It's all about the mouse - 12th August 2018 day 12 California Grill Brunch and a night swim

[Goldia]

Welcome to the It’s all about the mouse trip report. We are a family of four and this is our 4th trip to Orlando. I'm Abby, my DH is Dave and our children are Max (13) and Kate (11). This trip is all WDW and we stay inside the Disney bubble for the entirety of our holiday.

If you haven't read the previous day it can be found here

No parks today as we were having a well deserved rest day following the exertions of the 4 park challenge. We had a lie in. Of course, when I say lie in I mean in terms of being at WDW a lie in...

I woke up around 7.30am Kate was the last up just before 9am. We had a novel way of storing the minnie ears!

We slowly got ourselves ready for brunch at California grill. I’d booked this for quite late at 12.30pm as I wanted us to have a lazy morning.

We ended up doing quite a bit of rearranging of plans this morning while lazing around the room watching TV and playing on tablets.

I discussed with the kids what they wanted to do for the next couple of days. On Monday it was Max’s choice. I had figured he would pick TL and then HS, so I had already booked our ADR for the evening at 50s Prime time and 3 FP for the evening. He thought this was the perfect plan.

On Tuesday it was Kate’s choice. I had figured she would pick MK and so had booked FP for there plus dinner at BOG. Tuesday is also our check out day for OKW and check in day for our extra 2 days. This was still a surprise for the kids and they had no idea which resort we would be staying in. Well, Kate surprised me and asked for us to go to Epcot. I cancelled the original FPs (I thought she would go for MK) and booked up Frozen Ever After, Figment and Spaceship Earth. Kate was also really keen to get some more autographs and try to fill up her book.

This change of plan for Tuesday meant that I then re-considered our plans for Wednesday. This was actually day 15 of the trip for us but as today was a day off from the park we would still be able to go into the parks. I had planned for us to got to Epcot as we had a Beaches and Cream ADR so I had booked FP there. I didn’t want to ditch the ADR so I decided we would have a lazy day in the resort all day then head over to B&C for our dinner at the original time and then go over to MK for our final evening. I was pretty pleased that I managed to swap our FP for the 3 mountains at MK so we could go on Splash, Space and BTMR on our last night.

After slowly getting ready we caught the bus from the resort to MK.

We walked from MK to Contemporary.

We had a wander around the resort. The kids found a tv showing the Lion King (I think). Dave and me went out the back to look around.

It was quite hot outside though so we went back to find the movie was just finishing.

We checked in about 20 minutes early.

We were taken up in the elevator and each given a cocktail and shown to the lounge.

The kids hated the little balls in our cocktails and were really pleased they had grapes. Kate thought they looked like fish eggs.

We only waited a couple of minutes, but it was enough time to snap a couple of quick photos of the view.

We all enjoyed the buffet here. Dave had a plate with Devilled Eggs to start.

Max went for a bagel with cream cheese.

Kate loves sushi so headed straight there.

I also went for the sushi. All of this was great and I think this was my favourite part of the meal.

Max was ready for a 2nd run at the buffet and had a chocolate croissant and an orange.

Our cocktails were topped up many times, more than I can remember!

Kate had a bagel with cream cheese and salmon.

Dave opted for some of the sushi as his 2nd plate.

I had seen the charcuterie and went for a plate of cheese and meats. This was delicious. I had wanted to try some of the Danish or bagels but didn’t have room for more.

Max saw my bread stick, I said he would like some of the cheeses so he went up for his own plate and came with another Max special!

Dave tried out the parfait, this was very good.

Kate had a little from the charcuterie.

Kate then realised she hadn’t tried out a chocolate croissant and so went for one of these.

Max decided if she was having one it would be rude for him not to.

As our A la carte orders Dave had steak and potatoes with poached eggs on the side.

Max went for the chocolate pancakes, he was a bit cross the granola was sprinkled on top (as I'd promised him this would be on the side) he managed to eat it all in spite of these problems.

I had eggs benedict with lobster tails. If I’m honest this was just ok. It wasn’t quite hot enough and while I enjoyed it, it wasn’t the best part of the meal for me.

Kate had shrimp and grits, but as she loves shrimp and I was worried she wouldn’t like the grits we asked for the shrimp to be served on the side. She didn’t like the grits.

We also ordered a plate of blueberry pancakes for the table and these were delicious. Dave and me shared them and I really enjoyed my portion. The pancakes were light and fluffy.

Kate decided to go back to her first love – sushi.

We were brought coffee and the plate of desserts while I was off getting a photo of the musicians.

I also picked up a Bourbon baba on the way back, which was really tasty but I probably should have left this as I was way too full by now and had to force myself to eat it.

The server had explained what each of the puddings were, but Dave only managed to remember something about fig, blueberry and raspberries stuff and other stuff .

Fortunately Max was paying more attention. He explained we had raspberry cakes and blueberry cakes, fig biscuits, macaroons, chocolate with dried fruit and almonds and some truffles.

Clearly there was no way we were finishing these so we asked for them to be boxed up and then paid the bill.

8 TS credits used up. Was this worth double some of the other restaurants – in a word YES!

We were in the restaurant for close to 2 hours and I'm glad we took our time. We were told we could come back and watch the fireworks later, which I knew we probably wouldn’t as we were just too lazy.

We couldn’t even be bothered to walk back to MK to get the direct bus back to the resort. We got a bus from Contemporary to DS and we were really lucky as there was a bus waiting at DS for OKW.

We lazed about the room for a bit as there was a thunder storm, but to be honest this was perfectly timed as I just wanted to try and sit and digest for a while. I'm glad we weren't rushing off to a park or thinking about doing rides.

When mousekeeping came we said not to bother today. They were a bit worried about this and a little later a supervisor lady came over and asked if they could bring us anything so we gave them some old towels and got some new ones and she gave us a bag of bathroom goodies (most of these soaps came home with us!).

I did decide I needed to get some packing done today as we were due to check out on Tuesday (2 days). I wanted to separate out clean clothes and stuff we wanted at our next resort and the dirty stuff we knew we wouldn’t want. It took me and Kate about 30 seconds to make our decisions (outfits had pretty much been decided already anyway). It took Dave ages to decide what he wouldn’t need and what was dirty and what he would want to keep handy as he would want to wear it. I planned to load up the big cases with all our dirty clothes and souvenirs ready for coming home and pack up the carry on cases for the last 2 days. This seemed like a simple idea to me, but he really struggled to decide what to keep. He had 12 shirts that he said were clean (how many did he bring in the first place?).

After this bit of exercise I felt like I could manage a little treat from the boxed up dessert from Cali Grill.

As we were walking to the pool we thought it was a bit chillier than usual so we checked on the weather app, it was 26˚C, so still pretty warm really.

The kids have been desperate for a night swim and hadn’t had the chance yet so they were happy to get in the pool, which is where we stayed all evening.

They even convinced me to go down the big slide.

We had dinner from the resort QS.

We used a few snack credits here. Kate had a pretzel with cheese sauce. Max had a portion of fries. I had the cheddar ale soup, Dave had the chowder. I also ordered a second portion of fries for us to share.

This came to 5 snack credits.

I went over to the main reception check in area as I wanted to find out about how to organise the transfer of our luggage on Tuesday. They explained this was really easy and we just needed to make a quick call at Bell Services we could book a slot and someone would come to our room and collect the luggage and take it to the new resort. They also said that we didn’t need to go and physically check out on the morning as I had linked my credit card to the room.

Dave and me had a cocktail, back to the smoked turkey and whiskey breeze. We did like these 2.

We followed these up with a raspberry sparkler which is Prosecco and Chambord for me and a sultry seahorse for Dave.

We didn’t really need pudding but we had it anyway, cos, well, we had billions of snack credits.

We had a chocolate brownie and a chocolate and vanilla swirl ice cream with sprinkles as Max wanted to make his own version of a brownie sundae. This would have been nicer if the brownie had been warm. Kate had the rice krispi Mickey head. Dave had the key lime pie. I had the carrot cake.

5 more snack credits used for pudding.

We stayed at the pool until they closed it at 10pm.

Even though we didn't visit a park it was a lovely day and just what we needed so that we could face the final few days.

Statistics for the day:

Credits Used 10 snack, 0 QS and 8 TS. We used some snack credits today, but no QS, ha ha we just can’t seem to fit them both in.
Credits Remaining 39 snack 14 QS and 12 TS
Parks, rides, FP and characters: 0
Steps: 11,570

Tomorrow was Max’s choice and of course he wanted to go back to TL, we also had the much feared 50s prime time café for dinner, the kids were quite worried we would be told off for not eating our food up or for putting our elbows on the table.

[jothp]

Another really lovely day. The food once again looked fantastic and it's given me another place to think about for our next trip. We might just about be able to fit all the food in if we do nothing but eat!

[MrsSilverStar]

A lovely chilled day with lots of delicious food! We’re thinking of doing the brunch for Heath’s birthday, sounds like we better restrain ourselves if we want to head to a park afterwards!

Love that you managed to keep the room a secret for so long - did they know you were staying the extra days or was the whole thing a surprise?

[Jannyjan]

I have just managed to book the California Grill brunch. I have been trying every day for 4 weeks since we booked flights. Couldn't get reservations for 2 holidays last year so very pleased. I think it's one that gets booked out months ahead. Glad to read your report.

[GALE88]

Sounds like you had a lovely chilled out day. Evenings by the pool are fab!

[caitlinsmummy]

What a fab morning, sounds like it's exactly what you needed and good that you managed to rearrange to plans.

Cali Grill looks amazing as it always does, but I've got to say the star of the show is Max's cheese plate I love it!

A lovely relaxed day which was much needed and you managed to hammer the snack credits too which is a bonus! Xx

[Rescuer]

A lovely chilled out day. We have nothing else planned on our Cali Grill Brunch day either and reading your report it seems like that might be the right decision.

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by jothp

Another really lovely day. The food once again looked fantastic and it's given me another place to think about for our next trip. We might just about be able to fit all the food in if we do nothing but eat!

See more...

I loved that brunch it was fab food, definitely needed the afternoon nap to sleep off the food coma though!

Originally Posted by MrsSilverStar

A lovely chilled day with lots of delicious food! We’re thinking of doing the brunch for Heath’s birthday, sounds like we better restrain ourselves if we want to head to a park afterwards!

Love that you managed to keep the room a secret for so long - did they know you were staying the extra days or was the whole thing a surprise?

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The room was a secret until the point we had to catch the bus there at Epcot, at least I think it was I know feel like I should check with the kids and see if they overheard me and Dave talking about it! They knew about the extra days and that we would be transferring to a new resort, but just not to where.

Originally Posted by Jannyjan

I have just managed to book the California Grill brunch. I have been trying every day for 4 weeks since we booked flights. Couldn't get reservations for 2 holidays last year so very pleased. I think it's one that gets booked out months ahead. Glad to read your report.

See more...

Congratulations you won't be disappointed, it was so delicious!

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by GALE88

Sounds like you had a lovely chilled out day. Evenings by the pool are fab!

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The kids really love a night swim, I make sure they get at least one per trip.

Originally Posted by caitlinsmummy

What a fab morning, sounds like it's exactly what you needed and good that you managed to rearrange to plans.

Cali Grill looks amazing as it always does, but I've got to say the star of the show is Max's cheese plate I love it!

A lovely relaxed day which was much needed and you managed to hammer the snack credits too which is a bonus! Xx

See more...

His plates have become stars in their own right haven't they! Awesome arrangements of food!

I forced the snack credits on everyone even though they were really that hungry!

Originally Posted by Rescuer

A lovely chilled out day. We have nothing else planned on our Cali Grill Brunch day either and reading your report it seems like that might be the right decision.

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Definitely the way to go on Cali grill brunch day! I hope you love it as much as we did.

[bennyboy0751]

great day but my goodness ive put on 2 stone with that lovely food lol