Fantasising about food... from 2016! A very belated food report

[orlandoamber]

Hi all!

Like all of us, there’s not much for me to do at the moment (other than plan future Florida trips ) and been as I have two food reports from our 2018 and 2019 trips, I felt like I may as well round it off with also adding our 2016 trip into the mix. A little late for sure, but better late than never, as I love looking over my other two reports and remembering the great times we’ve had (and food we ate!).

In August 2016 myself and my now fiancé (we got engaged during our September/October 2019 trip so that’s documented in the food report in my signature below) travelled to Florida together for the first time (although we’d both been separately in the past) for 10 nights, staying at the Doubletree at Seaworld. We visited Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, Seaworld, Busch Gardens and Aquatica. We therefore ate in these parks and also on idrive.

We take A LOT of photos on our holidays so I still have a pretty good idea of what we did and ate each day. Many of the food items are things we go back for year after year!

I hope this serves as a bit of a pick me up and reminder of all the wonderful food we are missing in Florida at the moment I will upload the first day or two later this weekend.

[Dr.JumbaJookiba]

Yay! following

[orlandoamber]

Gatwick to Doubletree at Seaworld

We flew BA from Gatwick and stayed over at the Crown Plaza (in Crawley) the night before we flew. It wasn’t far from a TGIs so we walked there on the evening and had the Warrior burger... W (my other half) made a good dent in it but it definitely defeated me 😂 however it set me up well for all of the food to come on the trip!

The next morning we headed to Gatwick and, as you may know from my other reports, we’re not really breakfast people so we didn’t have anything in the airport as the flight was early anyway. We had some contacts within BA at the time and we were very kindly upgraded to Club World/Business. First up we had some bubbles:

We then had salad; a standard one and a tomato with mozzarella:

For main courses W had Moroccan chicken and I had steak:

We also had a fair few vodka cranberries and enjoyed reclining and sleeping to our hearts’ content!

This was such a great experience and something we may not get to repeat for a long time, so we were very grateful.

Upon landing at MCO, we retrieved our luggage and went to the Doubletree at Seaworld where we were greeted with the usual lovely warm cookies. We had another stroke of luck here as we were upgraded to a room in the tower section of the resort. We had thought we were booking this section via the BA website when we’d made the initial booking but it soon came to light that we’d booked the more resort style rooms with outdoor corridors. It wasn’t an option to upgrade so we’d resigned ourselves to being in that section of the resort (which would’ve been fine but not our first choice), so when we were upgraded I was overjoyed! The lady on reception said that it was because they’d overbooked the other side of the resort.

Our room was spacious and we had this fab view from the window (which was almost floor to ceiling - not for the faint hearted!):

That night we just got a pizza to share from the hotel (sorry I don’t have a picture, it was just a takeaway pizza in a box but I remember it being nice!) and went to sleep ready for a big day at Magic Kingdom.

[orlandoamber]

Magic Kingdom

First up, we headed to Magic Kingdom. There was a free shuttle from the Doubletree which was great, you just had to book it the day before (although it could have changed by now). You could also book a return time which we did but we actually ended up getting a taxi at the end of the day because we’d have missed some of the fireworks had we made our way back for the bus.

No breakfast for us but an early lunch at Casey’s Corner. We loved this and it’s now a staple on all of our trips. W had the foot long bbq slaw dog ($12.29 + tax) and I had the smaller version of it ($10.79 + tax) - it came with pulled pork, bbq sauce and coleslaw. Both came with fries. In hindsight with the tiny price difference between the two, I definitely should have got the foot long too

It is worth mentioning that I only have photos of some receipts. For Casey’s, those prices were taken from the actual receipt but for most of the meals I’m taking the prices from current menus online.

For dinner we went to Columbia Harbour House. We both had fried shrimp with fries which came with coleslaw and corn on the cob (I think W had already eaten his by the time this was taken!). This no longer seems to be an option at CCH - the most similar option is fried shrimp with chicken nuggets - but I imagine it was around $13.99 + tax which is the price for most meals at CCH. We like the food here but I remember the cocktail sauce that came with the shrimp was a bit odd!

We also got a Diet Coke ($3.99 + tax) and a Minute Maid lemonade slushy ($5.99 + tax) - I still have the souvenir straw from this now!

We then watched the fireworks and the electrical parade 😢

Before we left, we picked up a strawberry lollipop ($4.79 + tax) from Main Street Confectionary - how cute is this!?

[Dr.JumbaJookiba]

Great start, that burger looks really good Good to see a free upgrade too and a stress free travel day

[orlandoamber]

Originally Posted by Dr.JumbaJookiba

Great start, that burger looks really good Good to see a free upgrade too and a stress free travel day

See more...

The upgrade was fab! Never did I think I’d be eating steak on a plane

[orlandoamber]

Denny’s and Red Lobster (Aquatica day)

After a packed day at Magic Kingdom we decided to spend the day at Aquatica, after enjoying breakfast at Denny’s (yes, we actually had breakfast!). This is somewhere I’d loved going when I was younger and couldn’t wait to go back (we used to stay at the Rosen Centre, so on this trip we actually went back to the exact Denny’s I’d remembered which was handily placed in between the Rosen Centre and the Doubletree at Seaworld).

We both had an orange juice which is always really nice here.

I went for the All-American Slam which is scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast; I swapped the toast for pancakes though!

W went for The Grand Slamwich which is now something we return for often! It is a sandwich filled with scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, ham and American cheese on potato grilled bread with maple spice spread. It also comes with hash browns on the side. It is SO GOOD and I was jealous!

I can’t find prices on the Denny’s menu online but this is never usually more than $30 for the whole meal.

Then we decided it would be clever to try and WALK to Aquatica from Denny’s. Whilst in theory this did not look like it would take too long, it was probably not wise and we definitely didn’t feel clever when the heavens decided to open and we got SOAKED. This led to one of the funniest moments I can remember... we literally got to the back gate of the Doubletree when the rain was coming down so hard it was actually painful and we were like drowned rats, so we hopped back into the hotel and thought we’d wait it out in the lobby before trying again. As we were walking through the pool area I walked under a palm tree and a huge lizard fell straight on top of my head. Now I really like lizards and think they’re cute, but at this point I thought it was a spider and quite literally screamed down the hotel. The poor lizard had got stuck in my hair which is very curly and I was throwing my head up and down trying to get it out (still imagining that an Australian sized tarantula was on top of my head). Eventually he dislodged himself and happily ran down my arm and back onto the floor 😂 The whole situation was quite frankly ridiculous and we couldn’t stop laughing about it for hours afterwards!

Luckily after about 20 minutes the rain stopped and we headed off to Aquatica (abandoning the walk in favour of simpler and quicker methods of transport!). As we’d had a big breakfast at Denny’s we didn’t have any lunch at Aquatica but we really enjoyed the park, neither of us had been there before - our favourite was Roa’s Rapids, the very fast ‘lazy’ river there.

On the evening we went to Red Lobster, another old favourite. We decided to share meals as we couldn’t decide what to order!

We got one Ultimate Feast which is lobster tail, snow crab legs, garlic shrimp scampi and Walt’s favourite shrimp with rice and fries. Whilst the lobster is great I think the shrimp options at Red Lobster are stand out and we always go back for them - Walt’s favourite shrimp are especially soooo good, my favourite, with the garlic shrimp a close second. The garlic butter sauce on the side is also really good, especially for dipping the Walt’s favourite shrimp!

We also got a steak with mashed potato, grilled shrimp and broccoli. This was also good but more for W than me as I ate most of the shrimp by myself 😂

Do you like my claws?! 😂

Red Lobster usually comes out at about $50-$60 for this sort of meal.

Overall this was another great day with some really good, affordable food. It’s lovely looking back on these times at the moment

Next up I will likely do two days in one post as it was Busch Gardens followed by Discovery Cove and I don’t have that many food photos from either day.

[orlandoamber]

Busch Gardens

The next day we got the free transfer bus to Busch Gardens for the day (we don’t usually drive in Florida but we’re tentatively planning a trip at some point with a car and staying at four different hotels... watch this space!).

We purchased a refillable cup which was brilliant value as we could have icees and fountain drinks all day which was so needed in the august heat. We could also use the cup in other Seaworld parks so we reactivated it later in the trip too.

For lunch (no breakfast again, oops!) we went to Zambia Smokehouse. It is a bit like a canteen where you choose your food, have it plated up for your tray and then pay. There is a decent seating area outside but there always seems to be loads of birds hanging about trying to steal your food (it reminds me a bit of the outdoor seating area/bird situation at Flame Tree Barbecue in Animal Kingdom but not as nice).

W ordered the Zambia Sampler which is ribs, brisket and chicken served with fries. I ordered the pulled pork sandwich again with fries. W also got a side of beans.

Looking at their menu online it seems like they now do waffle fries instead of standard fries which would be nice. Regardless we thought the food was nice enough but nothing particularly to write home about compared to other food you can get in the Disney/Universal theme parks (Disney has the best theme park food in our opinion). We would return in future though if we were in that area of the park at the time we were hungry.

In the afternoon, we made a brilliant new discovery - dippin dots! We’d not seen these before and when W told me he wanted some I thought he was wasting money and told him not to bother 😂 He went ahead anyway and bought a strawberry flavour cup:

OMG these were so good and I loved the texture! And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t even like strawberry ice cream 😂 I realised from that point that I’d have to try some more flavours in the coming days...

On the drive back there was a crazy storm/twister (we did actually have good weather for August on this trip but I seem to be only telling you about the negatives 😂 ):

On the night we went shopping in the outlets and had a bit of a disaster in McDonalds. We hadn’t realised that the food areas at the outlets would close at the same time as the shops (not sure why looking back as this seems obvious) so the only place we could see to eat late at night was McDonalds. We went in and there were screens to do virtual ordering on - I can’t remember having seen these in England before at the time but they seemed quite easy to use... famous last words! So I ‘ordered’ for us and stood waiting for the food. We waited. And we waited. And we waited. Everyone who ordered after us got their food. After speaking to the manager it turned out that I hadn’t confirmed the order after all so we’d essentially just spent 30 minutes of precious Florida time hanging out in McDonalds with the locals 😂 I was absolutely furious with myself and decided I no longer wanted to eat there so we ended up in a taxi... back to Denny’s for a midnight grand slamwich!

We were quite happy to be close to the Doubletree by that point as we had an early start in the morning for Discovery Cove.


Discovery Cove

Unfortunately for this day I have hardly any food photos so I thought I would just tag it onto the same post as above.

As you may know, Discovery Cove is an all inclusive day where you can snorkel with fish and rays, swim with dolphins (extra charge, not something I’ve done since I was a child) and eat/drink to your heart’s content! You get breakfast when you arrive which consists of all the usual items and lunch which usually has pretty good choices of meats, burgers, salads, desserts etc.

Clearly I was having far too much fun on this day to photograph any food - oops! There is definitely some decent photos in my 2018 and 2019 reports though if you’re interested.

What I do have is a photo of a lemonade slushy drink - drinking one of these on the ‘beach’ at Discovery Cove is bliss, and a nice break from walking around theme parks every day!

I also had a photo fail on the night too... I promise my later food reports are much better than this one - in 2016 I hadn’t discovered the dibb and so wasn’t intending on writing this report mid-pandemic 4.5 years later 😂

We went to Islands of Adventure and blitzed some rides before retreating to the Hard Rock Cafe in CityWalk. I’m pretty sure we shared a flatbread and the nachos as we love them from Hard Rock (the best ones are in Playa de las Americas in Tenerife though - no other Hard Rock can beat theirs!).

This is probably one of our favourite Hard Rocks worldwide in terms of decor and theming - the rotating car above the bar is a nice touch!

[orlandoamber]

Animal Kingdom

Next, we were back at Disney for a day at Animal Kingdom!

No breakfast again but lunch was at Yak & Yeti Local Food Cafe (the quick service version of the Yak & Yeti restaurant).

I ordered the honey chicken which is tempura chicken with carrots, snap peas, honey sauce and white rice (current price $12.99 + tax). W ordered the teriyaki beef bowl which came with carrots, snap peas, mushrooms, teriyaki sauce and white rice - this no longer seems to be on the website version of the menu though

We also got a side order of two pork egg rolls (current price $6.99 + tax) and a Diet Coke.

This was all lovely and it’s remained somewhere that we revisit. I love spring/egg rolls anyway so those were always going to be a win for me! The chicken is also a bit like sweet and sour chicken - very nice.

We then got a couple of Minute Maid strawberry lemonade cups.

These are soooo good! We actually tried the standard lemonade version on a later trip and it wasn’t anywhere near as good, so definitely get the strawberry! They’re really refreshing, you eat them with a spoon and because they’re frozen they last for quite a while.

For dinner we went to Pizzafari:

We ordered the garlic knots (current price $6.99 plus tax) which are good - you get four of them topped with cheese and marinara sauce. We also got what I believe was a baked pasta bolognese topped with cheese - unfortunately this is no longer a menu item as while the picture doesn’t really do it justice (sorry), W quite liked this!

And that concluded our day! I’m kind of wondering how we only ate this much... we are such snackers nowadays that we definitely consume a lot more!

[Dr.JumbaJookiba]

I'm defo going back to Red Lobster next trip, not sure why it dropped of our list on the last few trips. Just signed up for offers