Epcot as we all know and love her, she’s been having a full makeover in the past couple of years. Most of us are very familiar with the walls surrounding her and keeping her fresh for us.
Disney came up with a new way to keep Walt’s dream of the ever growing park evolution alive by re-theming the park to now include different lands.
• World Celebration is where we will focusing today!
World Celebration is essentially the center of Epcot. It is now home to a beautiful tribute to Walt Disney himself. You can take a minute and sit down with Walt, view Epcot and even have a discussion if you would like!
While with Walt, if you look to the left, you will see a new area of refuge. In this area, expect more character Meet and Greets. I was lucky enough to see Daisy herself in all of her fabulousness!
To the right of Walt, you will find an area with benches and chairs, where you can sit, refuel yourself and even refuel your phones!
But the most exciting part of this area, is the Journey of Water.
Journey of Water is inspired by Moana and is an immersive experience. You are immersed in learning about the value and evolution of water itself. But be prepared to get wet! You are interacting with water!
It is one of the best addictions to Epcot, in my opinion.
Make sure to be prepared to get wet and for a large crowd! This is a family friendly area that can hold large amounts of people but you need your patience pants to be able to wait your turn!
Overall, these new additions are what dreams are made of! Exactly what Walt would have wanted!
Who doesn’t love cookies? To me, it is one of my favorite food groups! So I ventured out of my normal comfort zone of Gideon’s and went to Summer House on the Lake for their infamous cookie bar.
There were plenty of choices to choose from. A true cookie overload! The scenery was beautiful, very peaceful, rustic and organic.
Now for the good part, we ordered three different cookies. The Birthday Cake, the Orange Creamsicle and the Double Chocolate.
If you love chocolate this is for you but warning, the cookie is very dry! Tastes exactly like an orange creamsicle but warning you NEED A SWEET TOOTH! Just a typical sugar cookie with sprinkles, nothing special about it
Overall I would say, hold off on Summerhouse and all the talk about it. It isn’t the best cookies in town and you can do much, much better!
Bonjourno and let’s journey to Disney’s Rivera’s Topilino’s Terrace for breakfast.
Topolinos is a set price breakfast for Adults and Children. This is a character breakfast featuring Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy dressed in their finest Artistic Attire.
As per the new norm, you are presented with the characters autographs while you are seated. Each character will be around to your table, unless you are us and Donald gets sick on the day you are there!
It is a set price per person but you are presented with a menu to choose from. For an additional cost you may purchase specialty beverages.
Topolinos is placed on the tenth floor of the Rivera Resort. The views offered along with your meal are exquisite. You have a view of Hollywood Studios, Epcot, and the resorts on the Skyliner line. There is a terrace you may go out on right outside of the restaurant. Ask a cast member for help!
Each table is given a painters palette with croissants, mini muffins and muffins with three dipping sauces, a hazelnut spread, creamy butter and jam. This is for the whole table and is refillable.
The food at Topolinos is some of the best quality food on property. It is presented in a very artful way and given in a timely manner. The food is prepared to your liking and is delectable.
The characters come to your table more than once unless you had an experience like us. Donald happened to get sick and he did not make his rounds to our table. We spoke with our waitress and she was kind enough to find a way for Donald to find us as we were leaving.
Public service announcement time: please remember to always be kind to the cast members. Some things are beyond their control.
Do you think on your next trip you will try for the hard reservation of Topolinos?
Another year and more festival food to cover at Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival.
As you know, I visit every august about when all the booths open up at Food and Wine. Instead of being overwhelmed this year and forcing things, I decided to concentrate on only the cheese platters. And by that I mean, my parents ate most of them for me.
If you are unaware of what Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival is all about, let me explain. This festival concentrates on expanding ones palette from multiple different countries around the world. You can experience not only food but specialty drinks as well.
Every year, there is a cheese challenge. At each booth you purchase a cheese product, you receive a stamp, once completed you receive a special redemption treat.
This year our first cheese plate was from the alps.
Per usual it is melted Swiss cheese with olive, ham and bread slices. It literally melts in your mouth and leaves you wanting more!
Our second treat was from right next door in Germany.
This was the griddled cheese with pistachios and honey. This is a required taste. It’s basically grilled cheese with honey. Not a favorite.
Our next stop led us to Hawaii. Here was the Passion Fruit cheesecake. This cheesecake was so deliciously creamy, fruity and overall one of the best desserts at the festival.
Now it was time for our redemption treat! The redemption treat was mine. As per usual it is the strawberry cheesecake ice cream with chunks of cheesecake. I look forward to this every year! You can not purchase it separately. It is only given as a redemption.
But these weren’t the only treats we tried. We did experience some of the festival foods. Below you will find those and note they did not disappoint either.
I believe that Food and Wine is the best festival! What’s your favorite?
Well Howdy Partner, howdy do 🤠 let’s review Roundup Rodeo BBQ.
Roundup Rodeo BBQ is a family style dining experience. From the moment you step foot into Toy Story Land you are a toy, that doesn’t stop once you are in Roundup Rodeo. You are one of Andy’s many beloved toys and when a human comes, you must FREEZE. FREEZE, why? because toys can’t move silly.
But freezing isn’t the only thing the toys do, they also dance, sing and act silly! It’s truly a game as you eat!
But let’s get down to it, let’s talk the real meat of the situation. Roundup Rodeo is a family style dining experience as I said. You are presented with a menu with your options. The only real options you have to make are for allergies, sides and desserts. And let me tell you, the sides are the REAL STARS of this restaurant!
All of the greens are brought out first, then the chow and sides and last but not least the desserts.
All of the food was very good, no complaints at all. The service is great as well. Unfortunately we did have some mishaps happen. As many of you know, I have some food allergies. This restaurant in particular uses oregano and apples in a portion of their food. Our waiter was amazing, he spoke with the chef many times to make sure everything would be served properly without any reactions. I had to substitute most of the meats for some chicken and salmon.
This is where the mishap happened. When placing the order on the main computer, it cancelled out the rest of our food. We ended up spending over 2 hrs in the restaurant because they did not prepare the food for us and take us into account. We had to speak up about our wait. Of course, we were treated with care but it did take a large chunk of our park day.
Overall, the experience is great. Food is delicious and it is a must try but I wouldn’t say a must try for every trip!
By now we all know that Animal Kingdom is my favorite park and the largest park in Disney World. If you didn’t know that, now you do and you are welcome!
Animal Kingdom is dedicated to preserving the wild life. As one of the many ways to preserve the wild life, you must be educated. This education is provided by trails, safari and even tours.
On my most recent trip to Animal Kingdom, I took advantage of one of the many tours available. Let me start by saying that the tours are an additional cost. The tours range from $27-$200. My tour was a total of $27 (including an annual pass-holder discount).
I started by choosing the Caring for Giants your. This was my first Animal Kingdom tour and definitely not my last. I am hooked!
Provided in the tour is a tour guide, backstage access and up close and personal interactions with the animals. The tours can be booked via My Disney Experience.
The first thing you must do is book your tour 60 days in advance through the MDE app. once the tour is booked, you will receive a confirmation email and a follow up email right before your tour date with further information.
On the day of your tour, you will go right outside of Kilamarjo Safaris to the small tent. Yes, this small tent is not just for cute pictures! You will check in, sign your liability form and receive a badge.
Very important to make sure that you are on time for your tour and not to waste time. This tour I was on is only offered 4 times a day. If you are late, you miss opportunities and back up the rest of the waiting people.
While on the tour you will be going backstage. They do ask that you do not take any photos or videos, so phones away! That was hard for me but I did it 🙂
Once backstage you will board a van that will drive you past the animal habitats and straight to the elephants themselves. Now with any ride, trail or tour, the animals are not guaranteed to be out, so please keep that in mind! But we got lucky!
Once out of the van, you will walk a ramp to a private area to see a “behind the scenes” glimpse of the elephants. While there you may take as many pictures, videos, etc. as you may like while being educated by an amazing cast member.
You spend about a half hour to forty minutes with the elephants and learn even more information. After your time there, you board your van and drive back to “on stage”.
The whole tour is about an hr. It may be something you are interested in doing on your next vacation!
Tron! The long awaited ride, finally is opened for everyone to enjoy. You can enjoy by stressing, pacing and having a HIGH heart rate and obtaining a boarding group or pay to ride with Disney’s Genie Plus.
Tron is based off the early 1980s film Tron. You must sit as though you are on a bike and ride leaning the whole time. For those with mobility issues, you can choose to sit in a regular roller coaster type car and enjoy the ride as well.
From beginning to end the ride is a total of 45 seconds. Now I must give it to them, your take off is pretty cool, but not quite as fast as Rock N Rollercoaster. Going in the dark on the ride is awesome as well. The queue does need a bit of work because you can not understand the ride much. The queue is suppose to explain it to you but all it does is just confuse you some more.
One large plus of this ride is the locker system that they have included for your belongings. You scan your magic band, place your belongings in the locker and then scan again once the ride is finished to retrieve them. I believe more rides need to implement this. They do have this system at Universal and Disney needs to get on board as well.
Overall, I was not impressed with the ride and was quite disappointed. This ride does not beat the other virtual queues, such as Guardians of the Galaxy.
Will I ride this again, yes. I believe in second chances but would I pay for it or even say it’s a must do, NO!
Everyone who has read our blog knows that Animal Kingdom is one of our favorite parks. Actually it is our favorite park. Animal kingdom has some of the most unique choices of food in their parks. All of it delicious!
One of the most famous sit down restaurants in Animal Kingdom is Tiffins. Tiffins is often hard to find a reservation for as well. Often it is hard to walk up and walk right into Tiffins because it is so sought out.
To our surprise, my dad was able to pull off the impossible. He walked up, asked if they had any openings at Tiffins for the day and they told him, come right in! To say we were shocked is an understatement.
Tiffins has been one of the dream restaurants on this Animal Kingdom loving girls list! I was pumped!
From the moment you walk in, you are immerse in the imagineers travel journeys and feel as though you are traveling along with them. There are many different hidden details and stories to go with everything! Your server will be more than happy to share or your hostess!
Now Tiffins is on the very pricey side in my opinion. Typically when people see pricey, they think the food will not match. But I’m here to tell you that Tiffins did not disappoint.
Take a look at the menu and try not to be surprised by the prices. Don’t worry, I looked at it and went “okay I’ve sat in here, made it in here, read the menu, sipped the water and now it’s time to go!” Take it from someone who does not have money, that this can be very scary. But sometimes you work hard and deserve things. I am not someone who says that a lot and does not believe it but I did when at Tiffins
Tiffins has three different rooms you may sit in to enjoy your meal. You may request a certain room, but us just being happy to be able to get in, we took any room the wonderful hostess escorted us to.
From the moment you step into any room, it is breath taking.
Now let’s get down to the real reason you go to Tiffins, the food! We ordered the buttered chicken, Tamarind-Braised Short Rib, and the famous bread service for appetizer.
The read service came with three different types of African inspired breads with many different spreads. Each spread ranged from sweet to savory to spicy. The bread service is a cult classic and a fan favorite. It does not disappoint.
The buttered chicken melted in your melt. There is no other words I can use to describe this chicken. It was the most delicious meal I have ever had.
The short rib is one of the best cuts of meat you can have. It was savory, didn’t need a knife, and went down smoothly.
We did not get dessert because one there was no room and two because there are many dessert offerings throughout the park that you can enjoy. Plus most are the same everywhere!
Overall, make sure to always try and ask if there is an opening at a restaurant that you would like! And don’t skip out on Tiffins when in Animal Kingdom, even with the prices!
Boo 👻 spooky season is upon us! Well spooky season is upon us according to Disney World but I don’t think anyone could get mad at the best season of all coming early.
Since it is time for ghouls and such, Disney starts to offer their Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party in August and it runs until Halloween. Then promptly on November 1st it is time for Christmas.
Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is a special ticketed event, which means it will run you some extra money on top of your park ticket prices already. MNSSHP is offered at the Magic Kingdom and will start at 7 pm but your ticket allows you into the park at 4 pm to enjoy some of the park before the ghosts and ghouls take over!
At 7 pm trick or treating starts, ride overlays and very rare characters. Followed by a parade, fireworks and a castle show. All of these things are the reason for the extra price.
At 4 pm, check in time, Disney was not able to find our tickets that we purchased three months in advance. We were told to exit the park to check in, then told at the exit that we didn’t need to exit the park that we needed to head to Adventureland. When at Adventureland, they could not locate our tickets with our magicbands, annual passes or email. From there we were told to go to the ticket agent, located in Liberty Square. Do not worry, we got all our steps in! At Liberty Square, after moments, they were able to finally let us in and resolve the problem. This whole process took over an hour of our party time.
Now it’s time to partay, as the kids say! But instead we were hit with a good old Florida monsoon , which then delayed everything for another hour and a half
Once the monsoon gave a little bit, we decided, know what, let’s put our ponchos on and enjoy what we can. But we couldn’t because everything was shut, the candy truck was delayed, which meant no trick or treating, characters weren’t coming out due to lighting in the area (which lasted the rest of the night). So we were stuck and sad. But at least we looked great in our costumes!
Eventually rides opened up again and it was time to go on some. We hit the rides because characters were still not greeting and candy was still stuck on a truck somewhere! So pirates it was, because that’s my favorite. Pirates is suppose to have a spooky overlay, but was not our luck! The overlay did not happen because unfortunately the cast members who make that magic could not make it to the ride, due to the monsoon. So we rode pirates and stayed dry for an extra couple minutes. Once the ride was finished and we were exiting, we noticed the rain was stopping and decided to head straight to the one and only ABU! Come on, if you know me, you know that’s where my first stop would be!
Heading straight for Abu, waiting patiently in line to only find out that they were not going to be coming out. The cast member asked us to leave line and try trick or treating. It is now close to 8 pm and the candy was still not there. So the party was turning out to be a flop! We turned around to see that Abu had come out seconds after the cast member asked all of us to leave line, so we decided to run to the line and get back in. But again, Lady Luck was not on our side. Abu was taken back in and replaced with genie and Jasmine. I was disappointed and decided to explain to the cast member what happened. It turned out it was the cast member who had asked us all to leave, so I thought, they would understand. Instead we were told “well that’s Florida and we can’t help you out”. So my mom took over at this point because I was sad, disappointed and stressed out. It takes ALOT for me to hit that low in Disney world, the happiest place on earth!
So mom took over, found the right person and we were told to exit line, re enter line and take our chances and try to meet abu. Finally we did! Was it as magical as I would have liked, no! Was it still special, yea but my emotions were not in the right place. But listen, the party was starting!
or so we thought….We went straight up to the castle, it is now 8:30! The castle show was suppose to start in minutes. We found a spot and prepared for the spectacular Sanderson sisters castle show! An announcement was made that the show would go on, even with the lighting going off every 10 minutes.
Out comes the Sanderson Sisters. The show lasted only 6 minutes. Everyone waited longer for the show than the show itself. Rumor was the show was shut down early, due to the lighting. At this point, we weren’t hopeful for a parade.
But we were reassured the parade was happening, so we stood our ground and waited. About a half hour later we were told that the parade was, you guessed it, delayed! But hey, the candy truck finally made it. So there was some small hope but the candy lines were longer than the line I’ve seen for space mountain. So that was not an option for all of us who were stuck to our ground. Finally after a delay, here comes the headless horseman! The headless horseman slowly, very slowly, made his way around the parade route.
After another twenty minutes, behind the headless horseman came the parade! The parade was pretty special and the best part of the night so far. Within the parade there were some rare characters that you wouldn’t normally see, plus the amazing Boo to You song! The cast members did their best to have this parade happen, even though it was modified.
We got a parade, so it was time for fireworks! The lighting was still going and it wasn’t looking good, but somehow Disney found a way to make it happen. We were all very excited. This firework show was all about Mickey and his friends trick or treating and going into a spooky house. This firework show was so much better than enchantment! That’s saying something. It was very cute and put together well.
After the ten minute firework show, it was time to decide what to do. Do we go wait in the hour long line for candy, try to get to a ride with the crowds or find the characters. Well finding the characters was not an option, they were being taken back in due to the lighting. So there were two options and we decided to not choose either. We had had enough and decided it was time to get back to the resort. The weather wasn’t changing and that made it an easy decision.
So for our price we paid and with the unfortunate weather, it was not worth our money. And with the fact that the party was oversold. It was like a typical Magic Kingdom day, not the promised low crowds and small waits.
Although “that’s Florida” for you, Disney probably should have planned ahead for these things.
To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. Will I attempt to do the party again? Honestly I don’t know, I have a very bad taste in my mouth.
As soon as you step through the doors, you are greeted by a cast member saying “welcome home”. I don’t know if there is a better feeling or a better way to be greeted when you are about to go eat your dinner. Where you may be asking is this? Why, I’m glad that you asked! I am speaking of Disney’s Old Key West Olivia’s. Disney’s Old Key West Resort is the first resort ever built for the Disney Vacation Club. Within the Old Key West Resort, you will find a hidden gem, tucked away called Olivia’s.
Olivia’s is hearty home cooking with a hint of Florida in there. This is where you can find all of your favorites but with a southern, old key west twist.
Olivia’s serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. I happened to go for dinner and I was not disappointed. To start our dinner off we had a Cesar salad. That Cesar salad is big enough for more than one person, make sure to share it as we did. It was a classic Cesar salad, nothing too special about it but it did have homemade croutons! To go along with the salad, we had the soup of the day. The soup of the day happened to be onion soup. It was your classic French onion soup. This soup was so tasty, you will want to lick the bowl clean!
On to the entrees! My entree was the fish of the day, which happened to be a pan seared Salomon with some grilled vegetables and potatoes. The salmon seared to perfection and could melt in your mouth. The vegetables were coded in some lemon sauce. The lemon sauce was not too tart and was just right for me. Every vegetable was easy to eat.
Another entree tried was the classic fried chicken with mashed potatoes, green beans and a biscuit. The chicken can come smothered in gravy but we opted to have the gravy on the side. The gravy was very plain and needed more seasoning for me. The biscuit was dry as well. Make sure to dip the biscuit into the gravy, it helps! The chicken was fried to crispy perfection and was very moist. The green beans were a nice addition as well.
Lastly there is the prime rib with broccoli. The prime rib was very good but could have used a little more au ju on it as well.
Lastly was dessert. And for dessert was the classic key lime tart. The key lime tart was sweet, creamy and delicious!
Overall Olivia’s is a hidden gem and one you need to check out! Make sure to ask for Tes when you are there, she is the best and very honest!
SupercalifragilisticexpliBLOGadocious 