I love the restaurants in the parks and I am also so grateful for the other awesome options on property, such within the hotels and Disney Springs. I love breakfast. It's my favorite meal, despite the fact that I usually love starting my day with an awesome protein shake. I adore breakfast food. Brinner might actually be my favorite meal. And as I mentioned in my last post, one of my goals when we scheduled this trip was to have as many character meals as possible. On my daughter's first trip, she was scared of the characters other than Mickey and the princesses, so we maximized the magic on this trip and bet friends breakfast with Lilo and Stitch at the Polynesian Resort was ridiculously amazing!
I had heard about and tried the gluten free Mickey waffles at other resorts and quite honestly, found them disappointing. There is something different about the gluten free waffles at the Polynesian. They are addicting. Add on fresh scrambled eggs, island potatoes, bacon, and sausage that are all gluten free and we were in heaven. Make sure you don't skip out though on the fresh fruit or the passion orange guava juice. Again, I don't normally drink my calories in the form of juice, but this is worth it. As soon as your plate begins to run low, they bring out another fully stocked plate. It's an all you can eat breakfast buffet without the buffet. This is worth the splurge; besides, you have all day to burn the calories off.
And you get several characters with whom to take your pictures: Lilo, Stitch, Mickey, and Pluto. The cast members are fully immersed in character with the breakfast with cousins theme and so incredibly friendly. Schedule the start of one day around this experience.
Next up was dinner at Chef Mickey's, which is dinner with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, and Goofy. I think I actually took more pictures with the characters than of my food because I was so excited that my daughter would take pictures on this trip. We had such a blast!
Our waiter, Tim, was phenomenal. This was my first experience with having a waiter get the chef to walk me around the buffet. Normally, I am not a buffet person due to the cross contamination disaster waiting to happen with utensils in the wrong dishes, etc. That is because most buffets are neglected and only checked on periodically. Just as the case with everything else, buffets at Disney are different. There is constantly somebody overseeing each buffet area, restocking it, or watching for any issues. The chef walked me around each section, let me know what was safe, and what to stay away from. The encouraging part is that there aren't hidden surprises like there can be at other restaurants. Basically, what you think is going to be gluten free is. And they also offer if there's anything you want them to make fresh for you in the back, they are happy to oblige.
And this is also when I learned that when you celebrate your birthday at Disney, they are awesome at making it extra special. I had determined that since I was turning forty the following month and had experienced such a rocky year the year prior, my fortieth was going to be a yearlong celebration, and that it was. Tim, the awesome waiter that he was though brought me a gluten free cupcake and birthday card signed by the characters. Disney really does do it up right!
And then there's Disney Springs. We saw the lines for Ghirardelli and wondered, is it really worth the wait?! As my daughter and I were enjoying our sundae dripping with caramel and chocolate, topped with whipped cream and a square of chocolate, I'm going to have to go with a big fat yes! There were lots of other options in Disney Springs, but we actually just came for the shopping on our last night and stumbled across dessert.
Stay tuned for the fun posts on the fancy dinners...
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