DlxDP w/ CL Kicked Our Butts! See us expand before your eyes! 1/19 All Finished!

[emmysmommy]

I know, I know, I KNOW....going into this I had read opinions, I had thought through all the helpful advice but I didn't think it would be a problem to have deluxe dining + Club Level in August heat.

I have a ton of photos so at times when words to describe are lacking I will just insert a picture!

Please stay tuned because I will be reviewing the following:

8/18
Dinner: Cosmic Ray's

8/19
Breakfast: Kona Cafe
Lunch: Liberty Tree Tavern
Dinner: California Grill

8/20
Breakfast: 1900 Park Fare
Lunch: Chefs de France
Dinner: Contempo Cafe

8/21
Breakfast: Main Street Bakery
Lunch: Beaches & Cream
Dinner: Coral Reef

8/22
Breakfast: Club Level
Lunch: 50's Prime Time Cafe
Dinner: Artist's Point

8/23
Breakfast: Boma
Lunch: Pizzafari
Dinner: Le Cellier
Appetizers: Club Level Lounge

8/24
Breakfast: Captain's Grill
Lunch: Earl of Sandwich
Dinner: Sci-Fi Dine In
8/25
Breakfast: 'Ohana
Lunch: Casey's Corner
Dinner: Teppan Edo

8/26
Breakfast: Grand Floridian Cafe
Lunch: Snacks
Dinner: Mama Melrose's Fantasmic Pkg
8/27
Breakfast: In room dining
Lunch: snacks
Dinner: Tutto Italia

8/28
Breakfast: Cape May
Lunch: Beachclub Marketplace

Snacks
Misc. Club Level offerings
If you are doing the math already you will see that we left some dining credit on the table.

To get all the delicious details and my opinions on the food, service, ambiance/atmosphere and other observations keep watching for updates!

 

[vinotinto]

See us expand before your eyes

I can already tell this wil be a good one! I'm excited to read about your dxDP/Club experience.

I'm also excited to see another Tutto dinner review. I made ADRs at Tutto for our arrival night dinner and I'm not clear on what's on the menu. There are different menus floating around the web. They all have different dates and different entrees in it and none are very recent menus. The one from Allears is a year old and the WDW site does not have a menu posted. I've been seeing some good reviews recently, so I think we'll stick with this ADR (after really debating this!), but would love to know what non-pasta dishes they currently have. Do you remember?

 

[vllygrrl]

Oh my - that's quite a lineup! Can't wait to see how you handled 3 TS meals most days! DH and I will be doing DxDP with CL in November, but scheduled signature restaurants every day, so we'll be doing Breakfast/Early Dinner, or Early Lunch/Late Dinner each day, filling in with the CL and snack credits as needed...

 

[emmysmommy]

See us expand before your eyes

I can already tell this wil be a good one! I'm excited to read about your dxDP/Club experience.

It is almost embarassing to admit that we did this!!

I'm also excited to see another Tutto dinner review. I made ADRs at Tutto for our arrival night dinner and I'm not clear on what's on the menu. There are different menus floating around the web. They all have different dates and different entrees in it and none are very recent menus. The one from Allears is a year old and the WDW site does not have a menu posted. I've been seeing some good reviews recently, so I think we'll stick with this ADR (after really debating this!), but would love to know what non-pasta dishes they currently have. Do you remember?

I think I can help you out since I took photos of the menus as well. I'll have to find my photos of the menu and then I can tell you the non-pasta choices but I recall an entire section of them.

I had debated this ADR as well since I have heard some very negative reviews but we had a very good experience!

Oh my - that's quite a lineup! Can't wait to see how you handled 3 TS meals most days! DH and I will be doing DxDP with CL in November, but scheduled signature restaurants every day, so we'll be doing Breakfast/Early Dinner, or Early Lunch/Late Dinner each day, filling in with the CL and snack credits as needed...

Well, here's a sneak peek for you... we couldn't eat 3 TS meals a day! But we sure tried.

Keep your popcorn handy.

 

[kimgof]

Sounds like some great places to me! Can't wait to read your reviews!

 

[pigletforever]

I can't wait, We vacillated doing CL with Deluxe for Christmas but decided against it. Sounds like we made a good decision.

 

[TheTravelingCarters]

looking forward to reading about all your great meals!

 

[emmysmommy]

I was so anxious to jump in here that I almost forgot to provide some introductions and to give a little information to frame this review...

This was a girl's trip with just me (Brenda) and my 14 year old daughter Emily. We were celebrating her 8th grade graduation. My hubby had a new job so was unable to travel for the dates that we had booked.

We booked a split stay with 3 nites at BLT with deluxe dining and then 7 nites at BC CL with deluxe dining.

This trip was originally booked before the FD offer came out. We knew we would probably upgrade should the offer be released to the general public as it was in April.

However, when we re-booked our trip as a party of 2 rather than a party of 3we kept the deluxe dining and changed our room from a 1 bedroom BC villa to CL for our Beach Club stay. I debated changing our dining plan but there were too many restaurants that I had booked ADRs and I wanted to try as many of them as I could on this trip.

You will see my final analysis in the end but the pocket book didn't take as much of a toll as my waistline.

So I'm ready to get started here.

First up will be Cosmic Rays!

 

[emmysmommy]

Sounds like some great places to me! Can't wait to read your reviews!

Why thanks!

I can't wait, We vacillated doing CL with Deluxe for Christmas but decided against it. Sounds like we made a good decision.

You will hear many different opinions and although I had read them all, I now can pitch my .02 since I have now experienced it. (For what its worth!)
Thanks for joining in.

looking forward to reading about all your great meals!

thank you!

 

[emmysmommy]

This will start off easy... not a lot to tell about our first meal on the deluxe dining plan. Although many may expect to start their trip off with a bang we kinda started it by eating at the first place we saw that was still serving food!

We had arrived at BLT in the late afternoon after traveling from the West Coast so we were not acclimated to the 3 hour time difference yet. We didn't make it to the MK until around 9pm.

Since we were in Tomorrowland we stumbled upon Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe. Hey, I've heard of this from other Disboard Dining reviews. Cool - I think it even mostly got a thumbs up!

My daughter and I both ordered the ½ rotisserie chicken. (1 dining credit used each.) It came with green beans (ok tasting) and an ice-cream scoop of mashed potatoes. The potatoes were slightly sweet tasting. I’m not sure why that was but it took me a few repeat bites to actually confirm my suspicions. For dessert Em ordered the chocolate cake and enjoyed it while I ordered the carrot cake and saved it for later since I was full from the abundance of food.

The bill for the meal was approximately $33 (my receipt shows zeros since it is the dining credit version) and no tip required since it was counter service. We had 16 meal credits remaining.

Next up: Kona Cafe

 

[darthtatty]

great start, looking forward to the rest of them

 

[DLo]

Good start! We stayed bc cl last year but with the regular ddp. we ended up having cs credits left but used all our ts and snacks. We loved bc cl - hope you did too. looks like you tried some of my favorite places (kona, beaches and cream, boma, earl) and some that I want to try. looking forward to the rest.

 

[lmgustafson]

This looks like it is going to be a great report. I can't wait for the rest. One question. How are the remaining meal credits listed? Did yours say 18 adult meal credits or just meal credits? We are trying to figure out how to keep the credits straight if we sign up for it with two kids <9. For the regular DDP the remaining credits are listed as adult TS and child TS and the CS are listed all together. I assume the deluxe plan will list the adult and child meal credits separately (unlike the CS listing for the regular DDP) since they may be used for TS or for CS meals.

Look forward to more pictures and reviews.

 

[chocolateMinnie]

DEFINITELY subscribing - can't wait to see how this worked out. I'm having a job even contemplating this amount of food!!!

 

[sydneysmom]

I'm in too!! awesome lineup!!! (and that chicken is making my mouth water!!)

 

[emmysmommy]

This looks like it is going to be a great report. I can't wait for the rest. One question. How are the remaining meal credits listed? Did yours say 18 adult meal credits or just meal credits? We are trying to figure out how to keep the credits straight if we sign up for it with two kids <9. For the regular DDP the remaining credits are listed as adult TS and child TS and the CS are listed all together. I assume the deluxe plan will list the adult and child meal credits separately (unlike the CS listing for the regular DDP) since they may be used for TS or for CS meals.

Look forward to more pictures and reviews.

Excellent question! All the credits are pooled so you only need to give them one card that will subtract the appropriate credits. The receipt will display the number of remaining credits. I'm not sure if there is a distinction between adult and child credits - we had 2 adults on the plan so hopefully someone else can jump in and help with that.

 

[emmysmommy]

See us expand before your eyes

I can already tell this wil be a good one! I'm excited to read about your dxDP/Club experience.

I'm also excited to see another Tutto dinner review. I made ADRs at Tutto for our arrival night dinner and I'm not clear on what's on the menu. There are different menus floating around the web. They all have different dates and different entrees in it and none are very recent menus. The one from Allears is a year old and the WDW site does not have a menu posted. I've been seeing some good reviews recently, so I think we'll stick with this ADR (after really debating this!), but would love to know what non-pasta dishes they currently have. Do you remember?

Ok, I found the menu picture for Tutto. It's not a great photo (sorry for the flash spot) but hopefully you can read the selections.

 

[emmysmommy]

This was one of my favorite breakfasts of the entire trip....

Thanks to the many dining reviews I had drooled over the tonga toast and dreamed of the pineapple macadamia pancakes. Now which to order? Em ordered the tonga toast and I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to try a bit of everything Kona had to offer so I ordered the Big Kahuna. I felt a little piggish ordering that much food but heck how was I to share my experience with all of my Dis friends if I didn’t sample a little bit of everything!!

We started with the lilikoi juice (orange, passion fruit, and guava) – it was pretty good.

So here's the Big Kahuna:

The eggs were good, the home fried potatoes were not so good, the ham was ok from the 1 bite that I had and the bacon was nothing that I would try again the rest of the trip. The French toast I only ate a little since they were nothing special either. However…..the pancakes topped with pineapple sauce and dripping with macadamia nut butter were AMAZING! (And they were not even that hot.) I wish I had just ordered those. Note to self for next time – PINEAPPLE MACADAMIA NUT BUTTER PANCAKES ROCK!

I did have a taste of Em’s Tonga toast and it tasted like a deep fried donut. It was good but it would have been way too much sweet goodness for me with the portion size. Now, a good breakfast combo would be the pineapple pancakes and about a 1/3 of the tonga toast! Yummy!

I liked the little plate of condiments that they set on the table – for those germaphobes out there you don’t have to worry that any kid has put their mouth on the syrup dispenser to take a lick!

Service here was pretty good, no complaints. The restaurant was not busy with plenty of empty tables. They were easily accommodating walk-up parties.

We used our 2 dining credits for the meal and were on our way. One note: We tipped cash for all of our meals and for every restaurant except one the wait staff were really cool about not stumping for tips.

The cost of the meal was $38.92 without tip. We had 14 meals remaining on the deluxe dining plan.

Next up: Liberty Tree Tavern

 

[danalee]

I'm in! looks good

 

[MickeyNicki]

Great so far! What a wonderful trip for you and your daughter, something to remember!