theDIBB - Five Go On A Culinary Caper! Pre-trip And Travel Day

Hi

Welcome to my (hopefully!) live food report. I've spent many an hour drooling over everyone else's reports and so I thought it was time for me to pay it forward! I hope you enjoy! I haven't ever written anything like this before so please forgive typos (it will be typed on my phone) and be kind, I'm learning how to use the app as I go along.

There are 5 of us traveling tomorrow! (yes I've left this quiet late in the day) Me, the hubby, our two sons (age 10 and 5) and my Mum. We are staying on site at OKW for 3 weeks with a brief trip to Universal for the hubby and oldest son. ( can't promise they will remember to take food photos but they will go with their orders!) I booked when the $100 gift card and free dining was available. I waited until I could reserve the room at OKW rather than join the wait list and as a result the $200 gift card deal had finished but it did mean I could book with a cashback site and received £350 for my trouble so I didn't feel like I had done too badly! 😉

It's been two years since we last visited and quite a lot of restaurants have arrived on the scene so we are hoping to visit at least some of them in addition to some of our favourites. I am vegetarian so this has a significant effect on our restaurant choices as some don't have options shown on their menus. I know I can request something but I'd rather just know that I can get something off the menu. Hubby however wants the complete opposite to me when it comes to restaurants and plans to eat as many interesting meats and steaks as he can! We have a long list of ADRs so hopefully it will make interesting reading!

All the fun starts at 5am tomorrow so I'll leave this for now and hopefully update at the airport.

Thanks for reading x

Saturday 12 August

First stop ... breakfast

Brunel bar and kitchen - Bristol airport

One ultimate breakfast

Hubby review was not terribly positive, sausage undercooked, black pudding and beans over cooked and the field mushroom should have been referred to as a small lawn mushroom as it was so small! Eggs were nice and runny though, so at least there were some positives! 😉

A kids breakfast

It was demolished in double quick time and seemed to be enjoyed!

And finally toast and jam for the rest of us!

What more can I say... it was toast, nice soft bread and it all disappeared.

Next stop... Dublin!

Dublin airport

We had a very long 5 hour layover between flights and made the rookie mistake of going through US pre-clearance too early. We should have stopped and got some food before going through as the options are very limited once through.

For interest (and nothing to do with a food report!) it took us exactly an hour from landing to clearing the pre-clearance.

Anyway we bought some sandwiches from the little express deli/bar for lunch and shared them between us. Everyone had the same. Ploughmans sandwich with onion mayonnaise. It was really good, lots of flavour and a bit different. Better than a lot of prepackaged sandwiches 😊.

Aer lingus inflight food

First off we were served drinks and pretzels. The mini bags of pretzels were very popular with my 5 year old, I think he managed to pursuance 3 of us to give ours to him!

We paid to upgrade the inflight meal for the hubby and my mum. Hubby chose the steak option, we paid €22 for this and booked it online in advance. They didn't offer a vegetarian upgrade for me! The meal included bread, salad to start, steak with mash, mushrooms and broccoli, panna cotta for desert and a chocolate. He could also choose red or white wine. He enjoyed this and said it was miles better than the normal option. I asked if he would do the upgrade again he said yes it was worth it but he might choose a different option next time.

The upgrade meals were delivered before the rest of the meals and came on 'real' plates with 'real' cutlery.

We got the Chicken option for Mum as a little treat, this was €20. It was called Roast Chicken with a twist, it also included roasted vegetable salad to start, bread, roast Chicken breast on a tomato sauce with new potatoes and mange tout, a panna cotta for desert and a chocolate. It also came with a choice of red or white wine.

Mum really enjoyed this especially as it was really hot. (She hates lukewarm food!) she said it was a really welcome change to normal aeroplane food and she would order it again if she had the option. I'm really glad we treated her.

Everyone else had the main meal options of beef stew or chicken ravioli. Both the boys went for the Chicken pasta, the 10 year old enjoyed this but the 5 year old didn't. I don't think it was any better or any worse than standard plane food these days. It's just what you get!

About half way through the flight we were offered an ice-cream. This was really really good quality vanilla ice-cream, really lovely favour and a pretty generous portion.

The final food instalment of the flight was a hot chicken or vegetable lattice pastry.

We arrived at OKW by 9pm and I'm afraid we didn't do anything except collapse into bed! 23 hours after we started! 😴