An Evening in the Garden: F&G Festival Booths
First, a life update. We are sadly cancelling our September
MNSSHP/Food & Wine getaway. After planning a bunch of dining, booking FP+, and booking a surprise stay at AKL for T, we can't go because we're relocating for my new job. (Boo hiss, we literally just moved back to Oregon... heartbreaking
) Very disappointed to cancel, but it seems unwise to take PTO less than a month after starting.
Maybe we can wrangle a weekend trip during F&W and brave the crowds. T would do anything to taste the avocado crema again, provided it's available this year.
On the bright side: we may do a "land and sea" trip in January or February. We're considering an Alaska cruise next summer, but having never cruised before, I want to take a short ~practice cruise~ to ensure we enjoy it before committing to a 7-11 night cruise. The tentative plan is to cruise on the Dream and spend a few days at WDW during
Festival of the Arts.
Back to our dining adventures...
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The next morning we woke up to kids running and screaming up and down the hallways while banging on the metal railings. This is the only time I've experienced that at Pop. Very amusing, it's the example people always use as a precaution against value resorts! Due to this unwanted wake-up call, T is now almost completely against future stays at Pop. (I still love it, though.)
We got on a bus to Magic Kingdom because I didn't feel like dealing with parking at the TTC. Our first FP was for Space Mountain, which was great fun for our necks, and then we got a pepper jack pretzel at The Lunching Pad because I was absolutely starving. No picture, due to aforementioned hunger.
After narrowly avoiding a hangry incident we rode the People Mover, my favorite attraction in MK:
No clouds! It was a pretty hot day.
Then it was time for our Seven Dwarfs Mine Train FP. T wore his "dig dig dig" shirt this day:
We rode the teacups (first time for T, first time for me since I was very young), browsed the gift shop in Storybook Circus, then it was time to use our FP for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
After the encouraging scene at the end of the ride where Piglet et al. have a party and celebrate with cake, T felt a snack was in order:
No pretty shots of the Mickey ice cream sandwich because it started melting about 2 seconds after being placed into T's eager hands.
After this, T said he wanted to go on that "edge of tomorrow" ride... by which he meant Carousel of Progress, not the movie starring Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise.
While I love the CoP, T does not (or so I thought). After spinning around technology's progress over the decades, we took some photopass photos near the "purple wall" in Tomorrowland. We headed for the buses after that; it was very hot at barely noon.
What follows next was an empty bus ride back to Pop, swimming, a lunch of leftover chicken etc. from Homecomin' the night before, beers we'd bought from Publix, and T dealing with some business/work matters.
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After a relaxing midday break, we set out for Epcot around 5pm. We parked at the very back of the parking lot and it still wasn't far to walk, even with the hot sun.
I'd picked us up a Soarin' FP; we sampled the cokes in Club Cool for a bit, then were off on another flight around the world.
Since we'd canceled lunch at Beaches & Cream *and* dinner at Flying Fish, I felt we had carte blanche to eat at all of the Flower & Garden booths, or as many as we could manage.
First up was
Northern Bloom in Canada:
Seared Scallops with French Green Beans, Butter Potatoes, Brown Butter Vinaigrette and Apple wood Smoked Bacon, $6.50
This disappointed me as a scallop lover. If you'd told me these green beans were microwaved from frozen, I'd have no problem believing it. The vinaigrette was overly acidic and the scallops didn't have a nice crust from the sear.
The next booth we stopped at was
Cider House:
Freshly Baked Lemon Scone with Crème Fraîche and Mixed Berries, $4.25
Good. Not amazing, but we liked it.
Continuing on to France, we shared two items at
Fleur de Lys:
Canard Confit Aux Gnocchi à la Parisienne: Braised Duck Confit with Parisian Gnocchi, $5.75, and
Tarte à la Tomate Provençale: Provencal Tomato Tart with Sautéed Onions, Fresh Thyme and Rosemary on a Flaky Pastry Crust, $5.50
The duck confit was generously portioned and so delicious! We should've gotten two of those and skipped the tomato tart, which was good, but not nearly as good as the duck. Taken together these were quite filling, even though we shared between the two of us.
During this food tour we were also admiring the plants, topiaries, and completing the Spike spotting scavenger hunt. This was just as fun as doing the Figment scavenger hunt during Festival of the Arts, but the prize for this one was pretty lame.
Next up we have a stop at
Florida Fresh:
Spicy Blackened Shrimp and Stone-ground Cheddar Cheese Grits with Brown Gravy and Local Sweet Corn Relish, $6.75
Soooooo good. The best grits I've ever had. A week or two after this trip I was trying to remember where we'd had grits; I kept thinking it was at Homecomin', but knew we couldn't have had them there. They stuck out so well in my memory because it was divine. The corn provided nice pops of sweetness against the cheesy grits and brown gravy, and the shrimp had delicious seasoning. We thought about getting a second one of these but didn't because there were more booths to try, and I am here to tell you we regret that error. Always get a second helping if you loved the first.
We spent a while ambling around the garden near Florida Fresh. They had a ton of beautiful crop plants like artichoke, eggplant, cabbage, etc. After that, our next stop was at
Hanami in Japan:
Ginger Beef Yaki Udon: Thin-sliced Beef, Onions and Noodles tossed on the grill with Soy and Ginger, $6.50, and
Frushi: Fresh Pineapple, Strawberry and Melon rolled with Raspberry Coconut Rice, sprinkled with Toasted Coconut and Whipped Cream on the side, $5.95
I didn't try the beef yaki udon because I thought some of the meat looked fatty and stringy (and kind of like tripe). T said it was okay, he liked it. The frushi was a really nice dessert; fresh, light, and not overly sweet, even with the raspberry sauce and the whipped cream. Interesting texture compared to normal sushi. I'd get this twice if it were $4, not $6.
After Japan we took a little break in Italy, sitting on the steps of the round plaza. It was already cooling down and it'd become pretty breezy; I remember struggling to keep the frushi and udon paper boats from being knocked off.
While there I spotted a tiramisu gelato pop from a kiosk, and T dutifully went and brought one back:
It was delicious, but for ~$8 I thought it'd be bigger.
For some reason, toward the end I took dozens of rapid-fire pictures of T eating this, enough to make a flipbook or gif. One such outtake, above.
More Spike spotting. I think this is why we'd paused in Italy, to muster up strength to search for this little bee.
Elsa's pose is typical of how she looks in a lot of images and marketing, but what is with Anna's pose?
The next booth stop was at
Berry Basket:
Warm Wild Berry Buckle with Pepper Berry Gelato, $4.50, and
Island Grove Blueberry Moscato, Hawthorne, FL, $6
The berry buckle was quite good, and a huge size for its relatively low price. The pepper berry gelato just tasted of berries. The moscato was such a small pour, smaller than the usual mini pour at these booths. Le sigh.
Onto
La Isla Fresca, we have another winning item:
Sugar Cane Shrimp Skewer with Steamed Rice and Coconut Lime Sauce, $6.75
That sauce was perfect, the shrimp were huge, grilled nicely, and plentiful!, and even the rice was above average. I chewed on the sugar cane as I went along, which made up for not getting the tropical mousse cake at this booth. (Wanted to get it, but we'd mainly had dessert items.)
Sadly, that's the end of our booth adventures! There were more items I wanted to get, like always, but we called it quits early on. We spent some more time leisurely walking around World Showcase and taking pictures of the flowers and gardens. So pretty, colorful, and fragrant in some spots. Also during this time I had changed a late-night Mission Space FP to Frozen Ever After, much to T's delight. Wish I could explain why we love this ride so, but I really can't.
I protested that we hadn't had a "real dinner" because we had only snacked a lot (even though we were basically full...
), so after sunset we stopped off in Japan to eat at Katsura Grill.
shrimp tempura udon, $12
By no means is this ~gourmet~ Japanese, but I like Katsura Grill's udon. Reliably hot, salty, and fresh. T at first said he didn't want anything, then opted for a curry.
I think this was the
chicken cutlet curry, $13. If I recall correctly T liked this but had some reservations about the quality.
We took our food outside and ate in the peaceful garden, a large part of Katsura Grill's appeal. I saw a rat scurrying across the stones while we sat out there and we immediately agreed it was Remy, traveling to Japan to find international inspiration for new cuisine!
After that we were off to ride Frozen Ever After, a nice way to wind down from all of the walking and food sampling of the night. Properly relaxed, we rushed over to Mission Space for one last ride, but it was down. We spent a few minutes looking for the last topiaries we had missed in Future World. Then, we walked to the car and saw a bunch of the fireworks from the parking lot; from that position they were behind and shooting over Spaceship Earth. It was nice to see Illuminations from that perspective.
A peaceful, 5-minute drive later and we were back at Pop, packing up our luggage and soon, snoozing away.
Up next is our last day of the trip, starting with breakfast at the Polynesian!