If you are like Luke, you just can’t go to Animal Kingdom and NOT get a Dole Whip with Coconut Rum! ($7). We went to Animal Kingdom twice on this trip, so that meant 2 of these!

There’s not a lot to say about this – it’s the same delicious pineapple soft-serve (and I don’t even like pineapple!) with a shot of coconut rum in the bottom. The two flavours mix extremely well, and Luke says this is his favourite of all the Dole Whip options he’s tried.

In the German pavilion at Epcot, you’ll find a store named Karamell-Kuche (German for caramel kitchen), by Werther’s Original.

As soon as you enter, the smell of caramel is amazing. I had to try some of their caramel popcorn ($5.99 for the large bag seen below), it just smelled and looked too amazing to pass on, especially since it’s made with Werther’s Original.

Look at how amazing this looks! And it tasted just as amazing. Seriously, this was some of the best caramel popcorn I’ve ever had. It was crunchy, but still soft at the same time (it’s hard to describe, but the texture was perfect). We also ate this bag over a few days, and it remained delicious and just as awesome as the day we bought it.

I also bought one of their Caramel & Milk Chocolate Squares, $3.99.

I actually didn’t even eat this until we were back in Canada (I bought this on on Sunday, and didn’t eat it until the next Saturday), and it was still really good! The caramel was chewy, but still soft and easy to bite into. Think of those chewy Werther’s candies, but this was ten times better.

I think Karamell-Kuche has easily made it onto our must-do list for every trip! There are so many amazing goodies in there, and I can’t wait to have more of that popcorn!

We wanted to try Olivia’s Cafe for both breakfast and dinner, and we figured the night before the half marathon was the best time to schedule a dinner. This forced us to be back at Old Key West at a fairly decent time, and we knew from looking at the menu that it would have lots of great options for Luke the night before a big race.

Our reservation was at 6:30pm. We ended up checking in a few minutes late, due to waiting for a bus at Animal Kingdom, but the hostess assured us it was ok (I was worried we’d be charged the no-show fee and be unable to be seated – we were at least 15 minutes late). We ended up only waiting a few minutes before being led to our table, a 4-top close to the hostess stand.

A few minutes later, a waitress came over apologizing, and told us our actual waitress had a large table and would be another few minutes, but was willing to get us any drinks we might want. We weren’t in any rush, we knew once we finished our meal we were just heading back to our room to go to bed so we were not upset by our waitress taking a few minutes to reach us.

I was boring, and ordered a glass of water and a Coke.

Luke also ordered a glass of water, and a Turtle Krawl – Siesta Key White Rum, Parrot Bay Coconut Rum, and Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum with grenadine, Pineapple, Orange, and Key Lime Juices, $9.75. He was celebrating his half marathon before it happened haha! He enjoyed it, and did finish it all.

Now on to the food! Here’s the menu:

First, they brought us out some warm rolls and butter. There was nothing special about these, but I love my carbs!

Luke ordered the Southernmost Buttermilk Chicken – mashed potatoes, southern gravy and seasonal vegetables, $18.

This was pretty good, but since we had just been to Homecoming a few days prior this couldn’t even compare to that amazing chicken. The southern gravy was really great and full of flavour. The breading could have been a little crispier than it was (but we assume it had to sit under a heat lamp since I asked for my meal well-done). Overall though, Luke was pleased with this meal, and it is one of the cheapest options on the menu. He says he would order this again!

I ordered the Slow-cooked Prime Rib – 10oz cut with Olivia’s potatoes, seasonal vegetables and cabernet demi-glace $32. I specifically asked for this to be cooked well done, and it wasn’t an issue at all – and came out cooked perfectly! I was also very happy when I saw that the “seasonal veggies” were beans and carrots – two of my favourites! (I have such simple tastes haha).

As for those Olivia’s potatoes – oh emm gee. I can’t believe I actually just typed that, but I don’t know how else to describe them. So freakin’ good. They were thinly sliced and layered – basically scalloped potatoes. Mmm, they were so amazing they deserve a close-up:

Our waitress was very apologetic, since she was serving a very large party, but we really didn’t mind or care at all. When she brought us our receipt though, she had given us a 10% discount for “making us wait”, which was really nice of her! If we were in a rush to get somewhere, I’m sure the speed would have bothered us a bit more, but we were busying checking the internet and discovering the news about the cancelled half marathon.

We both love this restaurant, it has a great ambiance and a decent menu. It’s considered a bit of a hidden gem on Disney property, since people don’t typically travel to Old Key West just to check it out, but the restaurant was fairly full this night! This restaurant is one of the reasons we love OKW so much <3

The total for our bill (after the 10% discount) was $61.66.

We had an 8:15am reservation at Boma, which would have required a very early wakeup in order to catch a bus to Animal Kingdom, and then to Animal Kingdom Lodge. After the drinks the night before, we decided that a 6am alarm sounded terrible and it would be worth the cost of an Uber in order in sleep in a bit more haha.

We called an Uber, and it was definitely worth the $15 to not have to leave our hotel room until 7:45am.

We were dropped off at Jambo House, and went in to check in for our reservation. What a beautiful resort, it’s definitely on my short list to stay at one day!

We headed downstairs and checked in.

We did not have to wait long after checking in before we were led to our table. We both ordered some Jungle Juice (or POG juice – passionfruit orange guava) before we went to hit the buffet.

My first plate was pretty straight forward – tater tots, deli meat, cheddar cheese, sliced turkey and bacon. All of this was unsurprisingly really tasty!

I also had a made-to-order omelet with ham, bacon and cheese. I don’t eat eggs very often, but I had a craving that morning and this was perfect! I actually ate most of this, I really enjoyed it.

Luke’s first plate was a little more adventurous than mine. Starting at 12 o’clock and going clockwise, he had plantains, turkey bobotie, oak grilled asparagus, goat cheese scrambled eggs, carved ham with a spicy African mustard of some kind, smoked salmon, bacon and a sausage. After loving the bobotie at Tusker House, Luke was excited about trying it again, and he really liked it (he even said the Boma one had more spices than the one at Tusker House). He cleared his plate and thought everything was really delicious.

Luke also tried the African Fruit Salad, which he described as a fairly standard fruit salad with a yogurt-type dressing.

Luke also ordered a coffee at some point.

I also had to take a picture of the salt and pepper shakers, the bright colours made me happy 🙂

Luke’s second plate had more goat cheese scrambled eggs, more turkey bobotie and some of the french toast bread pudding. The bread pudding was amazing, and the other two things were his second helpings, so obviously he was a fan!

My second plate had more carved turkey, some of the french toast bread pudding, asparagus and a few pastries. OMG – that bread pudding was delicious (once I picked out out the gross disgusting raisins…). I went a little lighter on the sauce than Luke did, but it was so amazingly good (although quite sweet!).

Mmm, this was a really fantastic breakfast, even if I didn’t really venture out to many different things. We would both go back without question!

The cost of this meal was $25 each, and it came to $53.25 for the both of us after tax.

We had ate a large breakfast at Boma, but it was not enough to hold us over until our late supper reservation at Saana, so we decided to just share something from Flame Tree BBQ.

Neither one of us were starving, we’d had a lot of excitement that day, so we decided to just share an order of French Fries with pulled pork and cheese, $6.49

I was not expecting the cheese to be liquid plastic cheese, but it was fine. The pulled pork was pretty good for a quick service location, and I liked the BBQ sauce that was drizzled over top of everything. Also, the fries were shoestring, which is my favourite!

The outdoor seating here is plentiful, and it was no problem at all to find a seat (especially since we were there at a non-peak time – I think it was sometime between 3-4 when we were there). There were quite a few birds hanging around the area, waiting to steal some of our fries though…

The total for our fries was $6.92 after tax. It was not bad, considering it was enough food to hold us over until our supper reservation later that evening 🙂

When we initially booked our ADR’s for this trip (at the 180 day window of course!), this was not included in our plans. We did have a lunch reservation at Le Cellier and a supper reservation at Via Napoli, so the idea of a third ADR did not even cross our minds. However, while we were in that lull between booking ADR’s and booking Fastpasses, Luke was reading some things on the Walt Disney World Reddit page. One of the things that caught his interest was this place, which is located in the Mexico pavilion right on the water. There are these large, beautiful floor to ceiling windows overlooking the World Showcase Lagoon, and it offers a decent view of Illuminations (without staking out a spot hours in advance!). So, he looked online and found an 8:30 opening which he booked for us.

I don’t think we even had an hour between finishing our meal at Via Napoli and this reservation time, but it was freezing cold that night so it worked out quite well to be able to go inside again!

We knew when we booked this reservation that we would not be eating a full meal, but since we were in the Mexican pavilion we assumed there would be some margaritas to be had…

Shortly after we were led to our table, we were brought a basket of chips with salsa. The red salsa had lots of flavour and a decent spicy kick (I’m pretty soft when it comes to spice), whereas the green salsa  (salsa verde) was pretty mild (but still full of flavour). The chips were also pretty tasty!

Of course, we both had to order a margarita! I went for the Classic – tequila, orange liqueur, lime mix, on the rocks with salt on the rim, $12.50. This was good, but strong! The tequila was clearly better than any of the cheap stuff I used to drink in my university days, but you really need to be ok with the taste of alcohol to enjoy a margarita in my opinion.

Luke decided on the Maelstrom – tequila, mango puree, orange liquor, habanero peppers, blueberries, basil, Tajin chili powder on the rim, $14.50.  Luke thought this was good, and the mango helped to cool the heat from the habanero peppers, but overall it was a little too spicy and he said he regretted not just ordering the same as I did.

Even though we were not hungry, I was intrigued by the Queso Fundido on the menu (even though I actually had no idea what it was haha). The menu describes this as: Melted cheese with chorizo, Poblano and Serrano peppers, avocado-tomatillo sauce, and flour tortillas, $14.

This was not what I was imagining for some reason? But it was really good! I mean, it’s literally just a chunk of cheese, so how can you go wrong?!  It could have used more flour tortillas though, they only gave us two and they were gone fairly quickly (with over half of the cheese left). This is where the basket of chips really came in handy! I was not about to leave any cheese behind, and we polished it off with the help of those chips 🙂

Of course, the main reason we booked this reservation was to watch Illuminations. They dimmed the restaurant lights and piped in the music, and this was our view from our table.

There’s obviously parts of it which you can’t see perfectly, but if you’ve already seen Illuminations and are looking for a different experience, I highly recommend grabbing a reservation here!

Our total for an appetizer and two drinks came to $43.67.