LIVE NOW (ish) food report - Eating our way across land and sea ~ including QSDP ~ September 2019

[Goldia]

You're spoiling us with all the buffet photos. The food looks so tasty. I did do a double take at that bill over $1000, thanks for explaining the exchange rates, it wasn't until I read that and took another glance I saw it had been converted to USD underneath anyway. Ha ha, it did orignially make me think wow, we're never doing that!

It sounds like you're having a great time on board. Thanks for all the lovely food photos, I'm on a diet so at the moment I'm pretending I'm on holidays and I can eat all that food.

[MrsEgg]

I've just had a Sunday catch up, what a great food report and has inspired us to try a few new things next time, your cruise also looks amazing!

[Loobylou_82]

Love your daiquiri at Senor Frogs, wonder what the large one looked like? Thanks for doing the report, i really want to go on one of the mega ships now. It looked lovely.Looks like you enjoyed it all.

[4holibobs]

Originally Posted by Goldia

You're spoiling us with all the buffet photos. The food looks so tasty. I did do a double take at that bill over $1000, thanks for explaining the exchange rates, it wasn't until I read that and took another glance I saw it had been converted to USD underneath anyway. Ha ha, it did orignially make me think wow, we're never doing that!

I did wonder if the buffet photos were too much so glad you have enjoyed them!

The food definitely wasn’t worth the $75 let alone any more and it was a little awkward as they didn’t have any menus with USD prices... but I guess we enjoyed the experience so it will be one to remember!


It sounds like you're having a great time on board. Thanks for all the lovely food photos, I'm on a diet so at the moment I'm pretending I'm on holidays and I can eat all that food.

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Oh my pre holiday diet days I would have been loving imagining I could eat all the food too! I’m back on it properly today... it’s actually nice to be back to bent good and eating ‘normally’ although I’m not saying I couldn’t eat a Teak burger for tea! Good luck with your diet!

Originally Posted by MrsEgg

I've just had a Sunday catch up, what a great food report and has inspired us to try a few new things next time, your cruise also looks amazing!

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Thanks so much for reading and commenting - glad you enjoyed it!

Originally Posted by Loobylou_82

Love your daiquiri at Senor Frogs, wonder what the large one looked like? Thanks for doing the report, i really want to go on one of the mega ships now. It looked lovely.Looks like you enjoyed it all.

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I wondered that too renter daiquiri and what the price would be! Thanks, glad you enjoyed it and the cruise section too... just going to attempt to finish it off! Thanks for following along

[4holibobs]

Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in posting cruise day and our travel home day. I’ve been a little poorly since I’ve got home, nothing major but fuzzy heads and jet lag and lack of sleep definitely haven’t helped! I was back at work on Wednesday, but luckily for me I only work 4.5 hours on Fridays so I am home now and most definitely ready for the weekend!

To my surprise I actually wrote a full days worth of notes for day 7, so here goes -

Day 7 - At sea

Brunch/lunch - Main dining room

We didn’t go to bed until 1am, so missed breakfast this morning - oops!

On sea days they do a lunch in the main dining room from 11.30am - 1.00pm so we headed there for 11.30am.

There were two lines the same as at breakfast time, one for a la carte and one for buffet.

We joined the a la carte line knowing we could also use the buffet.

I decided just to order a main meal from the menu and have my starter and dessert from the buffet. I had the beef burger.

DH ordered a tomato salad, cod and key lime pie from the menu.

The buffet was really impressive, there were lots choice of everything and all the food looked really fresh.

The desserts especially looked outstanding!

I chose a salad for my starter which they mix and dress and toss for you. I had some Italian leaf, pepper, egg, red onion, chicken and Italian herb dressing. The salad was lovely, but you have to tell them if you only want a small one as it could become a meal in itself.

DH went up to the salad and picked himself up some prawns and some muscles to go with his tomato salad which he ordered from the a la carte menu. He said it was a nice salad with a hint of basil and olive oil.

I really enjoyed my burger, I ate as many fries as long as I had my burger so left around half. It was a tasty burger - not as good as Teak or D Luxe burger, but good all the same.

DH’s cod was a little dry, it came with buttery mash and cauliflower. It looked very beige and not my cup of tea at all. It wasn’t the best meal he’s had.

I didn’t even go back up to look at the cakes and desserts after I had photographed them as I knew I would be tempted by them and I wanted to be good (this is a real success for me as before I wouldn’t have batted an eye lid and may have even had two slices of cake, so I was really pleased with myself), so I had some strawberry ice cream with mini white chocolate buttons. The ice cream was a little melty and I added an extra spoon of buttons to compensate for not having the cake, it was really good.

DH was a little disappointed in his key lime pie, he said it was well constructed with crusty base, light meringue and coulis but there wasn’t really a taste of lime. He said it was very sweet and left a taste of sugar on his lips.

Overall a good lunch for me, I think perhaps DH made poor choices (especially with the cod), and there were good options available at the buffet including a pasta station, ribs, fried chicken, stew, and lots of fresh salad.

Drinks - refill station

We had a 2.30pm reservation for Grease in the theatre so headed down around 1.45pm and picked up some lemonades from the refill stations in Sorrentos. We both had sugar free Minute Maid lemonade.

I had taken the mini packets of skittles we were given on the plane and some mini caramel m&m’s we had bought with us. It was a really good show, the singing and dancing were great although it was freezing in the theatre!

Dinner - Main Dining Room

We ended our trip in the section of the dining room we sat in on day 1, and we had great service.

To start both DH and I chose the pork tachos. For mains DH chose the fish of the day which was blackened salmon and I chose steak Diane cooked well done. For dessert DH chose the cherries jubilee and I chose tres leches.

I ordered a Diet Coke and DH stuck to the water at the table. The waiters have been reluctant to bring refills of the Diet Coke but not at this table and I had two tonight. They were included in my drinks package.

When the pork tachos came I remembered I had ordered them on the last time and they were really open bao buns. I transferred mine out of the dish and onto the plate which made them easier to eat. I could have used more chilli sauce on mine, but I enjoyed them and could have eaten more. DH was disappointed and wanted hard tacho shells.

I enjoyed my steak Diane, the steak was cooked well done and was really tasty. The baked potato was the biggest I had had all trip, but was light and fluffy.

DH enjoyed his salmon - he has eaten lots of fish on this trip and has really enjoyed it.

I enjoyed my dessert although I was convinced the sauce had alcohol in it.. not sure my taste buds are working correctly tonight though.

DH has had the cherries jubilee before and enjoyed it. He likes cherry ice cream so the combination of the vanilla ice cream and cherries was a good one for him.

The head waiter came around and asked how everything had been, the waiter did also. They both asked if we could score the online survey well.

Drinks - Cafe Promenade

DH wasn’t offered coffee with his meal, so we decided to head to Cafe Promenade after our meal.

We had seen someone had ordered a hot chocolate so that’s what I got and DH ordered a latte.

They were both made fresh in front of us, but when we sat down to drink them I was convinced mine had coffee in it. DH tried it and said it didn’t, and asked me to try his to prove that actually tasted like coffee (I don’t like it), but when I tried mine again it definitely tasted like coffee so I ended up leaving it.

We were going to have an early night and headed to our room at 9pm, however, the steward was in our room and she asked us to give her 10 minutes so we came down to Central Park to sit and relax. My favourite piano player was out so we listened to him for a while, then he left and someone came who was playing an acoustic guitar. He was very good and it was really relaxing with low lighting, warm air and the smell of garlic from
Jamie’s Italian... we could have been sat on a Mediterranean street somewhere.

We ended up going to bed around 10.30pm and packed up our final little bits ready to disembark the ship and fly home tomorrow.

[4holibobs]

Sorry again for the delay in posting this last day... I’m finally feeling better and have now found the time to post.

So we had a really early start on travel home day. We were up just after 5am.

We didn’t have any breakfast on the ship, but there were a couple of places open for breakfast including cafe promenade (for pastries etc), and windjammer.

We were at Avis just outside the cruise port for 7.45am and soon on our way back to Orlando.

We headed to Target Rolling Oaks where we picked up two pastries, a cold coffee and a smoothie.

I haven’t got the receipt but I think this was around $10... the pastries were AMAZING!

We did yet more shopping, Ross dress for less, TJ Maxx, Tagrget and Dollar Tree... luckily we had plenty of space in our hand luggage for the items we picked up.

On the same complex there’s a Sweet Tomatoes. We always try and get there once a trip, it’s fresh food and can be as light or heavy as you like.

When you head in you’re faced with a huge salad cart... think Harvester salad cart (the best bit) but 10 times more choice. You will up a plate with salad, then at the end there’s a till where you pay for your buffet and drink.

You find a seat and then you can help yourself to hot food which includes soup, baked potato’s, Mac and cheese, pizza bread. There’s a dessert bar with a small choice of items and ice cream on a pull
Machine which tastes like McFlurry.

Our salads -

And the rest of my food...

Chilli soup and wholewheat bread - this was very tasty and DH has tried to recreate it at home since.

I Also had a baked potato with some sour cream and cheese.

I had some ice cream to finish off. It was really good and tasted like I said earlier like McDonalds McFlurry.

Before we headed in I googled voucher codes and managed to find one. I’d seen people do this before and it was no problem.

We both ate for $23 plus tax. We saw people leave their tables without leaving tips, but the lady serving our area cleared our plates quickly and was friendly and helpful so we left $3.

We headed off to the airport and dropped the car off with no issues. We didn’t hang around the terminal pre the monorail as we like to be the better side of security, but once we headed through I picked up a strawberry açai, latte and two chocolate chip cookies as well as a you were hear Florida mug from Starbucks. The total cake to $26 and unfortunately I didn’t take any photos.

We were sat on the exit row seats again on the way back. The flight went quickly, although unfortunately neither of us had any sleep. When we landed paramedics had to come on board and the air hostess told us it was a close call for the plane diverting as the medical emergency happened just before half way through the flight but luckily for us there was a paramedic on board and the crew had been in touch with head off sending the readings from the machines to them. Hope that person was ok.

Anyway, here’s the menu for the return economy flight -

We both had a cranberry juice and they brought us some pretzels again (yum!)

We both chose the pulled pork for our mains. The pork was lovely actually, it pulled apart really easily and was really tender. The meal came with cheese and biscuits which I gave to DH and a key lime pie in a jar. Unfortunately this was completely flavourless and very sweet. We both had one spoonful and then left it.

Breakfast was a hot chocolate pain au chocolate, however, it has been heated too long before being handed out and had started to go hot. Nevertheless I did eat it, although not the yoghurt and fruit it came with.

I Wish we could have had some sleep on the way home as I think we would have felt much better in the days following, but it wasn’t to be. Overall though we couldn’t fault Virgin and really enjoyed our flights with them.

The day we landed it took us 1hr45 to get home, we had a couple of hours sleep before getting up and going for a carvery for a tea... DH suggested I photographed my last off plan meal for the trip report, so here it is...

We had the most amazing trip and I’ll do some summing up in the next post.

Thanks for reading

[4holibobs]

So, I thought I would sum up some of our favourite meals and snacks here.

Best use of a quick service credit

This one is easy, it’s got to be Polite Pig. Great value for money, lots of choice, great choice of alcohol. Nice setting with seats inside and out. We loved it here, the first time more than the second.

I must also mention here the steak that we had on the last evening in our resort quick service restaurant. This was also great value for money!

Favourite quick service meal

DH - back to Polite Pig for the brisket meal. It’s the stand out meal for him, and he said it would easily compare to some of the offsite restaurants.

Me - I’m tied between Blaze Pizza and D Luxe Burger. I guess neither are particularly great value for money as it’s one item and a drink (small fries are a snack credit at D Luxe), but if I think back to our trip, these are the quick service meals I remember the most.

I love the fact at Blaze you can make your own pizza so you’re guaranteed to enjoy it every time. Everything is fresh and tasty and whilst we didn’t this time I like the fact that they have boxes to take any leftover pizza home with you. I think this will become a first night tradition for us now.

I’m so pleased we gave D Luxe burger a go, I’d read such mixed reviews about it, but the burgers were freshly cooked, we didn’t find them greasy, they were really great. I also particularly loved the fries we had as a snack credit with them.

Best value snack

This has to be the ale Cellier Steak from the Canada food and wine booth just due to the monetary value of it with it being $8.25.

Favourite snack credit

DH - dole whip - we had the standard pineapple and the one mixed with raspberry. DH loved them.

Me - My absolutely favourite snack was in fact a drink and it was the night blossom drink from pandora in Animal Kingdom. I love twister ice creams and it tasted just like that. I’m only sad we didn’t get one the first time we visited and I only got to have one.

Favourite Food and Wine Item

Definite for both of us, it’s the corned beef from
Flavours from (of?) fire before you enter any of the world pavillions. It tasted great and we both remember it.

Least favourite quick service meal

Unfortunately whilst it’s a popular one with lots of Disney you tubers, our least favourite meal was the khatsu curry from Japan in Epcot. We didn’t think it was good value for money and agreed we could have cooked something just as nice, or nicer, at home.

Best offsite meal

Teak - new to us, we’re so pleased to have found Teak thanks to the Dibb. It was a great atmosphere, excellent food and service, and good value for money. The choice of burgers was amazing and they tasted just great. I’d really encourage everyone to check it out!

We had the quick service dining plan for free with our package, and whilst if we had have kept the sums I’m not sure if we had have paid out of pocket we would have made money from the choices we had, but it was nice knowing that a good chunk of our meals, and especially snacks were already covered.

I would like to try the dining plan next time we visit, which I don’t think now will be for 5 years.

We enjoy eating offsite and exploring new places, and whilst I think we would probably enjoy a villa, I do like being in the Disney bubble despite not being in the parks 24/7.

Adding the cruise onto our Disney trip is a good compromise for our holiday, it means we know we have a relaxing break at the end of Full on tiring days, and we both get to experience the holidays we love the most.

We had the best trip, French Quarter was amazing again, we love how close the resort is to Disney Springs. Springs is one of our favourite things about the whole Disney complex, we loved eating there and the entertainment was great too.

The most memorable moment for me has to be a bus full of strangers singing happy birthday to me on the bus to Magic Kingdom. That really was Disney Magic at its finest.

We are doing something different next year, today we have booked a trip to Australia for 2020! If anyone has any tips or knows of a Dibb for Aus please do let me know.

Thanks so much to everyone who read along and more importantly those who commented, it helped me keep the report live whilst we were away.

I appreciate all the reports I’ve read and the hints and tips we picked up.

Until next time, thanks again

[Goldia]

I've really enjoyed reading your food report. You had some lovely highs and I'm grateful you shared it all with us.

Your plans for next year sound exciting, Australia! Wow! Hope you have a brilliant time.

[mick]

Thanks for talking the time to do your trippie I have really enjoyed reading along :spin sounds like you had a great holiday


Joan

[4holibobs]

Originally Posted by Goldia

I've really enjoyed reading your food report. You had some lovely highs and I'm grateful you shared it all with us.

Your plans for next year sound exciting, Australia! Wow! Hope you have a brilliant time.

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Thanks so much for following along and for your lovely comments, I really appreciate it

Originally Posted by mick

Thanks for talking the time to do your trippie I have really enjoyed reading along :spin sounds like you had a great holiday


Joan

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It was a really great holiday, thanks so much for reading and commenting - I really appreciate it