Totally Last Minute Spring Fling! No DDP, Tons Of Pics! COMPLETE!

[wilma-bride]

Those stuffed pretzels are even better than they look! It's a shame you don't have anything like that where you are.

We don't have any particularly exciting food here in the UK - that's why we love our trips to the US so much

Your son is going to love the American Dream! Perfect on a hot day!

I may just have to have a little try myself

Oh, and I know you had asked to let you know about the Tavern Fried Cheese at LTT before I left, so I just wanted to let you know that they did change it. It's totally lame now! I was so glad you clued me into the fact that it might have changed because if I had ordered that without knowing it was a possibility I would have been extra disappointed. I'm definitely writing to Disney on this one because I really hate that they changed it.

Thank you for remembering. I am completely gutted about the cheese. We will more than likely not be having our planned lunch at LTT now (unless your review persuades me to reconsider) but I will be paying a special visit to Bob Evans to get the fried cheese appetiser there instead

 

[jerseytinkerbell]

We made it to AK right at rope drop and rode a ton of rides thanks in part to our special FPs we received that morning. We were getting very hungry and very thirsty on this warm day and we knew exactly what we wanted for lunch.

Hubby and I had this for the first time on our trip last August and we we're instantly hooked. We we're really looking forward to this meal. We ordered and got our food fairly fast and headed to a spot overlooking Everest. I went and got all our condiments, napkins, etc while hubby found a table.

He ordered the Chicken and Ribs Combo, which he got last time too and then poured BBQ Sauce all over it.

He loved it this time too! He was an absolute mess though! I think he had more BBQ sauce on his hands than in his belly!

He got dessert too. He loved the Chocolate Mousse last time and has mentioned many times how he couldn't wait to have it again, so I was very surprised when he ordered the Key Lime Mousse.

He said it was just as good as the chocolate one and that he was really glad he ordered it, but he wished it had been ice cold when he ate it. He said it would have made it even better.

I ordered the same thing as last time too. The Pork Sandwich. Here it is pre-BBQ sauce.

And here it is post-BBQ sauce.

Delish! I love the BBQ sauce here. It has a nice sweetness to it as well as a little bit of heat. I poured almost 2 whole condiment cups of sauce on it and it was perfect! I was also able to sub out the coleslaw for baked beans, which worked out perfectly since hubby doesn't eat his coleslaw. I got to have his coleslaw and I still got to have baked beans.

Up close and personal with my baked beans.

LOOOOOVE the bits of meat in the beans. Heavenly!

Definitely our must-do for Animal Kingdom now!

Now we're off to Kali River Rapids because hubby is making me ride it this trip. I HATE getting wet! Thank goodness I brought a poncho with me!

Up next... A cool drink on a hot day!

 

[BlovesC]

Ahhhhhhh you guys have great taste! We LOVE POFQ and your pics are making me super anxious to go back. :laugh: And Flame Tree BBQ is the best! Such good food, and nothing beats sitting by the water watching the ducks and staring at Everest in the background as you eat.

Signing up! And the food at Sassagoula looks pretty good! We've never really eaten there on our POFQ trips, but since we found out you can use the TiW discount we definitely plan on taking advantage of it and having several meals there during our next stay!

Can't wait to read more!

 

[Krissalee]

I'm really enjoying your reviews!

Our traditional arrival day lunch has been R&C, so looking at your first meal the made me smile.
Plus, I can't go to AK without having lunch at Flame Tree - definitely my AK favorite. There is something great about their BBQ sauce. If you like onion rings, you should try them there sometime. They are the best!

 

[jerseytinkerbell]

So glad I found this thread! We head to POFQ for the first time in July. I had originally booked the Poly and I am still feeling a little blue about switching. One thing I was worried about was the food court and their lack of hours. We did tour FQ when we were there in Feb and we had breakfast at Sass, so I am a little familiar with the place. Did you do any early mornings? With the heat and crowds of July, we plan on fully utilizing both AM and PM EMHs. Just wondering what Sass offers for the early opening and late hour. I heard the grill section isn't open until 7? But that cheese danish looks like it might have to be my breakfast all week Yum!

This was our first stay at POFQ as well and I must say that I'm hooked! I really really loved it there. The grounds were beautiful and it wasn't a long walk to the food court or the bus stop not matter what building you're in. Loved the pool too! I wanted to ask if we could keep our room there for our last 5 days instead of having to go over to SSR!

We didn't do any really early mornings. The earliest we were at the food court was 8am and everything was open and available. Not sure how it is earlier than that. The dinner menu mostly stops at 10pm with just the Pizza and Burgers windows open until midnight, so you could still get pizza, burgers, chicken alfredo, meatball sandwiches, chicken fingers and a couple other things. Most of the bakery items were still available late night as well. The cheese danish was awesome!

Ahhhhhhh you guys have great taste! We LOVE POFQ and your pics are making me super anxious to go back. :laugh: And Flame Tree BBQ is the best! Such good food, and nothing beats sitting by the water watching the ducks and staring at Everest in the background as you eat.

Signing up! And the food at Sassagoula looks pretty good! We've never really eaten there on our POFQ trips, but since we found out you can use the TiW discount we definitely plan on taking advantage of it and having several meals there during our next stay!

Can't wait to read more!

Thanks for joining in! We didn't get to eat at Sassagoula too much on this trip, but I plan on going there a lot in the future! What we had was excellent! I plan on getting APs and TiW next trip so if we stay at POFQ it will be great to be able to use it at the food court!

By the way, I'm super jealous that you're only 35 minutes from WDW! We're hoping to move to Port St. Lucie in a few years and then we'll be at WDW more than we'll be at home.

I'm really enjoying your reviews!

Our traditional arrival day lunch has been R&C, so looking at your first meal the made me smile.
Plus, I can't go to AK without having lunch at Flame Tree - definitely my AK favorite. There is something great about their BBQ sauce. If you like onion rings, you should try them there sometime. They are the best!

That's so great that R&C is your arrival day tradition!

Oh man, I wanted those onion rings soooooo bad! I didn't want to eat them all by myself because it looked like such a huge portion and hubby thought he would be too full to help me eat them. I hate to waste food, but I should have gotten them anyway. Next time for sure!

 

[jerseytinkerbell]

Well, after a lame trip on Kali River Rapids (I totally don't get that ride) we were on our way to the safari when I remembered a particular treat I wanted to try. I walked over to Royal Anandapur Tea Company and paid for this little beauty.

A frozen cappuccino! Here is a closeup of the drink as modeled by my lovely husband's hand, he wanted me to point out!

I have found yet another goodie that I must have every trip from now on! So tasty! It was very icy (in a good way) and had a really great coffee flavor. Strong enough that I knew there was coffee in there and not just sugar. It was hot walking around at this point and this drink really hit the spot. Another winner!

Up next... Our first time at Boatwright's!

 

[CanadianPaco]

A free FP certificate... Awesome surprise!! I love the little magic moments! Your reviews are such a pleasure to read! thx!

 

[SweetSpot]

That ride is brutal. You're absolutely right about the drive home being worse. My hubby is the same way! We stop 3 times and it's gas, food and bathrooms all in one single stop each time. Not sure which way you're going when you drive down in a few weeks, but just to let you know, I-95 was really bad in the Richmond area. They're doing major road work and it was down to one lane in both directions. Coming home we hit that area around midnight, so there weren't many cars on the road and it only stopped us up for a few minutes, but going down we hit it bad. Just a heads up to maybe try and avoid that area if you can.

We are in Gloucester County so will be taking I-95 like you. Thanks for the heads up. I'm hoping that they will be done in a couple weeks but have a feeling we will be sitting in it for a while.

I was in PA for a doctors appointment today and went searching a Trader Joes and found one in Ardmore. I was surprised and happy to find a Farmer's Market next door with the Amish pretzel place in it and open on a Tuesday. I immediately ordered a steak pretzel only to find at 12:30 they hadn't started making them and only had very old, dry looking breakfast pretzels left. I'm determined, I will find them (and maybe some donuts) on Thursday.

Loving you report. Thank you for taking the time to share your trip with us.

 

[jerseytinkerbell]

A free FP certificate... Awesome surprise!! I love the little magic moments! Your reviews are such a pleasure to read! thx!

Thank you so much!

It's those little moments of magic that keep us coming back to WDW year after year.

We are in Gloucester County so will be taking I-95 like you. Thanks for the heads up. I'm hoping that they will be done in a couple weeks but have a feeling we will be sitting in it for a while.

I was in PA for a doctors appointment today and went searching a Trader Joes and found one in Ardmore. I was surprised and happy to find a Farmer's Market next door with the Amish pretzel place in it and open on a Tuesday. I immediately ordered a steak pretzel only to find at 12:30 they hadn't started making them and only had very old, dry looking breakfast pretzels left. I'm determined, I will find them (and maybe some donuts) on Thursday.

Loving you report. Thank you for taking the time to share your trip with us.

Good luck on your drive in a few weeks! Hopefully all that mess will clear up for you by then. Even though the ride is so long and difficult it makes arriving in Disney World that much sweeter.

 

[jerseytinkerbell]

We had a very full and productive morning/afternoon at AK. I even got to see the Festival of the Lion King show for the first time. Can you believe I had never seen that until this trip?! By 2pm AK was really getting crowded and we had done every ride we wanted to do, so we headed back to POFQ.

We had a really fun afternoon in the pool and then before we went back to the room we walked over to Riverside to check out Boatwright's. Here are a couple shots of the walkway from POFQ to POR.

POR is so gorgeous! I would love to stay at this resort on a future trip.

I had suggested to hubby that we eat here this trip since we love that style of food, but he hadn't seen the menu for himself and wanted to check it out. The restaurant wasn't open for dinner yet, but we popped inside to look around.

Outside Boatwright's

Inside the restaurant

The menu

I already knew what I wanted since I sit on the computer and look at WDW menus at work all day and hubby decided that he really liked the sound of the Voodoo Chicken, so we decided to head back to our room and get cleaned up and come back for dinner.

We were back at Boatwright's by about 6pm and the place was almost empty, so they were able to seat us right away even though we didn't have a reservation.

We were seated along the back wall of the restaurant and our server came over right away and took our drink orders and returned with our drinks and some Corn Bread and Whipped Butter to start.

Oh my gosh! This corn bread was delish! I wanted to eat the entire basket of it, but I wanted to save room for some dessert at the end of the meal, so I tried to control myself.

Hubby started with French Onion Soup.

He was with this soup. He shared a few spoonfuls with me and it was darn tasty. Very flavorful and very cheesy. Two things I always like in a soup.

Boy, we're off to a great start! Hubby asked about the Voodoo Chicken because he wanted to make sure it was chicken breast and the waitress said that it was, but it was on the bone. She also warned that it was spicy. He was more than okay with both of those things, so he ordered the Voodoo Chicken with Red Beans, Rice and Collard Greens.

He liked the chicken, but said it was kinda plain and not spicy at all. With a name like Voodoo Chicken you would think it would be very flavorful, but it really wasn't. He also said it wasn't really on the bone. There was a little bit of bone on the one part, but that was it. He didn't like the sides with this dish at all. He said it was very boring and left most of the sides still sitting on the plate when he was done.

I ordered Grilled Beef Tenderloin Medallions served with Macaroni & Cheese, Asparagus, Crawfish Beignet, and Red Wine Demi-glace.

Doesn't that sound/look AMAZING?! It wasn't. So very disappointed. It was not bad by any means at all, just boring. The meat was cooked perfectly, but had no flavor. The red wine demi-glace, no flavor. I would have been better off with steak sauce. All it did was get my meat wet. It added nothing to the dish. The crawfish beignet had no flavor either. It had some sort of odd tasting sauce on it, but the beignet itself was so tasteless. The mac & cheese however, was excellent! The asparagus was pretty good too, but then again how hard is it to screw up asparagus.

After such a great start I was really bummed over our lack of enthusiasm for our entrees. I was hoping for some redemption though by ordering the New Orleans Bread Pudding with Rum Raisin Ice Cream and Foster Sauce.

I had never had rum raisin ice cream before this dessert, so I was curious to try it. I wasn't a fan of the rum raisin ice cream by itself, but with the bread pudding and the sauce it all worked together very nicely. Not as good as the bread pudding at 'Ohana, but still pretty darn good. Definitely left the meal on a positive note with that dessert.

All and all I'm not sure how I feel about this restaurant. I really WANT to like it. I would definitely come back again. I am very willing to give a couple of the other entrees a chance. I'm not sure I would go out of my way to come here, but I will if I'm staying at Port Orleans again.

Overall, a fairly satisfying meal. Now we're off of DTD for some drinks and a movie.

Up next... MacGuffins bar and Johnny Depp!

 

[tallen429]

Hi!!
I always enjoy reading dining reviews, but I rarely comment...(too busy enjoying the food porn! LOL!)

Boatwrights ended up being such a pleasant surprise for my family a few trips ago. POR is the only Mod we ever stay at and we normally do our TS meals elsewhere, but we were on a free dining trip and somehow had an extra set of TS credits so we gave it a whirl. We LOVED it!! I was sorry to hear about your less than stellar meal because we were so very surprised and pleased that our meals were better than expected!
It's been a while so I don't remember our exact food choices, though I do remember something about pork, and also steak...

Our server was wonderful and that certainly added to the experience.

I hope you decide to give it another chance if you stay at POR or POFQ again!

 

[jerseytinkerbell]

After dinner we headed over to DTD, which was crazy busy since it was a Saturday night. We walked around for a little while and then headed over to AMC for a movie. We still had some time to kill before the movie, so we went inside and sat at Macguffins, which is the bar next to the concession stand.

Hubby had Blue Moon Beer, which I didn't get a picture of, but trust me, it looked like beer.

I looked over their board that listed their specialty drinks.

The Oreo Mudslide sounded really good, but I was still kinda full from dinner, so I didn't want anything that heavy. I was going to order a Mojito when I saw this sitting on the bar.

That sounded sort of odd, but I love drinks that are an unnatural color, so I went for it.

Behold, the Gamma Ray!

We took our drinks into the theater to find a seat and wait for Dark Shadows to start. I love being able to have a drink at the movies. Can't do that at the theaters at home, so this is a rare treat. My drink was awesome! The movie was awesome too, although the drink may have had something to do with that.

Up next... A Deep Fried Late Night Treat!

 

[disneyquilter]

Just joining in and I am loving your food report

Boatwright's always intrigued my husband and I (and the kids too) but we never ate there when we stayed at POFQ. That stinks that the food was only ok, but glad it was somewhat redeemed by cornbread and dessert (although, I could totally live off of cornbread and dessert-LOL!)

The Gamma Ray looks and sounds awesome! I don't think I will be as fortunate to get one while we are there at the end of September since the drink seems seasonal, but the Macguffin's menu looks great. I am a craft beer girl at heart but love me some mixed drinks

Can't wait for your next installment.

 

[auntfrannie]

I'm with you on Boatwright's. I ate there a couple years ago and while everything looked great, there just wasn't any flavor to it. The make-your-own-pasta at the food court was much better than Boatwright's!

 

[solana131]

Good to know about Boatwrights. I was debating that for this trip since we were staying at FQ, but I guess I will wait until I have the dining plan sometime. This trip we are just OOP for all meals, so I would hate to "waste" money on it. We will definitely walk up to Riverside to have a couple meals at their foodcourt just to mix it up a little. Love the pics of FQ from your walk over Can't wait!

 

[jerseytinkerbell]

Hi!!
I always enjoy reading dining reviews, but I rarely comment...(too busy enjoying the food porn! LOL!)

Boatwrights ended up being such a pleasant surprise for my family a few trips ago. POR is the only Mod we ever stay at and we normally do our TS meals elsewhere, but we were on a free dining trip and somehow had an extra set of TS credits so we gave it a whirl. We LOVED it!! I was sorry to hear about your less than stellar meal because we were so very surprised and pleased that our meals were better than expected!
It's been a while so I don't remember our exact food choices, though I do remember something about pork, and also steak...

Our server was wonderful and that certainly added to the experience.

I hope you decide to give it another chance if you stay at POR or POFQ again!

Hi there! Thanks for commenting! I'm so glad to hear that you had a very positive experience at Boatwright's. I really think I will try it again soon. It definitely wasn't bad enough to keep me away. We had a really terrible meal at Wave last trip and that's a meal that will keep me away from a restaurant, but this meal definitely had some very positive points.

Just joining in and I am loving your food report

Boatwright's always intrigued my husband and I (and the kids too) but we never ate there when we stayed at POFQ. That stinks that the food was only ok, but glad it was somewhat redeemed by cornbread and dessert (although, I could totally live off of cornbread and dessert-LOL!)

The Gamma Ray looks and sounds awesome! I don't think I will be as fortunate to get one while we are there at the end of September since the drink seems seasonal, but the Macguffin's menu looks great. I am a craft beer girl at heart but love me some mixed drinks

Can't wait for your next installment.

Thanks so much for joining in!

I am definitely okay with just dessert and cornbread! There's no judgement for what you eat on vacation!

Hopefully MacGuffins will have a new cool drink to try in September, but if not they had a lot of really tasty looking drinks to try. Even though I didn't get that Oreo Mudslide I saw someone order one when we were there and it looked delish! I have to try that one next time.

I see from your signature that you will be staying at CBR for the first time on your upcoming trip. I love it there! It's been almost 8 years since my last stay there, but I've stayed there more than any other Disney hotel over the years. Hope you have a great time there!

I'm with you on Boatwright's. I ate there a couple years ago and while everything looked great, there just wasn't any flavor to it. The make-your-own-pasta at the food court was much better than Boatwright's!

It's a shame you didn't have a great experience there either. The make your own pasta place sounds great though! I definitely think we will be staying at Port Orleans again soon and I will definitely have to give that a try.

 

[Libby_Darling]

Ooooh I'm so excited to see what the late night deep fried treat is!! loving the report!!

 

[smile4stamps]

Loving your report! Can't wait to hear more!

 

[jerseytinkerbell]

Ooooh I'm so excited to see what the late night deep fried treat is!! loving the report!!

Thanks so much for joining in Libby! Loved Loved Loved your recent DR by the way : Deep fried treat is coming right up!

Loving your report! Can't wait to hear more!

Thank you so much! Hoping to get a few more updates in today!

 

[CatNipRules]

I have to agree with you on Boatwrights. We were there a few years ago and found that the food was mostly tasteless. This is coming from someone who doesn't like her food spicy at all.

I love the look of that drink. It looks so yummy!!

Can't wait to read about the next treat!!