“Les poissons, les poissons!” A vegetarian and a carnivore EAT! *30/4 COMPLETE!!*

[Libby_Darling]

Welcome, welcome!

This is my first ever dining review, exciting! I’ve already posted the trippie of our holiday on another WDW forum but having spent countless lunchbreaks reading dining reviews here on the Disboards I felt it was my DUTY to contribute to this ever-growing collection of gastronomic delights and write a separate dining review! These reviews were invaluable when I was making our ADR’s and if mine help even one person, I will be a very happy girl

So, a bit of background on us and the trip…

WE are me (Libby) and my wonderful boyfriend of nearly 8 years, Ben.

This is us!

(I had to include that photo it cracks me up!!)

This was our first holiday to America together The furthest we had been was Disneyland Paris for two wonderful trips in 2007 and 2010. We were both at Uni for 3 years (well technically 4 because I did a Foundation year) and I wanted to go to Florida sooooooooo much but obviously we never had enough money I had been a few times with my family when I was younger and the need to go back was becoming so intense I had to do something about it!! So, fast forward to September 2010 after our wonderful Disneyland Paris holiday. We had both finished Uni, got good jobs and were feeling pretty good about the future. One night I was browsing the Disney UK website for the 589th time and I mentioned to Ben how good the current offer was (stay at OKW or SSR 45% off + free dining) and he told me to put the deposit down! The rest, as they say, is history! We flew out from London 6/10/11 and flew back 21/10/11.

The holiday cost a small fortune, we had a jam-packed schedule, did everything we wanted and more and it was the best 2 weeks of our whole lives We need to go back!!!!!

I could literally talk for hours about the holiday BUT you are here for the food so I will try to refrain from mindless chatter and focus!!

We actually did a split stay this holiday…we stayed in 3 different hotels! 8 nights at Homewood Suites on International Drive, 1 night at Universals’ Hard Rock Hotel and 7 nights at Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa. I don’t know if you guys want to read about our food from the first week? We did eat at some really amazing places! (I am obsessed with America/American food so it was all amazing to me but I understand to most of you it will just be ‘normal’ food hahaha) They are part of the holiday to me and I always enjoy reading about non-Disney food and I know others might so I’m gonna share them, if you’re only here for Disney food you might want to just check back at the end!

So, our dining preferences. This may SHOCK YOU (as it seemed to do to 99% of the servers we encountered on this holiday!) but Ben is the vegetarian and I, dear reader, am the carnivore! We found sooooo many times that the waiter/tress would put the veggie option down on my plate and the huge great steak on Ben’s before we could even utter a word! We found it hilarious! Stereotypes ahoy! Ben has been vegetarian for 6 years now and I’m very proud of him I eat mainly veggie when I’m with him (which is like, all the time!!) but when eating out I prefer to order meat, and when in America I prefer to order A LOT of meat!! I love steak and ate some of the best steaks of my life on this holiday. I also love love love seafood, prawns, crab and scallops and I was lucky enough to try lobster properly for the first time in Florida and absolutely fell in love with it I also really love pizza and developed an obsession with spinach and artichoke dip (as you’ll see!) which you can’t get over here for love nor money

Benji-bob is a very lovely, non-preachy, 100% vegetarian (no food with a face! fish has a face!) He eats ANYTHING that doesn’t contain meat and is not fussy in the slightest which makes it pretty easy when eating out and also when I cook for him

I am the obsessive planner in the relationship and I spent literally hours looking at menus and reading reviews before deciding where to eat and making our ADR’s. Not just for Ben but for both of us as we both love eating and wanted to try some really amazing restaurants that we wouldn’t have been able to had we not been on the DDP. But, this had the added benefit of knowing pretty much every veggie option in WDW (and to a lesser extent, outside the World) which came in handy if we decided to change any of our reservations

SO without further ado, here is the list of every single place we ate at during the holiday:

Picnic in our room at Gatwick Travelodge
Breakfast at Gatwick Airport – Lloyds Pub
British Airways in-flight meals
Uno Chicago delivery pizza
Homewood Suites Suite-Start buffet breakfast (will group these together seeing as we ate there most mornings!)
Friendly’s lunch
Millers Ale House dinner
Walmart haul and another takeaway pizza!!
Confisco Grille character breakfast – Islands of Adventure
NBA City lunch (Citywalk)
Hard Rock Hotel cocktails
Bubba Gumps Shrimp Company
Universal Studios Boulangerie Patisserie
Universal Studios pizza lunch
Butterbeer! and general WWOHP snacks
Bahama Breeze dinner
Florida Mall foodcourt lunch
Margaritaville cocktails and corndog
Cuba Libre dinner
Seaworld – Sharks Underwater Grill
Giordano's deep dish pizza!! (3rd pizza delivery…)
Discovery Cove dining (breakfast, lunch and snacks!)
Olive Garden dinner


And DISNEY FOOD!!

Cinderellas Royal Table breakfast
Cosmic Rays lunch and Cosmic Rays dinner!!! (how’d that happen!?)
F&W festival snacks and drinks Part 1
F&W festival snacks and drinks Part 2
Sunshine Seasons lunch
California Grill birthday dinner (Part 1)
California Grill birthday dinner (Part 2)
Super duper Anniversary HAMPER from Ben
SSR Artists Palette lunch
Tune-In Lounge drinks
‘Ohana dinner Part 1
'Ohana dinner Part 2
Animal Kingdom snacks
Restaurantosaurus lunch
Boma dinner Part 1
Boma Dinner Part 2
Earl of Sandwich late night snack
50’s Prime Time lunch - Part 1
50's Prime Time lunch - Part 2
MNSSHP - Pecos Bills dinner
Earl of Sandwich lunch
F&W festival eating and drinking (Part 1)
F&W festival eating and drinking (Part 2)
Tony’s Town Square lunch
Bonus Content - Saying Goodbye to the MK
Narcoosees Anniversary dinner Part 1
Narcoosees Anniversary dinner Part 2
Last day and lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express Part 1
Last day and lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express Park 2
Airport food, British Airways in-flight food and final message!

WOW that’s a lot of food. I promise it was only 2 weeks!! I work full time and have a fairly busy social life but I already have some of the reviews typed up so hopefully it won’t take too long, I am determined to finish as I hate unfinished dining reviews!

Finally, my rating system!

As you may have guessed from the title, The Little Mermaid is my NUMBER ONE DISNEY MOVIE OF ALL TIME, an extremely high accolade. So, it seemed fitting to have a LM rating system!!

I considered a system that included Ariel as the best and Ursula as the worst…but I don’t think there are any places we visited that deserve an Ursula!! So I’m going for a much more light-hearted outfit based option


5 stars Ariel in her wedding dress! Doesn’t get much better than this; she’s human, she’s got her man, her Dad’s cool with it all and it’s the happiest day of her life. This food is AWESOME!!

4 stars Ariel in her beautiful pink dress. She’s happy because she’s having dinner with Eric! This food is really good

3 stars Blue dress! Nice dress but she doesn’t have the best day what with being thrown into the water and all. Average food.

2 stars Ariel in her fins. Controversial choice but technically she didn’t really like them, “flipping your fins you don’t get too far…” so although they are beautiful she’s unhappy. This food is not good.

1 star Ariel in her makeshift DIY canvas dress. Not her best look!! Although I love how it looks awful in the first shot and then magically smoothes over and looks okay the rest of the scene! Ahhh Disney magic This food is AWFUL!!!

I hope you like my rating system and I hope you enjoy the reviews! I’ll try not to write so much next time!!

 

[CraigB03]

Count me in, can't wait

 

[H20DogsNDisney]

ready! can;t way for more

 

[momtwoboys]

I'm totally in! Love your review system! Little Mermaid is my second favorite Disney Movie...with Mary Poppins being first Can't wait to read all the reviews

 

[rznhal]

Awesome rating system!! Love it! Can't wait to read all about your trip!!!

 

[wild.zinnia]

cute rating system. can't wait for the reviews.

 

[Libby_Darling]

Count me in, can't wait

Yay!

ready! can;t way for more

Yay thank you!

I'm totally in! Love your review system! Little Mermaid is my second favorite Disney Movie...with Mary Poppins being first Can't wait to read all the reviews

Awww I love Mary Poppins too! It's hard to choose cause they're all awesome really haha, glad you like TLm too

Awesome rating system!! Love it! Can't wait to read all about your trip!!!

Hiiiiii glad you like it! Hope you enjoy the reviews

cute rating system. can't wait for the reviews.

Thank you! I'm just about to upload some!

 

[Libby_Darling]

Picnic in our room!!

First food of the holiday! We were both at work in the day (I had a half day) and my parents drove us to Gatwick Airport about 6.30pm and we got there about 8pm. We were both tired as I knew we would be so I had packed us a little in-room picnic!!

I had to run around the supermarket because I was going to miss my train so I ended up getting a pretty random selection of food! We had bread, hummus, blue cheese dip, brie and some Quorn scotch eggs. I also had a little readymade pack of smoked salmon dip and crispbreads. To finish we had Key Lime Pies (getting in the Florida mood!) but tragically we were so full we couldn’t eat them!! Had to leave them in the room

We have a little tradition that whenever we’re in a hotel room we get a cheap bottle of something bubbly This time we had sparkling rose, delightful! Here is Ben being a good waiter!

We enjoyed our little picnic relaxing on the bed watching TV and then were able to get an early night before our flight the next day. Perfect!!

The Verdict: Very enjoyable picnic and much cheaper than eating out!

 

[Libby_Darling]

Gatwick Airport Breakfast

Once we got to Gatwick Airport and were all checked in we headed to the pub for breakfast as we were both starving!! Ben started as he meant to go on by getting a cider but I sadly couldn’t face alcohol and just got an OJ.

Busted!!

I went for the “breakfast bloomer” which was bacon, egg and a sausage in a sandwich with a side of hash browns. It was really good!!

Benji got the full vegetarian breakfast which looked amazing when it came out! It had fried eggs, mushrooms, hash browns, a tomato and beans and he ate every last bite!

Really nice breakfast and we had a fab view of the runway so we could get excited about seeing our plane!

The Verdict: 4 stars, lovely breakfast

 

[Libby_Darling]

British Airways inflight food

We flew with British Airways and it was an amazing flight! IFE was awesome, we had AVOD so there were plenty of films and TV programmes to watch, not that I could concentrate because I was so excited!!!

About half an hour into the flight we were brought drinks, as we were on holiday I chose white wine! Ben got a beer.

After the drinks service, all the special diet meals were brought out which included Ben’s lacto-ovo vegetarian lunch that I had ordered online. It was free to do and really easy but BA recommend you order them before rather than asking when you’re onboard.

His meal looked lovely! And he really enjoyed it He got chickpea curry and rice, plus a side of roasted veggies, a bread roll and some fruit.

Unfortunately mine was brought out wayyyy after his so there was no way he could have waited but it really didn’t matter, by the time I got mine he was getting well into another film!

Our row was one of the last to be served, in fact I think it was actually the last and I just knew I wouldn’t get my first choice of pasta. Tragically, this was the case and I could only have chicken curry which I said was fine, it didn't really matter.

However, when I opened the lid of the hot dish I was amazed! It was thai green curry with sticky coconut rice, one of my absolute favourites! It was cooked so well too and I really enjoyed it. I also had a smoked salmon salad with a slice of lemon, bread rolls with butter and chocolate profiteroles for dessert. Quite a treat! I ate it all and was absolutely stuffed!

Everyone always complains about plane food but we really enjoyed ours!

About 2 hours before we landed we were brought round sandwiches which I forgot to photograph, possibly because I gave mine to Ben and ate a cheese baguette that I’d purchased at the airport instead! I think the fillings were egg mayo and I just didn’t fancy it. Ben enjoyed them a lot though.

The Verdict

Gotta be 5 stars! BA plane food is wonderful!


We were nearly at our destination!!

 

[Libby_Darling]

Delivery Pizza from Uno Chicago

I won’t go into details but we had a little incident surrounding the limousine I’d booked as a surprise for Ben but we ended up arriving safely at our hotel, the amazing Homewood Suites on International Drive around 6pm! Which was not too bad considering it took us an hour and a half to get through immigration!

We checked in and went up to our room and then realized it was 6.30 and there was still half an hour of the Managers Reception to go! The Managers Reception was held Mon-Thurs between 5-7 and served complimentary food and drinks. It was awesome. We freshened up and headed back downstairs, getting a glass of wine and a beer and having a little toast to the start of our holiday

Once we’d finished we went for a stroll down International Drive, taking in the sights and picking out places we might want to eat later in the week (not that every restaurant wasn’t already planned and in The Itinerary…) and stopping at Walgreens to get a few snacks.

By the time we got back to the hotel we were both exhauuusted and couldn’t face going out for dinner, we’d been up about 22 hours eekkk!! Ben used the room phone to order a pizza and we were so tired we couldn’t even think about toppings/crusts/meal deals so we just got one cheese pizza. How dull!! It arrived about 20 minutes later though and it was seriously delicious, if a little bit pricey for what it was!

The Verdict:

I was so hungry by this point that I would have eaten anything but I was also so tired that nothing could have tasted that great so this pizza gets a

 

[cocofifi]

I absolutely love this trip so far. Very entertaining. What an adorable couple!

 

[BLTLDZ]

You two are SOOO cute, and I am loving your reviews! Count me in

 

[iluvpluto27]

I'm definitely in! I've loved reading your trip report over on the dibb, but didn't get a chance to comment on it.

 

[sarahewoods]

Hey Libby,

Your full report is fantastic, and being such a foodie I have to follow you here too.


Yum yum
Hope the two of you are well xx

 

[MickeyMoguls]

Great dining review! Can't wait to read more! ALso love your rating system...Little Mermaid is a sentimental favorite of mine, my cousin's husband was one of the art directors. His little girl had red hair and green eyes which is one of the reasons Ariel's hair is that color, since they said too many other main characters had blond hair.

 

[wilma-bride]

Libby, great start to your reviews. We are obsessed with American fare too and all of our restaurants are planned months in advance.

I also love your rating system - the Little Mermaid is my second favourite Disney film (the first being Beauty and the Beast).

Hope you get some more of your review done soon, can't wait

 

[chocolateMinnie]

loving your reviews - as a definite carnivore I still enjoy having veggie meals (just not meat substitutes) and the meal on BA looks excellent - we prefer Virgin for everything except the food. BA definitely wins there hands down.

Looking forward to the rest.

 

[GoBirds]

Looks great. Can't wait to read all the reviews!

 

[irishsharon]

Really love your reviews!!!! I'm excited to read more!!!!