Monthly Archives: April 2021

Disney, Travel

May 5, 2019 – Part Two

After saying goodbye, Luke and I headed back over to Sunset Boulevard for our second Fastpass on Rock N’ Roller Coaster.

I love the costumed Stitch plush they have by the exit of Tower of Terror and Rock N’ Roller – I finally remembered to take a picture of AeroStitch:

We made our way back across the park over to Toy Story Land. The rain earlier in the day had cleared out a lot of people, so the park really wasn’t overly crowded. It was quite nice!

Our third and final Fastpass was for Slinky Dog (again!). We hadn’t been on it prior to this trip, and we weren’t aware of the VIP Tour when we made our initial Fastpass selections so we did not expect to ride this four times in three days – but here we were! We even lucked out and ended up with the very back row this time!

On our three previous times on Slinky Dog, I couldn’t figure out where the camera was. I finally looked at the camera this time – and then Mike Wazowski’d myself….

As we were exiting, the Green Army Men were hanging around – so of course we had to get pictures with them!

We wandered around a bit, and as we were walking past Toy Story Mania we noticed the sign saying it was only a 20 minute wait. Without hesitation, we entered the standby line – that ride is a must with a wait time that low! It was fairly accurate, although I think everyone in the park saw the low wait time on the MDE app and joined the queue line behind us (we lucked out by already being in Toy Story Land). I can’t remember why I felt the need to take a picture before entering our ride vehicle – but apparently we were in alien car haha.

Once again, I retained my title as the champion! My score isn’t that fantastic, but I do beat Luke at Toy Story Mania every single time – I’m just making up for the beat down I take every time we go on Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin (I don’t think I’ve ever beat Luke on that ride).

I love all the details in the exit of TSM. The barrel of monkeys are my favourite!

It was almost time for us to leave the park, but first we headed over to use the fourth Fastpass we had managed to grab for Star Tours.

At this point, it was time for us to leave the park – we had one final group event to attend for the weekend! As we were leaving, they had some of the Skyliner Gondolas uncovered and were testing them (this was prior to them opening). It was neat to see!

We found the bus for Fort Wilderness and set off – we were going to the 8:30 seating of Hoop dee Doo Musical Revue! You can read all about it here 🙂

After the show ended, we said our final goodbyes to Billie and Sarah who were able to bus straight to Wilderness Lodge from there. The rest of us loaded onto a bus to Magic Kingdom to catch buses back to our respective hotels. The drive wasn’t that long, but there were a lot of laughs! I was going to miss all of these ladies!

I didn’t get the memo from Lesley that we were supposed to look sad haha –

After hugs and pictures, we said our final goodbyes at the Magic Kingdom bus stops, and headed back to OKW for our final night at the hotel. We packed up, called bell services to arrange luggage transfer to our next hotel, then crashed for the night.

Disney, Food Review, Food Review

Hoop dee Doo – May 5, 2019

Luke and I had went to Hoop dee doo on our very first visit to WDW, back in January 2016. We really enjoyed it, but hadn’t found the time to make it back there on any of our subsequent trips. So we were excited when it was suggested as a group event during our Epic Trip weekend, and quickly signed up to attend.

After leaving Hollywood Studios, we caught a bus over to Fort Wilderness, where we transferred to an internal bus to take us to Pioneer Hall, where we met up with the rest of the group attending (Leslie, Molly, Su-Lynn, Steve, Su-Queen, Ariana, Jackie, Karilynn, Billie and Sarah). At one point, Luke went to the bathroom so he could take a picture of the crazy mural in the men’s washroom haha –

I cant remember exactly where this mural is – the women’s washroom maybe?

Close to showtime, they opened the doors and began leading groups to their assigned tables. I believe we had reserved category 2 seating, so we were on the main floor off to the side at two tables pushed together to form one long table (maybe we were category 1?). Our view was great!

If you’ve never been to this dinner show, it’s a set menu, and everything is brought to your table. The server assigned to your table takes care of your drinks (which are bottomless – and this includes wine, beer and sangria), as well as refills on any food items you’d like. Here’s the menu –

The bucket of salad as well as cornbread and butter were already sitting on the table waiting. Since the entire group of us met through the Disboards, where we all write dining/trip reports, we all stopped to take pictures of each dish before digging in haha…

The salad is good – standard, but good. Lettuce, shredded carrots, radish, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, cheese and an Italian-style dressing. If I’m offered salad on a pre-fixe meal at Disney, I eat it. I like to think my few mouthfuls of vegetables offsets the insane amount of delicious unhealthy carbs, fats and sugar I eat while on vacation haha.

This cornbread is so good! I don’t know why, but I could probably eat an entire loaf of it myself without trying too hard…it’s possible I actually did eat that much of it… The butter was nice and soft and easy to spread which is always nice! I think they initially had the equivalent of half a loaf per person on the tables, but I’m pretty sure we asked for more.

For drinks, I decided to try the white sangria while Luke ordered the red. I also ordered a Coke just in case I didn’t like the sangria (I like really, really sweet wines – like moscato, riesling, rose, etc). It was ok – a bit drier than I tend to drink, but that didn’t stop me from emptying my glass.

The show started, and I took zero pictures of the actual show until the very end. Before too long, the first act is over and they begin bringing out the main entrees – all served in buckets of course. There’s a little song about it, and the servers actually slam the metal buckets onto the tables. This was Su-Queen’s first time at Hoop dee Doo, and she was not expecting the slam – I managed to capture a picture of her face as the bucket of ribs was smashed down in front of her hahahaha

I forgot to take a picture of the bucket of fried chicken, but I did take a picture of a piece of it on my plate for some reason –

I’m not a huge ribs person, but these are fine. I enjoyed the two pieces I took, but I wouldn’t have wanted any more than that. The fried chicken is good – it doesn’t even come close to Homecoming, but then again nothing does.

For side dishes, the options are mashed potatoes, cowboy beans and “seasonal vegetables” – which was just corn. It’s not listed on the actual menu, but you can also ask for a bucket of mac and cheese which they will gladly bring to you.

The potatoes are very creamy. I don’t like beans, so I didn’t even touch those. Corn is corn – there’s not much to say about it, it tasted like a bag of frozen corn that was boiled until cooked. I’m not a huge mac and cheese fan, but I ate some of this and it was good.

After the food had arrived and everyone had a few minutes to dig in and enjoy it, the second act started. It’s such a fun show, filled with corny, groan-worthy jokes, likeable characters and fantastic singing/acting. The second act ends with a song about strawberry shortcake – and out come the servers with dessert. Everyone is swinging their napkins around, there’s clapping and singing along – it’s a good time!

This was Jackie’s birthday weekend, so they brought her a candle to blow out (along with other people in the audience), and everyone sang Happy Birthday.

This is definitely not my photo, since I’m right beside Jackie taking a picture from a different angle, but it was in my Google Photo account – there’s a few pictures in this report which I saved from other people…so thanks guys!

I love this dessert! It’s really nothing special, but is so good! The cost of Hoop dee doo is worth it just for the show and this dessert to me haha.

At some point, they brought around washboards to make noise and play along. Luke loves this, and was hamming it up for everyone at our table.

After the show ended, we gathered for a group photo – one final time to pull out the ChunkyDump!

We had a great night, and many laughs on the bus back to Magic Kingdom before splitting up to catch our respective buses back to our hotels. I was sad that we had to say goodbye, our Epic weekend had officially come to an end.

Since I can’t remember the exact category we had reserved, I can’t remember the exact cost. I’ll just go with $70/person, that’s in between the Category 1 and Category 2 pricing.

Total Food Cost: $1127