*Updated* The Flouridation food trip report... May as well go with that

[Vanillapod]

I’m so excited to be reading new reports that I’ve decided I’ll have a half baked attempt at completing mine from 2019.
It will just be pics and restaurant names as I have no idea exactly what we had!

[Vanillapod]

Food report continued….


First morning in Orlando

We woke early, showered, packed and headed over to The Beach Club.
We were on DXDDP as we’re not massive dessert fans. For some reason OH and DS always talked me into one anyway

I do remember that we had Glow Nights H2O so after a day in Epcot we headed to The Boat House and then onto Typhoon Lagoon

Boat House was good as always

The Boat House

We had a couple of cocktails and DS had some sort of mocktail.
I remember that OH and I ordered the same fish dish but I can only offer you pics so use your imagination with what’s in it!
OH’s had toppled over en route to the table, the waitress apologised and he jokingly asked her to take it away…
She thought he was serious! I was so embarassed she must have thought he was a right @rse. Anyway, he quickly explained it was a joke and all was well!
This was a great meal.
The butter with the roll looks awful but maybe it was honeyed? It could just be melted. Not sure

I remember we all had sirens sent to our phones during this meal due to a missing child. DS was completely freaked out by this. He felt something had happened in the vicinity (not that it matters where) but the waitress explained it could be the whole of the Florida.
DS had a coke float or maybe root beer float for his dessert (yuck) which he liked and we shared the others between the 3 of us

This is the fish dish both OH and I ordered. I clearly took a photo of the toppled one judging by the skin on top

I reckon DS insisted on the truffle Parmesan fries as we definitely did not need them!

Not sure why we ordered dessert?
The lemony thing was most likely mine and I reckon OH chose the rubbishy looking sorbet thing. No idea what that was but I can’t say I’d choose it based on the picture!
Looks like OH had a beer too.

We had a quick wander around Disney Springs and then headed over to Typhoon Lagoon.
If H2O glow nights returns, I would recommend it but, it did get very cold.
This was end of August so not even in the cooler months. There was nowhere to warm up at all and no hot drinks available either.
I’d bow out next time but we all know kids don’t get cold, even when they’re blue so it is a winner if you have children.

[Vanillapod]

Crystal Palace

I’d never been here before and as we were on DXDDP we had plenty of credits so thought ‘why not?’
We had a fast pass for 7DMT before breakfast

It was fun.
I wouldn’t pay for it now DS is older but worth doing if you have plentiful credits or have Pooh fans or young ones. I’d definitely pay if I had young children. It’s quite magical.
I’m not a lover of a buffet restaurant but it was less chaotic than I imagined.

This may well have been my first ever Mickey waffle actually. On previous trips we’ve had standard DDP and never used credits for breakfast.

We all enjoyed seeing the characters.
Here are a few pics of our various plates

OH and I had mimosas.

An incredibly healthy start to the day.
A smattering of pineapple there for me and of course the orange juice in the mimosa 😂

[Goldia]

I'm always happy to look at food and cocktail photos! I'm glad you've resurrected your trip report, even if you can't exactly remember all the details. We've never eaten at Boathouse, it was booked for our 2020 trip. Every time i hear Lou Mongello talking about it on a podcast I think I have to go there as it's his favourite restaurant and I have to say all your food looks delicious!

[Vanillapod]

Biergarten

So, I decided to go big and book 2 buffets in one day!
We were off to watch Orlando City in the evening so needed somewhere we could eat fairly early.
OH loves Oktoberfest so he chose this when we put out plan together.

It’s fun and we’d definitely go again but in a larger group I think.
We had truly boring people on our table.
The only time they cracked a smile was when a very snooty woman refused to sit with us 😂😂

We should do a Dibb Biergarten table share

The food was ok actually. I think it probably is dependent on when you arrive in relation to when the food is replenished.
I don’t have many pics as it was dark and our table mates were darker…

I don’t mean to sound horrible as I’m not the most exuberant of people myself but it would have been fun to share the experience with more communicative folk

Pretzel bread with beer cheese soup

Massive Stein!
I enjoyed what I chose. There was a lot of salady stuff and as we both have german family, we love this kind of food.
I’d recommend this but as I said, it could be much more fun. We had a lovely server who was originally from the same town as OH’s father.

Re the snooty woman, we were all seated and the server brought her and her partner over, she looked horrified and said ‘oh no, we’re not sharing. Take us somewhere else’ 😂😂😂

The server sat them facing the back wall. So funny!

After that we dashed back to the room, changed and sorted an UBer over to the football stadium to meet up with friends.

We’ve been to the football before but when it was over at The Camping World Stadium.
This was the new stadium.

After the match we walked into Church Street Station area with a friend and his son for drinks and then made our way back to the hotel when the queue for Ubers had died down.

I’m not a massive football fan but have enjoyed going along to these matches. It’s a great atmosphere

[Vanillapod]

Looks like The next day was spent at Animal Kingdom.
Can’t see any breakfast pics on my phone so we either had something in the room, didn’t bother, or forgot a pic!
OH had some kind of iced coffee though.

‘Jon without an H’

According to my pics we saw Festival of the a lion King, met Kevin and Doug and finally made it onto Flight of passage before lunch at Yak and Yeti.
We’d only ever had the QS here before so decided it was worth a credit, especially as we had Landry’s and therefore didn’t need to commit to a booking.
I’m fairly sure we still had to wait even with our card

Yak and Yeti

3 drinks in one pic.
Mine was a cocktail, DS reckons his was some sort of iced tea and OH had a beer of some sort

Not somewhere we’d go again

Looking back at the pics it looks ok but it wasn’t great. The appetisers were ok.
The beans weren’t at all crispy (we had those with our main)
DS liked his potstickers, OH didn’t think much of his soup and I think my prawns were just ok.

The mains were weird.
I have no idea why DS chose a curry 🤣 Hardly the weather for it and it wasn’t very good anyway.

I remember being a bit annoyed about mine as I’d queried the accompaniment and it was then completely different to what I’d been told. The fish was ok but the veg and rice were actually really unpleasant. They had lots of hard bits in them and were tasteless with a slimy texture.

It was a miss for us

We declined desserts but OH later got an alcoholic dole whip from a stall somewhere

That was really good. Would definitely have that again

[Vanillapod]

Yachtsman Steak House

I was torn between here and Shula’s.
There had been a fair few bad reviews at the time but then it seemed to pick up again so we went for it.
I’m so pleased we did. It really was excellent.
Great food, fantastic wine and excellent service.
I booked a late table. I think 9:30 ish which worked well. Although still fairly busy, the staff seemed quite relaxed and organised at this time. Some of the bad reviews had been long wait times, poor service etc.
We sat in the little area between the bar and restaurant with a drink whilst we waited for our table

We were shown through quite quickly so took our drinks with us which we finished off with the bread and roasted garlic

I had red, OH white and DS a virgin raspberry mojito.
That’s as specific as I can be at this stage!

Now I’ve just checked with DS and this is genuinely how this went…

Me
French onion soup

OH
Shrimp cocktail

And DS had this….
I’m sure OH must have shared with him

That was all delicious. I think initially OH was disappointed when his arrived as it wasn’t quite was he had expected but he did really enjoy it.

More wine followed in preparation for our steaks. This time we shared a bottle but I’m afraid I’ve no idea what after so long!
Nice glass

I ordered a fillet and OH and DS shared the Porterhouse I think?

We had truffle fries, creamed spinach and mash (which I’m surprised about)

I think mine came with fries possibly and OH and DS could choose a couple of sides as part of their steak choice

More blooming desserts followed!
DS chose a sundae thing which I think looked boring
OH chose a banana dessert which he absolutely loved. (He loves anything banana based so it’s his fault on this occasion that we all succumbed)
And I chose a cheesecake type of thing. Meh. Looked better than it was

We had a fridge full of half eaten desserts in our room. You just get into the mentality of thinking ‘I may as well try a spoonful’ and it’s so wasteful

This really was an excellent meal. Our server was perfect.
He and DS were telling each other the worst jokes ever and I think that just made them all the more funny!

We would definitely return here

[Vanillapod]

California Grill brunch
We had this booked for 2 Sundays and I was really excited for it

We had planned to get a bus but after a lazy morning we were running late so we thought it would be fun to grab a Minnie Van

Whilst quite fun to do once, it’s a bit of a rip off. This very short journey (Beach Club -Contemporary) was about $36!

I must have taken actual pics with a real camera as I have naff all on my phone!
Here’s what I do have…

It seems that may be all I have which is odd.
We also had bloody Marys which I struggled to drink. That’s no reflection on the quality of the Bloody Mary, I just don’t think it’s my drink!
OH enjoyed his.

What I do remember is that we all loved the selection of ‘help yourself’ items.
I won’t call it a buffet as it was more organised than that.
There was a really good selection.
Cheese, meats, gravadlax (I particularly remember a really nice honey with the cheese) bread,
Sushi, yoghurts, berries, nuts etc

However, the entrees in our opinion weren’t up to scratch.

One of us had duck and waffles (or could have been chicken and waffles) which was flabby and disappointing.
This is DS’s go to dish at Duck and Waffle and I did expect a similar standard which it really wasn’t.

We also had lobster benedict and some stuffed French toast

The French toast was the best option and was fine but very dry. Not anywhere near as dry as Tonga Toast but that’s another day…

The lobster benedict was really poor. 👎🏻
The hollandaise was insanely vinegary and the poached eggs were rubbish. It had unpleasant bacon on it too.
Hands down, the worst benedict I’ve ever had

OH and I enjoyed the buffet section hugely though and would have been more than happy to forgo the entrees and still come back the next Sunday.
It was lovely listening to the musicians and sitting by the window with the sun streaming in.

DS was not so fussed and thought it was a massive let down so we actually cancelled the reservation for the following week.
I expect that made someone’s day!
It seemed a waste of 6 credits tbh to go back if we weren’t all fully up for it.

Aha! OH has saved the day. The pics were on his phone.
Turns out we had lobster benedict (which also had bacon…)
Eggs royale
Chicken and waffles
AND french toast.
I now remember that DS was torn so the waiter brought both for him. I’m glad he did as the french toast was the only nice entree!

Really snotty eggs.

[Vanillapod]

Originally Posted by Goldia

I'm always happy to look at food and cocktail photos! I'm glad you've resurrected your trip report, even if you can't exactly remember all the details. We've never eaten at Boathouse, it was booked for our 2020 trip. Every time i hear Lou Mongello talking about it on a podcast I think I have to go there as it's his favourite restaurant and I have to say all your food looks delicious!

See more...

We really like it. We’d been before and had lobster rolls from memory?
I do prefer to be in the smaller area with the lower ceiling (where we were on our first visit) as it’s then feels smaller, quieter and less like a huge production line but we’d definitely go back either way. It’s a favourite.

[Pez01]

I love that you’ve come to finish off your report!