Jen & Angel in Europe: Orlando Day 8 - Magic Kingdom, Be Our Guest restaurant

11/23/2014

We checked out of our hotel today (below) to because my free vouchers were used up and the hotel's normal rate is more expensive than I would like to pay. I bid on Priceline and got us another hotel, also a very good location near Disney World. And roomier, which I didn't think was possible! Our old hotel was already ginormous, with a king-sized bed, kitchenette, laundry machine and dining area. Our new hotel room is actually 3 rooms--the first has two sofas and a writing desk, refrigerator, microwave and TV, then there's the bathroom, and our bedroom has a king-sized bed, another TV, and a lounge area. Orlando's not lacking for space, is it?

It's funny cuz the hotel maps show that Disney World is "just" across the street from the hotels, but Disney is so big (28,000 acres!) that to get to Magic Kingdom proper, it'll take a 15 minute drive! There's no way you can walk it because there's no roads for pedestrians. Kinda forces you to park in their parking lot for $17/day. Crikey, Disney knows how to print money. Universal took a page out of Disney's book. If Disney's charging $17 for parking, Universal also charges $17 for parking.

If Disney sells turkey legs, Universal also sells turkey legs. One of our favorite cookie and brownie distributor in Disneyland also sells at Disney World, and guess what? Universal also sells them.

The only time it's the other way around is when Universal raised their ticket prices this year. They justified this because now they have Harry Potter. Welp, that prompted Disney to raise their prices too. You'd think in the spirit of competition, Disney could now tout that they have cheaper prices to get more people to come. Well, Disney is not lacking in park goers, lemme tell you that. Slowest week of the year, my arse. I guess that just means you wait an hour or two in line as opposed to 5-6. >.<

Disney raised their prices because they view themselves as a luxury brand, which means they need luxury price tags attached. If Universal raises ticket prices, then Disney has to raise it even higher cuz they gotta be more expensive than Universal. Twisted logic. :T If Coach increases the price on their purses, does that mean LV raises theirs too?

Our free hotel

As always, start the day with a mad rush to the Seven Dwarfs ride. The wait time was 40-50 minutes today, so not too bad. Though by the time we got out, it was 70-90 minute wait time.

We went on Small World, which was a big mistake. This started tainting/souring our vacation in Disney. The wait time here was an hour (an hour! for Small World!), and by the time we reached the front, what does the employee do? She groups us with 2 significantly larger people in the same row. Have you seen the size of those boats?! I did NOT wait an hour in line so I could be squashed by a complete stranger. When we got on the boat, the woman sat on me. Yeah. SAT on me. Worse yet, it was hella hot and humid today, and the woman's body heat was all over me. *shudder*

She said "sorry," which I appreciated, but dude, Disney. NOT COOL. Use some judgement when you group strangers together, will yah? It infuriated me that the family in front of us had two kids that got a row all to themselves. A. Whole. Freakin. Row. All to themselves.

While I'm being squashed alive.

This happened on Pirates of the Caribbeans too. So don't go on those rides. Besides, the Small World in Disneyland is 1000 times better than the one here. Can't put my finger on why. Oh wait. Yes, I can. Disneyland doesn't group strangers together in an insanely small rowboat.

The wait time at Peter Pan today? 2 hours. It's sunny, the temperature's hot, plus it's the weekend before Thanksgiving, so there were a lot of people here today. It was hard just walking through Fantasyland at times, there were so many people.

Angel was getting very hot and very bothered by the humidity, so we took a break to sit down and wait for the parade to start, which was good, cuz a lot of people had the same idea. By the time we got to Main Street, a whole lotta people were already sitting down on the sidewalk (only the front row can sit, the rest has to stand). We were lucky to nab spots to sit, and so got a front row to see:

Flynn Rider

Alice in Wonderland

the Dwarfs

Snow White and Dopey

Cinderella's castle has very intricate mosaics that detail Cinderella's story:

The glass slipper!

Remember when I said we couldn't get the FastPass to Meet Anna & Elsa? It's not that we really wanted to meet them, it was more the idea that it's the most popular thing to do in Disney World right now, so that was the reason why we wanted the FastPass for it. Well, Enchanted Tales with Belle is one of the other hugely, insanely popular FastPass attractions in Magic Kingdom (they didn't start offering FastPass for this until sometime late 2013 or early 2014). We knew it was a kiddie attraction, but Angel got the FastPass anyway because it's so popular. Good thing too, cuz the wait time when we went was already over an hour.

If you wait in line without a FastPass, you'll have time to appreciate Maurice's Cottage at any rate (cuz the line winds around and into his cottage). With FastPass, you waltz on thru so you don't get to see Maurice's Cottage at all.

You start out in the antechamber where the Closet tells you what's about to happen: we're going to surprise Belle on her anniversary with Beast!

The Closet and her helper picks volunteers from the park-goers. If you have a kid, get them to volunteer. Seriously. You'll regret it if you don't.

Lumiere

We're ushered into the library with Lumiere, who does introductions, and then Belle comes out. Lumiere retells the story of how Belle meets Beast and falls in love, and the volunteers (the kids) act out their parts (Mrs. Potts, Chip, etc.). Belle thanks them for the wonderful anniversary present of retelling the tale, and takes pictures individually with each kid. If your kid didn't volunteer, then he/she doesn't get a picture with Belle. The kids that volunteer also get keepsake bookmarks with her John Hancock on it.

Belle

We felt kinda stupid in Enchanted Tales with Belle because we were the only adults there without kids. Just warning all you adults out there without kids, you might not want to do this.

Enchanted Tales with Belle and the Be Our Guest restaurant both opened in December 2012, so they're both relatively new and I think that's why they're so popular. Perhaps in time the hysteria will die down a little? Here's hoping cuz the Be Our Guest restaurant was so anal. They won't allow people who don't have reservations to walk beyond these stone gates:

Be Our Guest restaurant

Even if you just want a picture outside the restaurant or inside the restaurant, you're outta luck. You can't go thru the gates if you don't have a reservation. Which kinda sucked for us, because we did have a reservation...for nighttime. But I wanna take a picture of it during the day!

They wouldn't let me thru.

Dammit.

So we come back at 6:15 pm for our 6:30pm reservation. They said to arrive 15 minutes early. They don't tell you that you'll be waiting there for 45 minutes. Sheesh. What was the point of arriving 15 minutes early???

Baby's all sad like this gargoyle cuz she's starving and she wants to eat already, dammit!

We wait on the bridge leading into the restaurant. Finally, our name is called out. And that's when you get to go beyond the iron gates (there's two sets of gates--first, the stone one. If you have a reservation, you're allowed to go thru this gate. But you can't go thru the iron gate 'til your name is called to go inside the restaurant).

Entrance to the restaurant (or Beast's Castle, as they like to call it)

The Grand Entrance

Napkin folded into a rose--cool!

The waiter comes up with warm bread and butter, which we dug into cuz we were starving. I ordered the shrimp and scallop in puff pastry with lobster sauce:

The scallop was oh-so-buttery and the shrimp was plump and juicy, but the spinach in lobster sauce tasted weirdly like Chinese food. It didn't taste lobster-y at all. Ooh, I just realized--it might've been the sherry in the sauce! It tastes kinda like the Chinese XO sauce that I don't really like.

Angel ordered strip steak with green beans and fries:

The steak comes with a herb butter melted on top. Angel asked if she could get some truffle aioli on the side (the truffle butter usually only comes with the roasted chicken dish). Because it's Disney, the waiter said, "of course." So we got not 1, not 2, but 3 side dishes of the truffle aioli. The fries were OMG how-do-they-do-this it's so tasty! I kept taking Angel's fries cuz I've never had fries this good before. I can't describe the texture but I can still feel the texture of biting down on it...so lightly crisped on the outside, so fluffy on the inside. *sigh*

The strip steak must've been poached in a vat of butter because it was freakin delicious. So, so, soooo tender. Angel wanted medium-rare, and man, did the chef deliver. Who knew strip steak could be so tender? Damn I'm salivating right now.

I didn't try her green beans, but Angel was digging right into it, so it must've been yummy cuz she usually hates vegetables with a vengeance.

Beast makes an appearance:

The dessert cart

"Try the grey stuff, it's delicious! Don't believe me, ask the dishes!" Lumiere sings in Be Our Guest. Disney chefs conjured up a dessert called "The Grey Stuff" in an ode to the song:

The Grey Stuff

We knew we definitely wanted to try The Grey Stuff before we came to Orlando. The whole trip, we kept wondering what the grey stuff was. I originally thought Lumiere referred to a savory pate cuz in France, a lot of the pates have a greyish hue to them. But it's on a dessert, so what can the grey stuff be? We went thru variations of cocoa powder, vanilla bean, heck, straight up food coloring...

...but we never thought of cookies n cream. Duh!

Why didn't that occur to me? It seems so simple and straightforward now that I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. Right after I tasted it, I wanted a Jack n the Box Oreo cookie shake (aaaahhh road trip memories). The grey stuff is a cookies n cream mousse that was slightly overwhipped, aka foamy. Angel liked it, but I don't like mousse and foam, so I let her have it. Plus, I think they baked the brownies individually (as in those brownie pans with individual cavities) and ours was over-baked. My teeth hurt crunching down on the brownie portion, so Angel ate the whole thing herself. Props for presentation, though. And marketing. Grey Stuff. Brilliant.

The ballroom aka restaurant

The Be Our Guest restaurant has 3 different dining rooms. By far the largest is the ballroom (pictured above), and that's where we ate. The lighting's very dim, so our pictures didn't turn out very good, but I hope you can see how grand the scale of it is. When I originally made the reservation, I crossed my fingers that we would be dining in the ballroom because that's where Belle waltzed with Beast waltzed!

One of the other dining rooms is the West Wing, where Beast slashed the portrait of his human self:

And where the magic rose is:

This unicorn tapestry has been popping up everywhere during our trip. It was in Stirling Castle in Scotland, in Harry Potter, and now in Beast's Castle: