The Stop and Smell the Flowers trip
Who: The usual crew
Me: Lisa, 42 years old, single mom, many trips to WDW, especially in the last year or so
DM, Helen, late 60s, never been to Flower & Garden festival
DD, Kaylie, 15
DS, Casey, 13
When: May 12th
Why: Celebrate Mothers’ Day and visit the Flower & Garden festival
Originally, we were going to spend 3 days over at WDW the week of Memorial Day, enjoying all the Flower & Garden Festival activities. But when my friend decided to visit WDW the next week, I moved our plans, which put us outside the window for F&G. I’ve seen F&G festival at least twice. In fact, our first ever family trip to WDW was during F&G festival back in 1997. And we arrived Mother’s Day that year too! DD and I went over for a day last year (I wrote a report on that one with lots of pictures). But my mom has never been there for F&G. And my mom really likes agriculture. You might remember that she really enjoyed the Behind the Seeds tour at Christmastime. A couple years ago, I bought her a field guide to different trees. It was a gag gift, because she’s always saying “Hey, Lisa. Look at that tree over there. I wonder what kind of tree that is?” And I’d always answer “Gee Mom, I don’t know.” And she’d say “Hmm. Do you think it’s an elm? Or maybe it’s a maple? Or maybe it’s xxxxxxx” and so on and so on! Hence the tree field guide! But I knew she’d really enjoy all the topiaries and I was hoping to catch some of the seminars too.
I had a business trip planned for the week after Mother’s Day, so my mom was planning on coming up to stay with the kids. I just asked her to come up on Friday instead of Sunday. I called Disney dining (after posting a couple questions on the restaurant board) and made reservations for the Portobello Yacht club for a late lunch. We wanted something a little different, plus we’re doing the free dining promotion and have 2 meals booked for World Showcase that trip, so I decided on something at Downtown Disney. Anyway, enough planning (hey, it’s only 8 hours!), on to the actual visit!
We left the house at 7:30 and headed east. You may have heard about all the wildfires we’ve been having in Florida. The large one was about 200 miles northeast of my house, but due to some strange wind patterns, we were experiencing some of the smoke. It’s usually worse in the morning, since it mixes with the overnight dew and just hangs in the air. This was probably the worst it has been. I kept my headlights on the entire trip. We pulled into the EPCOT parking lot about 8:35, and parked in the 3rd row in. The smoke, fog, smog stuff was still with us. I took a couple of pictures on Mom’s camera (now loaded), and you could barely see the EPCOT globe through the haze!
Mom had left her AP back at her house, so she needed to get a new one issued. And I had ordered a renewal of my Disney Dining Experience and had to pick that up at guest relations. DS decided he wanted to start off on his own that morning. The three ladies finished up all our various errands just as the turnstiles were opening. DS was about 3rd in line at Spaceship Earth. When he got off the ride, he was the first person of the day to enjoy the new activities at the ride exit! I stopped and got his AP to pick up fast passes, then DD headed over to Test Track while Mom and I went on Soarin. We rode standby first, and waited about 15 minutes. Mom had never gone standby before, so she enjoyed the trivia questions while we waited. Once we were off the ride, I pulled FPs for all 4 of us that were good at 10:40. Here's a picture Mom took at the entrance while I was chasing down DS for his fastpass. You can tell it was still very smokey in the background behind the ship.
DD had gotten sidetracked in the butterfly house. She ended up spending about an hour and a half in there, watching a group of cocoons hatching out of their crystallis. Meanwhile, Mom and I were walking around the displays. There was one just as you come out of the walkway heading toward the Land that had a bunch of what I call spider flowers. They are fairly tall and have seed pods poking out all along the stems. We had tons of those at our house in Maryland, because we had brought the seeds with us from Indiana. I asked the folks there if they knew where I could get seeds for this, and they didn’t know. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to just pull of the seed pods for us. I understand that if they could, then the plants would soon look pretty ugly since everyone would want them!
After this, we wandered over to catch the next Turtle Talk, which was excellent DUDE! I can’t remember exactly what caused this, but all the kids were convinced that Crush was cheating, and that interaction got us mostly off track, but it was neat to watch how they can ad lib. Once again, we saved Dory by our excellent whale translation skills, then we were off to use our Soarin FPs. We caught up with DD by this time. As we walked toward the Land, right by the exhibit with the spider flowers, we saw 3 dream team members. We started chatting with them, and did some pin trading. One of them suggested we register on line for some of the dreams. We caught up with one of them later on that day as well.
We planned to ride Soarin then head over to the Odyssey building for a seminar on nosegay creation at 11:00. But the ride timing was against us. It was about 11:15 when we finished up with Soarin, which meant that we missed the early seminar. DD was ready for a snack, and so were Mom and I. DD headed into Mouse Gears and bought a bag of licorice pinwheels. Mom and I were in the mood for a pastry from Norway, but we decided to take the boat over to WS.
While we were waiting on it to get to the Future World dock, we checked out some of the neat gardening things they had for sale.
This is a picture of a group of bansai plants they had. My ex-Father in law was always fascinated with these plants.
And they had these pretty neat irrigation/yard art sculptures. I’m not sure if it’s clear in the pictures. When you hook up the hose to the sculpture, one of the sections starts spinning and it shoots water all over your yard.
This picture is their picture of the water squirting. It was pretty cool, but as I recall, they were over $100. It wasn’t that cool! By this time the boat had docked, and we headed on over to WS with a couple of other families. I took a bunch of pictures because I never ride this boat! It’s a different view. You can see that the smoke had cleared out by this time (about 11:30).
They were only running one boat, so we stopped at the Morocco/Italy area first. The other folks got off there, and no one was leaving WS since it had just opened. Mom and I had a private boat ride to the Germany dock! I snapped this picture at an activity center between Germany and Norway.
DD met up with by this time, and we headed into the Kringla bakery to pick our snack. Mom decided on a cloudberry creamhorn which we shared. Once we finished, we stopped to take some photos of the wildflowers growing on the roofs.
DS called and asked what we were doing. He was yet again in the House of the Future. We decided to meet up over at Spaceship Earth to see if they’d made any improvements yet. That was when DS told us about the displays at the exit. He headed straight into the display area, while we traveled back through time once again. I pointed out the Hidden Mickey on the monks’ worktable to Mom. We were stopped for quite a while in the Sistene Chapel area, but finally made it out of the ride. I didn’t see any changes in the actual ride yet. But boy does the new exit area look really cool!
I snapped this picture of Mom before we headed back to the Odyssey building for the next seminar.
It was about 12:10 by this time, and we (ladies only) wanted to hit the 12:30 seminar, which was put on by Guerlain fragrances. DS headed over to Mission Space.
One of the head people from the NY offices of Guerlain talked about how they develop fragrances. We were all given little papers with 4 of their signature fragrances on them. Each of us had our own favorites, but unfortunately, I’ve forgotten mine. I don’t really use perfumes anyway, and I’d never spend that kind of money on one! DD’s favorite was translated White Suede. It was neat to experience the seminar. And the dream team lady we’d talked to that morning was helping them out with the seminar so we got to say hi again.
After the seminar I picked up fast passes for test track, which were good for something like 3:30 (which was when we were eating). My memory is failing me, but I kind of think this is when we went back to WS. I know we rode the new Mexico ride, which Mom really enjoyed. We walked out on the side toward Norway, and Mom confirmed that the trees that have such pretty flowers are orchids. I think we met back up with DS who was flipping the juggling sticks in China. The next thing I can remember is that we went to the 2:00 nosegay seminar. I know we did something in the middle there, because Mom and DD went on ahead of me and saved me a seat but I truly can’t remember what it was!
The nosegay seminar was really interesting. The leader was a Master Garden with Disney and had been there almost 30 years. He explained all the things that their department does and said that he had set the stage for several presidents, several movie stars, etc. He talked about the history behind nosegays. It was mainly because of the horrible sanitation in the Victorian era in Europe. People thought that certain flowers and herbs prevented disease, and they definitely masked the smell. But they developed a whole other language, where each piece of the nosegay represented something. On our table was material to make our own nosegay, which we put together while he explained the meaning of each item. We all had a rose for the center, and greenery for the outside, plus baby breath, purple heather, and other stuff I can’t remember. You wrapped it up in a doily and tied it off with a ribbon.
By this time, we needed to head over to catch a bus to Downtown Disney to make our 3:30 lunch ADR at Portobello Yacht Club. We called DS and he was in the Living Seas. He said he couldn’t leave right away because he had been picked to help with the dolphins. He met up with us at the International Gateway about 2:45, and we walked over to the Yacht Club to catch a bus. I found a little girl in the lobby and gave her my nosegay. DD tried to give hers away to a girl who was having a melt down. At first the girl said no, but after a few minutes, she found DD and asked if she could still have it? My mom kept hers and gave it to an elderly friend as a mother’s day gift.
We waited about 15 minutes for the bus, and finally made it to PYC about 3:45. I was worried that they wouldn’t let us eat from the lunch menu, but they said it was fine. DD shared a secret with the hostess, and then we were seated. It was so nice inside this restaurant. We were near the picture windows overlooking the water (and the riverboat restaurant, Captain Jacks??). There were only 2 or 3 tables in use when we got there. Our server was John Henry and he was very nice.
I can’t find my receipt, but here’s what I remember ordering (thanks to the menus from AllEars for a memory jogger!).
DD had a Shirley Temple to drink, and DS had the white tea (which is made hot, and they pour it into a carafe full of ice. Mom had regular iced tea, and I had water with lemon (surprise, huh?)
John Henry brought us two nice sized loafs of bread along with roasted garlic to spread on it. DD chose the Zuppa di Pesci which was Adriatic Seafood Stew. DMom had the Farfalle with Chicken, and DS had a Proscuitto Panini (with the veggies on the side). And I shared from everyone. DD and DM’s meals came with a starter, and I ate DD’s soup, which was Minestrone. I think Mom had a salad.
I can’t tell you how wonderful it all was! DD’s stew was full of outstanding seafood. She soon had a pile of shells from the clams, and the tails of the shrimp. She ate almost all of it. Mom’s fafalle had a very light white sauce that she raved over. Of course, she only ate about half of it. DS’s panini came with potato salad and tossed greens. I asked if he could get something besides potato salad, and they offered French Fries. He had a full serving of the fries, and ate most of them, plus about ½ of his sandwich.
I ate about a ¼ of his sandwich and all his greens. The proscuitto was kind of salty, but it’s supposed to be! About the time we were all full, DD snuck back off to talk to John Henry. Of course, you can imagine she was telling them this was our Mother’s Day meal, to see if they’d give us a dessert. They brought us this excellent Lemoncello Cheesecake, which we all had a few bites of.
We absolutely rolled out of there, because we knew we couldn’t take a doggie bag since it would spoil in the heat. We still left at least 2 full meals worth of food (for my family anyway) behind. Although they don’t take the Disney Dining Experience discount, they do offer 20% discount for DVC members. Total with a nice tip was $60 which was a real bargain for the quality of the food.
We spent a little time browsing in DTD, then picked up a bus back to the Boardwalk. We were back in the park about 5:00, and just checked out the remaining topiary. We found a couple more bansai exhibits. One in Japan and one in China.
We made our way back to the front, and wanted to ride Test Track. The FP line was showing 30 minutes wait, but single rider said 20, and looked MUCH shorter. DD and I went single rider, and DS insisted on using his FP. I gave a family the remaining FP, and DD and I headed in. We actually were waved into the briefing room just as the doors were closing, and the CM told us to just walk on through unless we wanted to watch the pre-ride. We were on and off the ride within 15 minutes, but waited another 15 for DS to finish up. My mom sat at the exit and waited on us. She decided that once a year is enough Test Track for her!
We headed out about 7:00, and headed west. We were home by 8:15, and we were pleasantly exhausted. Another Great Disney Day!
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