Tusker House (another amazing DISunplugged rec!) AK *LIVE* and date night at Disney Springs

ToffPrincess

Mouseketeer
Joined
Sep 10, 2017
Animal Kingdom, Tusker House, La Nouba and date night at Disney Springs.
DS snored his way through the night and woke up without a fever or any trace of what happened the night before. Bizzare!! We decide to proceed with our Animal Kingdom day.
I was up at 6am Orlando time as I was getting an update from the vet that operated on my puppy’s leg. All went well but he will stay in till Monday to make sure that he is comfortable. My poor puppy :guilty:

Tusker House
We had a 8.10am breakfast at Tusker House. It was easy to find and check-in. Wow, what a huge buffet! So much choice over the standard fare.. for savory lovers this is the place to go. There are so many options it’s hard to know what to try first. I again must credit Steve from DisUnplugged for this one!
Highly recommend it as a character breakfast. If you don’t have time to do more than one and can get this booked when you do Animal Kingdom I would say go for it. It is by far the best value for money due to the immense choice and the characters come around fast so you don’t lose too much time. I would say for DS the character interaction was amazing! I can’t say it was better interaction than 1900PF or Garden Grill but the characters came around very quickly and spent a good amount of time on each table. They also interacted nicely and very warmly with the children.
We saw, Mickey, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck & Goofy! Food wise it is very good due to the amount of choice they offer but personally it wasn’t to my tastes. I love cinnaomon rolls and sweet things so for me it wasn’t great. They have sweets like donuts, croissants and cake but they are pretty standard and can’t compare to the ooey-gooey cinnamon bread thing at Garden Grill or the pineapple bread art Ohana’s. DH, who is a huge savory food fan, said it was the best breakfast by far and got up 3x. He wants to try lunch there so we have managed to book that for a future visit.

Then we went on Kilimanjaro Safaris which DS LOVED. He kept asking if the animals were real. I myself have never seen most of those animals before so it was one of those rides I felt like I could have done 4x over. DS loved it so much I immediately got on my app and switched some fast passes around to make room for another AK day.

DS and I then went shopping for toys (many were bought so I had to send them to the hotel) and then it was back to the hotel for us. Even though he has no more fever I didn’t want to push it. The bus service AK has is great and so well organised. The driver helped me with the folded stroller and we were the only people in the bus till Poly! We had a revolting lunch at Gasparilla Island Grill. DS’s burger had such a weird taste he couldn’t eat it.
My tuna salad also had this weird plasticky taste to it so I had to order room service for us. What happened to that place?! When I was a kid it was great and there were so many more things to play with in the arcade section. DH and my uncle stayed behind and did the Kali River Rapids and went to look around Pandora. They loved the park and came back after lunch with huge grins on their faces keen to go again. Good move on my adding another Animal Kingdom day!!

A few hours later- DS is watching Cindarella again, DH is asleep and I am about to get on the YouTube to research Universal resorts, Disney Cruises and some other Disney Hotels as we are coming back soon and are thinking of resort hopping!
Tonight (which I will update later) I take DH to LaNouba and Morimoto Asia for date night. He has never seen Cirque du Soleil before so he is quite excited for it.

UPDATE
After his nap DH took me to the dock at our hotel and we got in this tiny boat and went for a bit of a sail around the lakes. We saw our hotel, the Polynesian, WL and the Contemporary from the water angle which was magical! You can't get too close to MK but it is lovely to sail past and see the castle. Great idea for people staying at the GF.. you won't regret it! It's a great way of passing 30min-1 hour.

We then get dressed up and take the bus to Disney Springs not knowing quite what to expect. It wasn't the best weather and there were a lot of people.. it kind of reminded me of an outlet. One with no sales!!:pgig: After a walk around and quick stop in Sephora (where I bought everything mini) we went to the Cirque Du Soleil tent/area. They let us sit in our seats about 30 an hour before showtime which was nice as it was raining outside. As for the show.. what can I say.. it wasn't one of the better Cirque Du Soleil shows. It was pretty weak. I've seen Saltimbanco, Quidam, Algeria to name a few. (My uncle has a box at the Albert Hall so I'm lucky to see it whenever it comes to London.) The aerial work was fantastic but there were some gymnasts who made so many landing mistakes it became a bit uncomfortable to watch. Way too much time was wasted on the clowns.. I don't know if it was to make it child friendly but it definitely falls short of normal CDS standards. DH who had never been before enjoyed it.

Then we went to Morimoto Asia. We checked in and were sent to the bar area as we didn't have a USA mobile. They said they would call us by name when out table was ready. They never did. When we were sick of waiting (the bar area tables are filthy and it took 15 minutes to get a drinks menu) we approached them and the front desk lied and said 'we texted you.' Just say you forgot, don't lie. Huge pet peeve of mine. I pointed out that on the booking there is no USA number so that couldn't be possible. The woman blushed and we were seated immediately at a table that I had seen empty from the bar for 20minutes. So disappointed in this meal as so many people wrote positive reviews about it online. The sushi was huge.. I don't know if giants were making the rolls/nigiri but we were served chewy, badly cut slabs of fish on huge mounds of rice. Not the delicate sushi I was expecting from such a highly rated restaurant. We got one of the 'dim sum' dumplings which was good. Standard. We had to send back the daily special. It was supposed to be pork, chicken and black cod skewers but they ran out of cod. We accepted the substitute of another chicken skewer only to be served inedibly chewy pork and the blandest chicken ever. I NEVER send things back but this was so bad I had to.
The best thing we ate was the Singapore Laksa (pictured) which wasn't very authentic but tasted great. I love Laksa so that being served at the end saved the meal from a total disaster. I was crushed as it was our one date night this trip and it wasn't really good at all.

Then the rain started. We ran through Disney Springs to the bus stop where we just missed the bus. Luckily it was only about 15min till the next one came along. We were so lucky with that!

Disney Springs is nice just not for us. We would go back if we needed shopping but for once, that wasn't the purpose of our visit to Disney. We came for the magic!! We were relieved we didn't bring DS as I can't imagine it would be fun of him. Both of us are really into the whole Disney theming in all the parks so it's a bit anticlimactic to go somewhere where there is no Fantasyland or in-your-face theming. And that sums up the day. We went to bed with the bad news that the weather was turning nasty in Florida, not knowing what the morning would bring.


Next day HERE
Yesterday's post here
 
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