Imagine, Just One Birthday Every Year ~ October 2018 ~ Day 6 ~ Magic Kingdom and Chefs de France

[DisneyDaffodil]

"After all, Miss, this is France and a dinner here is never second best."-Lumiere, Beauty and the Beast

Index here

Today was my birthday, so I had been the one to have the final say on what we did today. I had planned that we would eat in Chefs de France that evening, even though Georgia hadn't originally been particularly interested in eating there. I also wanted to spend the day in Magic Kingdom so we were up quite early and wanted to head in to Magic Kingdom as it was a Saturday and thought that it could get busy throughout the day. I opened cards, talked to Rob and we both got ready to go out. I woke up with a cold and spent most of the day sneezing and snuffling. This cold didn't really get better for the rest of the trip and it was annoying to be in such warm weather and still be sneezing as if it was freezing cold I didn't let it stop me though

We arrived in Magic Kingdom around 9:30am. It was a really pretty day and the autumnal decorations in the park looked very seasonal.

Our first FP was for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which we quickly walked over to as it was coming towards the end of our FP time. We had planned to be in Magic Kingdom earlier but we were still more tired than we had expected to be and we'd taken time in our morning to open cards and talk to Rob. I had chosen our FPs today and had chose this ride as I'd loved the books when my children were younger, as I explained on one of our previous days in Magic Kingdom.

Before going on Winnie the Pooh, I had really wanted a coffee, as I was really thirsty (which I was all day possibly because of my cold) so after the ride we headed back down to Main Street to go to Starbucks. I took a few pictures of the castle on the way, as it was such a beautiful day to take photos.

I was very excited for this Starbucks and I had the iced pumpkin spice latte (as it was already warm and I find cold drinks much more refreshing) and I had the iced maple pecan latte with the sweetened cold foam. We shared a blondie and used one quick service credit for the two drinks and the blondie. We sat on the seats around the side close to the castle and watched as the Move it, Shake it, Dance it, Play it Parade went past. Both of our drinks were delicious and the blondie was tasty and great for sharing. This was probably my favourite Starbucks stop we had all trip and we visited Starbucks quite a lot. It was such a relaxing way to start the morning.

After our coffees, we slowly meandered over to our next FP, stopping on the way to watch the ending of the parade. I had chosen Seven Dwarfs Mine Train as I really enjoy this ride I on the other hand find it a little tame but I do love the singing part I think my singing on this particular occasion was especially loud, as I recorded during the ride and all you can hear is my voice I feel sorry for everyone else for having to listen to how flat and off key I was! Although we do this ride every trip, I would never queue for it without a FP, as I can't understand why the line is always so long.
We saw that there was a showing for Philarmagic soon so we went in to see this. It had been another must do on my birthday as it is one of my favourite shows in Disney World and always makes me cry. I love the music in this show but also think that it is very humorous. Donald's character never fails to make me laugh.
Mum wanted to watch Move it, Shake it, Dance it, Play it (I hate having to type that out!) from the beginning so we made our way down to the front of the castle. We watched the Fairy Godmother meet and greet for a few minutes and also saw Peter Pan skipping around with two children dressed as Peter Pan and Wendy.

I was feeling really washed out and tired at this point and sneezed all the way through the parade. I really enjoyed the parade and even had a little dance. This parade really reminds me of our first trip, as we watched it on our first day in Magic Kingdom then and it brings back such good memories. This parade is so happy and has a real feel-good vibe about it, so I don't cry when I watch this one (which is unusual for me in Disney ) I do love the characters that are in this parade such as Judy Hopps and Genie. It's great to see the more unusual characters out in the parks.

It was now time for our Be Our Guest lunch ADR. We had ate here last trip, but Georgia hadn't been well that day and because of that, she hadn't eaten much or enjoyed it. So, we had decided to come back this trip, firstly because I really liked the lunch menu here and secondly, so Georgia could properly experience it. I was so excited to at last be able to eat the beef baguette that I had only been able to pick at last trip. We were given a rose on our way in so that they could bring our food to our table as we had preordered. We chose seats in the Grand Ballroom, as this room is our favourite. It's large and better lit than the West Wing and we just like the decorations of the room. I especially love the snow coming down 'outside' and think its really fun to watch while we eat.

It took quite a while for our food to come here, which I was surprised at as our service had been very quick last trip. The restaurant was incredibly busy though so this may have been why. I ordered the vegetable quiche, which came with a salad that had raspberries on it. The quiche was delicious but the salad was very dry and should have had some sort of dressing to make it taste better and more interesting. I had the French Dip sandwich, which was as good as I had anticipated it to be. I was so glad that we'd come back here so that I could have this sandwich. It seems so strange to say that I'd been waiting for a long time to eat this, but I really had been

Last time we had visited, I had ordered the Grey Stuff cupcake, which I had eaten but not really enjoyed because I was ill, so I decided to use a snack credit and have this cupcake again. It's really nice and I'm glad I did have it again, but it does just taste like a normal cupcake and isn't very special, so possibly not worth the snack credit unless you can't resist the name. I decided not to have a dessert here as we had another ADR this evening and I didn't want to be too full for that.

Before leaving Be Our Guest, we wandered around and looked at the other rooms. We love the different themed rooms here and I think it's wonderful how true to the film the different parts are.

I had some photos taken by the stained glass on the way out.

We wandered around the park a little before it was time for our final FP at Haunted Mansion. I love the theming of this ride and I just think its overall a fun ride, although its gentle. I also love this ride and the ghost's characters and the stretching room at the beginning. I think it's so well made, especially considering how long ago it was created. The technology seems so advanced and looks almost realistic at points. I appreciate this ride because of its history rather than how 'fun' it is (as it really isn't a thrill ride)

When we left Haunted Mansion, it was very busy. We could barely move, as it was parade time, but we had anticipated that it would get busier later in the day and we'd been lucky that it hadn't been too busy earlier in the day. It was also really hot and we were both struggling as we were walking back towards the front of the park to go back to our hotel. As we walked, I suggested we make our way through some of the shops as I wanted to buy a pin and there would be air conditioning. I had wanted to buy the MNSSHP pin but we hadn't made time to do it at the party so I had decided to buy a Nightmare Before Christmas pin instead. I didn't see any that I really liked in the shops so decided to not buy one that day. However, while in there I traded with a couple of guests for one of my favourite pins of the whole trip. It was a Princess and the Frog pin and it's so pretty, so I was glad that we walked through the shops instead of outside.

We left the park at around 3pm and caught the bus back to French Quarter.

We quickly changed into different clothes to go down to the pool. We had about an hour here before returning to our room and getting ready to go out to Epcot that evening. We had a few drinks from our resort mugs and noticed these little details in the food court. I thought they were amazing, as I had wanted to stay in French Quarter because of its links to Princess and the Frog.

We got to Epcot around 6:20pm. As soon as we entered the park we realised it was busier than we had ever seen it. There were large crowds of people, especially down towards World Showcase. Even rides such as Spaceship Earth had really long queues which they never usually have, so we were very surprised as the other day we had commented on how much we liked Epcot as it was 'never busy'. We had definitely been proven wrong.
Our ADR wasn't until 7:30pm so we had about an hour to spare. Firstly, I wanted to go in to the Art of Disney store here as I had seen a postcard of a print that I really liked on our last visit to Epcot and wanted to buy it, to put on my notice board when I go to university later this year. Even this store was busy and we had to ask one of the CM to help us find the postcard, which he did very quickly even though we described it as the 'one with Figment and the Epcot ball' which was pretty vague
We had also planned to wander around World Showcase while we waited for our ADR but because of how busy it was, this was impossible. We have never seen Epcot so busy, there was person to person crowds and as there were so many people drinking and being loud, we didn't feel like it was a very Disney or family atmosphere. Obviously, we are both adults so this doesn't affect us but neither of us particularly liked it. I especially didn't like how crowded it was, as you could barely move as there were always people trying to walk in the opposite direction. We did browse around the Mitsukoshi store in Japan, as Georgia loves Studio Ghibli and other Japanese themed things, but even here it was too busy to really look around properly and so Georgia only bought a Japan pin. This was something that I wished we'd had more time to look around and I realised after coming back that we never looked around the Bijutsu-kan Gallery, which is one of my favourite parts of World Showcase, as I love the Japanese cute/kawaii items. Here's a picture of the postcard and pin that I bought.

Eventually, we gave up trying to walk around with the crowds and just sat on a bench to wait. This was a lot more chilled out than trying to push our way through the crowds. We headed to Chefs de France about ten minutes early but there was a queue to go in so we ended up going in to our meal at the ADR time.
It was so much quieter in here than it was outside and it was nice to breathe a sigh of relief and just sit down and enjoy our meal. We were given a seat by the window which was nice so that we could look outside.

I was particularly looking forward to this meal as I had chosen it. I had changed my mind about three times before eventually settling on Chefs de France. We had a very friendly waiter, Phillipe, who wished me a happy birthday as soon as he came to take our drinks order. I had an orange juice, as my throat was still sore. I had the St Germain cocktail, which was one of my two favourite cocktails that I had in Disney, as it tasted really nice and was a very generous serving. We were also brought bread.

We were then brought our main meals by a very attractive waiter. We were very impressed by attractiveness and the friendliness of the waiters here, as we had a conversation with Phillipe about the UK as he had lived there for a while too, even though the restaurant was busy that evening. We both had the filet of beef and cheesy potato gratin. This was delicious. I especially liked the cheesy gratin. The beef was really tender and tasted so good. It became one of my favourite meals of the whole trip.

After our main meal, we both had the same dessert, creme brulee. When they brought them over, a group of waiters came over to our table and sang 'happy birthday' in French to me. It was very embarrassing but also a special moment of the trip for us. My creme brulee was also decorated to celebrate my birthday. My creme brulee was perfect, as it had the perfect consistency of the the centre and the topping was crispy with great flavour. I, however, had never tried creme brulee before and realised here that I don't like it. I didn't think the 'mousse' style stuff had much flavour and the caramel top had a burnt flavour that I didn't like. It was perfect if you liked creme brulee but I, apparently, don't like creme brulee I did try to explain to Georgia that it was supposed to taste like that but she didn't really get it

I had really enjoyed this meal and was glad that I had decided on going here for my birthday meal. I was also glad that we had planned such a good ADR that evening, as if we had gone to Epcot without a meal planned I feel like we may have done nothing that evening and it would have been a bit of a failure in comparison to what we did.
Our meal would have cost $120 if we weren't on the dining plan but we only paid the 20% (as Phillipe had given us such good service) tip.
After our meal, we left Epcot and went back to French Quarter.

We had returned slightly earlier than we had originally planned because of the crowds in Epcot, so we decided to have a drink in our room before going to bed. I bought a can of Budweiser in the food court for $8 and I filled up my resort mug with a flavoured still lemonade. We stayed up until we'd finished our drinks while chatting and looking at photos from the trip before going to bed.

Step Count: 19,340

[Cinderella]

Great day!

[Palm trees]

What a fabulous way to spend your birthday. The steak looks really tasty!

[DisneyDaffodil]

Originally Posted by Cinderella

Great day!

See more...

Originally Posted by Palm trees

What a fabulous way to spend your birthday. The steak looks really tasty!

See more...

Thank you both, yes it was a wonderful birthday, although this was the day that I actually missed DH, Rob, a bit. We did chat a few times on the phone this day but it felt strange to be celebrating without him. It was a fabulous birthday though, and so nice to have a birthday in the sunshine in Florida instead of the rain in Wales

[caitlinsmummy]

What a fab day. Your steak looks lovely I'm jealous 😂 sounds like you had a lovely birthday and plenty of cocktails is always a plus xx

[Kat11]

Another great review for Chef De France, I'm seriously considering going there now, I'm really pleased you enjoyed it. 😃

Kat

[DisneyDaffodil]

Originally Posted by caitlinsmummy

What a fab day. Your steak looks lovely I'm jealous 😂 sounds like you had a lovely birthday and plenty of cocktails is always a plus xx

See more...

Thanks Kelly, I looked at the menu and I see they serve steak and filet of beef. We had the filet, maybe that’s why it was nicer, did you have the steak? It was a really memorable birthday, we were so lucky to both celebrate our birthdays on the trip

[DisneyDaffodil]

Originally Posted by Kat11

Another great review for Chef De France, I'm seriously considering going there now, I'm really pleased you enjoyed it. 😃

Kat

See more...

It was definitely in my top 3 ts restaurants. It seemed a little more ‘adult ‘ in atmosphere, although perfectly welcoming to children, so just seemed a real treat for my birthday 😀

[minnie52]

Sounds like a great day what a lovely way to spend your birthday x

[DisneyDaffodil]

Originally Posted by minnie52

Sounds like a great day what a lovely way to spend your birthday x

See more...

It was a wonderful day. It certainly made this birthday memorable 😀