Fairytales can come true. You gotta make them happen. It all depends on you. Day 7

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Day 7 – Olivia’s breakfast, Old Key West pool time, Rivers of Light dining package

Hi guys, welcome to day 7! Sorry it’s taken such an age to get this one up. We’ve been very busy for a few weeks, what with going on holiday and then a wedding and my grandma’s 90th birthday. To be honest I’ve been looking forward to a free weekend for a while!

This day is likely to be quite a short one, I’m afraid, as we spent most of the day at Old Key West, but it was still, in my opinion, one of the best days of the holiday. Enjoy!

In our very earliest discussions about this second trip to Florida, I had made Bex promise that we would plan a resort day. As I think I’ve said before, when we came home from our 2015 trip, I’d actually been doubtful as to whether I’d ever want to go to Florida again, purely because of how painful my feet had been. As well as limping through the last five or six days of the holiday, I’d also had difficulty walking for over a week after I got back home, and this had seemed to me to be quite a price to pay.

Of course, the pull of Disney, and the persuasive powers of my clever big sis, had been too strong in the end, and I’m so glad they were. Even though our second trip was longer than the first, my feet weren’t nearly so painful, and I’d enjoyed the trip far more because of it.

One of the changes I’d insisted on, to save my feet, had been this resort day. I’d made Bex promise that we would spend the majority of the day by the pool at whatever resort we went to, and only go to a park in the evening. She had agreed.

So here we were, pretty much half way through the trip, and it was the day which, I admit, I had really been looking forward to. I suspect that Becky and Jeannie thought that it was a bit of a wasted day, but they did end up enjoying themselves too.

We had a very leisurely start to the day. No alarm was set, so we all woke up naturally in our own time. Jeannie and I woke up first and sat chatting on the balcony for an hour or so before Becky joined us.

At about 9.15 Jeannie set off to walk to Hospitality House and Bex and I followed by bus. We had an ADR at Olivia’s at 9.30. This was the only meal that we were going to be paying for out of pocket at Disney World and had been a bit of a last-minute addition. For the last few weeks of the countdown, Becky had been obsessively fiddling with and fine-tuning the plan, which had included reading lots of restaurant menus. She’d read out the breakfast menu at Olivia’s to me, and that had pretty much been it! However, we’d decided to keep the ADR, and the fact that we’d be paying out of pocket, as a surprise for Jeannie. Basically so that she couldn’t argue!



Once we’d all been seated and opened the menu, I joked to Jeannie that if she didn’t feel like spending much, she could always go for the oatmeal. Her answer included the phrase ‘What do you think I am?’ as well as other choice words.




It wasn’t until we were sitting in the restaurant and looking at all the themed bric a brac that I started to wonder what ‘The Conch Republic’ actually was. The whole resort is themed around this place and I had no idea what or where it was. It turns out that it’s a part of Key West that had declared itself to be a separate micronation, sort of as a joke, and had been using this fact as a boost for tourism ever since. Every day’s a learning day at Walt Disney World, folks.



I didn’t really have a lot of time to ponder the idiosyncrasies of Floridian culture, however, because there were much more important things to think about. Such as whether to have the poached eggs or the omelette. Our very nice waitress gave us lots of time to make up our minds, and it felt nice to be taking things at such a leisurely pace. Eventually I chose the eggs Benedict with crab cakes…



…Becky chose the Sombrero omelette…



…and Jeannie went for the eggs and hash. She chose to have her eggs poached.



My eggs Benedict were perfect, and came with an American-style English muffin, which is a peculiar concept as it is in no way a muffin and I’m pretty sure we don’t have them in the UK. Like Danish Pastries, which the Danish apparently deny all knowledge of and call ‘Vienna Bread’ – we’re laughing and learning today, folks.

Aaanyway, the lime hollandaise was absolutely heaven, and went perfectly with the crab, which there was a generous portion of.

Becky’s omelette was also very generous, and full of filling. It came with what the Americans call a biscuit, which again, is not a biscuit, but a sort of savoury scone. Bex really enjoyed this but, as usual, didn’t quite manage to finish it.

Jeannie also had trouble finishing her food, so I helped her out by eating her biscuit and some of her sweet potato hash. This was really tasty but very starchy, being a mixture of sweet potato and normal potato; so it was quite heavy.

While we were eating our breakfast we checked the forecast, as the sky was looking a bit grey. We were alarmed to see that there was a strong possibility of rain that evening. This was potentially problematic because we were supposed to be seeing Rivers of Light that evening. Not only that but we were on the dining package, so we couldn’t easily switch it to another day.

Bex immediately started researching what would happen if we couldn’t see the show and whether it would affect our dining reservation, as well as whether Disney would allow us priority viewing on another night, if tonight’s show was cancelled. I think the frantic researching calms her down in situations like this; I prefer just to blindly hope for the best!

After breakfast, Becky went to the concierge to check that, after the dining plan drama yesterday, Be Our Guest had deducted quick service credits from us correctly and refunded the money for Jeannie’s lunch, which we’d had to pay for separately.

Jeannie went for a walk to explore Old Key West. I don’t know exactly where she went or what she did, but I gave her my camera and told her to take pictures. This is what she came back with about half an hour later:






The bunny had been one of the highlights apparently.

As you can see, it wasn't the most amazing of days weather-wise. In fact, the sky stayed grey for most of the day and kept us in constant fear of rain.

While the other two went off to engage in these useful pursuits, I went down to the pool. Again, there didn’t seem to be a lot of shade available, and living in Africa for so long had taught me that even when it looks cloudy, the sun can still be powerful, so when I spotted some shade I pounced on it. I spread my bits and bobs out over three beds, so that the other two would have somewhere to relax when they got back.



There isn’t a lot to say about the rest of the morning, to be honest. I buried myself in my book, which was about Hogwarts, and Bex soon came and joined me. At about 11.30 when Jeannie got back from her walk, we all went for a swim.



I had my first go on the slide, which is a pretty good one, but decided not to do it again while wearing a bikini, as it made my top fall down. It was much cooler weather than we’d had on previous days, so relaxing in the jacuzzi didn’t feel quite so much like what lobsters must go through. Jeannie always feels the cold really badly, so she especially enjoyed the jacuzzi.

We wiled away the rest of the morning repeating these activities whenever we felt like it. Jeannie nipped to Conch Flats every now and then to refill our mugs. I finished my first book and started on a second. We didn’t bother with lunch; we’d had a big breakfast and were saving ourselves for an extra special tea. We failed to enjoy the sunshine, because there wasn't any.

Around 13:00 a CM began a quiz, which she encouraged everyone around the pool to get involved in. Unfortunately, we didn’t, because we couldn’t be bothered to move close enough to hear the questions. This was a shame because we would have crushed it. It was a music quiz, where you had to name the Disney song and the character that had sung it. We actually ended up being able to hear all the questions (we went to hang out in the jacuzzi and be smug) and ended up with a score of 38/40. The ones we didn’t get were very obscure – anyone know the name of the woman who sings ‘Candle on the Water’ without googling?

At about 14:00 we went back to the room to do a few bits and bobs that needed doing and get ready to go out to Animal Kingdom. It started raining soon after we got back, which got us worrying again about whether Rivers of Light would be cancelled. We had a go at calling Mum and Dad again, but couldn’t get through, so we all showered and got ready for the evening in a leisurely way.

We had a fastpass for Dinosaur that was opening at about 15:30. We wanted to catch the end of it and then go onto our next fastpass straight away, so we left the room at 15:10 and went to wait at the bus stop.

It soon became clear that we would never make the Dinosaur fastpass. We waited and waited for an Animal Kingdom bus and none appeared. We watched two Disney Springs and two Epcot buses come and go and still no bus appeared. In the end, we waited 40 minutes for the Animal Kingdom bus. As you can imagine this was extremely frustrating and led to lots of tutting from us and from the other people waiting.

We had a bad experience with the buses later in the day as well and came to the conclusion that the bus service was the most significant low point of Old Key West. We hadn’t had problems like this at Coronado Springs on our previous visit, and we seemed to wait significantly longer for buses at the parks than other resorts did – though that may have just been the impression we got. It was also rather frustrating having to go all around the houses every time, and being on the bus for about 15 minutes, before even leaving the resort. On this occasion, with going round the rest of the resort plus the wait at the bus stop, we didn’t leave the resort for almost an hour.

In the end, we made it just in time for our second fastpass, which was for Finding Nemo the Musical. The fastpass opened at 16:30, with the show due to start at 17:00 and we arrived at the park at 16:30. We had to fast-walk through the park to the theatre, which wasn't really what we wanted to do, when we were all dressed up for Tiffins later on. Not to mention it really was raining at this point, so we all got wet feet, including poor Jeannie, whose shoes retained the water throughout the rest of the evening. We all got a little bit sweaty and were somewhat hot and bothered when we eventually collapsed into our seats in the Finding Nemo theatre. Humph!


A little dishevelled!

How lucky then that we were going to be spending the next 40 minutes in the air-conditioning, watching a very sweet, funny and spectacular show.



I absolutely love Finding Nemo the musical. I bought the soundtrack on our 2015 visit and I listen to it whenever I feel down. I’m a big fan of musicals in general and the fact that this one, which is top notch, is just casually included in your park ticket seems incredible to me. Becky reckons that the guy we saw as Marlin was the same guy that we saw in 2015, and also the same as the guy in the Disney World planning video, which he could well have been. If so, he’s been doing it a long time! It must be really fun.



My favourite bit is probably the bit with Crush; his song is very rousing.




Over all the show is funny and sweet and as good as a lot of West End shows I’ve seen and better than some – I’m looking at you, Aladdin!




We emerged after the show in much better moods than we’d gone in with. It was time to head to Tiffins for our ADR. This was the first of two signature dining experiences we were going to be having on the trip – we didn’t know what to expect but we were very excited. These signature dinings were the reason we’d been sharing lunches throughout the trip and we’d all really been looking forward to Tiffins.

We were also on the Rivers of Light dining package, which is why we were eating so early; 18:00 was the latest time we could get with the dining package.



As we arrived outside Tiffins, we could see annual passholders lining up to get into Pandora. It was the first preview for APHs that evening. They’d let CMs in for the first time the week before, but there was no word of ordinary guests getting in any time soon.




Bex, of course, had a brief chat with a CM to ask if she thought they’d let ordinary guests in at any point. The CM said, ‘You never know your luck’, or something like that, but it was fairly obvious she didn’t think so.

So we went to check in at Tiffins. We just had time to take in some of the beautiful decor and use the loos before being shown to our table.





Our waitress was wonderful and really added to the luxuriousness of the experience. She told us all about the menu and mentioned some of her recommendations. I could have listened to her talk about the food all evening – if I hadn’t been so excited to eat it of course. She then gave us a good long time to look through the menu before she came back to take our order.

The Rivers of Light dining package entitled us to three courses, so it was amazing value. It was really great to be able to have a starter, as I’m definitely a starter-and-main, rather than a main-and-dessert type of person. I think we all are. This would have been a set price of $67, but we used up two credits each on the dining plan instead. Either way, it’s pretty good value for three-course dinner and show!

The waitress had said that the bread appetiser was not to be missed, so we ordered that. We were going to share all three starters, so decided between us that we’d also order the cheese starter, since that would be easy to share. We went for the octopus as our third starter, not because it would be easy to share, but just because it looked so yummy.

I will do my best to describe the food from memory, but I must admit I found it hard to take notes while we were eating because everything was too good to wait for!



I kept flapping my hands at the others and telling them to stop eating and tell me what they thought of the food, but Bex told me to shut up and eat – what’s a woman to do?



The octopus was absolutely delicious. It was quite tricky to share and there wasn't much of it to go around, but we all had a couple of bites. It was perfectly cooked, not rubbery at all, and the sauces and veg that it came with were really intense in flavour and blended perfectly together.



The waitress was totally right about the bread and sauces – they were amazing. It’s a huge amount, so it’s really easy to share. I’d say, if you were only planning to have main and dessert, but fancied adding a starter to share, this would be a great one to choose. The sauces are lightly spiced, but not too hot. I didn’t write down what was in them, I’m afraid, but I’m sure one of them had a sort of curry taste, one was hummus and one was minty. Becky’s favourite bread was the poppadoms and mine was the flatbreads.



The cheese might have been my favourite starter – I absolutely adore cheese! None of them were too strong and they came with jellies, jams and honey so that you got that gorgeous contrast between salty and sweet. The little nuts are salted almonds, which were also delicious.

Next it was time for the mains. I have written down the main ingredient of each one, but again nothing detailed, I’m afraid!



As usual, Becky and Jeannie went for the same thing. This was the scallops with pea and mint. It was only Becky’s second time having scallops (the first was a few nights before at Epcot) and she said these were even better. I had also been tempted by the scallops, but had decided not to go for them in the end as I was afraid I’d still be hungry after finishing them (this is how my mind works, I'm afraid), but neither Becky nor Jeannie felt that it wasn’t enough food, though they did finish eating quite a long time before I did.



This was my main – the beef! I asked for it to be cooked medium rare and it was pretty much perfect, as you can see. It came with purple potatoes and carrots. I preferred the roast carrot to the strips of stripy carrot, but it all went together perfectly. The sauce was sort of sharp and a bit sweet and cut through the richness of the beef really nicely. This was probably my favourite meal of the holiday – I can still taste the sauce now…

Excuse me, I need to go get a snack.

I’m back! We all finished every bit of our mains of course, deciding regretfully that it was probably bad form to lick plates in such a nice establishment. Becky and Jeannie had finished eating such a long time before me that they actually brought out our desserts before I was quite finished. I made sure not to rush the last few bites of my beef though, while Bex and Jeannie tucked in.

Once again, they’d ordered the same thing.



This was the chocolate ganache. The strip of ganache is sort of hidden under the other bits in this picture, but it was very much the heart of the dish. The cream, banana and fruity sauce that it came with cut through the richness and made the whole thing pretty heavenly.



I ordered this mousse, which I think was passion fruit. It’s bad that I can’t remember, but in my fervour to eat it, I’ve just written mousse. It was again, absolutely gorgeous; very light and fresh tasting. I really liked the green crumb, though I can’t for the life of me remember what was in it. Overall it was the type of dessert that appeals to someone like me, who likes sharp, citrussy tastes more than uber-sweet ones.

I was genuinely sad to have finished eating; the food was that good! However, there were still more treats before we had to leave. The waitress brought over three popcorn buckets in the shape of lilies. She explained that these were Rivers of Light lilies and that the popcorn buckets lit up in different colours.



You could also get unlimited refills of popcorn in them for something like $10, if you wanted. They had straps so that you could carry them around over a shoulder, like a handbag – a bit of a relief for mums already weighed down with their children’s bits and bobs I’d have thought! In addition to these, she gave us our Rivers of Light tickets and a little sketch by Joe Rhode each. This was all included in the dining package and was a very nice touch.

What a fabulous experience this was overall! Every bit of food had been completely delicious and the atmosphere was a perfect mix of luxurious and laid back. The restaurant also celebrated our favourite thing, travel, in its décor and music.



The roof of the bar was decorated with questions like 'What's your favourite place you've travelled to?' and 'What's the best thing you've eaten on your travels?'






Although Becky and Jeannie liked our trip to the Contemporary on our last evening best, I think this was my favourite evening of the trip. I think this type of food, a fantastic fusion of flavours from all over the world, is my favourite and I really loved the whole atmosphere of Tiffins, as well as Animal Kingdom in general, of course.

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Part 2

Stuffed and ludicrously happy, we made our way over to Kilimanjaro Safaris, where our fastpass had now opened.



The posted wait time was 65 minutes, so we were very happy to have a fastpass. We also looking forward to doing a safari at sunset – we’d timed this very carefully. Most of all, I think, we were excited that it wasn’t raining; though we hadn’t uncrossed all of our fingers and toes just yet.




It was lovely to do the safari when it was a bit cooler, although of course the light wasn't so good for taking pictures. We had a great view of this single bull elephant.




We had a bit of a debate as to whether the sunset was real or not. Jeannie and I reckoned not a chance, but Bex was sure that it was. Anybody know?




We also had the best view of lions of the whole trip. Maybe they like coming out when it’s a bit cooler.




Overall it was a really enjoyable safari and I’d recommend to anybody to try it at that time of day.

Then it was time to go and find our seats for Rivers of Light.



We excitedly walked over to Asia and found seats in the special area for people on the dining package. The seats were pretty much front and centre, and about as good as they could be.




As you can perhaps see, there wasn't a huge amount of seating for Rivers of Light. It’s worth getting the dining package I think, just so you can guarantee that you’ll get a seat. There were already very long queues to get into the reserve seating areas when we walked over; so long in fact that we got confused as to where the entrance was.



Once seated, we turned our buckets on and they lit up all different colours. We didn’t fill them with popcorn, having eaten quite enough already that evening, but they definitely added to the atmosphere. This atmosphere built up as we waited for the show, and was one of the most wonderful things about it. The build-up was so gradual that you almost didn’t even notice it happening – the first time I saw a big cat shadow moving through the trees on the other side of the lake I almost thought I was imagining it, but it was soon joined by lots of other creatures as well as atmospheric noises and music.

A photopass photographer was taking photos, so we decided to get one while we were waiting.



In all I think we were waiting for about half an hour, but it only seemed like a few minutes. The atmosphere was completely magical and of course we had a lot to talk about – especially our relief that it hadn’t rained and we’d made it!

Finally, the show started. We took about a million photos, a lot of which didn’t come out very well, but I hope these will give you at least a vague impression of how beautiful this show is.



It started with just the lilies on the water. They’d been coming out one by one during the build-up to the show starting.



When the show started they emitted water and there were the usual beautiful projections onto the sheets of water.



There were also other beautiful lit-up floats in the shapes of different animals which moved around the lake.




Then the projections of animals began on the sheets of water. All the while the voiceover was speaking and there was music too. The music was absolutely lovely and I’ve listened to it on Youtube quite a lot since coming back from Florida, but I can’t really remember much of what the voiceover was saying. It was nice things about how we should protect the environment and live in harmony with nature I suspect.








There were also people on boats dotted around on the lake, playing some of the instruments live.



The show reached its climax with a projection of a whale leaping out of the water. I had sort of been expecting this but nonetheless it brought tears to my eyes – it was the perfect way to end a pretty much perfect show. Disney has knocked it out of the park once again with this show and it immediately became my favourite of the ones I’d seen so far. I know there was a bit of controversy around how long it took them to put Rivers of Light together, but it’s totally worth waiting for in my opinion.

We decided then to wander over to Everest and see if single ridering it would be possible. The single rider queue unfortunately wasn't open, and the main queue was a bit too long, so we decided to leave it for that evening. We walked to the entrance to watch the Tree of Life show, which we’d heard happened every so often throughout the evening.

While we were waiting, Bex and I grabbed a photopass. Jeannie was getting chilly by this point, so ducked into a shop to warm up. Her shoes were still wet from earlier and now, as the evening cooled down, were making her feel cold all over. Unfortunately, this led to her missing the first part of the show, but I think she was too uncomfortable to really mind.



Doesn’t the Tree of Life look amazing all lit up? I think it was a brilliant decision of Disney’s to keep this park open at night, though I hope it doesn’t disturb the animals too much.

As well as the main projection show, you can see the various animals on the tree doing things like stretching, or yawning or fluttering their wings while you’re waiting. But it’s like the build up to Rivers of Light when the animal shadows are walking through the trees, it’s so subtle that you sometimes just see it out of the corner of your eye and you can convince yourself, at first, that you were just imagining it.

There are actually a few versions of the Tree of Life projection show; we saw one on this evening and another on another occasion. This one started with a little animation about the baby deer on the tree, which comes to life and begins to walk around.




After that the little deer scampered off and was replaced by a montage of clips of Disney animals, of course accompanied by the appropriate music.






The various clips came from films that you could argue had a nature messages, such as Pocahontas, the Jungle Book, Bambi, Nemo, the Lion King etc.

We’d been led to expect that this was the kind of show you just stopped by if you happened to be in the area when it was going on, but of course, it was Disney, so it was completely spectacular. I’m afraid I cried again, it was just so beautiful. Animal Kingdom at night is, if possible, even more magical that Animal Kingdom during the day, I can’t emphasise enough how much we loved it.

The only downside was that Jeannie’s cold and wet feet were now making her a bit miserable. We decided to call it a night and went to wait for the bus, hoping to get back soon so that she could warm up a bit.

This was not to be. Once again, we had a very very long wait for the bus to Old Key West. It wasn’t as if we just missed one either; when we joined the line there were already about 10 people in front of us. I immediately flopped down and started massaging my feet (I had literally no shame by this point in the holiday) and gradually over the next 40 minutes or so, most of the rest of the line joined me on the ground, tee hee.

I must admit, we didn’t have much a sense of humour about the wait, this being our second very long wait of the day, so we (and the rest of the line) did begin to complain. It seemed that the problem was due, at least in part, to Pandora previews that were happening that day. The bus drivers seemed not to have been told that Animal Kingdom was staying open till 22:00 and therefore had all gone home to bed.

The two CMs who were monitoring the line joined in wholeheartedly with our huffing and tutting; one of them in particular was being extremely mutinous and un-Disney. In some circumstances this might have seemed to be going against the Disney way of doing things, but with a group of tired and fed up people, made up almost entirely of adults, the woman’s cheerful insubordination was actually just what we all needed. We had a good old whinge and all felt better for it.

Nonetheless, when the bus eventually did arrive, Jeannie and I decided that we were going to go to Hospitality House to complain, just so that Old Key West knew their buses were being less than satisfactory. Becky wasn't particularly into the idea and said she didn’t want to go (she’s not one of nature’s complainers) so we said she should go back to the room without us.

We arrived back at the resort at about 23:15 and Jeannie and I went to Hospitality House. We explained the situation and the guy behind the desk listened. He acknowledged our complaints, but it quickly became clear there wasn't much he could do about it. Not that there was much we wanted him to do about, we really just wanted the buses to improve, and he definitely wasn't in charge of that. He did say that if we came back the next day, someone could give us an extra fastpass, to make up for the one we’d missed because the bus had been late leaving Old Key West, but I don’t think we ever bothered. The whole thing was a bit frustrating.

We walked back to the room after that for showers and bed. We were all in bed by 23:45.

See you again soon, Dibbers,

Rosie XX

[collybird]

The buses can be so frustrating sometimes, delays are especially annoying at the end of the night when you're tired.

A lovely relaxing day, sometimes I think we need to spend more time just enjoying our resorts.

We've had breakfast at Olivia's but I can't for the life of me remember what I had! I think the menu promised more than it delivered. Tiffins looks beautiful, I am so excited to eat there.

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Originally Posted by collybird

The buses can be so frustrating sometimes, delays are especially annoying at the end of the night when you're tired.

See more...

Yes, they really can. it's definitely first world problems to be whinging about a free bus, but still...

Originally Posted by collybird

A lovely relaxing day, sometimes I think we need to spend more time just enjoying our resorts.

We've had breakfast at Olivia's but I can't for the life of me remember what I had! I think the menu promised more than it delivered. Tiffins looks beautiful, I am so excited to eat there.

See more...

Are you eating there on your next visit? You will absolutely love it, it's really special. It feels like the right mixture of laid back and posh - perfect for a special occasion.

You must be so excited for your trip! I hope you have an amazing time and everything goes to plan.

[mick]

You had a really bad day with the buses

Joan

[Gr8WideSomewher]

Originally Posted by mick

You had a really bad day with the buses

Joan

See more...

We had a few! It was the main downside to Old Key West. We didn't have any issues of that kind when we stayed at Coronado in 2015. It's a very small thing, but you always end up getting more frustrated about small things when you're tired