Half the Calories, All the Fun - A "Healthier" Food-Focused Trip Report (12/2-12/13) update 1/1

[mickey916]

Background:

Even though we visited WDW a few times over the years, DH wasn’t converted to a Disney fan until he had a work conference in April of 2022 in Orlando (which we turned into an extended WDW trip). We returned a month later with our adult sons as a make-up for our 2020 Covid-canceled trip. Since then, we retired, became passholders, and visited again in Dec. ‘22, May ‘23, Dec. ‘23, and Apr. ‘24. One of our favorite parts is trying all kinds of foods and treats. We always tend to eat healthy at home but eat whatever we want when we’re in “vacation mode”. After retiring however, we had a lot more “vacation days”. This past September after being in vacation mode for most of the spring and summer, our bloodwork indicated that it was time to focus on some healthier eating, as we were both diagnosed with high cholesterol. It was definitely a wake-up call. I’m happy to say we made some lifestyle changes and both received encouraging results at our 3 month check up in November.

But, our biggest challenge was yet to come, as we planned our third annual Christmas trip to Disney. We both wanted to be able to enjoy our trip, including treats, but we didn’t want to lose all the progress we had made. So, I scoured over menus, finding healthier options that still sounded tasty and we decided to put ourselves to the test. Could we still enjoy Disney without pizza, burgers, fries, and mac n cheese? We agreed we would still allow ourselves sweet treats from time to time, figuring all our steps had to count for something. Our goal was improvement, not perfection.

I’m hoping you’ll read along and see how we did on our “healthier” Disney adventure.

 

[mickey916]

Itinerary:
12/2 Drive to Santee, SC
12/3 Arrive in Orlando: Ford’s Garage, Gideon’s East End Market, Sassagoula, Scat Cat Cafe
12/4 Epcot: Festival booths, Sunshine Seasons, Le Creperie
12/5 Magic Kingdom: Gaston’s Tavern, Pecos Bills, Captain Cooks
12/6 Disney Springs, Monorail Resorts: Contempo Cafe, ‘Ohana
12/7 Animal Kingdom, AKL, All Stars Resorts: Satuli Canteen, The Mara, Yak & Yeti
12/8 Hollywood Studios & Skyliner Resorts: Primo Piatto, Cake Bake Shop, ABC Commissary
12/9 Epcot, Disney Springs, Coronado: Coral Reef, Gideon’s, 4 Rivers Food Truck, El Mercado
12/10 Disney Springs, Saratoga Springs, Old Key West Resort, Magic Kingdom: Artist’s Palette, Tony’s Town Square
12/11 Disney Springs: Chef Art Smith, drive to Santee, SC
12/12 Drive to Stafford, VA
12/13 Drive home to Massachusetts

 

[TheDailyMoo]

I'm definitely intrigued as I've gone straight cold turkey with anything bad whatsoever...avoiding even cold turkey!

With a trip coming up and having been the type to do restaurants 2 or 3 meals a day I am in full on "can I have that steamed broccoli with a side of steamed broccoli please" mode so I am very interested to see what you found!

 

[mickey916]

I'm definitely intrigued as I've gone straight cold turkey with anything bad whatsoever...avoiding even cold turkey!

With a trip coming up and having been the type to do restaurants 2 or 3 meals a day I am in full on "can I have that steamed broccoli with a side of steamed broccoli please" mode so I am very interested to see what you found!

Oooh! I have lots of great ideas for you! Hopefully I can keep up with posting them before your trip!

 

[mickey916]

12/2 - On the Road to Santee, SC​

Last time we drove from Massachusetts we spent our first night in Stafford, VA but felt like we could’ve driven further. So, this time we decided to leave at 3:15 am and drive all the way to Santee, SC. We hit the road exactly on time and started the drive through Southeastern Mass and Rhode Island. We went forty minutes before seeing another vehicle. For breakfast, I made us baked banana oatmeal that we ate as we rode.

We opted to take the route over the Mario Cuomo Bridge, avoiding the George Washington, which didn’t really add much time to our trip and made us much less anxious!. We hit some steady traffic on the Jersey Turnpike but it was moving right along. We never had any stopped traffic until we were approaching Washington D.C. We made it to Stafford, VA just in time for lunch, stopping at a Chick-Fil-A. We both ordered the Market Salad with Grilled Chicken (Filet served on a fresh bed of mixed greens, topped with a blend of Monterrey Jack and Cheddar cheeses and a mix of green and golden apples, strawberries and blueberries. Served with Roasted Chopped Almonds). We shared one packet of Light Balsamic Vinaigrette.

This salad was absolutely delicious! The fruits and vegetables were so fresh and flavorful. We’d only eaten at Chick-Fil-A one other time years ago but this salad made us huge fans!

After our delicious lunch, we hit the road again. We realized we weren’t going to get to Santee SC in time to check in and eat dinner before 8 pm so we opted to stop at Jersey Mike’s in Fayetteville, NC. DH ordered his usual #3, ham & cheese and I ordered a turkey & cheese.

It was very tasty as usual. However for some reason it gave me really bad stomach pains later. I don’t know if it was because of the fat from the mayo or the cheese but I was really uncomfortable. In fact this is the third time in a row I’ve had this reaction from a turkey sub at Jersey Mikes, twice in August and then this time. The first two times I thought it was the pepper relish so I skipped it this time but still got cramps. No more Jersey Mikes for me!

After our quick dinner stop, we got back on 95, passing South of the Border which looked really cool all lit up at night.

We finally checked into the Fairfield Inn & Suites, Santee, SC at 7:45 pm. With stops, it took us a total of 16.5 hours. It was a very long day!!!

Up next…a much shorter drive and we arrive in Orlando!

 

[TheDailyMoo]

avoiding the George Washington

The cross Bronx into and out of the GW Bridge is enough to make anyone abandon a diet and stress eat. Good call. I'm most interested in the baked banana oatmeal!

 

[mickey916]

The cross Bronx into and out of the GW Bridge is enough to make anyone abandon a diet and stress eat. Good call. I'm most interested in the baked banana oatmeal!

Most of the recipes I use right now come from the Skinnytaste website. This one was called Instant Pot Baked Oatmeal. It was pretty good! I will include a picture of it in my next update because we had it for breakfast again in our hotel room.

 

[zanzibar138]

This sounds like it's going to be a super helpful TR! My partner and I both have more work to do on our health journey, but with 3 weeks in the US on our upcoming trip, we will definitely want to be including some healthier options among the junk. Unfortunately we're both also quite fussy, and because we're not familiar with US fast food/takeaway, sometimes it's just easier to go with something bland and junky like chicken nuggets and fries. Your salad actually looks and sounds really good, so I will know to look out for a Chick-Fil-A to give it a try!

 

[rdkeim]

Following! Wow, that was a long travel day but nice to have a shorter drive on day #2. That CF salad looks great - I need to check it out. It will be interesting to what healthier options you found!

 

[Griffin11]

Following along! We eat pretty well at home but it's such a challenge when travelling.

 

[mickey916]

This sounds like it's going to be a super helpful TR! My partner and I both have more work to do on our health journey, but with 3 weeks in the US on our upcoming trip, we will definitely want to be including some healthier options among the junk. Unfortunately we're both also quite fussy, and because we're not familiar with US fast food/takeaway, sometimes it's just easier to go with something bland and junky like chicken nuggets and fries. Your salad actually looks and sounds really good, so I will know to look out for a Chick-Fil-A to give it a try!

We have a long trip coming up this spring so we viewed this one as a "practice run" because we know for sure we can't each junky fast food for a month without ruining our progress. Luckily we found lots of great options.

 

[mickey916]

Following! Wow, that was a long travel day but nice to have a shorter drive on day #2. That CF salad looks great - I need to check it out. It will be interesting to what healthier options you found!

It was definitely a little longer that we envisioned. For our trip next spring we're considering a stop in NC instead of SC but it's tough to find hotels in safe areas along 95 in NC for some reason.

Following along! We eat pretty well at home but it's such a challenge when travelling.

It is very challenging but we found we were able to find some healthier options we really enjoyed and didn't feel were a sacrifice.

 

[mickey916]

12/3 Driving to Orlando​

We started our morning with some leftover baked oatmeal that we heated up in our room’s microwave. I had brought some strawberries and blueberries along in our cooler and we added a banana, Craisins and nuts from the Fairfield Inn breakfast buffet. It came out quite delicious!

After breakfast we hit the road around 8 am. Our original plan was to aim for lunch at Disney Springs after stopping by Gideon’s in the East End Market. We realized that with a six hour drive ahead of us, that would be a pretty late lunch. It looked like we were going to be near St. Augustine around noon so we opted to head for a restaurant there.

At 11:15 we crossed the border into Florida.

We then started to narrow down our lunch choices. We thought about stopping at one of the restaurants we’ve tried before in St. Augustine or Ormond Beach but wanted to try something new.

We’ve been wanting to try Ford’s Garage but mostly because we heard they have great burgers. Since burgers were not on the menu for this trip, I took a look at the online menu and found they actually had interesting salad options. So, we set Waze to bring us to Ford’s Garage in St. Augustine.

The inside had cool Ford decorations and our server told us that this particular restaurant is the only Ford’s Garage Restaurant located within a Ford dealership (which was right next door).

The napkins were shop rags with hose clamps around them. Very cute!

Even the bathroom sinks were well themed.

I did have a hard time turning on the water, as I didn’t see the ball valve on the wall. I stood there for quite a while with soapy hands before I figured it out.

From the lunch “brake” menu, we both ordered the Thai Chicken Salad: Grilled Chicken, Mixed Greens, Mandarin Oranges, Sesame Seeds, Asian slaw, Crispy Wonton Strips and Ginger Peanut Dressing for $11.99.

This was another flavorful, excellent salad. All of the food looked very tasty but this salad really hit the spot. We will definitely dine at Ford’s Garage again. Service, atmosphere, and food were all top notch.

We continued our journey, still having two hours to go before we reached the original Gideon’s Bakehouse at the East End Market.

As I mentioned in the intro, we were aiming for progress not perfection and planned on still having some of our favorite sweet treats which meant a stop at Gideon’s. DH and I actually prefer Gideon’s cakes and the cookie bites over the regular cookies. When Gideon’s released the cake schedule for the month, we had picked a couple that we wanted to try. This day was Tuesday. We weren’t actually interested in any of the Tuesday offerings, as we were focusing only on new ones and had tried all the listed ones before. The employee however mentioned that there were still some slices left of the Salted Caramel cake from the Monday list, so we ordered a slice of that.

We dreamt of this cake for two days as we were driving. It was going to be our first big splurge. It sadly didn’t live up to our expectations. The cake was dry and the ratio to the frosting was way off. We usually like the large amounts of buttercream on the Gideon’s cakes but this time there just wasn’t enough cake. Perhaps part of the issue was that it was actually left over from Monday so maybe it was a little stale. We ended up having a few bites and saving the rest for another day.

We also wanted to try a bunch of the cookie bites so I pre-ordered them, which is only an option from the East End Market location. Even though we only wanted to order one of each of the five flavors offered, the minimal order was 12 so that’s what we got.

We started by each having a peanut butter cookie bite.

This was very good. The inside was soft and full of peanut butter flavor and the chocolate coating really elevated the cookie. We ended up saving the rest and eating them over the 10 days. We even brought home a couple for our sons.

Oddly enough, so far the favorite thing we ate that day was the salad from the Ford’s Garage!

Up next…exploring Disney Springs and dinner at Sassagoula Floatworks.

 

[summerlvr]

Love your trip reports! Looking forward to reading more!

 

[mickey916]

Love your trip reports! Looking forward to reading more!

Aww...thank you!

 

[suse66]

I’m hoping you’ll read along and see how we did on our “healthier” Disney adventure.

Looking forward to reading all about it!

 

[mickey916]

Looking forward to reading all about it!

Thank you!

 

[DLo]

Following along. Looking forward to reading more .

 

[erinch]

Awesome start!

 

[2xcited2sleep]

Off to a great start! Looking forward to building my list of heathier but tasty options in WDW.