La2kw's July dining report with pictures.

[La2kw]

We (myself, DW, DS, DD) spent 15 nights at WDW in a one bedroom unit at OKW. We are DVC members and stayed on points. We are also very experienced visitors to WDW and Disneyland. We did not do the dining plan, as we have never spent as much on food as the dining plan would have cost us. We do have the DDE and used it quite often, saving quite a bit of money. This trip, we spent an average of about $100/day on food, including the groceries we bought. The dining plan would have cost us $152/day. We had a full kitchen at OKW and had breakfast each day in the room, so I did not mention breakfasts in the dining report. Breakfast was mainly yogurt, toast, bagels, eggs, fruit, and cereal. We went to the water parks three times and took a picnic lunch with us each time. We also ate off site a couple times, once at Romano’s Macaroni Grill, and another time at Chili’s. My teenagers spent a few evenings in the room and ate leftovers instead of joining DW and I for dinner. The groceries and the dining off site was by choice, not to save money. Spending 15 days eating nothing but Disney food is not a good idea, especially since the quality has seriously declined in recent years, IMO.

7/2/06 We arrived at MCO at 3:15 pm. Using Disney's (un)Magical Express, we finally go into our room about 6pm. Check in at OKW was 30 minutes long, but that's another thread. We dropped off our carry on luggage, spruced up from the flight, and headed out to our first park. Our first meal at WDW was dinner at Columbia Harbor House in the MK.

Anchors Aweigh Sandwich - white tuna with lettuce and tomato on toasted multigrain bread, and the Garden Galley Salad - mixed greens with chicken, pecans, pineapple and feta cheese with the dressing on the side. DS had Captain's Special - Fried Chicken Strips and Fish - Served with choice of French Fries or Carrots and DD had Fried Chicken Strips - Served with choice of either French Fries or Carrots. Didn't get pictures of those. CHH used to have a decent apple pie here for dessert, but now serve a packaged chocolate cake instead. We were disappointed to see this, but it appears to be due to the DDP, since that packaged chocolate cake is cheaper than slicing and plating a real apple pie.

7/3/06 We woke up around 10am, suffering from jet lag (still on California time) and dragged ourselves to DD in time for DQ’s 11:30am opening time. We played Pirates of the Caribbean twice, then headed to Foodquest for lunch, since we were starved and hadn’t eaten any breakfast yet.

Garlic rolls with marinara, and a garden salad with blue cheese dressing.

Grilled Chicken Panini - sweet onion jam, watercress, rosemary garlic sauce.

Italian Panini - Assorted meats, cheese, roasted red pepper and balsamic dressing.

We also ordered a whole cheese pizza, This was plenty of food to share, and we even took home half a pizza, which DD and DS ate for a snack and for breakfast the next day. Food was good as usual, and we also get a 10% DVC discount. They will also give DDE members a 10% discount, so don’t hesitate to ask for it if you have the DDE card. After DQ, we rented a car and bought some groceries for breakfasts in the room, picnic lunches at the water parks, and two quick dinners in the room as a break from all the dining out.

For dinner, we went to Epcot.

We shared some fish and chips from Yorkshire County Fish Shoppe in UK...

and a lamb Schwarma platter from Tangierine Cafe in Morocco. DD and DS also shared a kid’s hamburger meal from Tangierine Cafe.

 

[Dustmouse]

Wow! 15 days at Disney! I can't wait to SEE and HEAR the rest!

 

[MickeyNicki]

Loving your report, I cannot imagine spending 15 wonderful days at WDW, I am so jealous!!

 

[momof2disprincesses]

Thanks for sharing. I especially LOVE the pictures. I can't wait to hear more too!

 

[bluejasmine]

Oh man what I wouldnt do for 15 days in WDW!! Cant wait to see the rest!

 

[La2kw]

7/4/06 We spent the morning at AK, riding Expedition Everest more than once. Fun coaster, but rather short. After that, we had to run to Target for some things we couldn’t find at Publix, and decided to eat lunch at the Target deli (which was not bad). We decided to spend the rest of the evening at our resort, since we were quite tired from jet lag. We had turkey hot dogs and salad in our room and fell asleep before seeing any fireworks. Didn't take any pictures since none of this was Disney food.


7/5/06 We got up early and made it in time for EMH at Typhoon Lagoon. We love EMH at the water parks! It's worth getting up early and going on all the slides before the rest of the guests can enter. We ended up leaving by noon since we had done everything we wanted to by then. We took a picnic lunch and had sandwiches, fruit, veggies and cookies for lunch.

Dinner was at the Biergarten in Epcot. We enjoyed the buffet (as we always do) of roast chicken,

sausages and sauerkraut, beef rouladen, and baked salmon,

salmon, roasted potatoes,

the best pork loin ever, sauerbraten, spaetzle,

glazed carrots, red cabbage,

various salads, cold meats, cheeses,

more wurst, peas & carrots, chicken schnitzel, mac & cheese,

assorted desserts,

Here are some of our plates, described clockwise starting at bottom of plate.
A salad plate; meunster cheese, spelt salad, bean salad, cold meats, cucumber salad, potato salad, tomato salad, and green salad in the center.

Another salad plate; pasta/pea salad, bean salad, pretzel roll, meunster cheese, cold meats and sausages, potato salad, beet salad, wurst salad in the center.

Picky DD's plate; mac & cheese, roasted potatoes, chicken schnitzel, pretzel roll.

My salad plate with multigrain roll, chicken spaetzle soup, cucumber salad, green salad with mustard dressing, and tomato salad.

Left plate; assorted sausages, beef rouladen, roast chicken, roasted potatoes, glazed carrots, red cabbage, saurkraut. Right plate; chicken schnitzel, roast pork loin, dumpling, sauerbraten, spaetzle.

Dessert plate; apple strudel with vanilla sauce, fresh apple, blueberry bar, vanilla pudding in chocolate cups, black forest cake, bavarian cheesecake.

We enjoyed the chicken schnitzel, the roast pork loin, and the saurbraten the most. The vanilla pudding used to be in a crock where you could serve youself as much as you liked. Now they put it in little chocolate cups, which we don't like as much.

We never miss a dinner at the Biergarten and were happy with our meal as always. We were even happier with our 20% DDE discount!

 

[La2kw]

7/6/06 Today we did EMH at the MK. We had lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern. Our meal was good as usual, though we have never seen this restaurant so busy! (dang that DDP!)

LTT used to bring rolls with apple butter to start your meal. Now you have to ask for them, which we always do. They used to always bring real butter also, but that's hard to come by at WDW nowadays.

Rolls with apple butter.

DW and I shared the always excellent Maryland Crab Cake (pan-seared blue crab cake on fire-roasted corn succotash with bay tartar),

and DD and DS shared the Tavern Fried Cheese.

I had the Colony Salad with the dressing on the side (Washington apples, sweet pecans and applewood smoked cheddar and grilled chicken tossed with field greens in honey shallot vinaigrette)

and DW had the “Sandwich Heard Round the World” (Grilled turkey panini with provolone cheese, Applewood smoked bacon, and cranberry spread on multi grain bread).

DD and DS both had “Old Glory” cheeseburgers.

We shared a chocolate lava cake

and an apple tart with cinnamon ice cream for dessert.

Lunch at LTT is always a pleasure and we never miss it. It used to be a nice and quiet place for lunch, but the DDP appears to have put an end to that. Fortunately, it is still character-free.


7/7/06 Epcot, lunch at Les Chefs de France. DS and DD had the “French Menu”, which included french onion soup, croque monsieur with a salad, and creme brulee for dessert. I had the gratin de marcaroni, and DW had the vegetable lasagna. We all enjoyed our food tremendously. The food looked so good when it came, we started eating before I took any pictures.

For dessert, DW and I shared the sorbets with an elephant ear pastry.

The sorbets were just ok, but the elephant ear was very good.

DD and DS both had creme brulee, which was included with their "French Menu".

Dinner at Artists’s Pallette, Saratoga Springs. I had a cheese flatbread and shared a house salad with DW. DS and DD both had pepperoni flatbreads, and DW had the chicken dinner, which we all had a taste of. I forgot pictures of this as well.

 

[princesstigerlilly]

Excellent reviews so far! Your LTT salad looks great

 

[La2kw]

7/8/06 MK, lunch at Plaza Restaurant. I had the chicken salad with strawberries, DW had the tuna salad sandwich on multigrain bread (instead of a croissant), DD had a cheeseburger, and DS had a grilled chicken sandwich. I forgot the pictures of this.

Dinner was at Earl of Sandwich. I had a Caprese (sliced fresh mozzarella, roma tomatos, fresh basil and drizzled virgin olive oil ), DW had the Florentine (grilled chicken, creamed spinach, mushrooms and parmesan cheese), and DD had the Cannonballs (meatballs in a rich tomato sauce with provolone and mozzarella cheese), and DS had the Scudetto (salami, capacola, ham and mortadella with fresh sliced mozzarella, roma tomatoes and marinara
).

Clockwise from bottom; Caprese, Florentine, Cannonballs, Scudetto.
All the sandwiches were as good as usual, and seem like a bargain at 5 bucks each.

After dinner, we went to Ghiradelli’s for the best sundaes at WDW. We are from California and have visited the original Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory in San Francisco many times. The original factory is now a tourist attraction with shops and art galleries, but there is a large chocolate shop and soda fountain in it. They also show how chocolate is made on a small self guided tour. In any case, we always get ice cream at Ghiradelli's whenever we are in San Franciso, Las Vegas, or WDW.

DS's favorite, the Foghorn (-Two scoops of premium chocolate ice cream layered with hot fudge sauce, smothered with red raspberry topping and finished with whipped cream and mini chocolate chips )

DW enjoys the Kids' S'more Sundae for 10 and under - (A scoop of premium chocolate chip ice cream with marshmallow topping, hot fudge sauce, a pair of chocolate-dipped graham crackers, a milk chocolate square, whipped cream and sprinkles. Comes with a Ghirardelli goody bag )

My usual is the Strike it Rich Sundae, and I ask for the new dark chocolate hot fudge -(A scoop of premium butter pecan ice cream, butterscotch sauce and golden almond nuggets under a layer of premium vanilla ice cream, our home-made hot fudge sauce, whipped cream, chopped almonds and a cherry).

DD loves the Warm Brownie Sundae - (A scoop of premium vanilla ice cream paired with warm Ghirardelli double chocolate brownie smothered with hot fudge sauce and topped with whipped cream, chopped almonds and a cherry)

7/9/06 Epcot, lunch at Alfredo’s. Shared a caprese salad for appetizer. I had fettucini alfredo, DW and DD had lasagna, and DS had pizza. Everything was excellent except for the pizza. The fettucini alfredo was great. I can't figure out why this place is not more popular. One word of warning, the tables are inexplicably close to each other. It didn't bother us because the place was not too busy at lunch, but it may be less desirable if the place is crowded. Forgot the pictures.

For dinner, DS and DD wanted to stay in the room, so they went back to the hotel and had sandwiches. DW and I went to the WL to check out the resort and had dinner at Roaring Fork. DW and I shared a cup of chili, and ham and cheddar sandwich on foccacia bread, and a salad. The salad was freshly tossed and had lettuces, apples, cheddar cheese, homemade croutons, and a great apple vinagrette (we asked for the dressing on the side as always). Forgot to take pictures again.


7/10/06 EMH at Blizzard Beach. We usually take a picnic lunch to the water parks since the food there is so bad, but with EMH at the water parks now, we decided to head to MK for lunch since we will be done with all the slides by lunchtime. We enjoy eating at El Pirate y el Perico and it is open very limited hours. It's only open for lunch from 11am-3pm. We have always been able to eat there during our summer visits, but I guess the hours are seasonal and many people don't get a chance to eat there. They changed the format a bit in that they added a topping bar similar to the topping bars at Pecos Bill's and Cosmic Ray's. I prefer having my food prepared in a sanitary kitchen rather than these topping bars which get very messy during the peak times. Any way, you get your food like this:

Two tacos, taco salad, beef empanada with black beans and rice.

then you go to the topping bar and put on lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, and jalapenos. Then they look something like this:

Dinner was at Chili's. After dinner, we went back to the MK for Wishes and Spectromagic

 

[Lil ole moi]

Oh La2kw, please keep your posts coming. I want more, I want more, I want more

 

[La2kw]

Thanks for all the nice comments. We are fortunate enough to be able to spend 15 nights at Disney. DW and I are both teachers, so we have the time in the summer. Having our DVC points also helps us spend that amount of time.

More to come soon...

 

[all4disneyworld]

I have really enjoyed hearing about and seeing your dining choices. Never been to LT but your salad looked great!

Thanks again!

 

[notnothin]

Enjoying your reports! Keep 'em coming, please!

 

[bell.of.the.ball]

Just curious how old are your kids? It seems sometime they eat kids meals and sometimes not. If ther are over 9 did you have problems ordering them a kids meal?

 

[La2kw]

7/11/06 We spent the morning at Disneyquest again. Naturally, that means we had lunch again at Foodquest inside Disneyquest. This restaurant is really a Cheesecake Factory Express, and is very good. The salads are very fresh, and the pizzas and paninis are made to order. Pizza slices are not made to order, but are usually pretty fresh. DD had a slice of cheese pizza, DW and I shared an italian panini and a garden salad. DS had his own italian panini and we all shared some garlic rolls. Some of these pictures are recycled since we ate here twice and ordered pretty much the same food.

After lunch, we played a few more games, then headed to the Wonderland Cafe for dessert. If you’ve ever been to a Cheesecake Factory restaurant, you know what the desserts are like. We shared some cheesecake for dessert.

We were all a bit tired, so we decided to stay in tonight. We made burritos and salad for dinner.


7/12/06 This morning we went to the Studios. We had lunch at Sci-Fi Dine In. We think MGM has the worst food choices of all the parks, but this restaurant is usually okay.

I had the Caesar Salad with Chicken - Grilled chicken breast, fresh cut Romaine Lettuce tossed with a traditional Caesar dressing topped with Croutons and grated Parmesan. I had the dressing on the side. This was a pretty good salad and the chicken had been freshly grilled and was still warm.

DW, DS, and DD all had the All American Burger - Flame broiled Beef Patty topped with your choice of American or Swiss Cheese, served with fries. DW substituted cole slaw for the fries.

We shared a couple of hot fudge sundaes for dessert.

What a rip off those were, as they were made with soft serve ice cream (something they do not tell you of beforehand). I hate soft serve ice cream. Compared to Ghiradelli's sundaes, they were just pathetic.

For dinner, we went Romano's Macaroni Grill.

7/13/06 Went to AK again, and this time had lunch at Pizzafari. It's not my favorite place, but DD and DS were starved and really wanted it. DW and I were not hungry, so we didn't really care where we ate.

DS and DD each had their own pizzas. DW and I shared one. We also shared some breadsticks.

While eating, we noticed these disturbing murals.

This polar bear's face looks human.

This lion is very strange, with a freaky smile.

The zebras are even stranger.

The tiger is not so bad, but he does resemble Tigger.

Next time we'll sit in the upside-down room.

For dinner, we went to the food court at Pop Century. We can use our DDE here, and DD really wanted to go back for some sloppy joes. We had sloppy joes, pizza, chicken strips, and a salad, but I didn't get any pictures of those. We had twinkie tiramisu for dessert.

 

[La2kw]

Just curious how old are your kids? It seems sometime they eat kids meals and sometimes not. If ther are over 9 did you have problems ordering them a kids meal?

They are both teens and neither ordered any kids meals. The plate my DD served herself at the Biergarten was from the regular buffet line. DW did order the kid's s'more sundae at Ghiradelli, and had no problem even though it's for 10 and younger.

 

[La2kw]

Excellent reviews so far! Your LTT salad looks great

The Colony Salad is very good, though it used to be better because they used to put shredded roast chicken on it. Now they use a grilled chicken breast that tastes pre-cooked and rubbery. However, the rest of the salad is still good with the cheddar cheese, apples, and pecans. In fact, I wished I had ordered it without the chicken. I always get dressings on the side since Disney tends to drown them when they toss the salad. This dressing is very good used sparingly.

 

[dawgfan]

Thanks for the review.

 

[La2kw]

7/14/06 Today we went back to Typhoon Lagoon and took our picnic lunch with us. We had sandwiches, salads, and fruit.

For dinner, we went to Epcot. One of our favorite things to do is sample the foods in the different WS pavillions.

First we came to Cantina de San Angel and DW and I were craving some Mexican food. It's difficult to find good Mexican food in Florida (no offense), and it's near impossible to find it at WDW. Cantina de San Angel is no exception, but we were desparate. We are Mexican and we know what good Mexican is. Please don't eat at Cantina de San Angel and think you are eating good Mexican food. DW, DD, and I shared a Plato Combinacion - chicken taco, beef burrito and a quesadilla served with black refried beans and Mexican salsa. Like I said, we were desperate. DS was smart and headed over to McDonald's.

Only Disney would try to convince you that salsa is a side order. The taco was not bad, the quesadilla was more like a cheese empanada but was okay, and the beef burrito was just plain scary. We did survive this version of Mexican food and headed to Norway next.

DW and I shared a turkey sandwich, DS got his own

Since we were there, I ordered a school bread

and a Kringla - sweet pretzel with raisins or sweet pretzel with raisins and almonds

Both pastries were excellent as usual.

Off to Japan, where we shared a bowl of Japanese Curry - (spicy curry sauce with onions, carrots, potatoes and beef served over steamed rice)

and some iced green tea (a welcome break from all the diet cokes).

The curry was excellent, as was the tea. Funny thing about the Yakitori House. They no longer serve yakitori (broiled chicken skewers). They used to, but I guess they found out it was less labor intensive and cheaper to just serve us a chicken thigh instead (Teriyaki Chicken - Chicken thigh served with Teriyaki sauce and steamed rice). Hey Disney, if you're not going to serve yakitori, don't call the place Yakitori House. Call it Chicken Thigh House instead. Thank you.

We were done eating, but we went over to France to check out Boulangerie Patisserie.

We saw these,

and these,

and these,

and these,

and these,

and these,

and all of these,

but we were full and didn't order anything.


7/15/06 We went back to Epcot and had lunch at Boulangerie Patisserie. DW and I shared a vegetable quiche and a couple pastries.

I also went over to Germany and got one of their excellent pretzels.

DD and DS had their McDonald's fix, which I refuse to photograph, since it's not Disney food.

Dinner was at the POFQ food court, which has definitely gone downhill. I didn't even take any pictures, we were so disappointed. We used to really enjoy this place, too. If it wasn't for my 20% DDE discount, I would have asked for a refund.


7/16/06 We went back to the MK on our last parks day. Lunch was at Columbia Harbor House again and we pretty much had the same thing as we had on the first day of our trip. We did have our final Dole Whips of the trip as well.

Dinner was leftovers in our room. Time to clean out the fridge!


7/17/06 Bye, bye WDW! We left for a few days at the beach, then 3 nights at Universal before heading home. No Disney food today!

 

[heather360]

I really enjoyed reading all of you reviews. Thanks so much. It was great to see your pictures. I'm really craving some french pastries now.