The 3 Mouseketeers Non-Stop WDW Adventure (Aug 2018) Day 10 Epcot then RoL Dessert Party

[Custancia]

Day 9 is here

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a family going to WDW must be in need of a detailed plan. However, it’s also well known that sometimes you need to adjust the plan to keep your sanity, family harmony and avoid exhaustion!

It should have been a crazy, busy, 3 parks kind of day! The day planner was telling us to go to Epcot, get onto Test Track first thing and stay in Epcot to have lunch at Garden Grill. Then use Fastpasses at Hollywood Studios, to get on Aliens Spinning Saucers, and Frozen Sing-a-long, and Star Tours. Then get over to Animal Kingdom for the Rivers of Light Dessert Party.

That was always a ridiculous plan – but we (I) had been keen to get Fast passes for all the Toy Story Land rides, and then had to ‘squeeze in’ the newly released Dessert Party. Luckily, we’d already managed earlier in the trip to do all of the things planned for Hollywood Studios – so we ditched going there today (and cancelled our Fastpasses). We also decided it wasn’t worth pushing ourselves to get to Epcot early. But we did manage to score a last minute Frozen Ride Fastpass, as we were getting ready to leave our room!

It was a very familiar 5 minute walk now from our room to the main (South)bus stop. We watched a couple of buses to other parks come and go, before the bus to Epcot – but it was still only a few minutes wait.

Our first Fastpass was Figment (not the best use of a Fastpass at a 5 minute queue, but we were only booking them that morning). We love this ride, but perhaps because of familiarity rather than because it’s amazing? So we sang along as we travelled through the laboratory (hopefully not annoying anyone else in our vehicle), enjoyed the ‘scents’ and spotted hidden mickeys in the upside down house.

As we were not in any rush, we lingered in the play area after the ride. This is definitely a great thing to do if you need to spend a bit of time out of the sun in air conditioning. We all had lots of fun conducting music on the Melody Maker Screens.

DD enjoyed creating her own Figment on the computer terminals.

We also waited until there were no small children playing on them, and played on the musical tiles. Not sure if they are intended for ‘big kids’ but we had a lot of fun!

And then we had a blast taking various photos in the Photo Booth. I think it may have been another DIBB tip that you can use these with your photopass/memory maker – there is an option in the booths to tap your magic band and get your photos digitally for free. Luckily there are a couple of booths, and no-one else seemed interested in using them, so we got LOTS of photos using the different themes available.

We eventually headed over to Norway for the Frozen Ride. I’m glad we had managed to get a Fastpass, as the standby queue always seems to be quite long. When we came out of the ride into the shop area, it was really crowded which surprised us. Until we saw that it was absolutely tipping it down – and everyone had obviously decided to shelter in the shop. One of the cast members, Andreas, had a folder with a Disney Quiz, which he invited us to do. We did really well at it – so he asked if we wanted to do a harder one (with questions like “which year did each of the WDW parks open?”). We didn’t disgrace ourselves, but we needed a few clues on some of the questions!

It was nearly time for our ADR at Garden Grill and it was still raining really heavily. So having left our ponchos in the room (again!) we decided to buy some more to get from Norway to Garden Grill. It’s a bit of a distance, and sitting in an aircon restaurant in dripping wet clothes didn’t seem like the best way to enjoy the meal!

Garden Grill is inside the Land pavilion, and slowly rotates during the course of your meal, so the scenery (part of Living with the Land Ride) is constantly changing outside the restaurant.

Our table was near one of the internal doors, so we had a great view of this server entertaining us all by standing between the fixed, and the rotating floors, and ending up virtually doing the splits before he fell over!

The food was excellent, and we liked the not-so-hidden mickey when we arrived at our table!

It is served family style, so it is a fixed menu and brought over to your table on platters. There was bread to start,

Then some salad – which is grown in the Living with the Land attraction.

The main was so delicious (sliced beef, pork, turkey, with stuffing, veg, mac’n’ cheese and fries) that I completely forgot to take a picture before we tucked in! The server was excellent at making sure that we knew we could get more of any of the items, and brought us plenty of extra fries and mac’n’cheese when we asked.

The berry short cake was delicious too – although we were quite full by this time!

I was still celebrating my birthday, and I got a card and cupcake.

We took advantage of the dining plan to have a couple of cocktails with our meals - the Citrus Freeze (Vodka, Peach Schnapps and Mango Puree). You could definitely taste the alcohol!

DD had (I think) a lemonade.

During the meal we were visited by Mickey in his farmer’s outfit, Pluto and Chip and Dale. DD was wearing the Chip and Dale headband she had bought at DLP previously, and they were very excited at seeing little versions of themselves. All the character interaction was excellent here – and it’s great seeing characters without having to queue for them. DD also prefers this to character buffets, as she is worried she will miss them whenever she goes to get food!

After the meal, since we were right next door, we’d booked a fast pass for living with the land. Again, we didn’t really need to fastpass it, as there was only a 15 minute queue.

We all find this attraction completely fascinating (and all the more so for having done a Behind the Seeds tour a few years ago). And as always we found lots of hidden mickeys.

We wandered back into the ‘hub’ area and I was very tempted by seeing Joy and Sadness. But DD couldn’t be bothered to queue. So I went by myself, and had a really lovely (and quite long) interaction with them both. Apparently my hair style is quite like Sadness’s! I liked the theming of the queue-line with the memory balls on the wall.

Meanwhile, DD and DH had headed over to Mousegear – where DH found a prefect Star Wars pin for DD who goes ‘pew pew’ when pretending to shoot things!

After this we wandered over to Club Cool for an extra (free) drink. We all have different favourites of the drinks to try, but we all agree that Beverly is not nice!

We wondered about the number of tiny paper cups that they must get through each day. We tried to calculate the amount with one of the cast members in Club Cool. I can’t remember the actual numbers but it was something like; there are about 100 cups in each stack in a box which contains about 20 stacks (so 2000 cups in a box?) and about 6 boxes a day so 12,000 cups a day. Anyway… I definitely remember thinking that it worked out as a LOT of cups!

We popped into the toilets in the quiet(ish) corridor/seating area – through the doorway between Club Cool and Starbucks. We found this area by accident one year, and it’s a great place to sit and chill whilst you have an iced drink from Starbucks on a hot day.

We then headed over to Spaceship Earth for our final fast pass, admiring the surroundings as we walked.

After having journeyed back through time, and seen what the future had to hold in Spaceship Earth, we headed out of the park, stopping for a browse in the Art of Disney shop. Before getting the bus back to Riverside, we indulged DH in going on the monorail loop around Epcot, and really enjoyed seeing the park from a different angle.

Back at Riverside, we called in at the Foodcourt and picked up some milkshakes and fruit for an afternoon snack whilst we put our feed up back at our room. DH and I tried to write up notes of our morning whilst DD was very taken with the DVC channel, and all the advertising for Copper Creek!

For reasons which I now can’t remember (except perhaps that we liked them!) we took a Minnie Van rather than the Bus over to Animal Kingdom. The cast member driving us was very friendly, and explained that she had previously worked in Parking over at Epcot and was thrilled when she got the job to be driving the Minnie Vans. She dropped us off virtually at the entrance of the park, and since we had been picked up literally outside our room, it was all very, very convenient. Given the huge price increases since we visited, I don’t think we will be using Minnie Vans again so I’m glad that we used them several times this holiday.

At Animal Kingdom, we went to visit Tough to be a Bug, since we’d picked up a last minute fast pass. Not that we had any real benefit from it, as there was not any queue to speak of (as usual!).

We had a giggle seeing each other in the themed 3-D glasses. DD was not happy about the spiders coming down from the ceiling though, and buried her head into my shoulder!

Then it was time to wander over to try out the new Rivers of Light Dessert Party. It was clearly signed and easy to find where we needed to be.

However, they had set it up ready, and then got a warning of possible thunder. So the cast members were waiting for clarification as to whether we could go in, or whether it needed to be moved to a sheltered location (I think using Flame Tree Barbeque?). There were not many people attending the dessert party (probably about 30 in total), and the cast members were really good at making sure that everyone knew what was happening and apologizing for the delay. To pass the time we were chatting to one of the cast members, Tim, who told us that all the staff were really excited about the opportunity to do a dessert party at Animal Kingdom – it was evident that they were really excited and proud of it. We were waiting about 30 minutes in total, and the cast members were reassuring that we would have additional time available after the show to compensate for the ‘dessert time’ that we were missing now. They also asked if anyone needed a bottle of water or ice-cream whilst they were waiting – and I took them up on the offer of a bottle of water as I was really thirsty! We just asked for one, but they came back with one for each of us, which was really nice.

When we finally got in, we saw a gorgeous display of food, and a number of tables. The tables were all standing only, but had zebra themed covered, and amazing lanterns and lotus flower light ornaments.

The cast members also let us know that there was reserved seating, just below the party area, for Rivers of Light, and that we were welcome to sit there with desserts if we liked.

Every food table had some lovely theming touches.

There was some fruit, cheese, and also some nuts - to be a little healthier.

There were really beautiful individual cakes. They tasted as good as they looked too!

We commented to one of the cast members how lovely the food looked, and they pointed out that the pastry chef responsible was standing nearby and passed on our compliments. It was evident that a lot of attention and thought had gone into each item.

There were several soft drink options available.

There was also an alcoholic bar with cocktails (and I think beer and wine, but I was too taken with the cocktails!)

The reserved viewing area was relatively large, particularly as there were not that many people at the party – and everyone else looked very crowded on that standard seating just across from us (sorry rather a blurry photo – perhaps the cocktails had an effect )

We enjoyed Rivers of Light, although perhaps not as much as other evening shows.

As promised, we were given extra time to enjoy the desserts and drinks after the show (and they had completely restocked all the desserts whilst we were watching RoL). This meant that we probably ate twice as much as we would have done otherwise!

They weren’t strict on the time after the show, and we dawdled and were the last to leave, and were definitely not rushed out. As we were finally leaving, Tim (the Cast Member we’d been chatting to whilst waiting to get in) came over to say goodbye, and gave us 3 souvenir lantern cups – and encouraged us to fill them with drinks to take with us.

We slowly made our way back to the park exit and the bus stops, but pausing occasionally to admire the theming!

We were amongst the last out from that area, and it was lovely to walk through empty sections of the park.

By the time we got back to our room, we just collapsed into bed – still very full from all the desserts

[GezzasGem]

Those cakes really did look beautiful! Great that you got to compliment the chef too 👌 I loved the meet with Joy and Sadness, our DD hugged Sadness for ages and I almost cried! Sounds like another great day was had by all 😊

[Palm trees]

Sounds like you had a fantastic day, both the Garden Grill and the dessert party are on my wish list for a future trip.

[Goldia]

Absolutely agree, you have to plan with military precision and at the same time be prepared to throw it all out the window.

You did some of my favourite things at Epcot...figment and Garden Grill! What a lovely day and perhaps less stressful getting caught in the rain than if you'd been trying to keep to your schedule. The quiz sounds fun.

The little cakes at the dessert party looks lovely. How cute are they!

[Custancia]

Originally Posted by GezzasGem

Those cakes really did look beautiful! Great that you got to compliment the chef too 👌 I loved the meet with Joy and Sadness, our DD hugged Sadness for ages and I almost cried! Sounds like another great day was had by all 😊

See more...

The cakes were like mini-work of arts - it was almost a shame to eat them (but they were really good!). Sadness gives really good hugs, I was almost in tears meeting her myself!

Originally Posted by Palm trees

Sounds like you had a fantastic day, both the Garden Grill and the dessert party are on my wish list for a future trip.

See more...

It was a great day! I definitely recommend both Garden Grill, and the dessert party (although, I think the dessert party felt particularly special because there were so few people there - a rarity for a disney event!)

Originally Posted by Goldia

Absolutely agree, you have to plan with military precision and at the same time be prepared to throw it all out the window.

You did some of my favourite things at Epcot...figment and Garden Grill! What a lovely day and perhaps less stressful getting caught in the rain than if you'd been trying to keep to your schedule. The quiz sounds fun.

The little cakes at the dessert party looks lovely. How cute are they!

See more...

It took me a couple of trips to get the hang of being able to just let go of the plan when needed
I do love Figment! And I love that there is never a queue (although i do worry somethings that may mean Disney decide to replace him )

Thank you all so much for reading and commenting

[jothp]

It's funny how we spend so long making intricate plans and then always end up changing them once we're actually there. We love Garden Grill too but have only ever done breakfast. The desserts at AK looked lovely and worth it to have a little bit of extra space to sit comfortably.