sleepydog25
Been here awhile
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2004
Yes, you can walk to FW--we do it all the time. Take the bike path that starts at the junction of the walkway between the main Lodge and the VWL building and the walkway to the bus stop. There's a New Balance map right there (but, you don't need it). Take that bike path toward FW (i.e., same general direction as the bus walkway) and just stay on it. It's roughly a mile, one way. It's paved the entire way until you get to FW where it joins up to the pony section where it's mostly mulch. Regardless, you stay on it and you'll come out about 50-60 yards from Trail's End which will be on your left. Easy peasy.Since I anticipated that we would have a very full first day I planned an evening park visit for our second day and left the morning and afternoon open for food, movies and sleeping in. When we got up we all decided that a big breakfast sounded ideal and my SIL had never done Trail's End before, so I got on the app and was able to book it with no problem. Yay!
I don't know what I was missing, but I could have sworn that I've read on here a ton of times that you can walk from WL to Trail's End, but I could not figure it out and my map app told me it would take hours to walk there, so I gave up and we went out to wait for the bus. Does anyone know if you can? Did I make this up in my mind? I dunno, but first, look at this view from the Lodge.
I was willing to drive, but we figured an internal bus over to FW would be along shortly, so we decided to wait it out. Check out my Nightmare Before Christmas inspired outfit for the day.
There was a CM at the bus stop this morning and I asked if one of the buses would stop at FW next other than the internal bus as it had done so on our way to Epcot the day before, but he said no, so back we went to waiting for the internal bus. And wait, and wait, and wait. Then he yelled for us to run down to the end as our bus was there... but it said Disney Springs. We went with it and went down only to be told, oops my bad, not your bus. Back we go to wait again. It was getting very close to our reservation time and I was really about to just get in the car and drive over when a bus pulled up. And the lovely CM felt bad about making us run for the wrong bus, so he gave us a Fastpass for the park that night, which was really sweet!
This was especially great since I was unable to book the safari for AK that night because I used our Fastpasses for Na'vi River Journey, Everest and River of Lights. Score! Thanks Henry!
The bus to FW from WL only had the three of us on it and took us right to where we needed to go with no other stops, so we made it right on time for our reservation. Perfect!
One of our favorite breakfast spots.
We checked in and got our pager and waited outside to be seated. Selfie time!
After only a couple of minutes we were seated and drink orders were taken and we were off to the buffet! The best part was that it was Sunday and it was the brunch buffet, which we had not done before. It was essentially all the best parts of breakfast and lunch combined. Mickey waffles and fried chicken? Yes please!
My first plate.
A Mickey waffle (obviously), breakfast potatoes, seasonal pasta, breakfast pizza, tater tots, French toast bread pudding and a cinnamon roll.
Their breakfast potatoes have big chunks of beef in them and are the absolute best potatoes ever. Everything else was super yummy, but the real stand out for me was the season pasta which was penne pasta with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes and goat cheese cream sauce. I couldn't get enough of it!
Rob's massive first plate complete with gigantic omelet and every meat known to man.
He was RAVING about the chicken, so I had to save room for some.
My smaller second plate.
More pasta (YUM!) and a small piece of chicken with some mashed potatoes and gravy.
I have had their chicken before and loved it, but I forgot how good it was. Delicious!
And of course we had to get the Moonshine to drink, which is the awesome fruit blend they serve at a number of spots throughout WDW.
Brunch at Trail's End was a total success! My SIL loved it too. I would absolutely do brunch again over breakfast. This was the best of both worlds and everything was fresh and tasty. I highly recommend!
We were all super full and ready to sit in a movie. Off to Disney Springs we go!
We, too, have thoroughly enjoyed Trail's End. Not sure they still have it, but their BBQ eggs benedict used to be delicious, at least if you could get them fresh out of the kitchen so that the yolks were still runny. As for Roaring Fork, we've stopped going. Once they renovated, they lost the fresh aspect of the food. For example, the Mickey waffles now come as part of a basket meal and aren't made fresh-to-order. Gone are all the wonderful toppings save some sludge-like glop that is supposed to be akin to bananas foster but tastes more like sweet glue. There have been many complaints since the refurbishment; seems RF has lost its mojo.