Scream if you want to go Fatter! Deluxe DDP to Drive Thru 2018

[JenD1]

I’m binge reading this on our home from fortnight in Cornwall (no WDW for us this year ☹️). It’s making the miles go by wonderfully!

[theCMG]

Originally Posted by JenD1

I’m binge reading this on our home from fortnight in Cornwall (no WDW for us this year ☹️). It’s making the miles go by wonderfully!

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thanks for reading, know the long slog back from Cornwall well! Hope the traffic isn't too bad

[theCMG]

Lunch - Via Napoli (EPCOT Italy)

Lunch on Day 8 is a return to a favourite from our last trip, Via Napoli (at the back of the Italian pavilion). Bear in in mind for this that DW is Italian which makes us all a bit choosy with the food. First of all, we arrive on time for the ADR to be told it’s a 20-30 minute wait. We tell them that’s too long in Italian and 2-3 minutes later we’re seated. That may not be fair but it's very Italian.

A hostess had placed us at a table near the back of the huge restaurant. and learn that the menu changed last week. For drinks DW has a negroni, this was good. DD chose the usual apple juice and I went for a glass of chianti. The red wine was lovely, super-soft.

EPCOT t-shirt Challenge 13/22

As appetisers we re-order two of the items from our last meal 3 years ago, arancini and calamari and we add a caprese salad. Here’s the arancini which according to the online menu are fried risotto balls, mozzarella, meat ragù. The ones we had did not seem to have meat ragu it was non-descript inside, possibly some sort of seafood? Chicken? They were pretty much just the risotto with cheese. Big and a bit bland.

The calamari were ok, DW and DD really liked them. I thought they were a bit meh mainly because I ate most of mine with the marinara sauce in the jug and this sauce was bland as anything. Described as spicy on the menu, it was the same tasteless red sauce that appeared on multiple dishes. Maybe they’ve taken over the marinara order from Tony’s Town Square now Tony's has apparently employed a chef who does more than open packets.

Finally we had the Mozzarella Caprese (fior di latte mozzarella, vine ripened tomato, basil) AND…

What kind of monster puts figs in a caprese salad!

The mozzarella was ok, hardly any tomato and a single basil leaf. But...figs! It also came with this classy looking balsamic vinegar to dress it with:

Is it me or does that label look a little worn?

I kept pouring and pouring this stuff which is in the bottle of a vinegar that retails online for $6 a bottle. Far be it from me to suggest that someone out back is decanting catering standard balsamic vinegar into more expensive looking bottles but the lack of flavour of the vinegar and wear on the label...I really hope this restaurant isn't in the company of those places who squeeze own label ketchup into Heinz bottles etc. Classy!

Here’s a new bottle - look at the straight line on top of the main label sticker vs the earlier photo

So our starters were very hit and miss. Last time we had great arancini and calamari, these have gone downhill and the caprese, figs

Main courses next, DD had a decent chicken parm - Pollo Parmigiana (breaded chicken breast, tomato and mozzarella, spaghetti pomodoro) albeit the pomodoro was from the same unloved red sauce family as the starters. I tried ate some of this and the chicken was good. DW chose Linguine con Vongole Veraci (littleneck clams, garlic, vesuvio tomato) which she liked so this was a score. She enjoyed this main which is one of the more difficult ones to get right so kudos to the kitchen for that one clearly there are some good dishes around!

Chicken Parmigiana

Linguine, EPCOT t-shirt Challenge 14/22

My order was the pizza special for the day which was a buffalo mozzarella margherita with basil on it also. The first one came like this:

And went straight back, at first glance it looks obviously underdone. I tasted the crust and the middle to try but the dough was well under and a guaranteed stomachache for anyone daft enough to eat it. When I sent it back the waiter (who was generally great) did say ‘so you want it well done’ and got ‘no I want it cooked correctly’ in return (well he started it ). A different pizza came back all of 2 minutes later, this time without the basil. It was a teeny bit over - actually patchy, overcooked in some areas of the base and undercooked in others (check that oven!) but overall it was fine if a completely underwhelming pizza with the mozzarella nuked on the top - overheated (check that oven )

I felt a bit guilty for the person whose no basil pizza order this obviously was supposed to be and hope that their meal wasn’t ruined because I refused to let mine be

Pizza pedantry behind us we ordered just one dessert, a double portion of the Zeppole di Caterina ricotta cheese fritters served with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Think of these as gourmet doughnut holes, they’re great even as we took them without the sauces. We scoffed these in the France theatre sheltering from a storm by watching the France movie.

So the bill came to $168 and I’ve now changed my view to agree with the majority that Via Napoli ain’t great and that’s with the advantage we had in using an Italian speaker to get perfect service.

It was also the first time I noticed one of those multi-lingual; passive-aggressive Disney guide to tipping leaflets slipped in alongside the bill

Dinner is at le Cellier

[sha9]

Oh excellent! I love Le Cellier. Hopefully it’s enjoyable!

[Disney Planning]

Shame about the pizza, how can they get that wrong. Thought they had those big wood fired ovens to cook the pizza at Via Napoli?

The cheese fritters look great 👍

[theCMG]

Originally Posted by sha9

Oh excellent! I love Le Cellier. Hopefully it’s enjoyable!

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To follow! We were a bit tired so no dessert unfortunately

Originally Posted by Disney Planning

Shame about the pizza, how can they get that wrong. Thought they had those big wood fired ovens to cook the pizza at Via Napoli?

The cheese fritters look great 👍

See more...

There was something wrong with at least one of the ovens because the second one was patchy and the top almost burned while the base was fine. The zeppos/cheese things were great, I've just been informed that I vetoed a double or triple to go portion, we're watching our figures

[theCMG]

- EPCOT morning
- World Showcase adventures
- Snack Credit Blitz

In the morning after Akershus we’d ridden Frozen and Test Track then also gone to the Pixar short films (don’t miss these ) and did the always cute Turtle Talk with Crush.

We were on a bit of a snack frenzy on this day, including an eclair (DD), doughnut (DW) and an iced cappuccino (me) from the French patisserie.

It’s is I l’Eclair

Doughnut in a hole (theCMG, 2018)

Watch that snack total go down today

The afternoon before our Via Napoli dinner DD and I also had a couple of ice-creams from Ampleforth Creamery on the Boardwalk. So many great flavours and you can try before you buy too, a snack credit gets you the basic cone with one flavour which is great as a normal sized snack. I went for the Buttercake flavour and DD the Milk and Cookies. Bit of a photo fail, sorry!

We also found this year’s Village People/YMCA (see the 12 Days of Easter) except this time it was in the so bad it’s good category. We watched the Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Tape live! Show on the stage by the USA. The back-story is magnificent:

”After saving their world from certain destruction, Peter Quill—a.k.a. Star Lord—brokered a deal with Nova Prime and the Xandarian government to bring an outreach program to his home planet. The purpose? To share Xandar’s rich heritage and culture with Earth’s people.

As luck would have it, Peter informed Xandar’s leaders that there’s already a place on Earth with a similar mission… a theme park called Epcot, where all of Earth’s cultures are celebrated. So, as part of their first outreach, Xandar has sent some of their most talented performers to showcase their music!”

I’d describe the dialogue between the songs as the worst in the galaxy but other galaxies might complain and ask to be included in that description Basically it’s karaoke with a couple of decent singers among the band, several people pretending to play instruments and ‘Star Lord’ mugging around the stage while ‘Gamora’ looks on moodily and occasionally performs a bad Sporty Spice kick.

Now these two aren’t exactly Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana, they're more like Spar Lad and Gonorrhea. That said we enjoyed this a lot, funniest show of the holiday and it is a great soundtrack they are pretending to play. DD was horrified to see DW and I dancing which is always a highlight All in all a great start and I hope the new Guardians rollercoaster is as entertaining.

After this I picked up a beer, with all that great choice in Germany I ended up through a combination of queues and laziness getting a Becks

EPCOT t-shirt Challenge 15/22

DD Snack Blitz

'I do not have popcorn lookalikes' (Admiral Snackbar)

We then before dinner did pretty much a full lap of the lake looking for snack credit packaged stuff from each country for DD’s tasting thing after we get back. It looks like even this week the list of snacks is being pared down (we thought on the first night there were snack credit packaged things in Mitsukoshi but not now). This search was a bit frustrating but we did end up spending snack credits on things from Mexico, Canada and Germany so not a complete write-off and the snack mountain has been dented significantly.

Dinner at le Cellier to follow later

[Jesslydevie1]

Oh that food looks delicious,particularly like the starters just down my alley!