Just The Four Of Us - On site at OKW - Day 4 – It’s worse than that it’s dead Jim. Epcot & Cape May

[Kidd McFluff]

Hurray! We all slept well and woke up at around 7:30. Once we were showered and dressed and I volunteered to go to the hospitality house to collect some hot breakfast. I noticed that my phone was out of battery so I plugged it in for a quick charge.

Old Key West has a quick Service restaurant near the main pool and it does fairly good breakfast. I drove down and parked outside the shop. The breakfast counter was quiet so it didn't take long to use a QS credit to buy a bounty platter, and a snack credit to get a Yoghurt and fruit cup. I filled all of the resort mugs (coffee and hot chocolate for me and Kirsten) and drove back to the room.

This was all pretty good, although we all had some not so positive comments about the savoury biscuits. (why would you want a scone with breakfast?) and was a welcome addition to the pop-tarts and waffles. We shared it all out and once we had finished we were ready to decide what to do for the day.

I picked up my phone to check what rides we had booked in for the afternoon but it still wasn’t working. Lots of plug/adapter changes and a bit of pointless swearing later and we had come to the conclusion that it was broken. We searched the web on Kirsten’s phone and found a local Samsung dealer who according to their website would be able to help . We decided that as we had nothing planned for the morning we might as well try and get the phone fixed. A few minutes later we were all in the car heading for a nearby outlet mall. It turned out that he couldn’t help….the phone was pronounced dead on arrival.

I may have experienced a small moment of rage/depression at this point (at least three cigarettes were smoked on route back to the car) but I soon got it into perspective. We still had Kirsten’s phone and my laptop would do for research purposes. The fact that I couldn’t answer work emails or chase sales while I was here was a blessing in disguise. I’d have to hope that my office could handle things while I was here. I’d miss having the phone to take photos at every opportunity and to check things online but other than that I was hoping that it might be liberating to be without it.

We headed back to Old Key West to hit the pool for some lunch and cocktails. We grabbed some sandwiches and Drinks from the bar (Mohitos this time) and spent a couple of hours lazing about in and around the warm water. Quick Service meals on Old Key West aren’t exactly brilliant but they are OK for a quick bite. We chose the Turkey Sandwich which came with chips (Kettle Chips) and a cookie. We also ordered a couple of beers for good measure. (well why not?)

Dylan and Isla had some fun playing on the coyts and table tennis as well as making movies on the Go Pro. They tried the underwater filming function and the pair of them spent the next hour or so floating around the bottom of the pool while Me and Mrs McFluff relaxed and had a paddle.

We had some fast passes booked for the afternoon at EPCOT and were all looking forward to our evening dinner booking at Cape May Café. After a quick shower and an obligatory repacking of the park bag we caught the bus to Epcot at around 2pm and once we had cleared security and taken a few pics of the golf ball (What is that thing called) we headed over to the Land pavilion for our first Fast Pass of the day…Soarin.

We got better seats on soarin this time but the Eifel Tower was still banana shaped. I still needed a little rest/large drink once we were off the ride but as the queue for Living with the Land was down to 10 minutes we took the opportunity to ride this too.

It’s an interesting ride(ish) incorporating a trip around an Eden Project style dome filled with edible plants of all types. Everything from tomatoes and pineapples to dragon fruit and lemons. We were a little surprised to hear that they farm their own fish for the restaurants in Disney here but there they were (all doomed to be deep fried) swimming around for all to see. We enjoyed the calm boatride and my pulse was almost back to normal after our trip on Soarin by the time we left the Land Pavilion.

We decided to walk around the world on the way to Cape May Café for our evening meal. We walked through Mexico to America stopping in Japan for Isla to commune with the soft toys in the Japan Shop. We spent a while in here and made plans to come back to buy kitchen ware and incense etc at a later date. Once we were finished window shopping we took a stroll out of the back of the park via International Gateway.

Our dinner was booked for 17:30 but we were beginning to wilt in the heat so we grabbed a slushy to share as we walked from EPCOT to the Beach Club Hotel. It’s quite a long walk and we were a sweaty mess by the time we arrived at the Beach Club. It has a very grand entrance and the lobby is beautiful. All high ceilings and airy rooms with huge ceiling fans Cape May Café is on the ground floor here and after checking in, we sat in the cool foyer watching cartoons and waiting to be called to our table.

Our server came to collect us within a few minutes and we were shown to our table and told how the buffet worked. (Top tip, Ignore the queue and start in the middle of the buffet). We ordered some great cocktails here (a Long Island Iced Tea for me and a Mohito for Kirsten) and the kids chose strawberry lemonade cocktails. I held the fort at the table while the others headed off to what looked to be a very impressive food selection. They all came back with plates piled high with snow crab legs, muscles, clams and prawns. Dylan of course opted for a bowl of mac n cheese to go with it all.

Buffets can be awkward for me and my allergies and so the chef came out to see me again. It turned out to be simpler for me to have a guided tour of the entire buffet with the chef pointing out everything that was free of onions, garlic and the like. Fortunately most of the seafood was steamed so OK for me. To go with my clams, crab, huge prawns and sweetcorn I also tried some rare beef, potato salad and coldslaw, , The chef insisted on cooking up some muscles especially for me as the ones on the buffet were cooked in onion and garlic (of course) I was a little self-conscious and asked for 4 or 5 and forgot about it. I returned to the table with my food and joined in with what looked like a beach massacre!

The food was excellent. Everything was lovely. The snow crab was sweet and tender, the clams and prawns were super tasty The kids were in their element, hacking away at the crab and muscles with gusto and soon the table was awash with shells and random crab body parts. Halfway through this seafood feast a bucket (yes an actual bucket) of steamed muscles arrived just for me. I could have fed the entire clan with this bucket! I was valiant in my efforts but only managed to eat about half of them. I did however head back to the buffet for a second helping of snow crab and prawns.

After the main course the empty plates were taken away and we contemplated the range of cakes and tarts etc on offer for pudding.

Between the four of us we pretty much tried one of everything. My vote went to the brilliant oatmeal cookies but I was vetoed as ‘boring’ and the vote went to the mini lemon meringue pies. Finally we were done. The shear weight of food had forced us to order a second round of cocktails and soda’s (any excuse! ) so the bill here was a little higher than usual. The tip and drinks came to around 60 Dollars. Our server and the chef were both super and we felt well looked after from the moment we arrived until the moment we left. This had been a top quality meal and one that we will remember for a long time to come. It scored a 9/10 from us…High praise indeed!

We finally waddled out of the restaurant clutching our swollen bellies and headed for the boat over to Hollywood studios. Dylan had a little go on the telescope while Isla and Kirsten ran off to the toilet ‘I can see Disney’ he shouted with joy….So Proud!

The boat arrived as the sun went down and we motored over to Hollywood Studios via a few of the other hotels to catch the bus home to Old Key West. We were back to Turtle Pond bus stop by about 8pm and walked back to the room. Mouse-keeping had visited while we were out and all the soft toys had been tucked up in bed with eye masks on. It was a nice touch and the kids were sure that it was down to their decorated tip envelopes. We’ve got no pics of this unfortunately but it became a theme of the holiday with the toys being posed in various different positions when we returned from our days out, There was no pattern to it. Sometimes it happened, sometimes it didn’t.

We had soon unpacked our bags of todays purchases and the little ones were asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows. Kirsten and I headed out to the balcony for the usual Margaritas before bed. It had been a great day. Tomorrow we were planning on a visit to Cocoa Beach on the Atlantic coast so we set the alarms for 8 and fell asleep listening to ‘The Now Show’ on Radio 4. Happy days!

[Kellea]

Fantastic report so far x

[mick]

A great day

Joan

[Gev]

Fab day. I’m not a seafood eater, myself, but that buffet was impressive!

[Floridaagogo]

The buffet sounds amazing.I wonder how many people think the Eiffel Tower is actually banana shaped 😬

[Kidd McFluff]

The whole banana shaped Eiffel tower thing is quite funny. It's more pronounced than the picture I used, especially as you fly close to it. I thought it looked pretty cool. As far as the buffet was concerned, it was the best we've had on our Disney trips so far. Even if you're not into sea food there was plenty of fried chicken, rare beef, ham, salads, etc. The puddings were great too.

[Kidd McFluff]

Originally Posted by Kellea

Fantastic report so far x

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Thanks. It's become a bit of a labour of love now. I'm up to day 9(I know, I need to upload more days soon) but it takes about 4 hours or so to write each day and an hour to put it up on the thread what with all the pictures/memes and stuff. I have to go back through photos just to help me remember what we were doing and at what time etc.

It's been lovely to do though. It's mostly so that we can look back and remember the holiday in detail for years to come. We're going to make a scrapbook too but who knows if/when that'll ever happen.

[summersun]

great day but shame about your phone x

[Goldia]

How annoying about your phone dying! I'd have been majorly stressed about it.

We never got round to having breakfast from the OKW quick service. It looked good in the photo though. It sounds like yoou had a lovely evening at Cape May and then the relaxing boat ride back, followed by margaritas. Doesn't get much better than that.

[Kidd McFluff]

OKW Quick service was OK but TBH we had much better QS elsewhere. (Port Orleans Riverside was brilliant and only a 3 minute drive. OKW was convinient for a quick breakfast. We found that the snack credit breakfast items were enough to feed all four of us (danishes, yougurt & fruit pots, croisssants, cerials etc).