If you read one article about Disney Dining, make it this one.

Any one who follows Mrs Banks on Facebook knows that time has just disappeared with Christmas and birthdays and travel to Sydney and dining reservations. I am now enjoying my summer holiday and have the chance to sit and relax to prepare these posts for a couple of weeks - in between bouts of chopping things with my new chainsaw!! Oh - how The Ken Man knows me so well......  

OK .. On with the show! Here's a post I started writing about 2 weeks ago: 


It's all fuss and excitement and crazy internets clicking here tonight!

If you want to secure your favourite table service Disney dining reservation you have to book 6 months in advance - and that day is almost here past for me!!  (ha ha ha - that shows how long it takes me to write a post)

guess what I'm doing tomorrow evening?? (source: pscalculator )

Only 4 more sleeps until (now after) Christmas Day - but I feel like it's already arrived as I go crazy with the dining reservations!

We have some underlying rules to follow with our dining arrangements, including:

• We want to try lots of different things
  
• We can't eat everything (dang!) SO a la carte dining more often to give more control over the amount of food purchased and consumed.
• We are happy to split large dishes, and taste each other's meals - also happy to hoard if it's too good to share!
• Limit buffet attendance. (Usually poor food items and some of us have limited intake.)
• Enjoy meals with others.
• No cheap and nasty park food - hot dogs, burgers and dreaded Disney fries (oh, I shiver just thinking about Pecos Bills - ewwwwww - and where they ask you not to spit. Well not in front of women and children.)

Please don't make me go here (source:Disney food blog)

• Let your friend wear stretchy pants

By getting online the moment bookings opened I was able to get everything I wanted - some of which are very coveted bookings! Here are some highlights from our bookings so far:  (the links will allow you to see the current menus)

• Breakfasts - Staying in Boardwalk Villas gives easy access to fabulous breakfasts including Greek style Kouzzina (21st); Captain's Grill (22nd) and Kona Cafe (26th) (the home of REAL coffee in WDW). We are also visiting Safari Donald at Tusker House (24th) for Harambe style.

Kona Cafe's Tonga Toast. My precious ....

• Good fun themery lunch at 50's Prime Time Cafe (23rd) where you eat your veges and keep your elbows off the table.  Biergarten (21st) where it's Oktoberfest every day! Liberty Tree Tavern (22nd) where it is 4th July everyday!

 

No, Please, your quiet enjoyment of the meal will be thanks enough for these coveted bookings:

• Le Cellier - the Canadian Steakhouse (21st). This small underground wine cellar serves it's signature dishes: cheddar cheese soup and Filet mignon on truffled mushroom risotto. Oh sigh.

 

•  Chef's Table at Victoria and Albert's Restaurant - this classic is rated one of the USA's 15 most iconic restaurants, and with scores like 29/30 is one of Zagat's most highly rated. 

Now the category: "Everyone is arriving in Orlando now. Let's all go out together for a meal"

• The Crabby Shack! Fulton's Crab House will be hosting at least 10 of us on the 25th. Will you join in for more than you can eat seafood?

lobster tails, crabs, prawns, clams, oysters - served on platters, in towers, in buckets!

• On the afternoon of the 26th, we shall be raising our pinkies and ensconced at the Grand Floridian Resort's Garden View Tea Room for Afternoon Tea. It's all cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and scones with jam and cream.

(source: wdwinfo - read their full review including menu)

And now here's a booking that will be a highlight of your trip - the all new California Grill! (26th)

Closed for 8 months in 2013 to undergo a complete overhaul, I am so excited to see this new look and new menu. One thing that hasn't changed - location. It is still on the roof of the Contemporary Resort and every meal offers premier viewing of the Magic Kingdom fireworks show!

Our last evening in WDW will finish on a high note! (source: DisneyFoodBlog - read their full review)

Who cares about pictures of the restaurant or what's on the menu. Because FIREWORKS!

UPDATE: I have now secured a 2nd California Grill dinner booking for Sunday 29 June - when everyone will be in Orlando.

If you would like to come meet everyone and join in, please contact me ASAP before seating books out! As is the case with Zontians, the more the merrier!

Are you a foodie? What type of cuisine do you want to enjoy in Orlando?

Disney dining discounts deliver delight when deliberating the dollar's deepening dive.

"All right, don't practice your alliteration on me"

Maybe I have managed to pique your interest, just slightly, in the wonders of WDW. 

Perhaps even gotten you interested in going over for a meal or two?

It may be that in doing your own WDW research, you have noticed there are rather a lot of dining options and rather a lot of food.

Given the Aussie Dollar is now starting to slide away from the USD, I'm looking for any discount I can get so I can still eat like a king - rather than stand in a car park sucking an ice cube. 

FREE FOOD?! I'm sooooo there.

We have already explored that WDW is HUGE! 

Look at it! The huge lump! Just like my arse. Which is kinda congruent really. Cause dining at WDW is how my arse got to its "huge lump" state.         OK.........ONE of the causes.

What Disney want, is for you to stay on property and never leave. And spend all your money there.

One way in which they lock you in is to sell you a dining plan attached to your Disney resort accommodation booking.  These dining plans come in different sizes for different budgets and different desires. The Disney Food Blog does a very good job of explaining how the plan works.

So if you are going to join Mrs. Banks and our other Zonta friends who are having a little WDW holiday in the week before International Convention, you may want to work out if the Dining Plan is a sensible option for you.

To work this out is very easy - or really really hard -you just need to, for every meal:

• work out where you want to eat
• what you want to eat,
• the price of all that food compared to the chosen dining plan price.

Excel is my 2nd best friend

The WDW Dining and All ears.net are the go-to websites to check out the menus and prices.  At the DISboard Dining Reviews everyone is food critic! with photos!

Every single menu from every single dining option - AllEars - I luvs you

I have done the Deluxe Dining Plan a couple of times, and it was fabulous to eat amazing, top class, table service meals every night of the trip, at a decent discount and ...... well .... we're back to the size of my arse again, aren't we? But it is A LOT of food - maybe too much.


Another option is to get an Annual Pass or get a friend with an Annual Pass - like me. I have an Annual Pass! With an Annual Pass, for $100 I can purchase a 'Tables in Wonderland' membership and eat almost everywhere with a 20% discount on food and beverages. And I take 9 friends with me and the whole meal scores the discount.

My precious

Read those restaurant menus and decide where you would like to dine. Then whip out your excel spreadsheet and start doing your sums. The best option will be different depending on your family size and your hunger levels.

If you are an obsessive-compulsive planner, this is HEAVEN!

If you are not, then just tag along to my restaurant bookings.

So rabid, hungry readers, what is your favourite dining cuisine?

Lubrication

When we last left our hero, she was trudging across acres of marble tiling looking for a corner in which to have a nice cup of tea and sit down. And maybe a biscuit.

Come 2014 I'll be trading in that cup of tea for a Kungaloosh!

Disney's eponymous cocktail (source: sasakitime.com)

So when the business is done down in the Marriott World Centre Convention Centre, it is time to head up to the pointy bit for the relaxation.

So you could go to the Mangrove Emporium food court .....

premade sandwiches, burgers and hotdogs, pizza and soft drinks, coffee and muffins

..... but I am not sure why you would.

So let's go upstairs and check out the High Velocity Sports Bar

(source: marriott world centre. Unfortunately, the "in" crowd was not there the same day as I)

Filled with 28 large screen TVs at full volume, it is a place where too much sport is barely enough!

Every booth has a little personal TV. In case you want to watch the PBS Newshour. HA HA  - no just joking - MORE SPORT ONLY!

I have no beef with sports broadcasting.  I feel very sorry for televised sports fans as they all must be profoundly deaf.

Moving around the corner, is the main game (to not quite abandon sporting metaphors) - Solaris Cafe

I can see this place getting a work-out. Open for three meals a day, casual seating, large enough bookings aren't a problem. Here there will be little groups of Zontians breakfasting, lunching, coffeeing and everything else that Zontians do.

Traditional and extensive breakfast buffet up the back. Those doors on the left are to a private dining area for your large parties.

And one of those things that Zontians do, is enjoy a preprandial libation. And Solaris can help out there with the Solaris Bar

Up there in the back - where I haven't used my zoom.

If you prefer to lounge about, you could go to the Lobby Lounge bar:

Hawks Landing Golf Club Bar:

If you like the volcano heat, you could go out on The Veranda:

(Source: marriott world centre - I do not move in the circles with the beautiful peoples)

And if that isn't enough, they are currently constructing new pool surrounds which will include a pool side cafe and bar

will be re-opened in time for your morning 25 laps.

 And so the next morning, when you are nursing your hang-over and need a kick start: their own in-house Starbucks

You'll have to work really hard to go thirsty.

So gentle reader, with whom will be having your first chat and a drink?

Winter Park - Posh preprandial delectations

I am known to say that I have never met a Zontian who doesn't have a healthy appetite. Maybe I've met one who doesn't drink alcohol - but really - most events are accompanied with cake and champagne.

So if you are going to 2014 Orlando International Convention you could drink Lapu Lapus at the Polynesian  Resort .....

It has a little umbrella - snerk!

....or you could get serious and head out to Winter Park: Home of the Wine Tasting Room!

It was closed dammit! Just because it was 10am?!

Now there are several of these babies in Winter Park - and whilst they are very common in the USA, not so common in Australia. So for Australians - if you want to taste test wines you hop in your car and drive around a wine growing region stopping at the cellar doors. You taste the wines which that particular winery makes. One becomes very good at spitting.

The beautiful Yarra Valley - drink in the vines

In the USA, you go to your local shopping centre, you enter the Wine Tasting Store and sit there all afternoon until completely plastered.

Winter Park is the location is to transform oneself into a Patsy type character - it's all beluga and little nibbly things. I saw plenty of wine tasting, bottle shop type places mixed in gourmet olives, artisanal cheese and specialist chocolate shops. Not a single supermarket to be found. Until recently there used to be a store called Bullfish - a mixture of dog boutique and wine store.

Coffee, tea, spices, chocolate, tea - all the major food groups covered

When you have finished shopping for your little nibbly bits you may desire to release your tensions with a cheese platter and New Zealand SVB. Finally it is 3pm and you may enter the holy grail: The Wine Room. Using the unique Enomatic wine dispenser machines and the widest range of tasting bottles, supposedly in the world, at 150 on tap, this is the theme park of wine tasting!

The delightful Samantha Brown explains how it works - and become less lucid as the video progresses:

hmmm ... it's jammy and plummy and clangy and tinny and Eddie at 5:12

Zontians! It is time for a call to arms! Am I organising a function at The Wine Room ?..... with beluga and little nibbly things of course!