Having Annual Passes means infinite Disney trips, right? *COMPLETED* 6/5 California Grill Brunch

FSU Girl

DIS Veteran
Joined
Oct 20, 2016
Hi Again!
So I thought I'd give this restaurant reviewing another try since the first one went so well :)
I don't have the paid Photobucket so I'll be posting screenshots of my upcoming pictures so a third party site can't make them disappear.

Background info: Me and my boyfriend have the silver annual pass for Florida residents. This is my first time having an annual pass and I want to get my money's worth by making a billion trips (kidding, sort of)

Here is a list of current trips booked where lots of yummy food will be eaten :thumbsup2

Trip 1:
August 4-6
This trip was just planned and booked two hours ago. Originally the passes we had were blocked-out for these dates, but Disney just announced that this was changing to August 1st so people could experience the Great Movie Ride and Ellen's ride one last time. I love those rides and jumped at the opportunity to go. We will be staying at the Beach Club, which will be a first for both of us. Current restaurants booked: Yachtsman Steakhouse for dinner and The Crystal palace for breakfast.

Trip 2:
August 18-20
This trip was planned around the fact I was able to get a Be Our Guest dinner reservation. We will be staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas - Kidani. It will be my second time at this resort, but first time in the villa part. My boyfriend has never stayed here before. Current restaurants booked: Be Our Guest for dinner and Ohana for a very early dinner.

Trip 3:
September 2-4 (Labor Day)
This will be my boyfriend and I's first stay together off-site at the Marriott. This trip was planned purely because my parents invited us to go with them to Victoria and Albert's. I had been talking the restaurant up a lot to my parents and finally convinced my dad to go and he wanted us to go with. I was also able to get a Flight of Passage fast pass which is amazing since my Animal Kingdom centric trip above I couldn't find one for the whole trip. Current restaurants booked: Victoria and Albert's for dinner, Yak and Yeti for dinner, The Plaza for lunch.

Trip 4:
September 28-October 1
This will be our first time going to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party. We will be staying at the Yacht Club, which originally was going to be our first time to this hotel, but now with the first trip booked at the Beach Club that's not really true anymore. Restaurants currently booked: Teppen Edo lunch (something filling before the party), Cape May Cafe for breakfast and for dinner (this might change), Possibly Be Our Guest for lunch but probably going to drop because this park doesn't really fit into our plans anymore, so will need to add something else eventually.

Trip 5:
December 10 - ?
So this trip isn't finalized. It will be my boyfriend and two of our friends. Originally we were going to go up that Friday and stay through Monday, but my boyfriend's holiday party was announced for that Saturday and now we can't go up until Sunday. I currently have the new Copper Creek villas booked for Sunday-Wednesday, but I'm not sure if this will stay. I wanted to do a cruise Monday-Friday and can't look into booking that until the beginning of September. So potentially this will become a one day trip, a four day trip, or a week long. Restaurants currently booked: Be Our Guest lunch and dinner, Ohana dinner. Need to probably change around some of the dining later.

Trip 6:
January 12-15 (MLK Day)
This will be a really special trip. My boyfriend has two young daughters and this will be our first vacation with them. Currently have Bay Lake Towers theme park view booked for two of the nights, trying to get all three, but will probably have to stay somewhere else the first night (still undecided) I booked a lot of restaurants, but will cut them down when we tell the girls. We want their input on what parks, rides and restaurants they want to go to and will change plans accordingly. This will be a present for the holidays for them so this will change after that. Restaurants currently booked: Be Our Guest lunch and dinner, Ohana, Chef Mickeys for breakfast, 1900 Park Fare for breakfast, Yak and Yeti for dinner.

So these are all our confirmed trips planned. Our passes expire at the end of May so there will be more trips added later on. I'll update this after each trip with lots and lots of pictures :) I hope you enjoy reliving my vacations with me.
:mickeyjum
 
6 TRIPS!!!!! As in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6!!! This I gotta eat along with. Can't wait to get started
 


TRIP 1 - 8/4/17-8/6/17

I'm back from my first of 6 trips planned. I got home about an hour ago and I am exhausted. I forgot why I didn't want to go during the summer. It was HOT. But we had an awesome time and I'm so glad I got to ride The Great Movie Ride and Ellen's Energy Adventure one last time.

So my first two meals at Disney I totally failed to take any pictures. We got into Disney a lot later than I thought we would and I was hangry. It was 9pm and not much was open and we didn't have reservations anywhere. We were staying at The Beach Club and decided to eat at the Beach Club Marketplace. It was open until 10pm and nearby. We got a pepperoni flatbread and a cheese flatbread.

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A picture of our room. I think Disney makes it a point to ignore my king bed request, but we ended up liking this room. It was just outside the elevator off of the lobby on the fourth floor.

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From Snapchat our bitmoji's checked into The Beach Club.

The below picture is from Disney's website since I forgot to take a picture. It looked pretty similar to this and tasted good especially when you hadn't eaten all day. We also got some Mickey gold fish which was a good snack.
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We didn't do much our first night since we drove up after work on Friday and went to bed early. We woke up early on Saturday to get a jump on the day. We got our breakfast from the same Market Place. I sent my boyfriend to get food while I lingered in bed a little longer. I was really bad remembering to take pictures on this trip of food. It seemed like every meal I was hungry and needed the food right away. So below is another photo from Disney's website.

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My Breakfast sandwich didn't really look like this, but it tasted pretty good. The egg was scrambled and abundant and kept falling out of the sandwich. It came with some sort of potato casserole thing I did not like. My boyfriend got Mickey waffles that came with a side of bacon.

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His only came with two so I'm not sure if he got the kids version or I was so sleepy I didn't notice the other two waffles.

Saturday we went to the pool for the morning and then headed over to Hollywood Studios to get in our last ride on the Great Movie Ride. I want to try the quick service by the pool Hurricane Hanna's when we go back for our Yacht Club stay. But we were out of the pool way before lunch time and decided it would be easier to eat in Hollywood Studios instead.

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I'm very sad The Great Movie ride is closing. I think it's a classic and I always enjoyed riding it. We waited to ride the Cowboy version which I had never seen before and was a cool way to say goodbye to the ride.

After getting in a couple more rides we decided we were hungry and headed over to PizzaRizzo. It's a quick service over in the Muppet courtyard that was recently remodeled into the muppet rat Rizzo's Pizzeria. I ate here once as the older version and I don't think much was changed in design. I ate upstairs so maybe there was more muppet details downstairs because I didn't see much.

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The majority of items on the menu are pizza.

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I decided to get a pepperoni pizza again which comes with a caesar salad and I got a coke to drink. My boyfriend decided to get a meatball sub which also comes with a caesar salad and got a lemonade to drink.

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I remembered to take pictures this time. :)

Since I'm uploading screenshots I'm limited to 10 photos and will continue in another post...
 


TRIP 1 CONTINUED

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Here is a close up of my boyfriend's meatball sub. He said it tasted really good and although this picture doesn't really do it justice, it was really huge.

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Here is a close up of my pepperoni pizza. This tasted good, but I think the flatbread I had the night before wins just by a bit. This was thick crust, but the sauce on the pizza was too liquidy and some of it ended up on the plate. Still was pretty good and I'd go back here.

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A close up of our caesar salads. They came in drink cups and tasted pretty good. Made me feel a little healthier after eating all these pizzas.
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We went upstairs because it was really crowded downstairs and didn't want to look for a table for a long time. Luckily it was half empty upstairs.

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I think this is a good place if you want a quick bite to eat and are looking for Italian food. It's a little hard to find with all the construction going on. With it being so hot outside and really crowded it was nice to find an air-conditioned spot to relax and have lunch.

After a few more rides we decided to head back to our hotel to get ready for our Yachtsman dinner. The forecast said it was supposed to storm around 6ish. When walking towards the boats we saw a huge line and no boat in sight. We decided to walk back, in 103 degree heat and no shade. But we did beat the boat back and worked off our pizza.

We were back in our hotel when we heard the whistles of the lifeguards telling everyone to get out of the pool.

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I am so amused by this weather radar. Magic Kingdom seemed to be a in a bubble away from the rain.

Even though the hotels are separate, but attached, they don't have an indoor hallway connecting them. They do have a covered outdoor walkway so we didn't get wet walking to dinner.

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This would be our second time dining here. It was so delicious for my birthday dinner in May we had to go back. We had a 6:45pm reservation and were seated quickly after checking in. This was an improvement from last time when they forgot to come get us when our table was ready.

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We were seated in a small room that had three other tables in it. I liked this location, we were away from the hustle and bustle of the restaurant and it felt really romantic.

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TRIP 1 CONTINUED

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I love the bread this restaurant has. The pull apart onion bread is the best.

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They brought Australian butter and roasted garlic. Both were delicious. It's hard to not fill up on bread at this restaurant.

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We got a second basket of onion bread. The first was devoured pretty quickly.

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We started with a couple soups for appetizers. I got the lobster bisque. This was sooo delicious. It was the perfect ratio of cream and actual pieces of lobster. I finished this so quickly I wish I had savored it more. My boyfriend eats really fast and always finishes before me, and I actually was long done with this before he was done with his soup.

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My boyfriend got French Onion soup. He said this tasted really good and it looked really cheesy.

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For my entree I got the 6oz filet mignon prepared medium well with a side of mashed potatoes and I got peppercorn sauce on it. I know a lot of people don't like when steak is cooked so much, but I really don't like it when my steak is bloody in the middle. Well I cut this open and it looked more like medium rare instead of medium well. So they quickly brought me another steak that was cooked much better. I'm guessing the steak was meant for someone else because medium well steak cannot be cooked in the three minutes they brought it out to me in.

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My boyfriend got the 14oz prime rib that came with sweet potato. He said this was really good and he finished everything on his plate.

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Of course we had to get the truffle mac and cheese again. This is so good I recommend it to everyone. Unfortunately, we were too full to finish everything. This would have been a perfect time to have had a villa with a fridge to take this home to.

After dinner we went for a stroll around the boardwalk and watched the Epcot fireworks from the bridge by the Swan and Dolphin hotel. It had cooled down a little from the rain, but was still pretty hot out.

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TRIP 1 CONTINUED

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The hallways in the Beach Club seem to go on forever.

So we had a bit of change of plan on restaurants for our last day. Originally we were going to go eat at the Crystal Palace for breakfast and hang out in the Magic Kingdom. But this was proving difficult with fitting in the two rides I needed to go on one last time so we decided we should spend Sunday at Epcot instead. This created a new dilemma of where we should eat instead now. I looked at a lot of Epcot restaurants, but couldn't decide on one. So instead we decided to eat breakfast at our hotel instead at Cape May Cafe.

We had a 10:15am reservation. I had thought we would be sleeping in and then have a late breakfast. Well, we woke up at 8am and checked in a half hour early. I didn't expect to be seated for a while, but surprisingly got a text our table was ready almost immediately.

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Goofy

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The Mickey Waffle station. A word of caution, the syrup is very very hot don't get any on your fingers. :scared1:

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Scrambled eggs and chorizo scrambled eggs were delicious.

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I apologize for how my plate looks. I was about to spread my cream cheese when Goofy arrived at our table, soon followed by Donald. It was funny how quickly they showed up and then Minnie didn't come around until we had finished our food and paid. I also don't like that there are only 3 characters, that seems like very little compared to other places on property. But the food did taste really good.

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Around the corner was the pastry table. The lemon pound cake was really good.
 
TRIP 1 CONTINUED

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My pastry plate. The cinnamon bun really should have been a lot hotter to taste good. But I loved that lemon pound cake. I might have had two...or three.

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I liked the paintings on the walls by the tables. They gave this room some extra charm.

After breakfast we headed over to Epcot. This park needs some trees or something. I was a total sweaty mess before we got out of the world showcase.

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We had one mission and that was to ride Ellen's ride one last time. I have to say, I have never seen this ride so crowded. Every single seat was filled. I like this ride, but I'm not really sad to see it go. I had forgotten that it was mostly watching a movie with a little dinosaurs thrown in.

We were able to get a lot of fast passes here, which was nice since this park seemed really crowded today. The Living with the Land had a 60 minute wait. I guess I never come during the super busy times, but I have never seen this ride with such a long wait. We actually used a fast pass for it, which I never thought I'd do.

For lunch we decided to do quick service in one of the countries. We decided on China and the Lotus Blossom Cafe. I really liked the food here, but once again failed with taking pictures. My boyfriend reminded me when I was about halfway done and he was almost completely done eating.

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I got the Mongolian beef with noodles. I don't see this dish listed on Disney's website, but it was really good. It had a little spice to it, but I would definitely get this again. I hope it doesn't mean anything with it not being on the website.

My boyfriend got Orange Chicken with steamed white rice.
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He said this was very good. I'm sorry the only picture I could get was when he had one piece left. It looked more appetizing before he had eaten it all LOL.



So that concludes my first trip of six I have planned on my annual pass. It was a really fun short weekend trip that was full of nostalgia for the closing rides. It was beyond hot, with temperatures going over 100 every day and I really don't think I'll schedule a summer trip any time soon again. (besides the ones I have coming up). All our food tasted good and I would go back to all the places again. I'm pretty exhausted now so I'm going to go to sleep and dream of Disney.

Until next time ;)
 
Looks like your first of six trips was a hit! Glad to see you all enjoyed Yachtsman as much as we did. The filet is divine and you are right you can't beat that mac and cheese. I'll have to give the soup a whirl some time as I love all things lobster bisque.

Looks like Cape May treated you all well. I love all the characters in their beach gear. We'll have to try it sometime as I'm sure my daughter would love it.

Dying over your Lotus Blossom pictures especially your boyfriends poor sad piece of one chicken :-)
 
Great report! I love the orange chicken, the last time we went the girls and I got one to share. Everyone was suppose to take a taste but my the time the boys return we had eaten it all lol!
 
Looks like your first of six trips was a hit! Glad to see you all enjoyed Yachtsman as much as we did. The filet is divine and you are right you can't beat that mac and cheese. I'll have to give the soup a whirl some time as I love all things lobster bisque.

Looks like Cape May treated you all well. I love all the characters in their beach gear. We'll have to try it sometime as I'm sure my daughter would love it.

Dying over your Lotus Blossom pictures especially your boyfriends poor sad piece of one chicken :-)
It was a great start :) I think you'd definitely enjoy this lobster bisque it was sooo good, I used some of the bread to soak up the last bits in the bowl. The characters at Cape May were great at interacting. My boyfriend was wearing a Mickey shirt that day and Donald was not having it. I have to work better at remembering to take pictures of the food even when I'm really hungry. It's especially tough with my boyfriend since he's such a fast eater.

Great report! I love the orange chicken, the last time we went the girls and I got one to share. Everyone was suppose to take a taste but my the time the boys return we had eaten it all lol!
I didn't get to try any of my boyfriend's Orange Chicken, by the time I looked at his plate it was almost all gone. I'll have to sneak a bite next time we go there.

Lucky you...six trips in a year! Yachtsman Steakhouse looks great...hoping to have dinner here during our March 2018 visit!
I really is good, I don't go to a lot of repeat restaurants, but this is definitely on our list to return to yet again.
 
Stopping by and reading! I've never eaten at Lotus Blossom but I think both my husband and I might like it. We may have to try it on our trip coming up next month! Oh an 60 minute wait for Living with the Land?!?! Thats crazy! Reminds me why we go during "slower" times.
 
Stopping by and reading! I've never eaten at Lotus Blossom but I think both my husband and I might like it. We may have to try it on our trip coming up next month! Oh an 60 minute wait for Living with the Land?!?! Thats crazy! Reminds me why we go during "slower" times.
I really liked Lotus Blossom. I also liked it had seats under a covered area to get away from the sun. I'd definitely go back for my dish again. And no one should wait 60 minutes for that ride, it's insane. I'm hoping for lower crowds for some of my upcoming trips.
 
Trip 2 - 8/18-8/20
Satu'li Canteen

This past weekend was an awesome trip. Even with really hot weather and lots of crowds we were able to do a lot and have a great time. We drove up after work (left a little early 3:30pm to try and make it into Disney in time to do our fast passes.) Instead of going to our hotel we drove straight to Animal Kingdom so we could ride the Safari ride at night for the first time. I honestly wasn't impressed. They didn't have much light and we could barely see any of the animals and half of them were still sleeping even though they are nocturnal. I was unable to get a FOP fast pass for the trip, but did get the boat ride one so we got to experience Pandora at night for the first time. We also decided this would be a great place to have dinner.

We went to the quick service restaurant in Pandora - Satu'li Canteen. We had been here once before during the annual pass preview and it had been so good I couldn't wait to try it again. They have mobile ordering for this place, but there was hardly a line since it was almost 9pm and we just opted to order the normal way.

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I decided to get what I had last time. You create your own bowl and I chose Chicken, rice, and creamy herb dressing.

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I took a couple pictures of the menu. The kids hot dog is something I might go back and enjoy because I love when they have dough fully around instead of a bun, which these had.

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You can also order alcohol here. I didn't have any alcohol on this trip, I was hot and dehydrated the majority of the weekend and would have probably died if I had had alcohol.

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I thought the beer taps looked pretty cool though.

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My boyfriend got almost the same dish as me, but he got the chimichurri sauce instead. He really liked his and cleaned the plate.

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I got a coke with my meal. The straws are made of cardboard or something, I think for the animals safety.
So my meal, I didn't love. I think the rice was way under cooked and the chicken tasted weird. I left half the meal on the plate and was disappointed since the first time was so amazing. I'll eventually go back and probably try something different, but it was sad looking forward to this for so long and it being a let down.

We had fast passes for the show River of Light, but we were tired and decided to go back to the room instead. I released my fast passes and probably made someone's day since it was completely out when we left.

The drive to the hotel was very short since we were staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge - Kidani Village. I really liked this hotel, it was both of our first time staying on the DVC side and I thought the room was huge!

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For the first time ever, Disney gave me the requests I had asked for. Probably because I wasn't requesting a king bed, but I was still really excited. We were on the third floor near the Zazu elevator, which is closest to the Jambo house (main building) side. We also were over looking the Sunset savanna, which I really wanted since I wanted to see the zebras and giraffes.

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We were in a one-bedroom villa, which comes with two bathrooms. This was the first bathroom when you walk in the front door.

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Our king bed (the reason behind me booking a one-bedroom for just the two of us)

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The living room. It was very spacious, but I wish there was more light in this place. I think it might be for the animals on the savanna, but it was hard to see when getting ready in the mornings.
 

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