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Disney, Food Review

Homecomin’ – May 1, 2019

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One of our favourite restaurants anywhere is Chef Art Smith’s Homecomin’. After falling in love with the place on our 2017 trip, we held our wedding reception there as part of our January 2018 trip. We also really enjoy starting our trip here with supper on our arrival night, and this trip was no exception.

We checked in at the hostess stand outside the restaurant, and we only waited about 5 minutes before I received a text message saying our table was ready and to head inside. As soon as we walked in, I spotted the main man himself – Chef Art Smith! I was fangirling hard, and mentioned to the hostess showing us to our table how excited I was to see him in his restaurant, and how special this place was for us after holding our reception on the patio the day of our wedding. She immediately went over to him and clearly told him that, because the next thing we knew he was making his way over to our table! He was so friendly, and shook our hands and asked if we’d like a picture, and thanked us for coming back to eat again. Eeeeee! I mean, just look at my giant, dorky grin hahaha:

After our famous-person meet and greet, we sat down and started making the difficult decisions about what to order. First decision was drinks!

Since it was our first night and I’d barely slept in days, I decided it was a great time to really overindulge, and ordered a 22-ounce squeeze bottle of Rumshine Punch – Strawberry RumShine, blackberry brandy, banana liqueur, pineapple juice and house-made grenadine, $22.

Look at how adorable this squeeze bottle is! And the drink was extremely delicious, and despite being strong it went down easy. Maybe a little too easy, spoiler alert – I was feeling pretty good by the time this meal was over hahaha. Also – you can take this bottle back and it’s $13 for refills 🙂

Luke’s first drink order was the Florida Crush – Tito’s handmade vodka muddled with orange and strawberries, a splash of fresh squeezed Florida orange juice and agave syrup, $12

Luke had tried this drink here back in December, and he thought that one was mixed a bit better than this one.

Also – we had one of the best tables in the restaurant, along the back wall overlooking the water. It was a perfect way to really kick off our vacation!

We decided to go all out on this meal, and order an appetizer, entree and dessert each. My appetizer wasn’t really exciting, but I was thinking ahead and ordered a basket of Cheddar Cheese Drop Biscuits – $7

I love these so much, and since I knew we had an early start to our day tomorrow these would make a great breakfast. There were 6 in here – we ate three of them and saved three of them for breakfast.

It’s not officially stated on the menu, but you can order a half-order of the Church Lady Deviled Eggs – southern style deviled eggs $12 for 6 eggs ($6 for a half order)

I don’t like eggs, so I’ve never tried these, but Luke has had them a few times and always enjoys them. He really likes putting a bit of the house-made Hot Sauce on them. I also asked for his input, and he called these “Heaven’s Cholesterol Bombs”.

Next up – entrees! We really wanted to try something different, but I didn’t want to change it up too much. I always get the Fried Chicken, so this time I ordered the Fried Chicken & Doughnuts – two pieces of Chef Art Smith’s famous fried chicken served with house-made sugar doughnuts and creamy mashed potatoes, $27.

The only difference from the other chicken dish is doughnuts instead of a biscuit, and I believe the pieces of chicken are smaller with this one (but that’s not based on anything other than the multiple pictures I have of the non-doughnut based chicken dish). The chicken was just as delicious as I remembered. I also ask for a side of their southern gravy every time too, it’s so good on top of the mashed potatoes or used to dip pieces of chicken (or biscuit!) into. The doughnuts were also clearly fresh, and they are served with maple syrup to dip into (or pour over top of them – no judgement). It was really sweet, but such a great contrast to the savoury chicken/potatoes.

Luke really switched it up and decided to try the Cuban Sandwich – house smoked pork, shaved country ham, house made pickles, yellow mustard and Swiss cheese pressed between slices of fresh Cuban bread, served with house-made barbecue chips drizzled with icebox dressing, $18

I didn’t try this (I don’t like mustard), but Luke really enjoyed it! I did steal a few of the chips though, they were nice and fresh and crispy. I really enjoy their icebox dressing as well. In Luke’s words – the bread was toasted to a perfect crispiness, the pulled pork was excellent and complimented well with the ham and mustard. He was also a little apprehensive about ordering it at first because he’s loved all the other things he’s tried here, but he was so happy he took a chance on a new item!

At some point, Luke ordered another drink, Blue Hooch – Blue Flame moonshine, lemon-infused moonshine, blue curacao, house-made simple syrup, fresh lemon juice and a splash of Sprite, $13

This was my favourite of the three drinks we had during this meal, and I might have helped Luke out by drinking half of it… (he did help me with my RunShine Punch too, I’m not that much of a lush hahaha).

Finally, we somehow found room for dessert (ok fine, I packed up half of my mashed potatoes and one piece of my chicken just so I’d have room…). Luke ordered the Shine Cake – Chef Art’s signature dessert. An adult-only butter cake soaked with moonshine syrup, served with seasonal fruit gastrique and a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, $11

This is always great – I mean, who doesn’t love getting drunk on cake?! It’s a large piece (it’s bigger than it looks in the picture), and I definitely helped him with this buttery perfection. It’s also strong enough to keep your buzz going a little longer…

I went for my favourite dessert on the menu – Hamilton County Chocolate Pecan Pie – a 100 year old traditional Smith Family Farm recipe served with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, $11

I know it doesn’t look super impressive from my awesome dark photo, but this is so good! I’m not a huge pie person – but I love this one! It’s served warm so the chocolate is a little melty, and the pecans are nice and salty. I try to avoid ice cream for the most part (dairy seems to be a trigger food for my Crohn’s), so I only ate about half of that scoop, but it pairs perfectly with the pie.

I forgot to take a picture of the receipt, but it was just under $130 with my 10% annual pass discount.

Total food cost: $197

Disney, Travel

May 1, 2019

We arrived at Old Key West, and headed in to the main lobby to pick up our new Magicbands – blue for me, red for Luke. The cast member helping us let us know our room was not yet ready – not a huge surprise seeing as it was just a little past 11:30am by this point. While we were on the Magical Express I had received a text message from my boss asking for my help with something, so I sat down on a bench in the lobby and pulled out my work laptop which I had brought with me. Luke decided to go check out the little store and enjoy some of the free lemon water in the lobby. It didn’t take me too long to finish up what I had to do, and we went out to drop off our carry-ons with bell services. We called our first Lyft of the trip, and headed off to the Vineland Outlets. I’m not much of a shopper these days, but I do enjoy starting our vacation with a trip to the Disney Outlet there!

A trip to the Disney Outlet (I believe it’s actually called the Disney Character Warehouse) can be hit or miss – you never really know what you’ll find when you visit). We had decent luck on this trip, and I found a single Monsters University spirit jersey in my exact size for $20! Luke also found the Wall-E zip-up hoody he’d been looking at last year in his size for $20, and a Dark Wing Duck mug for $5. I also picked up an Epcot 35 ornament for $5, a Pascal baseball hat for $8 and a Minnie Mouse baseball hat for $5.

We were hungry, so we decided to just eat in the food court there. It was nothing exciting, but Luke had a burrito and I went to Charley’s Philly Cheesesteaks.

After eating, we called a Lyft to take us to our next stop – Walmart! So exciting, right?! We love browsing and seeing what is different than in Canada, and picking up a few supplies for our trip. Water is like $4/bottle in the parks, or a case of 40 bottles was $4 at Walmart. We picked up a few of the unique to the US items we love (like Garlic Butter Ritz, Big Chewy Nerds, Almond Joy chocolate bars, etc) and took our time going up and down each aisle. We always enjoy looking at the prices of alcohol, it’s so cheap compared to Canada! (For comparison, that same bottle of wine is $12-$15).

I always ask my coworkers if they’d like anything, and they always ask for unique candy. So I picked up these three kinds of Twizzlers that I’ve never seen up here for them (the orange ones are seriously amazing! The watermelon ones were gross, and the cherry and citrus ones were good).

Luke also ran to the liquor store next to Walmart and picked up a small bottle of Bailey’s – when on vacation why not start your day with a Bailey’s and coffee!

Once we finished up our shopping, we called an Uber XL to get back to OKW. We arrived back there around 3:45, but our room still wasn’t ready so we passed the time by chatting to some of the bell services people (check in for a DVC room is 4pm). I kept refreshing my email and at 3:57 I finally found out our room number! I was very excited to see we were in building 35, as that’s the same building we’ve been in every single time we’ve stayed at OKW. I love that Disney tries to keep it familiar when you do repeat stays at resorts, although I’m not sure if they just do that for DVC stays?

Our other luggage had arrived with the Magical Express tags, so one of the cast members from Bell Services drove us to our room in a golf cart with all of our luggage and Walmart purchases. Of course, once we arrived our Magicbands wouldn’t work – but he was able to open the door with his master key so we could at least drop off all our stuff (I showed him the My Disney Experience app to confirm we were at the correct room that had been assigned to us). He then drove us back to the main building so we could figure out our Magicband issue. Since we were there, we also took some time to walk around the main pool area since we’d never really checked it out before (all of our previous stays at OKW have been in January when it’s too cold for us to go swimming). We started walking the 7-8 minutes back to our building when the same bell services saw us and pulled over, motioning for us to hop back in his golf cart. I guess it was worth it to tip him generously when he dropped us off the first time!

Once we got back, I took obligatory room pictures before we made a huge mess by unpacking. Our room was 3526 and it had been recently renovated, so the beds were new. I prefer the new style, it’s nice to be able to shove a suitcase underneath the bed out of the way. The carpet looked like the same old stuff, but it was fine.

The bathrooms had been completely renovated, and were really nice! The flooring was nice, and the bathroom felt very big. It did now have the wall-attached shampoo/conditioner instead of the travel-sized ones from years past, but we don’t mind that.

We were on the second floor, and I loved our view from our balcony!

Luke took a shower while I unpacked a bit and changed into clean clothes for supper – including my new MU spirit jersey from the outlet. These were still being sold on property for full price, so I have no idea why this one was at the outlet, I haven’t been able to find anything wrong with it… but for $20 I’m very happy to have found it! For those interested, my leggings are from Silver Icing, which is one of the multi-level selling companies but they are some of the nicest leggings I own (I’d say comparable in price and quality to Lulu Lemon).

Our dining reservation was in Disney Springs, so we decided we wanted to take the boat (there is an option for a bus from OKW as well). The only place to catch the boat is from the main building, so we walked back out there. I enjoyed this Captain Marvel bus way too much, and had to take a picture of it…

We had perfect timing, and the boat pulled up to the dock about 90 seconds after we arrived.

Taking the boat from OKW to Disney Springs is such a nice, relaxing way to spend 20 minutes! We arrived and our first stop was the new ticket center. My annual pass had been active since December, but Luke had purchased a 10-day Park Hopper ticket with the Canadian discount for this trip. The next morning we had very specific plans so we made sure his tickets were active tonight.

We then headed off to our supper reservation at our favourite Disney restaurant – Chef Art Smith’s Homecomin’ (or Che Fartsmith if you will…).

After eating, we were exhausted so we hopped a bus back to OKW and went straight to bed after I took a shower. Tomorrow promised to be a very exciting day!

I also took screenshots of my Fitbit data for each day. I’m positive mine doesn’t read correctly, Luke will always have a few thousand more steps than I will in a day at Disney, but it’s not like he’s running laps around me …

Disney, Food Review, Travel

Charley’s Philly Steaks – May 1, 2019

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While we were at the Vineland Outlets, we were hungry and decided to just grab something from the food court there. There isn’t a huge selection, but we each found something. Luke grabbed a burrito from Currito (sorry, no pictures) and I went to Charley’s Philly Steaks because it’s not something we have in Canada.

I ordered a regular Philly Cheesesteak with nothing on it – no onions, mushrooms, green peppers, tomato, pickles, lettuce or mayo. I honestly would have been fine with mayo, but the cashier seemed a bit confused when I was saying what I didn’t want on it, so it was just easier to say nothing except the meat and cheese.

I also made it into a combo with the Ultimate Fries and a drink.

They went a little crazy with the bacon on the fries – I actually had to scrape some off, it was just too much. You can’t really tell, but these also had that weird plastic cheese sauce America loves and ranch dressing.

Total was $14.82. The food was ok, nothing really special(but we didn’t expect spectacular from a food court). It was food, and it held us over until our dining reservation that evening.

Disney, Travel

April 30th/May 1st 2019

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On April 29th, we headed out to my best friend’s acreage and dropped off our dogs. Just because I think they are adorable, here’s pictures of them…

Magoo always has to grab something when it’s time to go for a walk…on this particular night, it was a hand towel from the pile of clean laundry I was folding…
Jax hates the rain – but he hates his jacket even more…

On April 30th, Luke and I both had to work for the full day. The hours dragged, but we both got home around 5pm and started putting together our last minute things – packing our toothbrushes, phone chargers, etc. We cleaned the litter boxes, loaded up my SUV, made sure our cats and degu had plenty of food and treats (my Mom was going to be checking on them daily) and then headed out around 9:30pm.

After a quick stop for gas, we were on the highway to the airport and arrived at our preferred parking lot just shortly after 10pm. We took the shuttle to the terminal, checked our bags, made it through security quickly and found ourselves with lots of time before our flight left. I’m the type of person who is late for everything – except flights. I’d rather sit at my gate early than have to run to catch my flight (which happened on the last flight I took before this one, due to a system crash and the longest check-in line I’ve ever seen. The lady checking my bag told me I “should have been more responsible and been there earlier” despite the fact I was over 90 minutes early for a domestic flight *facepalm*).

Anyways, back to this trip… we decided we had more than enough time to sit down to eat. There’s a few options in the Edmonton airport, but we headed over to my old-faithful, Boston Pizza. Click on that name to take you to my review of our late-night snacks 🙂

While we were sitting there, we saw on the departure board that our flight was delayed by about 20 minutes. Once we finished eating, we headed off to our gate and found a pair of seats – only to hear an announcement a few minutes later that our flight would now be departing from a different gate. I always think it’s hilarious when you’re sitting in an airport and you see an entire herd of people changing gates, and now I was one of those people hahaha.

We eventually boarded, and left about half an hour past our original departure time. We both managed to get a bit of sleep – but not much. We landed in Toronto, and they made an announcement that anyone not connecting to Orlando was to remain seated, and anyone heading to Orlando – head straight to customs. We were cutting it close, but we made it through security and customs quickly, and made it to our gate while they were still pre-boarding!

Our flight from Toronto to Orlando was uneventful, and we landed around 10:30am on May 1st. We took the Fake-O-Rail to the main terminal and headed straight to the Magical Express.

Since we’re Canadian, Disney won’t mail us our Magicbands before a trip. To get on the Magical Express we typically have a letter that’s mailed out to us, but then I’m always struggling to get it out of my bag when we get there – so this time I was thinking ahead and brought one of my Magicbands from our December trip and it made things so much easier! We didn’t have to wait too long and we were boarding a bus for our first hotel of the trip! Of course I had to take a selfie to document the moment 😉

Exactly 31 minutes after taking that selfie, I took this picture of the sign for hotel #1 – one of our favourite places to stay on Disney property!

Food Review, Travel

Boston Pizza – YEG Airport April 30, 2019

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Since we arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare, we decided to hit up my old-faithful, Boston Pizza. For those non-Canadian readers, this is a Canadian franchise that has almost 350 locations across the country. There’s nothing special about the food, but I’ve never been disappointed. I’m pretty easy to please!

The menu at the airport location is obviously limited compared to a regular location, but that’s fine. My favourite item is still available here: the Cactus Cut Potatoes – spicy thinly sliced fried potatoes served with our signature cactus dip, $12.89 (they cost $10.99 at non-airport locations…)

Luke decided on Thai Bites – your choice of chicken or shrimp tossed in sweet Thai chili sauce served with crunchy Asian noodles, carrots, fresh cilantro, green onions and sesame seeds, $15.39 ($12.99 at non-airport locations). He also ordered a Coors Light, $9.79.

While we were waiting for our food, I ran next door to Starbucks and picked up a Very Berry Hibiscus Refresher for myself and a Pike Place coffee for Luke. I used a gift card to pay for our drinks.

I know my plate of potatoes don’t look like much – but it’s all about that dip! From my research, it’s apparently just caesar dressing, sour cream, parmesan, chili flakes and green onions – but it’s one of my favourite things!

This hit the spot, and was enough food to get us through our red-eye flight 🙂

Disney, Travel

Introduction – May 2019 Trip

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A few years ago when I was starting to plan our first WDW trip, I found the Disboards – an online forum filled with Disney lovers sharing stories of their trips, reviews of the food they ate, etc. I was immediately hooked! I created an account, and started commenting on other trip/dining reports before I began writing my own.

Last summer, I was working night shift. The hours were long, the crew was small and I had down time. Of course, this led to me thinking about future Disney trips… I had already completed #Disneymath and knew I was going to be purchasing an Annual Pass for our trip in December, so of course I wanted to figure out how to get at least one more trip out of it. I reached out to a few of the ladies I knew from the Disboards who I was Facebook friends with, and the Epic Trip was born! It evolved from a few people into almost 30, and was definitely a trip to remember! The theme of our trip was Friendship and Food, and there was no shortage of either! It’s so wonderful when internet friends become real friends 🙂

Originally our trip was going to be a week or so, but we kept extending it until it was finally 12 nights/13 days.

Dates: May 1-13th, 2019
Hotels: Old Key West (May 1-6), Animal Kingdom Lodge (May 6-11), Pop Century (May 11-13)
Tickets: I had an AP, Luke had 10-day hoppers​

Disney, Food Review

Boma – January 2, 2018

One of Luke’s favourite meals from our 2017 trip was breakfast at Boma, so we made a reservation to return there. Our reservation was early, 7:30am, but we were there on time and were seated in a fairly empty restaurant.                



Our waitress took our drink order (juice for both of us – I can’t remember what they call it at Boma, but it’s the same delicious POG juice they serve at many other locations on property, and a coffee for Luke). We went then went up to the buffet.

My first plate, starting at the top and going clockwise: a plantain, strawberries and grapes, bread pudding with pecan caramel sauce, asparagus, carved turkey and tater tots. Not overly exciting, but everything was really good, I especially love that sauce for the bread pudding!

My second plate: made to order omelet with bacon, ham and mozzarella. I don’t typically eat eggs, but I just can’t pass up the opportunity to have an omelet that’s made to order. I didn’t finish this entire thing, as eggs are a food that bother my stomach (I have GI issues), but I did enjoy what I ate of this!

Luke’s first plate, starting at the top and going clockwise: goat cheese and chives scrambled eggs, turkey bobotie, asparagus, bacon, ham, tater tots and smoked salmon. The bobotie was one of the main reasons he loved this place so much, and he really enjoyed it again.

Also – proof of our drinks haha –

Luke also had a bowl of African fruit salad

Luke had a second plate of food, but I obviously didn’t take a picture of it, and it was so long ago now that neither one of us remember what he had -opps.

The cost for this meal was $27/each (it’s probably more now, most buffet prices seem to have increased since this trip). I was able to use my Tables in Wonderland card again (after being blacked out the previous two days), so our total bill came to $55.73 with the 18% gratuity added in.

This is a great option for breakfast, although it is a bit out of the way. We did skip it on our last trip to Disney (December 2018), but we are staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge on our upcoming trip (May 2019), so we do have plans to eat both breakfast and supper at Boma 🙂

Tables in Wonderland original cost: $150                                                    Break Even Point Before this meal: $130.60                                            Savings this Meal: $10.80                                                                                     Total Until Breaking Even: $119.80

Predicted food budget: $2631.67 (does not include tip)       Estimated Cost of this meal: $53.25                                                                   Actual Cost: $46.01 (before tip)                                                     Over/Under: Under by $7.24                                                             Remaining: $2143.45

Decluttering, House/Lifestyle

2019 Items in 2019

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Last weekend, I decided to start tackling our disaster of a basement…

I started breaking down old boxes, and tossing away anything that was old/broken/etc. It did take me a few hours, but by the time I finished just this side of the basement I had thrown away over 100 items and I swept/mopped the floors. There’s still a lot to be done, but overall I was very happy with the progress made in one day!

As of today (January 26) there are over 200 items out of our house since the beginning of the year!

Count: 236/2019

After this picture was taken, the lamps and stool were both moved and that cardboard box was broken down and placed into recycling.


This is entirely Christmas/Halloween/Easter decorations….. I might have a bit too much of that stuff…


I almost never wear heels, so I will probably end up selling quite a few of those pairs at some point this year. I did move a few pairs straight into a tote of things to sell, but I was more focused on picking them up off the floor than I was on going through them…
Decluttering, House/Lifestyle

2019 Items in 2019

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m on a quest to rid our house of at least 2019 items during this year. That equals about 5.5 items leaving every single day – which is a tough task!

I knew there would be lots of days where I didn’t mark off anything from my chart, but other days with huge progress. I decided to start in the master bathroom, this storage shelf in particular:

(And yes, that tin actually has Quality Street in it…this is right beside my bathtub, and everyone needs snacks while they soak in the tub haha).

The first thing I decided to focus on was that tiny little plastic container on the bottom. In case you can’t tell from the picture, it’s filled with lip glosses/balms. Seriously. How many of those does a person actually need?!

I started smelling them all, and anything that didn’t seem right, or I knew was old went. In the end, I threw out 32 items that day:

Did these 32 items make a noticeable difference in my decluttering efforts to make our house look better? Of course not. But it only took a few minutes and I was able to mark off a full row on my decluttering sheet – it was quick, easy and has motivated me to keep going!

As of today (January 11th), there are 82 items gone from our house! It’s still all small items, but it’s progress! Here’s to keeping it going!

Progress: 82/2019