Surf & Turf 2014 TR! (Feb. 22-Mar. 6, 2014) - Page 14 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
I'm all caught up. I had no idea you didn't enjoy the rental car. I laughed at your comment about laundry on vacation. I had quite a bit of that during the week too. It sounds like you had a great day, sorry the Jiko service wasn't that great.
Great day at AK! Sorry Jiko was disappointing! . Love the soapstone animals!
We had a great time at AK. I guess if we loved every restaurant it would make dining decisions even harder. I love my bloat of hippos. I think it's amazing we found the same soapstone animals Pat got in Africa.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iwonathomas
Seems like a great day. Sorry that the service at Jiko got bad all of a sudden. Love the hippos that you bought they are so cute
It was a really nice day. I was disappoint with Jiko, but it makes our dining choice at AKL much easier. I love the animals, and they go perfect with my collection.
Quote:
Originally Posted by num1DVCfan
I'm all caught up. I had no idea you didn't enjoy the rental car. I laughed at your comment about laundry on vacation. I had quite a bit of that during the week too. It sounds like you had a great day, sorry the Jiko service wasn't that great.
Wow! You caught up quickly! We loved having the rental car but actual vehicle was terrible and was not an upgrade from a full-size. The truck space gave us some trouble later in the trip. I actually like being able to do laundry on vacation. Not that I love doing it, but the cruise was tough because there were times that I would have loved to wash somethings to wear a different day. I wish we had a better experience at Jiko, but there are so many places we want to try still that it is okay.
Wow...not sure where I was when this started, but I'm glad I'm caught up! Congratulations on booking your Alaskan cruise! My parents just returned from theirs this past Saturday. I have yet to hear how it went but based on the Facebook posts, it looks like they had a blast! Can't wait to hear more about your trip to the World!!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
Wow...not sure where I was when this started, but I'm glad I'm caught up! Congratulations on booking your Alaskan cruise! My parents just returned from theirs this past Saturday. I have yet to hear how it went but based on the Facebook posts, it looks like they had a blast! Can't wait to hear more about your trip to the World!!
Welcome on board! I tend to always miss the start of PTR's and TR's too! I'm so excited about the Alaskan cruise. We have a trip to Disneyland planned for November and I'm looking at things for the cruise more than the Disneyland trip. I think because I already know our general plans for DLR, but still it is odd for me. You'll have to fill me in on what your parents thought of the Alaskan cruise, any info on port adventures would be greatly appreciated.
Today's Update: You're Letting Us Have Ice Cream for Lunch?!?!?! (Saturday March 1st, 2014)
This was our official chill out day! We slept late and woke up at about 9am and everyone got dressed. Well, mostly. The kids were grouchy, this is quite normal when we don't really have a schedule. They did eventually get moving and we told them we were going to get lunch and then they would have some time to swim at Storm-a-long Bay. This motivated them a little. If they only knew what we were planning, I think they would have moved a lot faster.
We arrived at Beaches and Cream about 10 minutes before they opened. We found a table and hung out until they opened the doors. I did have an ADR, but clearly it is not really needed this early in the day. Although I liked having it because it prevented us from changing our minds at the last minute due to grouchy kids. We started perusing the menu but we didn't want to drag out the actual plan too long. So, Pat and I started talking about how we weren't really that hungry for burgers and such and that we think we should just have ice cream for lunch. The kids faces were priceless!!! They were asking if we were serious, and when we said yes they started cheering!!
Of course, they were a little skeptical about the Kitchen Sink, being that it has everything all thrown in one big "sink". Being on the autism spectrum they don't like foods mixing or touching and this was going to be an experience. We told them if they really didn't like it we would figure something out. We did swap out the coffee ice cream for something else, but I can't remember what, probably chocolate or vanilla.
When the Kitchen Sink arrived the kids were so excited and it was hard to stop them from digging in right away to snap a couple of pictures.
BTW, if you are going to do this, put the kids in the outside of the booth so you can actually see your child in the picture. Poor Hunter is lost back there:
Okay, you can see that someone already snagged something out of the very front of this but you get the idea:
It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would for the 4 of us to polish off the entire Kitchen Sink:
It's funny the table behind us also got the kitchen sink, but they made their kids eat normal food before letting them get the ice cream. Hey, I figure that thing had brownies and pound cake ice cream, cherries etc. That covers some of the food groups, works for me!!
After finishing up our ice cream lunch, we went back to the room to get the kids ready for swimming. The kids jumped in the pool and took off in two different directions. Pat and I found a nice shaded table and read books, had some drinks and just relaxed for awhile. We did get a little hungry and ordered a lobster salad sandwich to share. This was surprisingly good.
After awhile Shana came and found us and told us that Hunter had punched her. It took me forever to track him down because he was sitting on the wall under one of the bridges. I told him he needed to come out and we had him sit out for 10 minutes. He handled the whole time out quite well and while he was there he said he was hungry, so we ordered him a cheeseburger. He probably sat out for about 30+ minutes due to the wait for the food and we didn't have any problems after that.
I decided to head up to the room at about 4 to go get a shower. The kids came up at about 4:30. Everyone got showered and changed and we decided to head to Disney Quest since our late dinner the night before derailed our plans. Well, it was not meant to be this night either. When we got to DTD it was packed!!! We drove around for about 15 minutes just trying to find a parking space. When we are on vacation we don't always realize what day of the week it is and it was a Saturday. As hard as it was, we convinced the kids (mostly having to convince Hunter) that this was probably not a good night to visit Disney Quest. We promised him that we would make it there at some point during the trip. We opted to head to Epcot instead.
We drove back to the BC and parked the car and walked into Epcot through the International Gateway. On the way in Pat and Shana stopped at GS to replace Shana's DAS, she had left it in a pair of pants I washed and well, it didn't survive. What was nice was when they asked the party size, Pat just said 4, so her's was issued for 4. This was helpful that we didn't have to get 2 filled out every time we went to get a return time.
We were all a little hungry at this point. Apparently, ice cream for lunch is not very filling. I was really wanting to check out Spice Road Table so we made our way over to Morocco. It was about 7pm and we were seated at a table right away. We ordered some shrimp harrissa chicken rolls, beef/chicken skewers and calamari. Overall, none of us were very impressed. I understand the idea of tapas, but these were all quite expensive and we would have had to order a lot to really make a meal out of it. The food was good, but we all agreed we prefer to go to Restaurant Marrakesh instead.
Here is the "view" from our table, this would be an ideal location to watch Illuminations from, but we didn't want to spend anymore money on tapas to justify sitting there that long.
And here's Pat and Shana just for fun:
We decided that we needed some dessert (not like we had eaten any this day ) Funnel cakes were the dessert of choice. The kids were thrilled when we decided to each get our own funnel cake. Clearly our tapas did not fill us very well.
We actually had FP+ for Illuminations this night, and so we decided to make our way to the viewing location. When we got there all the area directly by the fence was already taken, but we found an area in the back where we could still see pretty well.
While we were standing there waiting a little boy about 2 years old was running around loose and kept running up and grabbing Hunter's leg. Hunter ignored it the first couple times and I tried to figure out who the boy belonged to. Finally, Hunter was not liking it and being a little boy with autism was using his foot to try to get him away. He basically stuck his foot out straight and nudged the little boy away. Well, mom decided to finally come get her son and yelled at Hunter telling him it was not okay to "kick" a little boy. I was livid! Here's Hunter minding his own business and some strange kid keeps grabbing on his leg. He gently moved the boy away with his foot (which knowing about his meltdowns, this was a really good reaction for him). I firmly explained that it was not okay to let your child run about loose grabbing people and that my son has autism and doesn't like to be touched and that she's lucky he didn't actually "kick" her little boy. I was actually impressed because she apologized and walked away. We continued to watch as they let the little boy run all over the place and he even took things out of other peoples strollers. For the most part the parents just chased him around and laughed it off. Oh well, guess she didn't really take my comment to heart, although she did make a concerted effort to keep him away from Hunter.
I love Illuminations, although after doing the Illuminations cruise last trip I am a little spoiled now. But this area has a pretty good view, if you don't want to fork out the money for the cruise.
Here's a few pictures I got of the show:
After the show we had to swim upstream to get to the International Gateway, but we weren't in a hurry so it wasn't too bad. We stopped in the World Traveler on the way out and Hunter wanted to buy gifts for everyone. I didn't want him to spend all of his personal money on us so I told Shana to want something small. She got the idea and he bought Daddy a keychain and Shana and I got bookmarks and he also bought Shana a pair of earrings. He also bought another one of the 2014 Vinylmations, this time I was hoping he wouldn't get the special red one and he didn't he got the blue one. He was so excited to have the set.
We made our way back to our room and we all crashed pretty quickly.
Sounded like a great no plan day!
I have been wanting to get the Kitchen Sink! I had it on my list of October, but I heard they quit selling them, I don't know yet if it is true or not.
Glad Hunter handled the little kid grabbing him so well. Some people, I tell ya!!!
I've felt that since the construction started DTD just always feels insanely crowded. I haven't enjoyed a shop n stroll there at all the last few trips! LOVE the Kitchen Sink for lunch and we did the exact same thing last time we stayed at Beach Club, too fun! Sorry to hear about the disappointment at Spice Road Table, I think it makes sense that the lounges only offer small bites but sometimes you want more of the yummy! Loved the view for the fireworks though
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
Another great day! Sorry about DTD being so packed, but sounds like you made the best of it at Epcot!
It was a really great relaxing day. DTD is just a mess, but trying to visit on a Saturday was just dumb. Epcot was our original plan, so it worked out really well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by disneydreamer33
Sounded like a great no plan day!
I have been wanting to get the Kitchen Sink! I had it on my list of October, but I heard they quit selling them, I don't know yet if it is true or not.
Glad Hunter handled the little kid grabbing him so well. Some people, I tell ya!!!
It was a really nice day, and although it seemed as if we had no plans, we really did The Kitchen Sink was so good and so much fun. I hope they didn't stop serving it. I was so proud of how Hunter handled the situation, especially with the mom yelling at him. He really wasn't kicking the boy, just had his leg out to try to keep him back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by xwewhisper
I've felt that since the construction started DTD just always feels insanely crowded. I haven't enjoyed a shop n stroll there at all the last few trips! LOVE the Kitchen Sink for lunch and we did the exact same thing last time we stayed at Beach Club, too fun! Sorry to hear about the disappointment at Spice Road Table, I think it makes sense that the lounges only offer small bites but sometimes you want more of the yummy! Loved the view for the fireworks though
DTD is a mess. When I was there in Sept. trying to take all the pictures I needed it was just crazy. It really isn't very enjoyable right now. Other then going to Disney Quest we didn't visit DTD at all. It was fun having the Kitchen Sink for lunch! I think the options at Spice Road Table is great if you want drinks with some small snacks, but it really was pricey either way. The food was very good though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CinderAbby
That's my kind of lunch - especially on vacation.
The Kitchen Sink was awesome! We have "vacation rules" and don't really worry about eating healthful while on vacation. The kids love steak, shrimp, calamari, chicken etc, so I know they will get plenty of real food during the trip.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wheezie
Loving your TR so far!
That kitchen sink looks awesome!
The Kitchen Sink was awesome! So, worth it!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lfredsbo
I would certainly be thrilled to have ice cream for a meal!!!
Sorry about the little guy at Illuminations, but sounds like Hunter handled it well considering his limitations! Kudos to him!!!
It was the best meal ever! According to the kids. I really wasn't upset with the little boy, I've been on the other side of that when my kids would go up to people inappropriately (heck, we still have that problem at times). I was really mad that the mom had the audacity to yell at Hunter when she wasn't anywhere to be seen for a good 3-4 minutes and he wasn't "kicking".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ariel&Alice
All caught up! your trip looks like so much fun!
It was a fantastic trip altogether. We had so much fun!
Congrats on finishing the kitchen sink! I agree that the expense of the tapas size at Spice Road Table is at odds with how filling it is. Nice view for Illuminations, but sorry about the annoying little boy.
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
. Love the soapstone animals! 
We drove around for about 15 minutes just trying to find a parking space. When we are on vacation we don't always realize what day of the week it is and it was a Saturday. As hard as it was, we convinced the kids (mostly having to convince Hunter) that this was probably not a good night to visit Disney Quest. We promised him that we would make it there at some point during the trip. We opted to head to Epcot instead. 
I was really wanting to check out Spice Road Table so we made our way over to Morocco. It was about 7pm and we were seated at a table right away. We ordered some shrimp harrissa chicken rolls, beef/chicken skewers and calamari. Overall, none of us were very impressed. I understand the idea of tapas, but these were all quite expensive and we would have had to order a lot to really make a meal out of it. The food was good, but we all agreed we prefer to go to Restaurant Marrakesh instead. 
) Funnel cakes were the dessert of choice. The kids were thrilled when we decided to each get our own funnel cake. Clearly our tapas did not fill us very well.
Liz 
The Kitchen Sink was awesome! So, worth it!
Linear Mode
