Tax Day!
Yes, I was signing my business tax return on the 14th while boarding our southwest flight. But I’m glad I did becuase I didnt have to think about it any more! Tax day was like anyother day at DIsney World. In fact, I was thinking.. wow, all of these people must have already finished their taxes! Look how relaxed everyone looks! lol
Wednesday!
I was excited to try a Cortado from the Barcelona Lounge. It just seemed fitting to order a Spanish style espresso drink at a Spanish bar in a Spanish lounge in a Spanish hotel! Which, buy the way was staffed with mostly people from actual Spain! It was such a delight.
The Cortado was delicious. One shot of espresso with just a little dab of steamed milk. I definitely like it better than a latte or cappuccino, but not as much as my beloved Americano.
We tried to grab a quick breakfast sandwich at the Little Mix coffee bar, but DD didn’t see anything she wanted, so we went again to El Mercado de Coronado. It’s such a cute quick service. There was plenty of seating and the ordering was easy. Although, they did not have mobile order. I grabbed a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich on a brioche bun. The bun was little over the top so I torn off the top half of it. But other than that it was perfectly delicious and it filled me up!
We took the bus to Epcot after this and me tup with some friends at Epcot. Walked around a bit and then met up with our other friends. We tapped in to Living with the Land and booked Slinky for HS for the early evening.
We were ready to start testing some snacks, but the food booths this year didn’t open until 11:30. So we high tailed it to Swirled Showcase and got the peach dole whip, blueberry soft serve and the liquid nitrogen Honey Mascarpone Cheesecake. The peach dole whip was everything, honestly. It was sweet, tangy, refreshing, and delicious! And it smelled too good! My daughter preferred the blueberry soft serve. She said she was so tired of everything peach flavored. To be honest, I’ve been OBSESSED with peach flavored everything for the past 9 or so months, so I get it. The blueberry soft serve was delicious. It was creamy and light and had a wonderful blueberry flavor, don’t get me wrong. It was delicious in it’s own right. And had we not had it with the peach dole whip, I may have been gushing about that! But, it really just didn’t hold a candle to the Peach. It was the tang and the sweet and the dole whip texture that really did it.
The nitrous cheesecake was a sleeper hit also! It was crunchy on the outside and creamy on the inside with a delicious light cheesy flavor. It had a blueberry compote on the side, which added a nice tang as well. I’m not a big cheesecake fan, but if it could all taste and have that texture, it would be a major contender for dessert for me. Everyone with us liked it too. It was a very interesting take on cheesecake.
It still wasn’t 11:30 yet, so we tried to find another open booth. The only one we saw was the outside Communicore Hall building My friends got the conch fritters and the fish slider. I was still full from that sausage and egg sandwich and dole whip. I did want to try the fish slider and am Im sad that I missed it. My friend said it was good, but small. And they also said the conch fritters were good. But there was no gushing, or oh my gosh… you need to try this. They just said it was good. What we did get was the Cucumber Watermelon slushy. It had an exact watermelon and cucumber taste! Like you could test both the same. It was lovely and refreshing, and I think we finished it in 3 minutes. Don’t get it if you don’t like cucumber. Sometimes with cucumber drinks, you can’t really taste the cucumber. This slushy, you definitely can!
We walked around for like 5 min and then realized that the rest of the food booths were open, so we headed back over to communicate hall. On the way back, I grabbed the chip and dip trio at Yacht Grub. It has three dips, one is a whipped feta citrus, one is an onion dip and the third is a pimiento dip. I thought they were all rich and delicious! The feta was my favorite, but my friends had each said the other two were their favorites! So, I just think they are all delicious! But honestly, the star of the show was the chips! Homemade chips taste amazing and have a wonderful crunch and they seasoned them with the perfect amount of salt to be dipping into flavored dips.
I brought this back to the communicate hall and we got a couple of the steak bowls, tomato salad and peach cobblers.
Can I just say that that was basically the best steak I’ve ever eaten! And to think they made it in bulk at a theme park is mystifying! I could not have cared less about the risotto, but it was good. It just paled in comparison to the steak. And I kind of just wish they served it with mashed potatoes!
The tomato salad was perfection. The tomatoes we got were fresh and had a lovely flavor and they topped everything with a delicious vinaigrette! It seemed like the tomatoes were marinated in it, but they weren’t soggy or squishy, so I’m not sure. But the flavor was balanced and the dish was refreshing.
Last but not least, we got the peach cobbler with the cinnamon gelato. The peaches were massive slices, the cobbler was well seasoned and the cinnamon gelato really topped off the flavor profile! DO not get if you don’t like cinnamon. All of this had a strong cinnamon flavor. Which, naturally I loved! It was perfection with a piece of the cobbler, the ice cream and the peach!
It was around 1:00 or so when we were done. In the breezeway of Connections, there were a bunch of pin traders set up at some picnic tables. So we sat there for a while and let the girls try to trade pins. There were some very serious pin traders, and some hobby traders. Everyone seemed super nice to the girls.
We had our LL for Guardians, so we track dover there as soon as our food settled. The nice thing about these festivals is that the portion sizes are small, and we shared everything, so we were pleasantly full, but not overstuffed. Our LL went pretty fast, and we got the song I Ran. I love that ride with that song! It’s so fun! I still haven’t gotten September. We are seriously thinking about going back on Sept 21st so we can form sure get that song!! It is such a fun ride, but out took me awhile to get to that point! I have realized that I do best in the front row so when I get scared, I can see where we are going. It makes the ride so fun!!
After Guardians, we had a LL for Test Track. DD hadn’t ridden it yet with the new overlay and I was so excited for her too try it out! I love test track, and I especially love the new overlay when you are driving through the forrest. She loved it too!
Next up was Soarin’. Another favorite! Soarin’ is such a fun and relaxing ride. But this time, the smells were not working! It still enjoyed ourselves flying allover the world, but you could tell there was something lacking. I feel sorry for the people who will only ride it once and they missed out on it! It’s such a fun part of the ride experience!
We stooped at connections cafe to grab a quick snack before heading to Hollywood Studios. We just had the normal Chicken tenders and fries. We also got the watermelon mint aqua fresca. My friends did not like the drink, but my DD and I did! It wasn’t as good as the cucumber watermelon slushy from earlier, but I like date flavor. I didn’t find it too sweet, and the mint wasn’t all that strong to me. But I am a big mint and basil in your drinks fan, so maybe I’m just more used to the flavor.
After this we headed over to Hollywood Studios. We had a Slinky Dog dash LL. I love that ride also so much!!! It’s just so fun and adorable. After that we raced around using up all of our Lightning Lanes. It wasn’t busy, so we hit all of the “good rides”. Toy Story Mania, Millennium Falcon, and Mickey and Minnie, and Star Tours. It was the best Star Tours ride we had! I love that ride!! We had BB8 on our transmission! haha and our ship landed sideways and stayed that way!! It was so unexpected and fun!
Our friends were going to Disney Springs for the evening and DD didn’t want to go, so we had some LL lined up for MK, but just decided to do the monorail loop and do some pin trading instead! It was really fun! We found some really great pins. We always find great pins at the resorts… we think it’s the best place for pin trading. Maybe they aren’t picked over as much? Not sure, but, man, it was good pickings.
We got hungry at around 7:00 and stopped a the Contempo Cafe for a quick bite. We were not looking forward to eating there, but it was convenient. But we were so shocked!!! DD ordered the bacon cheeseburger, and I ordered the Buffalo pizza and superfoods salad. The surprise hit was the cheeseburger. It was a fresh ground beef patty that looked like a smash burger. It was huge and went well over the bun! It had fresh bacon and real cheddar cheese, and it was actually so good. In my head I was thinking BBQ pizza and not buffalo, and I didn’t realize it until after we ordered it and we got it at the table and opened the box and realized, oops! buffalo is spicy! But also lucky for us we ordered this at Disney. So it wasn’t all that spicy. But also a little too spicy. If you like buffalo, you would love this pizza. The only sauce on it was the hot sauce, and it had ample chicken and cheese. The bread was soft and yummy. It was good, and we ate a little of it, but it really was too spicy for us to eat as a meal. We also had the super foods salad, which was also delicious with a nice vinaigrette and loads of.. well… super foods! I have been impressed with all of the salads at Disney.Connections cafe, Sci-Fi Diner, and Capt. Cooks to name a few. This one was no exception! It had dried fruit, kale, and all sorts of seeds and nuts.
We also split the chocolate filled cronut. It was okay. The mix of dark chocolate icing was weird with the cinnamon sugar it was coated in. But, it was still a lovely sweet dessert!
We finished walking around The Contemporary, hit all of the pin boards on the lobby level, the monorail level, and we walked over to Bay Lake Tower. We’ve had the best of luck pin trading at the contemporary!
We took the monorail back to MK and then walked back over to grab a bus back to Coronado Springs. It was about 9:30 by now and we went in for another order of the garlic knots! Thankfully, this evening we were in be asleep by 10:30. We got some much needed rest!