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.

After listening to some animatronic birds sing to us, it was time to go check in for our lunch reservation. We had a 1pm reservation at Cafe Orleans, and the place was insanely busy when we got over there. We actually had to stand in a line just to check-in for our reservation, and there were a few people in the line who did not have a reservation, so they seemed to be pretty angry when they were informed they would not be able to get in that afternoon. Ugh, people just make a reservation!

We had a bit of a wait, so we went exploring a bit so we could find this door! Maybe one day we’ll actually get to enter the door…

Anyways, it was almost 1:30 before we were led to our table, a 4-top right by the main pathway (a perfect location for people watching!). As always, we had looked at the menu online before our trip, so we had a pretty good idea of exactly what we wanted to order.

We both started with a mint julep , $3.49 (and since we were inside the Disneyland park, these were virgin due to it being a dry park (the only place to buy alcohol in that park is inside Club 33).

These were so good, and they were bottomless! I think I drank about 4 of them while we were there…

For my meal, I decided to skip an entree and just order two appetizers. First up was the Pommes Frites – traditional French Fried Potatoes tossed with Parmesan, Garlic, and Parsley served with Cajun Spice Remoulade, $7.

I tried that cajun remoulade dip it came with, but I wasn’t a fan at all. However, it was not required – these fries were amazing and had so much flavour without it. Shoestring fries are also my favourite. Yum!

My other choice was a strange one – I ordered their French Onion Soup – sauteed sweet-onion medley in a traditional broth with croutons and melted gruyere $10.

Why I ordered this is beyond me – I don’t even like onions. I’ve ate french onion soup in the past, but I mainly just sip the broth and eat the cheese off the top. It’s not something I have ever ordered at a restaurant though, and probably something I won’t order again. This was ok, but it was nothing compared to those fries!

Luke decided to order an actual entree, and went for the Chicken Muffuletta Sandwich – Cajun-spiced chicken breast, Black Forest ham, capicola, salami, provolone cheese, olive salad, and roasted red pepper mayonnaise on a sesame seed bun served with house-made seasoned chips. $21

Luke liked this, but said it was really nothing special (especially for the price). I stole a few of his chips – they were good, but again, nothing special.

Once we finished eating, our waitress came over with a Mickey-shaped beignet for Luke’s birthday! There was a lit candle in a pile of whipped cream with Mickey sprinkles and everything!

We had planned on buying some beignets on this trip at some point, so it was even better when it was free haha. I know they are typically sold in 3’s, but honestly the one was enough for us to share. It was good, but I might only be saying that because of how much icing sugar was on it…

The total cost for our meal was $41.74 after a 15% discount thanks to my annual pass. We actually made a reservation and came back here a few days later – those mint juleps were calling our names! You can read that review here.

When we made our ADR’s, we decided on ‘Ohana for our non-park day, since it was the day Luke would be running the half marathon and we figured he would be hungry. Of course, the half marathon was cancelled but we still stuck with our initial plan of having a non-park day, and kept all of our planned meals the same.

‘Ohana is located at the Polynesian Resort, and is one of the most difficult ADR’s to secure, this place books up quickly. We booked this within minutes of our 180 day window opening up – highly recommended if you want to eat here.

After enjoying a few drinks at Trader Sam’s (click to read that review), we headed upstairs to check in for our ‘Ohana supper. I’ve read horror stories of people waiting an hour or more past their reservation before being seated, but we only had to wait maybe 5 minutes before being buzzed.

As a hostess led us to our table, she pointed out the fire pits where the meats are cooked, and then stopped to pick up a loaf of the pineapple coconut bread.

The only adjective I can give this is ok. You can definitely taste the pineapple, which gives this bread a bit of a sweet taste, but they don’t give you butter for it so it’s just dry bread. Not my thing, I ate a single little piece and that was enough. No worries though, I knew there was still more than enough food coming to fill me up!

For drinks, I kept it simple and had a glass of water and a Coke. Luke had the same.

They also brought us some warm towels, but I’m not fancy enough to even know what to do with those….

Next, we were brought out a salad, which I believe had a passion fruit vinaigrette on it. This was good, it was salad, but I didn’t plan on filling up on this. I believe Luke and I finished all of this though.

Next up was this giant platter of food:

This had stir-fry veggies, teriyaki noodles, pot stickers and honey coriander chicken wings. I’m not a huge fan of chicken wings, so I only ate one of those, but the veggies and noodles were amazing! The pot stickers were also really great!

While we were loading up our plates with food from this platter, they came around with the skewers of steak, chicken and shrimp. I don’t eat anything from the sea, but Luke tried a shrimp (despite the fact he has a mild shellfish allergy…). I took one piece of chicken, but I wasn’t a huge fan since it was thigh meat – I’m definitely a white meat only person when it comes to chicken. I knew the steak would not be cooked to my liking, so I asked our server if I could have some well-done pieces (they typically serve medium). A few minutes later, our server came back with steak they cooked extra long just for me 🙂

It was cooked perfectly well done, and was so tasty! At some point we were asked if we wanted more of anything from the platter with noodles, and we just asked for everything haha. I seriously loved those noodles! And it was nice to eat some vegetables, broccoli is one of my favourites.

Once we had finished stuffing our faces, it was time for dessert! And oh man, was I looking forward to this one! ‘Ohana bread pudding with banana foster caramel sauce – yum!

This is what it looks like when it first comes out:

And a close up of the sauce:

And after pouring that amazing sauce all over it:

This was seriously amazing. It’s also a HUGE serving, and we were barely able to put a dent into that thing. So, so, so good though!

This is a pricier meal, at $45/person but it is something I would not hesitate to do again – I’m hoping to add it to our plans for our next trip in 2018 🙂

Tusker House is probably our favourite character meal on WDW property (no, we haven’t tried all of them, but of the ones we have tried – this wins hands down).

In 2016, we had made a reservation for 1pm, but for our 2017 trip we wanted to try and hit both breakfast and lunch so we made our reservation for 10:45.  I was also super sick the day we were there in 2016, so this was my chance to fully enjoy my meal here!

We arrived pretty much right on time, maybe a few minutes early, and only had to wait a few minutes before being escorted to our table.

Since this meal is a buffet, there’s no menu or choices to make – except how you’re going to load up your plate! I’ve mentioned before about not being a huge breakfast person, but this buffet had lots of non-breakfast options as well!

As soon as we were led to our table, we placed our drink order with our waiter – I don’t remember exactly what they called it there, but we both had the POG juice (passionfruit-orange-guava) – they might call it Jungle Juice there? We didn’t even wait for our drinks to arrive, we just hit the buffet so we could catch the breakfast offerings (Luke loves breakfast food!)

My first plate, starting at the top and going clockwise: tater tots and ketchup (fairly standard, deep fried deliciousness), some kind of omelet – ham and cheese maybe? (I don’t really remember now, but I know I didn’t like it – it was filled with gross onions haha), basmati rice with a curry chicken (this was great, not too spicy but lots of flavour!), a plantain – meh, ham – good, bacon – always good and a Mickey waffle – you just can’t walk past them!

Luke’s first plate, starting at the top and going clockwise:  a sausage patty (one of Luke’s fav breakfast meats), rice and curry chicken (same as the one I had up above), tater tots, a Mickey waffle, an egg, bacon, ham, salmon, a piece of cornbread and bobotie – which Luke LOVED. On the smaller plate is the banana bread pudding with vanilla sauce – omg, so delicious!

We also grabbed some biscuits and gravy to share. Bad idea, this was disgusting.

Once we had our first plates of food, and had started eating, the characters started coming around. First one to show up at our table was Donald 🙂

Next was Goofy!

Then Daisy:

The fourth character to show up at our table was the main mouse himself, Mickey. When I saw that he was getting close, I decided to Facetime my mom since she was in New Brunswick visiting my grandmother in the hospital. When Mickey reached me, the smile on my Nanny’s face was priceless, and she started waving to him and saying “Hi Mickey!”. The cast member in character that day was incredible, and as soon as he/she realized what I was doing, he started waving and blowing kisses to my grandmother. Luke did manage to snap a picture of me and Mickey on Facetime. This was such a simple thing, but I am so glad I did it – I lost my grandmother less than two months later, but I just have to remember the smile on her face that day and it makes me smile too 🙂

Luke had to get a picture with Mickey as well.

In between all the character visits, we did go back up for more food.

For my second plate, I didn’t want very much, but I wanted healthy – so I grabbed some green beans, some grapes, a square (that was awesome!), some pork, a cube of cheese, some carrots/corn and a small scoop of mashed potatoes with gravy. This plate looks pretty sad haha, but sometimes I just want fruit and veggies!

Luke  also got a second plate – more salmon, a pickle, more rice with curry chicken, I believe the next thing was a tofu dish, some desserts, more bobotie (sp?), pork with some kind of sauce (the downfall of writing these reviews months later haha) and some green beans.

Now that I think about it, the plates pictured above might have been our third servings, but it’s all I have pictures of.  Just now that we both left STUFFED! I love the food here, and the character interactions have always been fantastic.

I also need to give a shoutout to our waiter,  Lee. He was hilarious and kept cracking jokes with us – nothing too inappropriate, but things he probably would not have said if there were children at our table haha. He kept our table clear of dirty plates, and our glasses full of water and juice. He was one of the top two servers we encountered on this entire trip – I hope to see him again next year!

This meal is a bit pricey, at $45 per person, but it’s one that will continue to be at the top of our must-do list every time. We were there for at least an hour and a half, and we didn’t eat again until 7pm that night (like 8 hours later).  There are food options for everyone – if you want to be adventurous there are some great options, but fussy eaters will also have no trouble finding something on the buffet here as well.