyway. The trip we had in mind would be around two weeks long, and going SO far away from home, we wanted to bring some friends for that journey. We had friends who were down for the adventure, until they found out that they had eight…EIGHT weddings to attend in 2017, with some of them being at out of country destinations! Oof! Scott and I were still considering going to Tokyo just us, but that would have to wait until June or July. Fast forward to January 2017, the spring semester at our respective schools had just started and we made it to about Wednesday of the first week of the semester before we had our trip for spring break booked! We have a trip to Key West planned in June, so this way we have something to look forward to mid-semester and this summer.

Throughout this school year, we’ve had many conversations deciding when we would return to WDW. We kept wondering if we should wait for Pandora to open. But when it came down to it, there were plenty of new and exciting things for us to do and we NEEDED THAT SWEET, SWEET MAGIC! We teetered back and forth about actually pulling the trigger, I was constantly checking package prices and room availability and then one night I saw that all of the packages with a room discount for our resort had been booked! I quickly figured out that the package without the discount was less than $200 more, and I took this as a sign that we needed to book NOW!


Scott went to take a pre-bed shower and I quickly made the reservation without him knowing and then I saw THE most glorious screen!


2ypgpck.png


I showed Scott the laptop screen and he asked me with wide eyes, “what does this mean?!” I was very pleased to tell him that this meant that WE WERE OFFICIALLY GOING BACK TO DISNEY WORLD!


The timing of our booking was great because we only had to wait less than a week to make our Fastpass Reservations. However, because we booked fairly close to our departure date, flights were STEEP! In fact, the cost of both of our round trip flights was only slightly less than our 7 night hotel stay and 6 day parkhoppers! OY VEY! I tried looking at departure from several different locations, I thought about flying in to a different city in Florida and driving in, but nothing I considered was going to produce savings worth sacrificing that much trip time. I booked our fares through Southwest, and all of the cheapest category of tickets were sold out, for both travel days, which is why they ended up being so pricy. However, I checked Southwest’s website daily and I was able to find tickets for both of our flights in the cheaper category! Each time I found the cheaper fare, I just called Southwest and then we were refunded a couple hundred dollars, TWICE! So now I had more reasonably priced flights, AND both were non-stop flights, with our arrival day flight getting in at 9:45am! We’re so excited to be arriving in Orlando so early!

We plan to take a lot of pictures, and have a ton of fun, which is easy for us always, but a guarantee at Disney! I really hope you'll be along for the ride(s)! I have a feeling this is going to be one of our best and most special experiences at the parks yet!


So, our final details:


When: March 11th – 18th


Where: Pop Century (but let’s be real…the room is only for sleeping, we are here to park, park, PARK IT UP!)



Thanks for reading and I hope that the story of our Disney trip brings you joy, wherever you are reading this from!


Love the title
 
So I think it's super cool that they've thrown in a little reference here. We'll have to keep an eye out for this next time.

Apparently there's another Maelstrom reference inside the Anna and Elsa meet and greet, but we're not really meet and greet people.

That's so disappointing about the strawberries!

It really was. Alli raves about these berries and cream. Last time we had tea, we could choose between berries and cream or banana foster. I chose the banana. She chose the berries. And she never let me live it down. Always bragging about how good her berries were. Well who is BRAGGING now??

Can't go wrong eating edible toothpaste!

I wish I could describe it better. Just ridiculously minty whipped cream. My mouth was so cold! For a long time, too. It lingered. I loved it.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Top