In May we were royally spoiled by a quick long weekend trip for the tasting! We arrived Thursday and left Sunday. We had our meeting with our planner set for Friday with Lisa Smith, but she had a last minute family emergency, so her supervisor Janice sat in with us, which worked out pretty nice.
That said, I tried to cram in as much fun as humanly possibly, and we started off the first night with dinner at Be Our Guest and met The Beast!
Another highlight on the trip was having lunch in Animal Kingdom and meeting Evas all time favorite character- the one and only Donald!
Getting to Frank's can be challenging, and since we were staying at The Boardwalk, we decided to walk through EPCOT entering at the International Gateway and walking to the Monorail as we had a lunch ressie at the Kona Cafe (love the wings and the Kona coffee!)
We monorailed to the Grand Floridian and walked to Franks, but it was raining all day, so we got very wet making the walk over! We then rode over with the planner to backstage EPCOT which was so cool to see, and into the catering kitchen. All I can say is "wow"- an amazing kitchen. There was an entire wall covered in 8 x 10 pieces of paper, each representing a different event the kitchen was catering that day!We met "Tony" who was the chef who prepared the food we had requested. He was awesome, and it was then we realized our crucial error- we had anticipated tasting portions- what we got, was a whole meal. We should never have eaten beforehand!
The food was absolutely delicious, and I was so wrapped up in tasting, I actually missed taking a picture of an entire plate offering- the same size as the plate above that is divided into 4 dishes. We were slightly embarrassed when Chef Tony noticed that almost every dish we sampled continued a focus of cheese...but what can I say, we love cheese!
The salad dish is a watermelon, smoked blackberry and purple haze goat cheese and citrus vinaigrette and was delicious! A must have!
The entrees and sides are a penne pasta with cognac cream sauce, artichoke and green peas, the beef dish above was good, but not spectacular, so we left it off- we are having the pictured cheddar cheese grits but pairing it with the not pictured Parmesean Crusted Chicken which was awesome!
Also not pictured is the Grilled salmon entree and another pasta entree that is included. We essentially modified the "Lady and the Tramp" buffet dinner, so we are also getting the romaine based salad, the bread service, and the included desserts (Italian Citrus Cake and chocolate cannoli) along with tea and coffees provided. All this food came out to $60 per person which I also thought was a great price.
We opted for a full bill on consumption bar as well, and will have Mickey bars available- also a bill on consumption option!
After the tasting we went back to Frank's to taste the cake offerings, do the floral choices and discuss all the transportation options and try to line up the day. We chose the marble cake with the amaretto cream filling. We are actually having them make us a custom cake to be designed like the "Tree of Life" at Animal Kingdom, with pictures of our lost loved ones on the leaves (Eva's Dad, My Grandparents and my Brother, and all the pups we have lost over the years)...in addition there will be a small chip and dale inside the truck on the back eating the cake! Can't wait to see it!
The whole thing lasted only about 2 hours, so we had planned on going to the Magic Kingdom for a bit afterwards, but it started raining with lightning again, so the monorail was shut down and we, along with everyone else, made our way to the boat dock at the GF. We actually got on the boat in not too long a wait 920 minutes), but then got stuck on the water for almost an hour as there were so many boats operating at the time, we had to get in line for each dock! So we saw the Poly for a long time....
The rest of the trip was a quick blur... but was awesome all the same to get a little mid-year taste of the magic...
