Dining advice

[nomoretslt]

@heathpack you are probably already there….and I just read on the only blogger I follow there is no gingerbread house at GF this year. They just finished the birdcage bar. The blogger was staying club level last week and they started drilling in the lobby to finish the bar at 11:00 pm! It echoed up and down the hallway and a guest went ballistic. Anyway it’s done, apparently people like it, and the lack of the gingerbread house has apparently cut down on foot traffic this week.
Have a great time.

 

[heathpack]

@heathpack you are probably already there….and I just read on the only blogger I follow there is no gingerbread house at GF this year. They just finished the birdcage bar. The blogger was staying club level last week and they started drilling in the lobby to finish the bar at 11:00 pm! It echoed up and down the hallway and a guest went ballistic. Anyway it’s done, apparently people like it, and the lack of the gingerbread house has apparently cut down on foot traffic this week.
Have a great time.

Yes, we're here. We knew about No Gingerbread house this year.

We arrived Sunday. My cast member cousin decided to join us for our first two nights.

Yesterday was Candlelight Processional day. Biergarten was fun (but too much food!). CP was beautiful, I don't know how I was underwhelmed in the past! After CP, we partook of extended evening hours. Rode Frozen (wut? why do people wait so long for this?), Remy, Test Track and Guardians- and our longest wait time was 20 min. We shut the place down and are so tired today.

Cousin gets a 40% discount on Whispering Canyon- so we went there for breakfast this morning before she left and we saw the WL Christmas decorations. Therefore on Thursday (our MK day), we are going to have 1pm brunch at Grand Floridian Cafe. We will do a mellow monorail Xmas tour Thursday in association with that brunch.

Tomorrow we are still deciding between the Crescent Lake tour vs mellow resort day and late lunch at Wine Bar George. Either way, we will go to EEH at Animal Kingdom tomorrow. Right now, we are leaning towards WBG.

It turns out a childhood friend of mine will be arriving Thursday. We were planning on Typhoon Lagoon and Jiko on Friday (our last day) but may need to be flexible on plans to meet up with her and her husband.

Sat we drive home and-- back to the grind!

 

[heathpack]

More dining advice, please. We're heading to Boulder Ridge for the first week of Feb. Here's the plan:
Sat arrive around dinner time: probably Geyser Point. Electrical water pageant
Sun maybe rope drop MK for a few hours in AM, 7:10pm Ohana. Fireworks on beach
Mon: Family visiting for a day GF Cafe brunch. EPCOT extended evening hours 9-11 pm
Tues: sleep in. either Whispering Canyon brunch (leaning towards this, easier) or Wine Bar George lunch (tempting). Maybe MK parade or fireworks
Wed: Maybe rope drop HS, Beak and Barrel 7pm, MK Extended evening hours 9-11pm
Thurs: sleep in, maybe Fantasia Gardens, Wailulu Lunch. Maybe Animal Kingdom late.
Fri: 8:30 am Segway tour of Fort Wilderness, then ??? Have Chef Art Smith 6:30pm reservation
Sat: departure day, have 10am Whispering Canyon if we didn't eat there earlier in week, otherwise will drop it

Questions:
1. We are definitely keeping Ohana to try the current version for ourselves. However, we are interested in hearing recent opinions- to go in with appropriate expectations.
2. Beak and Barrel- has anyone here gone yet? Should we try to make a light dinner of the food? Or just go for drinks?
3. The Fort Wilderness piece: We will be done with our Segway tour by 10:30. I can't find exactly when Trail's End starts serving lunch, its either 11:30 or 12. We could probably burn an hour or 90 minutes exploring Fort Wilderness, possibly by bike (the Segway Tour leaves from the bike barn, so renting bikes would be convenient.) We generally avoid QS breakfast but could consider that if the Trail's End version is better than most. Is the current version of Trail's End worth the effort? One option is to just head back to Boulder Ridge and eat in. If we ate at Trail's End, we'd skip the Chef Art Smith Homecoming dinner. If we skipped Homecoming, we'd probably keep the Wine Bar George lunch earlier in the week.

 

[ljmiii]

Questions:
2. Beak and Barrel- has anyone here gone yet? Should we try to make a light dinner of the food? Or just go for drinks?

We're going to WDW a few weeks later than you and after reading reviews decided to do Wed night at 8:30PM at Beak & Barrel. The food choices seemed appropriate for a late night snack but not really good/filling enough for a light dinner. Obviously, YMMV.

3. ..If we ate at Trail's End, we'd skip the Chef Art Smith Homecoming dinner. If we skipped Homecoming, we'd probably keep the Wine Bar George lunch earlier in the week.

After reading the the rave reviews we decided to do Wine Bar George over Homecoming for our DS lunch. But both are great restaurants and part of our decision was that it's hard to eat a 'light' lunch at Homecoming...you might want to keep both. Particularly now that you can cancel most ADRs 2h and 1m before the ressie if you're not feeling it that day.

 

[nomoretslt]

your plans sound good…I do like the quick serve place inside Wilderness Lodge…the name escapes me….but I sometimes like grab and go instead of table service/brunch. I did not know about the Segway tours….they used to do them at Epcot early mornings. I have not heard anything bad about Wine Bar George. Chef Art Smith’s either. I did get to meet him and sample his chicken at Party for the Senses in 2019 I think it was….he was presenting his spicy chicken…..I asked for non-spicy and he frowned at me. That was the last PFTS….never came back after the shutdown. We enjoyed that for many, many years during F&W. Have not heard anything bad about Beak and Barrel….and daughter would have let me know…she pays more attention than me lately.
Enjoy the Fort area. Will you check out the DVC cabins? I wonder how far along the new DVC is?
I’m hoping our plans for February don’t need to change. Looking forward to FARTs.
Happy New Year!