The 12 Days of Easter - Complete

[Juliemack]

Thanks for carrying on ... enjoyed your review of Club Cool and with you on the craisin thing... why? As for blue cheese popcorn, don't think I'd even be brave enough to give it a go

[theCMG]

Originally Posted by Juliemack

Thanks for carrying on ... enjoyed your review of Club Cool and with you on the craisin thing... why? As for blue cheese popcorn, don't think I'd even be brave enough to give it a go

See more...

it's a pleasure Julie, the intervening 2 years had been a series of distractions and disasters but I had the notes saved and always planned to come back to this. It's a lot easier to upload photos these days. Will post the final couple of days up tomorrow or Monday

[theCMG]

Day 11 - Hollywood Studios and World Showcase

Morning - Hollywood Studios

Breakfast was quick and on the go, a banana and apple juice for DD, blueberry muffin and water for me.

Having a 13:40 ADR at Beaches and Cream we opted for a very early light lunch to optimise a run at a pair of ice cream sundaes later on.

Good morning at the park, clearing most of our favourite rides and getting a couple of character meets in to boot (didn't manage Baymax though ) We were up for a good lunch at 11:00 sharp

Lunch Pt 1 - Studio Catering Co, Hollywood Studios

This place looks like a UK theme park restaurant and the food continues the theme sadly. Having not planned this for once I think I'd confused it with the Backlot Catering place. My toasted turkey and cheese panini with tomato soup (ordered with a diet coke) was:

1 not a panini, it was two slices of the cheapest sliced white loaf
2 toasted to the extent that the one slice of tasteless cheese was not even sweating up against the fridge cold cheap Turkey slices never mind melted
3 costing about $14 served with a tiny cup of lifeless canned tomato soup
4 by my estimation $0.20 of food at Walmart prices assembled with about $0.30 of labour

Basically this is a horrible, measly, cheap yet expensive version of what I'd do for myself after work if no one else was around and I'd had enough of life for the day. My version is indescribably better. Yes I know it looks ok in the photo.

DD ordered the Kids Power Pack meal. It came in a IMO gorgeous box:

Witness the unboxing shot, this is what the kids do with video game collector’s editions don't ya know:

Here we have maybe $0.30 of food assembled with $0.20 of labour albeit with a sheen of about $500m of marketing expertise on the packaging.

If this really was a Studio Catering Co it would be for an Adam Sandler movie, possibly Click or Don't Mess with the Zohan. And the crew would leave because of the food not the movie. I paid over $20 for this lunch, today was the first time that Disney food really seemed like a rip off.

Because we were both still hungry we ended up sharing a hot dog in a pretzel roll served with crisps from Min and Bill's Dockside (the big boat).

This was again measly albeit tasty from lovely salt studded pretzel bread and relieved me of another $9. At this point we gave up and left the park!

Lunch pt 2 - Beaches and Cream

Sanity was restored with a lunchtime reservation at the hugely popular Beaches and Cream. I ordered a rootbeer for variety, it looks like a DC but trust me it's not, free refill on this and managed to convince a late arriving DW it was diet coke to get a textbook bad taste face

The main event was the sundaes. DW was mainly observing but had a couple of tastes. I went for the No way Jose - a peanut butter, chocolate fudge and vanilla ice cream concoction

Every bit as good as it sounds. I could go more peanut butter in there but that's just me. I ate around 2/3 and stopped before I started to feel it too badly.

DW went for the Fudge Mud Slide which was chocolate fudge, caramel, ice cream and brownie.

She loved this and wouldn't stop, eating about 3/4! I have no idea where it all went but this was definitely regretted afterwards.

To put the lack of value of the quick service at Hollywood Studios into perspective the vastly superior looking Beaches hot dog provided table service with fries was cheaper than the Min and Bills hot dog (with service about the same). Clearly there's a premium for food in the parks but the value differential table service over quick seems huge if you look at what you get in a lot of places.

We then took a break in the room before heading out later to finish the World Showcase lap.


Dinner Around the World - EPCOT Flower and Garden Festival

Onto the Food and Wine festivals largely ignored little brother the Flower and Gardening Festival. I'm slightly bemused by an American gardening festival with the Village People booked to play the main stage. It seems to feature topiary which while cool looking is made mainly from bits of artificial leaves wired together and then tacks on a number of food stalls. I didn't quite get it, is the theme Disney characters, countries, food, gardening or high camp - please narrow it down to no more than 3 of these!

Anyway at least there's some nice food options to explore. My first stop was the Smokehouse stand near the American pavilion. I ordered a flight of beers that I think were portioned for a smaller species and then an item which I can't read the description of without dribbling on my phone - Beef Brisket Burnt Ends hash with white cheddar fondue and pickled jalapeños.

7 Dwarfs beer flight

The flight was a mixed bag. The Hefeweizen was good, a classy Weiss bier with all the expected notes. The IPA was also pretty good albeit not enough to really appreciate it. The maple bacon stout was gimmicky, nothing particularly wrong with it but adding a bacon flavour to stuff is starting to get old and all I really had here was a stout with some sweet notes. The chilli beer was predictably disgusting, the taste starts ok but then morphs into the water from a jar of jalapeños. Why did I drink this last? I'm fairly sure any of the dwarfs would have sent it back. At least it was only a few mouthfuls. All in all the flight was ok but shockingly poor value again on what has become rip off Friday.

Onto happier things. The Burnt Ends item is basically just a list of my favourite words, the description could only be improved for me if it was served on Salma Hayek.

This could never have met my expectations but was still pretty good. From what I know of it, Burnt ends are supposed to be the bits cut from either end of a piece of barbecued brisket. I've had the dish before and the flavours through the beef were a lot more intense. I have my suspicions here that these were regular pieces of brisket and Disney was again playing fast and loose with their descriptions of food (see lunchtime 'panini'). This was still good though, chewy brisket, cheese and potato, could have used more jalapeño and better meat to be what it could be.

DD had a water while she digested the last of her ice cream bomb. We also listened to some terrible music coming from the direction of the Garden Stage where the (retirement) Village People were hacking away at disco's corpse.

After this we picked pearls in Japan and watched a great acrobatic show in China before a pitstop for DW to sample a Kung Pao chicken bun from the festival:

This was nice and a decent portion too, we were able to share, both having plenty. The chicken was heavy on the soy sauce but still worked well and it came with plenty of red and spring onions, greens and a soft steamed Chinese bun shaped like a soft taco. This was good.

DD was hungry again by this stage and only fish and chips from the Yorkshire Fish Shop would do. While I waited for DW and DD to come back with this and the inevitable Jamesons diet coke (I don't want to know what she says to the Rose and Crown barman but she always comes back with about 3 times the Disney spirit serve) I picked up the final beer from the Unibroue range sold at the Canada beer cart, La Fin de Monde.

The barman described this as a Blue Moon (an American Weissbier) on steroids but in the Belgian style. I'm not sure that all adds up but anyway the pint of 'End of the World' was great. I can live with paying $10 for a beer when it's a pint of top quality stuff rarely available on draft.

DD was now back with the fish and chips, photo for this one is gone unfortunately. She liked this meal, I also sampled and can confirm that while the fish is ok the batter on the thick side. The chips so not compare to real chip shop chips but may be close enough to aid the homesick.

EPCOT passports were completed in Canada and we were off for a second lap of the world with the aim of picking up small jewellery items in Japan (from the pearls) and for some reason to listen to @20% of the original Village People hack their way through YMCA.

First it was France to get a Gnocchi Parisienne a la Provencale from Fleur de Lys for DW. Gnocchi with veg instead of sauce hmmm. DW ate it but it looked and tasted pretty nasty to me. French gnocchi is not something I want to see again.

We stopped in America and I hit the Smokehouse again for the Pulled Pig Slider with coleslaw:

The coleslaw is obscuring the pulled pork here in another less than stellar shot, sorry for that. This was good, the coleslaw had a pickled flavour which was a surprise but good and the pork and roll supported it well. This was also more like a small regular burger than a slider size.

Not so the beer. More fool me I decided to order a larger serve of the Floridian Hefeweizen I'd liked earlier but larger was still relative, a stein for Tinkerbell but largely useless for a human. Assembling a pint from this stand would have cost more than our holiday.

We moved over to Italy as the park started to wind down. DW wandered off unsupervised so of course her Fior de Latte, Prosciutto e Pane do Casa (pinwheel of mozzarella, prosciutto, olio Toscana, ciabatta bread) from the Primavera kitchen comes with no photo Nonono. She says it was great but too big which seems unlikely, there certainly wasn't any left when we came over.

While DW was scarfing cheese, DD and I were in a long last orders queue for ice cream, also in Italy. This went down well and proves the ability of the 9 year old stomach to bounce back from ice cream overload in less than 6 hours.

Another serious ice cream here!

After this we were all a little tired and emotional on our last night and it was time to amble back to the hotel. Today's step count is at 17500, tomorrow is a quick blitz of Future World then the long journey home.

[theCMG]

Day 12 - EPCOT Future World and Home Day

Morning - EPCOT

We started with a very light breakfast to finish up croissants, cereal bars, juice etc. Completed packing and headed to EPCOT for a few quick final rides, Sum of All Thrills, Mission Space and Test Track - all favourites. I was bullied by the family to ride the evil Orange version of Mission Space against my better judgement (not cool with the spinning). Then it was back to the Beach Club for check out and goodbye to Disney time.


Lunch - Romano's Macaroni Grill - Orlando Airport Terminal B

Having dropped the car back and chicken in we stopped pre security for something to eat. Chili's had a 30 minute wait so with this already bring a late lunch we opted for Romano's, an Italian place pretty fairly central in Terminal B.

The restaurant didn't look great but we'd spied out food and the menu from a distance and it looked ok. We ordered the usual drinks before receiving some decent warm bread spiked with rosemary and served with butter. This was demolished, we were seriously hungry.

After this our shared appetiser of bruschetta arrived (on another day this would have been way too much bread).

The bruschetta was also ace. Lots of thin crispy pieces of herby garlicky bread served with extremely tasty chopped tomatoes (I think it said arrabiata on the menu but these were not spicy, maybe they change it if you have a child in the party). This was demolished too. The cream cheese type thing also served with it was not needed and ignored.

Entrees and DD predictably ordered a kids spaghetti pomodoro. This was large and she ate almost all of it, possibly the after-effect of yesterday's sundae heroics at Beaches and Cream.

DW had shrimp linguine. She also like this but found it way too much. I didn't try but it looked pretty solid so the general rule applies that any Italian food she eats without complaining about is good

I went for my American Italian favourite Chicken Parmesan.

By the beard of Zeus this was good, a huge portion which I went through like nobodies business. The chicken carries all the flavours of a margherita pizza which I think is the point, served with a pile of delicate angel hair pasta with pomodoro.

We saved dessert thoughts for later and headed through security. Romano's was a real pleasant surprise and tbh a lot nicer than the greasy meal we'd had at Chili's on our last trip.


Flight Food and Home - United, Newark and BA

On the first flight we were in United first/business class to Newark, booked this a long time ago for a silly low price the seats and service were great, the plane even had free wifi but it was down and the crew had zero training how to deal with it

We had a few snacks and drinks - DW almonds and gin and tonic, DD Cape cod chips and apple juice, me diet coke and almonds.

Dinner - Newark airport BA Lounge

We ate our main evening meal in the BA lounge as we had avoid upgrades to club world on the flight back. After two fails we finally made a lounge in this trip!

We had the usual drinks. The food in here was great, DD went for chicken strips and fries

I started with a Southwestern tortilla soup which was very tasty, Mexican flavours in a mainly vegetable and bean soup and nice texture added by dropping in tortillas as you would croutons. I had a bread roll with this.

I don't usually substitute newspaper for a plate btw it was the excitement of a real sports section.

It was a good spread with a beef dish, a sort of DIY pasta bar and lots of salad and veggie options. I went for New England Cod Cakes with tartar sauce, asparagus and a Dijon mustard fingerling potato salad. All very good, the best meal I've had in a lounge by far because it was not only nice it was relatively light.

DD had the braised beef dish with roasted potatoes, she was not so enamoured with the beef:

For dessert DW first inhaled the only remaining piece of berry cheesecake in the lounge so fast that a stop motion camera still wouldn't have caught it. This was nice, the rest of us wouldn't know! We all hit the cheeseboard hard:

Don't be alarmed by the unsightly blob in the corner, that's the former England football captain hehe sorry Wayne. On the plate are Gouda, Brie and Asiago (not had this before but nice - looks like a Parmesan but this was much milder. Accompaniments were table water biscuits and a tangerine honey, again this worked well.

After that we nibbled at cookies, Oreos, m and m's and other dietary horrors. Example:

Flight 2 - BA Newark to Heathrow

We were soon on the plane. Aside from a small disappointment that I needed to be reallocated a seat away from the other two (handled very poorly at the gate and very well by the flight crew) this was nice and easy and the 2 flight return had not been too traumatic at all. I didn't sleep at all unfortunately but I did enjoy the last of the new Hobbit films, so much better than the first one which was as drawn out as one of my lunch descriptions.

Anyway, Shortly after sitting down we were offered dinner and breakfast menus. I always feel like they prefer you not to take the dinner which is fair enough in business but not so sure for those without the lounge dinner option! Knowing BA they probably only stock 3 of each dinner option for the whole plane

Here's the snack cornucopia they keep for those lucky people up the front, the honey roasted nuts are lovely the jelly belly beans are a bit of a risk in the middle of the night - yuk aniseed. Must resist late night caffeine fix...

Final Breakfast - BA Heathrow to Newark

And here's my breakfast order of tea, bacon roll and a yoghurt

The bacon roll was more of a slider size if I stay in US speak but it was delicious. Crispy toasted vaguely brioche style roll with soft bacon. The yoghurt was raspberry which is a positive, it's a yoghurt what can I say. It was non fat and tbh rather synthetic and unpleasant with a saccharine sweet taste rather than fruit.

DW went for the muffin and croissant, no picture of course, a next mission is to train her up on capturing these. DD slept through breakfast, with an early morning landing we didn't want to wake her. DD is still annoyed with us now, 3 years later for not telling her about the always available snack section we won't get away with that again


The Bit at the End

I'm amazed how quickly I've got used to taking pictures of food, what was do embarrassing at first quickly became second nature and no one outside my own family batted an eyelid. If you're thinking of doing it, do it. It's a great way to remember your holiday. In years to come I'll be able to show a copy of this thread to DD and it'll tell her as much if not more than the family photos

If I do it again I plan to get a lot better at the actual food photography and remove done of the grimmer looking pics (Day 1's pot roast pick makes he feel a little unwell to look at for example). The bad jokes, random cultural references and waffling I'm afraid can't be removed.

My step counter was dead today so guessing the count. With the early EPCOT dash and 2 airports along with plenty of inactivity I'll go for 13500. See you later and thanks for listening - we got there, this is finally the end. Heading back next year with the same group for a less rushed trip to Orlando, Disney and Universal so might try a repeat.

[Floridaagogo]

Love love loved it.you made me laugh out loud so many times 😀😀

[Juliemack]

where the (retirement) Village People were hacking away at disco's corpse.

That line made me laugh so much... enjoyed the food photos too. Thanks for finishing your report

[Ycryan]

Fantastic food trip report, love your writing style.

You definitely need to do one for next year's trip. x

[theCMG]

Originally Posted by Floridaagogo

Love love loved it.you made me laugh out loud so many times 😀😀

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that's why I write it. Very envious of your countdown

Originally Posted by Juliemack

where the (retirement) Village People were hacking away at disco's corpse.

That line made me laugh so much... enjoyed the food photos too. Thanks for finishing your report

See more...

tbey were genuinely awful although of course that only makes it more memorable. Who knows what acts we'll see next time. Glad you enjoyed

Originally Posted by Ycryan

Fantastic food trip report, love your writing style.

You definitely need to do one for next year's trip. x

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Thank you, it just might happen. DD currently wants to be a writer so it may be better proof-read too. You're going to be there in no time now

[loubyloulou]

Great food report!

[MissFortune]

So glad you finished and I enjoyed your jokes!

Roll on the next one.