Suitably exhilarated, it was time to leave the park. There was zero point going back to the hotel, so we kept on trucking and caught the park-to-park bus to Hollywood Studios. I don’t think we had to wait too long, and if memory serves, we had the bus almost to ourselves too. It must have been quick as my last photo in Animal Kingdom is just as we got on Everest, and my next one is under an hour later, with us already through the gates of Hollywood Studios.
We looked to see if there were any fast passes available, to no avail, so headed straight to the Hollywood Brown Derby to check in for dinner.
Back in the day, and I am talking the mid-90s, this was the restaurant to eat in. I have vague memories of it, and all the pictures on the walls – it felt so glamorous. As I had fond memories of it, Andy and I had eaten there (and paid for it, no dining plan then) back on our honeymoon and again, it was good. The team there were nice and gave us free champagne and dessert as it was our honeymoon, and I have very fond memories of the general ambience, amazing lobster spring roll that I had for my starter. Yes, I can remember a starter I had nearly a decade ago, can’t you?
We were about 20 minutes early for our 19:30 reservation, hoping that we might be seated a little early. Peeking our heads round the door, the restaurant didn’t look that busy, so we were confident we would have time to eat two courses and get out in time for the 21:00 fireworks. Yes.
The check-in area was a complete scrum, nothing golden-age about it. Kids screaming, parents shouting; it was awful. And we had to put up with it for ages as we weren’t seated til 19:40. When we were finally led to our table, it was in the lower part of the restaurant which was OK but felt a bit like we were dining in a drained swimming pool. Plus, it was noisy.
Our server chucked some bread on the table and away she went. I don’t want to sound like a horrible snob (which means I am going to) but you can buy ten of these rolls for a couple of quid in Tesco – they didn’t exactly scream “signature restaurant”.
The thing that sticks out most in my memory is our completely absent server, who, when she did turn up, was rude and surly. She looked and sounded like Baddison from Orange Is The New Black, wasn’t happy that we declined starters (that lobster spring roll was long gone) even though she knew we were on the dining plan, and looking at the times on the photos I have, we waited over 20 minutes for our drinks. She also rolled her eyes when I explained at the start of the meal that we were in a bit of a rush as we wanted to see the fireworks at 21:00, and made some sarky comment – I forget what exactly, but it was unnecessary.
I can’t remember what this cocktail was, I’m afraid but knowing me, it would have been some variation on a margarita. Andy stuck to Sprite and we both asked for water.
The menu itself looked pretty good, the food here always appeals to me and it was actually one of my more difficult menu choices as there was so much I fancied. And I had plenty of time to make up my mind, as our server didn’t come back for ages. Sometimes I complain about the fact that Disney turn tables too rapidly for you to enjoy your meal, but the one time on this trip where we were on a bit of a deadline, it was slower than a sloth hitching a ride on a tortoise. It wasn’t a relaxed signature dining experience, we were being ignored.
Eventually, about 40 minutes later, our main courses arrived. Andy had gone for the beef fillet, which came with “sweet potato silk” (pretentious, much) and mushrooms. It looked small, and didn’t take him long to get outside of it.
I had made a pretty good choice – I went for the Cioppino, which is described on the menu as “seared scallop, lobster, seasonal fish, blistered tomatoes, fennel, olive bread croutons & cioppino broth”.
Unlike poor Andy’s shameful use of two meal credits, this was a sizeable portion and it was really delicious, if a little salty. I ate all of it, but I’m not entirely sure I would have paid $50 OOP for it. Still, I’ve never had this dish before and it was nice to try something different.
It was now 20:45 and I was getting twitchy as we still had dessert to order and the evening fireworks were due to be starting at 21:00. We wanted to see the show particularly as it was the holiday special and we’d really enjoyed it last year. In desperation, I flagged a passing server down and asked for our bill, but he said he couldn’t help us and would go and find our server out back.
Five minutes later she was back at our table. I explained that we were in a rush and could we please order some dessert to go, and have our bill? She wasn’t thrilled about this but told us that as we were taking the dessert away, it limited our options and we could choose three mini desserts instead as they were more portable. Why they couldn’t just do us a slab of cake each was beyond me, but we chose the mini desserts and asked her (nicely) to please hurry.
I’d ordered a mini grapefruit cake, and, because I was under pressure, and a lot of the other options didn’t appeal, or we weren’t allowed to order them due to portability issues (really), two of the chocolate mousse cakes. Andy did the same but ordered an espresso cheesecake instead, so he had three different ones.
Finally, at 20:59, Baddison brought the boxes and our bill, which I tapped and scribbled as fast as I could. For the first time ever, we only left a 10% tip. Bit naughty I know, as it was a signature restaurant and the main courses had been alright, but we should have been able to get through two courses in 90 minutes, and we’ve never had a server be that rude to us, in Disney or anywhere else. Maybe she was having a bad day, maybe the Brown Derby is better at lunchtimes, I don’t know. But I think it’ll be another ten years before we try it again.
We hurried out the door, and the evening show had already started but hadn’t been going long. We managed to find a decent viewing spot relatively easily. It’s so much easier to get a good view of the evening show at DHS than at the other parks as it’s flat and open and there isn’t much to get in the way.
The holiday show, as I said in my last report, is some odd little story about some elves trying to save Christmas. It’s very cute and the projections are really clever – it’s definitely worth seeing if you are over there during holiday season, we liked it a lot. Sorry if some of my photos look a little... post-apocalyptic.
What we liked less, was this crowd trying to get out of the park. Woah. Look at a these people. Hell.
Unbelievably though, we managed to weave our way through the scrum, protecting our “portable desserts” at all costs. We were fully prepared to have to do the salmon swim past the bus stops and to walk back to the hotel, but we saw that a boat was due to pull in and the queue wasn’t that long, so we happily turned left instead, and got on the boat. Hurrah!
Back at the Beach Club and we popped into the Marketplace to grab some bottles of water, and a couple of forks so we could eat our desserts.
The water bottle made me laugh:
Desserts were nice and had more or less survived their journey. The chocolate mousse was lovely – dare I say it though, I felt the fabled grapefruit cake might be a tad over-rated. But we ate it all up and enjoyed them very much.
That’s it for today. Weirdly, this was the first day of the whole trip where we broke 20k steps and I can only think it was because we didn’t come back to the room part way through. It didn’t feel like we’d walked that much though!
I hope you join us tomorrow for our last full day (sob). We have a great morning in Epcot, and then attend Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party in the evening! Day 13 can now be found
here