We woke the next day to a freezing 32 degrees and full sun. After going through the morning bathing and dressing rituals we jumped back into the Kia and drove over to the Animal Kingdom Resort. The high temperature for the day was suppose to be 71. Silly weather channel.. Still we held on to our heavy coats and jeans.
We had 9:00am breakfast reservations at Boma. We got a little lost on the way to the Resort as the road wasn’t clearly marked, so we arrived a bit late, but they took us right in. Boma is a buffet, they take you to your seat, take your drink order then send you off to the buffet. We kinda were expecting something more African and food weird. But everything was pretty american normal.The most daring menu item was a corn beef hash furtada. Oh that and jungle juice…. the waitress came by while we where eating and asked us if we would like some jungle juice. Weird images from our youth came quickly to mind of teenage parties where jungle juice was a weird mixture of strawberry flavored boones and cheap beer. So we asked what is it, the guy sitting at the next table to us chimed it, “Oh it’s great! You’ll love it!” The waitress said, “It’s passionfruit, orange & guava.” We both yelled out a bit relived “Oh it’s POG!” Only to get sour faces back. Both the waitress and other diner clearly preferred to call it jungle juice and looked a bit miffed.
After breakfast we headed over to Animal Kingdom theme park. Now this park in the past visits has been our least favorite, so we had no intention of staying to long. Plan was to hit Expedition Everest a few times, have lunch and then go take a long nap. Turns out as we left the park later that afternoon, we found ourselves reflecting on a nice day. We skipped the Kilimanjaro speedway Safari and the water rapids ride (too cold to be wet). Got two good rides in on Expedition Everest and were happy that some age on the tracks has help make the ride feel a bit more like a runway train rather then the super smooth ride it was before. On our last visit we didn’t make it up to the train ride to the conservation center, so it was our 2nd attraction on the list.
The short train ride takes you semi-backstage to see some animal pens and allows you walk around and peek in to the vet treatment rooms and watch procedures being performed. This was nothing new for Joshua since we works for Banfield. So we moved pretty fast though this area, but it would be very cool for a kido who is into animals. Lunch was at the Tusker House, which turns out was another Buffet. We didn’t stuff ourselves on breakfast so we had some room for lunch. The buffet selections were good. Again nothing weird or adventurous. After lunch we wandered down and out of the park and headed home for a long nap.
After our nap we decided to cancel our dinning reservation we had back at the Animal Kingdom villas and try to do a walk up at EPCOT. We had skipped illuminations the night before to the weather, so the new plan was to find some dinner and some fireworks. We got to EPCOT about 6:00pm and after a ride on spaceship earth we walked up via mexico to Italy to see if we could get a seat at one of the new italian restaurants. Turned out to be a big no, so we started walked down towards England and walked right into a lady standing in the street in Morocco. Turned out this is a good thing as she was promoting the Moroccan restaurant. She wrote down a little note in Arabic and gave us directions on were to go. A few minutes later were sitting at our table.
After another americanized meal we found a great spot down in England and watched the illuminations fireworks and the special holiday fireworks ending.
Friday Morning we got our first long sleep in. We had lunch reservations at 11:50am at the 50’s Prime Time cafe and nothing on the books for breakfast so we slept in and took our time getting over to Hollywood Studios. With a high of 77 we finally broke out the shorts!
We got to Hollywood Studios with plenty of time to spare for lunch so we made a beeline for Pixar Place to get fast passes for Midway Mania. We got the passes but for 6:45pm, tonight was our 7:00pm showing of TRON. So we decided with a small tear that we didn’t like that ride (complete lie..) anyway and jumped on the Great Movie Ride.Lunch was at the 50′ Prime Time Cafe. Which is a cute restaurant that has 50’s TV’s playing video clips. All of the staff pretend that MOM is cooking and make sure everyone follows moms house rules. No elbows on the table, no games at the table… ect. Anthony had lunch here back in the 90’s and wanted to share the cool place with Joshua. WOW was that a mistake.
The first hiccup came when our name was called. Half way to our table (in the good area) the server realizes that our table already has guest at it. So back we all go to the waiting room to wait. A moment later we get taken to what can only be an after thought room. The server pulls apart a 4 top table and converts it to two 2 tops with a 3 inch gap between the two tables. The room is bare, white. One TV in corner that we can’t really see. No cool theming like the main restaurant. So we were a bit bummed but played along, not everyone can sit in the cool area and at least we are not in the bathroom like our dinner at the Blue Bayou. We as we looked at our menu the server came out again and seated two more people at our table, or rather the table that is 3 inches from our table. SO begins the uncomfortable non-verbal lunch by both tables.
What food we did get was not worth any hype. Joshua ordered the chicken pot pie and Anthony the Fried Chicken. Instead of the wonderful lunch Joshua was expecting he got the meatloaf. Our waitress was also a walking mess as she seemed a little perturbed.. Lunch took over anhour and 45mins of that was us waiting for her. This was the only restaurant for our whole vacation were we left ZERO tip. This was the worst dinning experience we had for the whole trip! So now came the hard part of the day and the main reason that Hollywood Studios is now our least favorite park. After lunch there was nothing to do…. Well almost nothing. Joshua did Tower of Terror once. But the lines for Midway were over 90mins and so we the Aerosmith roller coster. Even star tours was closed.
So we did the short backlot tour and checked out the animators area and demonstrations. The real highlight of our day we Dinner at the Brown Derby, a restaurant we LOVE. Problem was killing time between lunch and dinner. We ended up doing a lot of walking and pre-shopping. For dinner at the Brown Derby we had a mission… Cob Salad.
We love the Brown Derby’s Cobb salad. And joy of joy it is no longer served as a 2 person appetizer. Which really would not have matter too much as we both wanted it. Problem was the single serving is still the double serving portion. So we ending up with 2 HUGE bowels of salad! It was so funny as both of us tried to eat as much as we could, just like two little kids, as we loved it so much. So you know what they say don’t fill up on bread you will spoil your
dinner. Well we kinda did. When our main course came we both kinda poked at them, they were good but the salad was SO much better. Josh had the double bean vanilla creme brûlée for dessert and was in seventh heaven.. Next visit we are going to get the Cobb Salad as our main course and split one order between the two of us!
So after dinner at the Brown Derby we headed over to the Osborn Lights. They were very very pretty! Over 3 million LCD lights! The streets were packed and just
as we got to the middle it dawned on us that we only had 40mins to get to our movie! We speed walked all the way to the furthest parking lot in 10 mins! We burned off most of dinner LOL!
TRON legacy was showing at the Downtown Disney AMC theater, which was about a 10min drive from Hollywood Studios. We both are Sci-Fi geeks and Anthony LOVED the original TRON movie as a child. So seeing TRON legacy on Disney Property on opening night was like a little kids dream come true.We have a large screen TV in our home and rarely go see movies in a theater. We find it too noisy and hate the high cost. But we where really impressed with this theater. Super comfy seats and the picture quality and sound was amazing.
According to Disney… “The AMC Entertainment upgraded auditorium one to be the first Enhanced Theater Experience (ETX™) in the United States. The ETX auditorium includes a 20 percent larger, floor-to-ceiling screen, 3D technology, 12 channel audio and digital projection that delivers higher resolution than HD.” The extra tech really was noticeable! We LOVED the movie, for once the hype matched the movie. Fingers crossed for a third film!
