The Great Dessert Hunt: Sep 4, 2010 – Sep 10, 2010 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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The Great Dessert Hunt: Sep 4, 2010 – Sep 10, 2010
The Great Dessert Hunt: Sep 4, 2010 – Sep 10, 2010
Who: Me (Heather) & DH (John). We are also traveling at the same time as friends of ours. Cheeser is a fellow Passporter (she’s the one who told me about them in the first place!), a coworker (in the same department), she & her DH live right near us, and have become good friends as well (it’s a small world, isn’t it?). Although she & her DH have to leave on Thursday, as he has to go back to work Friday. We will try not to have too much fun after they leave.
When: We leave tomorrow on a flight at 9:25am. All 4 of us were able to get on the same flight out. I am starting my trip report now, as I am on vacation from work now! We will return home on Friday evening.
Where: DH & I will stay at Wilderness Lodge for 1 night, and then to BLT (our first DVC stay!) from Sunday to Friday. Adding that Saturday would have eaten into our points too much. I hope to keep this TR updated while we’re there, but I may be too busy having fun. Our friends are staying at WL for their whole trip.
What: We have couple of special plans. The majority of our overall trip planning seems to have centered on food, especially dessert (hence the title). We will be going to the Wishes Dessert Party and DH & I are doing the Around the World Segway Tour in Epcot (never done either before). We got the Basic Dining Plan for the BLT part of our stay, and we have ADR’s at:
Saturday: House of Blues
Sunday: Teppan Edo
Monday: Crystal Palace (breakfast) & ‘Ohana’s
Tuesday: Le Cellier
Wednesday: Liberty Tree Tavern & Wishes Dessert Party
Thursday: Tutto Italia
Of these, DH & I have only been to Le Cellier (which all 4 of us LOVE). We have never been to ‘Ohana’s or Liberty Tree for dinner before.
We also plan to try Via Napoli if we can get in (as they’re still in their “soft” opening and don’t take reservations), go to Starring Rolls for these cupcakes we keep hearing about, eating Dole Whips, cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, beignets, something from the Plaza or Plaza Ice Cream Parlor, and whatever other desserts roll around. Hopefully all of the walking will help us work off all of the dessert!
And one other adventure I won’t mention yet – you’ll have to stay tuned!
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This sounds like a delicious trip. I hope you will have time during the trip to keep us updated but, I won't be holding my breath. Have a wonderful time.
Sharon
The Great Dessert Hunt: Day 1, Saturday, Sep 4, 2010
our friends picked us up at 6:15am. They had their 17-year-old daugther with them so she could drive their car back. We made it to the airport and through security with no problem. The security employees were even really nice! I was so happy. Then we were hungry. DH & I have started flying out now as close to 9am as possible. Our flight time was 9:25am. We now have a tradition of eating at Max & Erma's before we leave, as the one in the airport serves breakfast. Is this the start of exciting food yet? No, we're not at Disney World yet!! We all got pancakes, except John (he got an omelette). The breakfast was still good and we were on our way. The plane left pretty much on time. Our friends were 3 rows in front of us, so we weren't able to talk to them during the flight. John said I fell asleep for 20 minutes on the flight. I did? I didn't notice. No wonder the flight seemed really short. We use DME, so once we were off the flight, it was on to the line to wait for the buses. It didn't take long at all for the Wilderness Lodge bus to come. Yeah!! (We have waited there for hours on previous trips...) We went to the check-in desk. We both had aleady done online check-in. We were both put on the first floor in king-size bed rooms (we requested king-size). These were handicapped-accessible rooms. Our friends was on the side by the pool. Ours was on the other side of the hallway and had a view of a swampy pond. We were only going to be there one night, so we were OK with that.
Lots more to post from this day, but no more time right now...we have an early breakfast ADR! I will get back to it when I can.
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We survived and made it back home. Time to continue the TR!
Day 1 continued:
Since we were checked in so early, we went straight to MK, taking the WL boat over. John & I had to process our AP's first. Our friends had warned us that AP’s are paper tickets, unlike the nice plastic Keys to the World. We tried to get them to add them to our keys, or find some plastic cover, but no luck with either of those. Apparently if you lose/ruin your AP, you just show your id and they print you a new one. They did give us a list of all the places that have AP discounts. J Our friends already had their tickets, so they went on in. We were hungry for lunch by now, so they went to see if we could get in to the Plaza. It took a while to get our AP's, so by the time we got in, they had a wait (we had to have all of our party first). So we sat on a wall on the side and people-watched. Soon we were in for lunch at Table 1 right by the door. A cool location! We didn't want to use one of our TS credits on it, so we paid OOP. I had a tuna sandwich with fries, and got a chocolate shake for my drink. This also doubled as a dessert - it was really good! John got their chicken strawberry salad and an iced tea, as he always does. Our friends got a tuna sandwich with fries and a Coke, and a Club with chips and a strawberry shake. Neither John nor I like cherries (which came with our shakes), so we made our friends very happy. My receipt says we were there at 3pm, but we were there around 1:30 or so.
As you can see in one of the pictures below, MK already has a bunch of Halloween decorations up. This made us quite sad as there was no MNSSHP while we were there.
Then we headed towards Adventureland and on the way we stopped by some Photopass photographers and got a whole bunch of pictures. Since the entire area by Crystal Palace had been walled off when we were there in January, John wanted some pictures in that area. We love stopping by every single Photopass person we see (although he love it slightly more than I do…) We were wondering if our friends were getting annoyed with us about all of these pictures, but they kept saying they weren’t! Then we did Jungle Cruise, Tiki Room, and Pirates of the Caribbean, some of our favorites. Then we saw the Country Bear Jamboree. Neither John nor I had ever seen this before – either it was closed or we just walked on by it. Our friends said we had to see it. I adored the bear claw scratches on the floor in the lobby. The show is also cute (and corny!). I wanted to try to get to all of the attractions I still hadn’t done in 3 trips, so this was the start of that hunt. Check!
Next was the sword in the stone. John and I had heard about this a lot, but still hadn’t found the thing. It’s right next to the Carousel, not that hard to find…duh! Anyway, we had to get pictures. FYI, in case you’re reading and had not heard, the carousel has been renamed to Prince Charming Regal Carousel. I really don’t understand why?
At this point we decided to leave and head to Downtown Disney. We had made an ADR at House of Blues at 7:15pm and we wanted to get a little shopping done first. I think we spent the entire bus ride trying to decide if we would get off at Marketplace or West Side…I really didn’t care, it was quite an amusing conversation. J I think we finally decided right when the bus stopped at Marketplace to get off there. We wanted to go into World of Disney. We found Disney Silly Bands (yeah, we had been looking for them!). We bought Cars, Toy Story, and some general Mickey character ones. We also found princesses and fairies, but these are for our 9-year-old nephew, who has told us in no uncertain terms that he will have nothing to do with princesses. We’ll see what happens if he meets one though! I looked around for Muppet Silly Bands, but could not find them there. We took the boat that goes from the Marketplace side to the West Side. I had never ridden this boat before; I had always walked that long way. This ride I was thinking, this is a really cool way to get to the other side.
Our dinner at House of Blues was awesome. I ordered a pepperoni pizza appetizer as my meal thinking it would be small – I was wrong; I could only eat half of it. John ordered the half rack of ribs and a cup of chipotle corn chowder (daily special). I tried a bite of that soup, and it was yummy! I ordered a Raspberry Tequini too (I don’t normally drink that much, but I was on vacation!). The waitress said this comes with half salt/half sugar around the rim. I don’t like the salt around margarita glass rims, so I asked for just sugar. I should have asked for none, as it was way too much pure sugar. The drink itself was good though. The worst part was that we had no room left for dessert. L The best part was the waitress was the best!
Then we decided to take the boat back to the Marketplace to do some more shopping and check out Ghirardelli. This was a mistake. We waited on that boat dock for almost 30 minutes waiting for a boat to come by (as a longer and longer line forms and we are eaten by mosquitoes attracted by the lights). Then when it did and we could finally board, it took a while to leave. There was another boat on the other side of the lake which apparently our boat captain decided he couldn’t leave until he knew where it was going. Then he decided when it came into the other side of our dock that he had to honk and honk at it! He looked all annoyed, but we were all annoyed at him.
We stopped at Ghirardelli for some samples. Their flavor was caramel pumpkin spice. Um, yuck! I did not even open mine (wouldn’t have taken it if I had known). So we caught the bus back to WL to settle in for the night. Our friends went to the pool, but we were exhausted and had to get up early to switch resorts – for our first ever stay at BLT!
Looking back at this day, it wasn’t a very good start to our great dessert hunt. It was however a great day, and I have never done so much on a first day at WDW. J
About This Page: 
Our friends are staying at WL for their whole trip.
Heather 
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Thank
Pixie Dust
Have a magical trip! 
Susan
I hope you will have time during the trip to keep us updated but, I won't be holding my breath. 
Hope the magic has already begun! 
Cassie
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