'Moon over the World: Our Dream Disneymoon (Dec. 16-23, 2010) Trip Report - COMPLETED!! 1/16 About This Page:

[Jessie092408]

A couple things:

LOVE the picture you got of the elephants.

David and I were both highly disappointed with Wolfgang Puck as well back in September. The service was slow, the food was so-so, and our dessert sucked.

Sorry about your meltdown in line for Buzz and Woody. I had one of those in September waiting for a bus. I think it's to be expected that we all have at least ONE on our trips, right?

Love the story about Woody staring Rob down. My husband cracked up when I shared it with him!

Your meals at Kouzzina and Via Napoli had my mouth watering....I ate dinner at Kouzzina in September, but your breakfast sounds SOOOooo good!

[KMB733]

Great updates!! Sorry about the long line for Woody and Buzz, but if there is anyone who understands about melt downs, its us. I'll admit that I have at least one on every trip. The Osbourne Lights are amazing, great pictures!

[islandgirl]

More great updates!! Your pictures of the lights are amazing!!

[disneyfreeeak]

sounds like a fabulous day! I really want to try Via Nappoli now!

[MelissaSue]

Originally Posted by Colexis Mom

More great updates! Glad Kouzzina and WCC were hits! Sorry about WPC being a disappointment! And the rain! Nouba is fantastic!! More please!

Thanks for continuing to read, Marnie!!

Originally Posted by sc507

You've also confirmed with me that Kouzzina needs to be on our breakfast list next trip....

Stacey, you totally have to do Kouzzina! I'm already dreaming about going back myself!! It won't disappoint!

Originally Posted by Cam22

Great updates! for the review of Via Napoli as we finally get to eat here in June and I'm so excited.

Cam, you and Stephanie are going to love it!!

Originally Posted by ilovedisney247

Great updates . . . sorry about the long line to meet Woody and Buzz, but it sounds like it paid off! I'm glad you enjoyed Via Napoli, we loved the pizza, but thought the rest was so-so. The Osbourne lights are amazing! I'm getting ready to book my trip (solo again) for next December!

Heather, let me know when you end up going! I think we're going to head back again in December ...

Originally Posted by Jessie092408

David and I were both highly disappointed with Wolfgang Puck as well back in September. The service was slow, the food was so-so, and our dessert sucked.

Jessie, thanks for saying that! I felt so guilty for not enjoying it because I know so many PPers love Wolfgangs!! You made me feel more normal.

Originally Posted by Jessie092408

Sorry about your meltdown in line for Buzz and Woody. I had one of those in September waiting for a bus. I think it's to be expected that we all have at least ONE on our trips, right?

My goal for our next trip is no meltdowns. Ha … yea, right.

Originally Posted by disneyfreeeak

sounds like a fabulous day! I really want to try Via Nappoli now!

Yes! Don't listen to the jerks (like *ehem* me) who say it's too much to pay for pizza. Because it's REALLY REALLY good pizza!

Originally Posted by KMB733

Great updates!! Sorry about the long line for Woody and Buzz, but if there is anyone who understands about melt downs, its us. I'll admit that I have at least one on every trip. The Osbourne Lights are amazing, great pictures!

Thanks, and thanks for reading!!

[MelissaSue]

On day five, we really started to run out of gas, and my notes get very sparse. We woke up, got ready and walked over to Magic Kingdom for our 8:25 am reservations at Crystal Palace for breakfast with Rob’s favorite characters.

Right away, I was confused. When I made the reservation, the Disney website said that the park wasn’t open until 9am, but the park was already overrun with guests … odd.

I asked a cast member, who told me that the parks open at 8am every morning on the week leading up to Christmas. Well hot damn. There went my plan for getting great pictures of an empty Main Street!

Breakfast was delicious, filling and fun. We were seated next to a family with two cute little girls who were singing all of the 100 Acre Woods songs and were so excited to meet the characters. (2 credits: $57.49)

Unfortunately, most of our photos from this breakfast came out totally blurry, especially the ones with the two of us together.

Breakfast in our bellies, we headed out into the park. We hit the Haunted Mansion first, which we both totally love. Then Pirates, then over to Tom Sawyer Island (sadly, all of the paint brushes were gone, but we did have fun running around looking for them). After that, we powered through Jungle Cruise twice, Snow White and Philharmagic.

It’s funny, I’ve ridden all of these rides before and none of them are even really THRILL rides, but they I still get a total kick out of them.

After the fun, we headed over to lunch at Liberty Tree Tavern. We loved the atmosphere and themeing of the place, and the food was good but not great.

Rob had Tavern Fried Cheese (yum) and Freedom Pasta. He said the fusilli pasta didn’t hold the sauce well, and the chicken was overcooked and chewy. Overall, he thought it was a good entree, but not something he’d try again.

I had Declaration Salad with strawberry vinaigrette, which was slightly overdressed and included more iceberg than field greens, and the New England Pot Roast, which was totally yummy if a little salty.

For dessert, Rob had apple pie, his favorite, and I tried the Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake. I don’t usually really like caramel, but I ordered it on the recommendation of so many folks on this board, and I was not led astray. This dessert was really decadent. It was like a sweet delicious bomb in the mouth. Very good way to end the meal and our day at the park. (2 credits: $68.51)

We headed back to the room for a nap and a meeting with a DVC rep. I’d been seriously looking into DVC since June, but Rob was resisting. He had a lot of questions and concerns, so I thought a sit down would be beneficial for us. The meeting went on quite long, and it was a good experience.

Afterward, we headed back to the beach to watch the sunset, did a load of laundry, and then had to rush over to the Grand Floridian for our reservation at Narcoossee’s. We ended up being 20 minutes late, but luckily they’d held our reservation. And thank goodness because this was the best meal (tied with Via Napoli) that we ate all week.

The restaurant itself is lovely, and if you haven't been, you should at least check out the location. It has a fabulous view of Cinderlla's Castle. There were some beautiful special occasion menus printed out just for us, and the dim lights made for a very romantic meal. It FELT like the most upscale meal of the week.

The meal started with bread and butter, like most do, but there was something totally special about the butter: it was unsalted and sprinkled with Hawaiian sea salt. It brought out the sweetness in the butter and gave it an interesting texture. Unique and delicious.

For apps, we started with the artisanal cheese plate and duck confit, which actually went rather well together. The cheese plate completely blew me away. Total yum-gasm! I highly recommend it.

For entrees, we had Surf and Turf with gratin potatoes and broccolini and the crab-crusted mahi with crushed Fingerling potatoes, haricots verts and Meyer lemon sauce. Both were yummy—the filet was out-of-this-world tender and just rare enough, and the fish was well cooked and delicious. (4 credits: $197.42)

Dessert, of course, was included with this meal, but we didn’t eat it right there. Instead, we had another cheese plate (so yum—I have been DREAMING about the Fourme D’Ambert ever since) and a slice of apple walnut cake wrapped up to take back to our room because dessert was actually THE MAIN EVENT: my honeymoon gift to Robert.

A tiny replica of our wedding cake! So adorable, so delicious!! Rob teased me about “finally getting some wedding cake” through the whole dessert (which Disney says is meant for ONE!) because he only got a single bite of our actual wedding cake—I ate the rest of the slice we cut ourselves, and then he was never able to get a slice from the cake table once it was all out and cut for guests.

Totally full and laden with desserts in a beautiful Narcoossee’s bag, we headed back to the room. We’d intended to walk along the beach to the Poly for fireworks, but we got such a late start on dinner that the fireworks were just minutes away when we exited the restaurant. Plus we were too totally full to do much walking and it was sort of extremely cold.

So we hopped on the monorail (after admiring the ah-mazing gingerbread setup) instead and watched the fireworks as we circled the Seven Seas Lagoon, then hopped off after the show and headed to our room. Even at that point, we’d planned to take a quick nap, then head back into the Magic Kingdom for Extra Magic Hours, but once we fell asleep, we were totally OUT for the night.

Not much park action today, but it was a very calm, relaxing day. Two thumbs up!



Up Next: Epcot!

[MelissaSue]

Well rested and a bit sheepish about skipping Extra Magic Hours, I got up extra early (around 6am) to do the last load of washing so we’d have more time in the parks later in the day. Rob was up by 7:30, and we folded and put away while we got ready.

We’d planned a later breakfast (9am) at a local restaurant (Kona Café), so we shared the cheese plate from the night before as “first breakfast” when Rob woke up.

At Kona, we shared a press pot of coffee and both had the Liloki juice (which had less orange juice in it than the POG juice at Tusker House and, we think, made for a better beverage).

We loved Kona, and we both definitely want to go back. The décor is fun and beachy without being too silly and over the top. One thing that really turned us off was the manager. We could clearly hear him complaining to his servers and to the hostess that the breakfast crowd was very slow today. It wasn’t a commentary on us, really, but it did make us feel like we were just butts to fill a seat, and that’s not a very special feeling.

Luckily, our food soon arrived, which made everything seem better. For breakfast, I had the Macadamia Pineapple Pancakes, which were unbelievably delicious and completely filling. The nuts added a great bite to the whole dish, and the pineapple wasn’t too sweet. Combined with the really, truly top notch pancakes – YUM.

Unable to make up his mind about an entrée, Rob had the Big Kahuna, which included French toast, Macadamia-Pineapple pancakes, eggs, home fries and bacon. Everything was great, but Rob said he has had better French Toast, and his pancakes didn’t have the nuts cooked into them like mine. (2 credits: $40.32)

We walked around the Poly for awhile, admiring the hotel. I especially loved the internal waterfall, although I was disappointed that there seemed to be no gingerbread art. We also bought some postcards for our coworkers as well as for my Fairy Godmailer duties and put them right in the mail on our way out.

We walked over to the Ticket and Transpo Center and were SHOCKED to find it absolutely mobbed with people. The line for the Magic Kingdom monorail was actually spilling out of the loading area into the open plaza. We must have looked shell shocked because a friendly Cast Member stopped over and politely pointed out that there was no line for the bus to the Magic Kingdom. Luckily, we were headed to Epcot, which had literally no line. In fact, there were only 2 other people waiting for the monorail!

Our notes for this day are kinda sketchy, but I remember we started in Future World. We were thinking about doing the Behind the Seeds Tour, but they were already all booked up until much later in the day, plus our blisters were acting up, so we decided to save it for the next trip. We did, however, grab Soarin Fast Passes on our way out.

We headed over to the Living Seas, where we rode in our clamobile (so fun … except for the jerks who didn’t understand “no flash photography”) then wandered the aquarium, which oddly made me sea sick. I’ve never in my life been sea sick before, but there you go. So I actually sat on a bench outside, basking in the sun, which Rob wandered around the aquarium. He says it was neat. He says, “I like fish.”

After that, I believe we caught a showing of Captain Eo. Neither of us had seen it before, but some friends highly recommended it. It was really quirky and fun with just the right amount of cheese—we love science fiction.

A quick trip to Club Cool (which was much like what we remember from touring World of Coke in Atlanta), a visit to the Kim Possible Recruitment Center, a stop at Mouse Gear and a few Photopass poses later, and it was time for our lunch ADR at Le Cellier.

Not a very productive morning, but we were really getting tired at this point in the trip.

We showed up 15 minutes early to our ADR … and waited 15 minutes to be seated. They really pack them into Le Cellier, and they time their ADRs well! It was the only time all week that we showed up early and weren't seated within 5 minutes.

We were insanely excited about this meal but were unfortunately a bit disappointed. It was better than some of our other meals for sure, but almost every single item that came out of the kitchen was too too salty. And that’s coming from someone who likes things too salty!

Rob started with the mussels, which he thought were delicious and I thought were gross. I had the famous cheddar cheese soup, which I found to be a bit spicy for me and not at all what either of us were expecting. We were expecting a rich, beery taste, but it really only tasted like sausage and salt. Neither Rob nor I would order it again, even with delicious pretzel bread as a dipper.

For lunch, I had the petit filet with mushroom risotto and Rob had the strip with roasted potatoes. The filet was delicious—a good cut of meat, prepared well. The risotto was delicious, too, but very salty. The strip was gristly (we shouldn't have ordered it medium rare) and also too salty. The potatoes were also over salted.

For dessert, I had the maple crème brule, which was delicious. Rob had the Mount Blanc Semifreddo in a peach soup. He liked the dessert, but thought the soup was a little too sweet. Overall, we walked out feeling very full and very happy. Don’t get me wrong—it was a good meal!! It just wasn’t what we’d been expecting after hearing so much about LE CELLIER. (2 credits: $143.59)

After lunch, around 2pm, we headed back to the room for a nap. We were back in the park by 5pm, in perfect time for our 5:15 Soarin Passes! Even the FP line was a little long, and we were extremely fortunate—we got pulled from WAY back in the line to fill two empty seats!! It seemed like there were a lot of large groups (6 or more) touring together that day, so we got very lucky!

We headed over to the World Showcase, intending to explore the Pavilions, but the park was absolutely mobbed. Kids were running everywhere, the lines for the Candlelight Processional were spilling out into the walkways all over the place and we were really too tired to fight it.

Instead of getting frustrated, we picked up our Kimmunicator. The Kim Possible Missions—we did Germany and China—were a lot of fun. Rob would love to see a version for adults that uses the same effects but gives clues that are a bit tougher to figure out.

I’d heard great things about La Cava del Tequila, so after saving China, we wandered over to Mexico to give it a try. Tequila is sort of my favorite thing to drink, but I didn’t know much about it, so the little cantina was very cool! The mural and photos on the walls explain the process of making tequila, and they offer an (extremely overpriced) tasting of three different kinds of tequilas (La Cava Tequila Flight), which we tried and loved. I'd love to go back when we can linger a bit longer.

Time sped by this evening and before we knew it, it was time for our dinner at Tutto Italia. Another restaurant where they seat you VERY CLOSE, but luckily the waiter (didn’t write down his name) and bus boy were both VERY CUTE, which did make up for it a bit.

For apps, Rob had the Fresh Mozzarella salad with tomatoes, basil and Tuscan olive oil. I had the tortellini zuppa, which is sort of my favorite light, delicious soup in the whole world. I often make it at home and was really pleased with this version, which was elevated from my home version with a perfect blend of spices and fresh-tasting tortellini.

For entrees, Rob had the Tagliolini pasta with shrimp, braised artichokes and a cream sauce, which he says was unmemorable, mostly because he can’t remember it at all. I ordered the baked cannelloni stuffed with spinach, ricotta, bechamel and parmesan cheese. This was amazing. Rob was jealous! I wasn’t able to finish it all, so we packed it up to take back to the room.

(Spolier alert—we heated it up in the microwave at Contempo Café the next day, and it was STILL ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS, even after spending the night in the deep freeze.)

For dessert, the language barrier got in the way. We’d each ordered a torte (there were two on the menu), but we both received the chocolate torte. We decided to just go with it. We both thought the berry sauce was delicious, but Rob thought it didn’t go well with the tart and I thought it complimented it nicely. Overall, it was a nice meal, and we’d order and split the cannelloni again for sure. (2 credits: $97.00)

After dinner, we wandered back around the World Showcase, stopping near France, where we picked up two Grey Goose Citron Lemonade Slushies. Yummy even in the cold!

Then we settled in for Illuminations with extra holiday fireworks. We ended up sitting on a ledge next to a very kind older couple who’d been camped out for almost an hour! I felt bad that they waited so long, then we just slid in next to them at the end, but there was plenty of room! The man and I chatted about our day, but once the show started, they moved to get a “better” view.

After the show, we meant to take a boat to the Boardwalk, then a bus to the Magic Kingdom, but the line was SOOOOO long, we decided to just hoof it to Boardwalk. By the time we got there, my feet were DONE for the day (the blister won!), so we actually hopped in a cab.

It was a bit of a scary ride—the cabby was on the phone with an ex-girlfriend the whole time, but soon after we got on the road, Wishes started! Even from the backseat of a cab, Holiday Wishes is magical!! It was a nice way to end the evening.

Even better, as we walked to our room, the Electric Water Parade was in full swing. I love that thing so very much, but sadly NONE of the photos I took ALL WEEK came out. The floats, I guess, were just too far out on the water and too twinkly for my sad little Cannon point and shoot.



Up Next: T is for Tomorrowland

[Colexis Mom]

More great updates! What great eats you've had! Sorry about the crowds!

[dwonderz]

Just got caught up! Sounds like you had some great restaurant stops on your trip! Can't wait to hear more! Very excited to hear more!

[Cam22]

Lots of wonderful meals in these updates!

[ilovedisney247]

Yum! What a great update! I love Kona for breakfast, but have yet to try Tutto Italia! I think we might add it for lunch on our June trip. Neat to see the fireworks from the cab!
My December trip will probably be the week before Christmas again--my hotel is typically empty on those dates and its easy to take the week off--especially if you have volunteered to work all of the holidays. This year I ended up with the week before Thanksgiving off and spent 3 nights at the Contemporary and worked the busy Thanksgiving weekend and then I spent 4 nights at the All Stars the week before Christmas, having volunteered to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the restaurant. I'm going to book my DVC stay for the week before Christmas this month--put in a request off and once again volunteer to work the holidays.

[chezp]

You have had some wonderful meals! Sorry about the crowds...

[OCEANGRLLG]

Just joining in here! Sounds like you guys are having a good time!

[islandgirl]

Great updates! More wonderful meals!!

[bsblady01]

more please