The Florida Project! 12 Days @ WDW for our 10th Anniversary! UPDATED 9/23

I'm sorry to hear about your dad. I hope he is doing well now.

Our trips have never been long enough to take advantage of the miniature golf courses. I really wish we could go more often or have more days to do something like this.

Looking forward to hearing about Afternoon Tea! That's something I would love to do!

Thanks Annie! He is doing really well now, much better than before!

Maybe one day you guys will get an early evening or something to go and check one of them out, we really enjoy playing them! They are great fun little courses and each one of them has its own special little quirks and we always have a great time.

Oh man, yes we discovered Afternoon Tea a little while back and each time we go it is getting harder to procure a reservation time for it, so we always have to decide if we want to go there pretty early and it always seems to be the first priority on our ADR list! It is a great thing to do if you are at Magic Kingdom since it is so easy to get to the Grand from there. A short monorail ride away and afterwards you can get straight back over to the park!
 
Thursday, June 15, 2017 - Part Two - Afternoon Tea For Two!

We made it just in time to our Afternoon Tea reservation, there were an abundance of open tables, not sure if it was because ours was such an early reservation or what, but it was interesting anyway because there were no open reservations and it was so quiet in there. We looked over the new menu, we hadn't been since they changed the options of tea packages and decided on the Cheshire Tea. After we ordered we waited and relaxed looking around and out the windows of the tea room!

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The first part of our package to come out was the Fruit & Cheese Plate, along with our tea, which we were looking forward to. We always get the same teas pretty much. Jeremy usually gets the Earl Grey and I get the Breakfast Tea. The fruit plate had a great selection on it including pineapple, grapes, papaya (way overripe papaya) and pear to go along with the cheeses!

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I remember we switched out one of the meat-based sandwiches for an extra, but those sandwiches included cucumber, egg salad, and goat cheese/tomato, and a grilled onion tart, and yummy those were delicious! I think the goat cheese sandwich was my favorite, but that onion tart was great too!! I am not the biggest fan of cucumbers, but I still eat them anyway and that was the extra sandwich that we each got.

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Once we finished our sandwiches our scone/dessert tier came out and man did it look so good!! Every time I come here I realize why I enjoy it so much. It is away from the crowds, we get to sit and relax and have a really nice experience with the music playing in the lobby of the Grand Floridian. Everyone is always so friendly and we never feel rushed or like we are just a number in a long line waiting for the next attraction or that we need to eat quickly because there are 50 other groups with reservations that need your table next. This place is still one of our favorites and hopefully it will stay that was for a while!

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For our dessert selections today, I chose the trifle and Jeremy chose some macarons and chocolate covered strawberries from the tray. They were really good and we were pretty much full from this, which was good because we had a later dinner reservation this evening!

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We finished up there and took a nice stroll back over towards our room. The clouds were getting pretty ominous and we wondered whether we would be able to finish our Miniature Golf Tournament afterall! We did stop to take a view photos and do a little vlogging on our way back to the room.

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We wanted to check and see how busy the pool was because we still wanted to go there, we had yet to be able to go to the pool on the entire trip yet so we really wanted to make sure we could do that, however, there had already been lightning in the area, so for the moment, it was closed. We really wanted to try and finish up our tournament today before dinner so we went back up to the room and planned on heading out to see if they were still open...

 
I am really intrigued by the afternoon tea! It seems delightful!

It is such a nice experience, even if you only do it once. Getting away from the hustle and bustle of the parks, or like we did, just a relaxing afternoon at the resort. We really enjoy going and try to do it as often as we can get a reservation! We absolutely love it!
 


I think the Afternoon Tea at the GF is so lovely! The food looks pretty tasty, too. Our trips are never long enough to do this, but one day I'm going to make time.
 
I think the Afternoon Tea at the GF is so lovely! The food looks pretty tasty, too. Our trips are never long enough to do this, but one day I'm going to make time.

I hope you get a chance to try it out one day! We usually do it for a late lunch sort of thing if we have a later dinner reservation or something, but we have never had a bad experience there! Definitely a nice relaxing way to get out of the heat and crowds for a bit!
 
Hope your Dad is doing OK by this time. Sounds like a scary situation.

Your golf tournament sounds like a lot of fun! A nice change from the parks. We either need longer trips or need to go more often to take advantage of some of the other activities. Looking forward to hearing about your Afternoon Tea!
 


Thursday, June 15, 2017 - Part Three - Due to Inclement Weather...

We had finished up our afternoon tea and were headed back over to the villas at the Grand Floridian. This has become one of our absolute favorite DVC resorts on property. They took such care and there is so much attention to detail here that you really can't go wrong. I think the one thing that helps our other favorite Kidani Village is that they have covered parking, now if this one had that...there is no doubt it would be number one! Inside they lobby they have this adorable fountain based on the penguins of Mary Poppins and every time I see it, I get the biggest smile on my face!

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After dropping things off in the room, we headed back out to see if we could get in at least one more round of miniature golf before the rain started. We pulled in first over at Fantasia Gardens and it was closed due to lightning. We also drove by Winter Summerland, just in case, and as we arrived we were greeted with the lovely "Due To Inclement Weather" sign...and just as we were driving away, the bottom dropped out. For our afternoon in we drove back to the resort and decided to relax until dinner tonight so we stopped by the front desk and picked up two movies to watch! We ended up choosing Saving Mr. Banks and The Help.

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We love Saving Mr. Banks, it is such a great movie and we always really enjoy watching it! Tonight was one of the other restaurants that we were VERY excited about trying...I watched a few reviews for Chef Art Smith's Homecomin'..and I couldn't wait to order the catfish!! Jeremy was really looking forward to the macaroni and cheese and so we were salivating thinking about dinner tonight!! Out of all of the reservations we made this trip, this place was the highest, as far as what we were looking forward to! We headed over to Disney Springs, parked and walked over. We got checked in and a few minutes later were seated at our table!

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This is another one that is really difficult for me to type out. We have such amazing experience all over Disney property and it is very rare that we have any type of bad experience. We are not picky eaters at all, we will always eat whatever is put in front of us, we are also pretty easy going and I hope that comes through in our trip reports, we can usually make the best out of bad situations, rainy, storms, rude people, everything like that we always try and turn it around somehow, so like I said this experience at this restaurant, was one I wish on no one. This dining experience at Homecoming was hands down the worst at any Disney restaurant we have been to in the past 12+ years...and we have eaten all over property. The sad thing is, it was the restaurant we were looking the most forward to...

Our server came over after quite a while, she could have been very busy in the kitchen or anywhere else and that is fine, we were both servers, so that doesn't ever really bother us, we totally understand the restaurant business and things get busy sometimes so that was not a big deal at all. She was acting a little strange, and she could have been having an off night as well. Keep in mind we are there for our 10th Anniversary vacation. We both have wedding bands on, magic bands, 10th Anniversary Buttons...etc. Out actual anniversary is tomorrow night, and we will definitely get t that experience...because it was AWESOME!!!! So we are also from the south and are used to like being called honey, sweetie, sugar, and things like that by servers at restaurants, it is part of southern culture really. However...this time it was different...she was calling Jeremy all of these pet names and it was really awkward to the point of him becoming uncomfortable. She never called me any of them, so it was really odd that she was doing it to him?? We couldn't figure it out but we just thought, oh southern restaurant, they are doing what they normally do..so we ordered our food! I got the catfish I was really looking forward to, Jeremy ordered the catfish sandwich and an order of macaroni and cheese!

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Once the food came out, it didn't take too long we were ready to eat and it wasn't bad by any means, but it was just ok, it was a meal, it looked so good on the plates that we were actually shocked at how bland it was? Not sure if the kitchen was having an off night or what but we definitely did not experience the amazing food that all of the reviews stated. So once our server checked in on us, we figured it out...LOL!! She was flirting with Jeremy because apparently she thought we weren't together...haha!! That is why she was calling him pet names and sort of just pretending I wasn't there. After we finished our meals, we left a lot of it on the plates, I really wanted to try the hummingbird cake but it took forever for her to come back to the the table so we could order it so we just sat there for about 20 minutes waiting to see her again. We finally got our cake ordered and it was the highlight of the night!

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If you happen to find yourself here, you should get that, it was the best thing we had while we were there. So we had finally finished our really strange and uncomfortable meal, like I said before, we shared our food, both wearing magic bands, wedding bands, anniversary buttons, and at the end of the meal she asked us if we wanted separate checks. I guess most married couples that come in together by themselves ask for separate checks...who knew? Anyway after we were like uh no...we don't want the check separated...she brought it out to us and it was our table food, plus stuff that another table had ordered. So our check was wrong as well, that took about 25-30 minutes for her to sort out because I think the other table had left already? Not really sure, but she must have been having a very off night. So for that small amount of food we ordered, no appetizers...we ended up spending over 2 hours here. At least Disney Springs was really pretty at night, because that was the only way our mood was really lifted after eating here.

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We walked back to the car and started making our way back to the resort, we ended up watching The Help and going to bed, hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. We had such a great day up until the end of it. It was funny too because I got a text from the restaurant asking for us to rate the experience. I probably would not have emailed them or anything about it, but since I got this text, I let them know everything that happened. The next day I got an email from the manager who wanted us to come back in for another try...I just ignored it, we don't want anything from them and in our book this first impression is going to be the lasting one for us...at least for a while!


stay tuned for the Budget post!
 
Let me preface by saying that my husband is a chef for Ruth's Chris.

However, we were underwhelmed at Homecomin' as well. We thought , maybe, it was because we went when they first opened. I haven't heard any other reviews of the experience of food lacking flavor until now!

I mean salt and pepper and onions and butter and cream are staples in my house, ha ha. But nothing tasted good!


Our Ten Year Anniversary is Next Year and we have booked the Poly because my husband has a BIG birthday in Jan 2019 and He wants to do Grand Flo. All of your pictures of the resorts are so good and make you feel like you are there!
 
We were also completely underwhelmed by Homecomin' in June and it was one of the restaurants we were most looking forward to. DH loves him some fried chicken and after reading all the stellar reviews, it was just ok. So disappointing!
 
Let me preface by saying that my husband is a chef for Ruth's Chris.

However, we were underwhelmed at Homecomin' as well. We thought , maybe, it was because we went when they first opened. I haven't heard any other reviews of the experience of food lacking flavor until now!

I mean salt and pepper and onions and butter and cream are staples in my house, ha ha. But nothing tasted good!


Our Ten Year Anniversary is Next Year and we have booked the Poly because my husband has a BIG birthday in Jan 2019 and He wants to do Grand Flo. All of your pictures of the resorts are so good and make you feel like you are there!


Yum, we always enjoy dinner at Ruth's Chris! I was so sad about Homecomin'! Definitely interesting to know that you guys didn't enjoy it either. We couldn't find any bad reviews before we went, which it why we were so shocked to have such a mediocre meal on top of the bad server experience. When I absolutely know that I can cook better food at home than at a restaurant, that is a problem. The only thing we really enjoyed was the dessert, and I am wondering now if it was because the dinner was that disappointing that the dessert seemed awesome...LOL!

I hope you guys have an amazing Anniversary trip!! Our anniversary day was so fantastic and we ate at Boathouse...best meal experience we have had on property in years!! The Poly is an awesome resort, we had originally booked there before all of our planning changes for the first 5 nights of the split stays, we go back there time and time again because of how much we enjoy it...and then the Grand...I mean, it is gorgeous and the people there are always so welcoming. I guess they are everywhere on property but we really love both of them!!
 
We were also completely underwhelmed by Homecomin' in June and it was one of the restaurants we were most looking forward to. DH loves him some fried chicken and after reading all the stellar reviews, it was just ok. So disappointing!

It is so sad to hear that, since all of us were so looking forward to eating there! I hope for them that these are just flukes because that restaurant has some very high potential to be amazing! I mean their menu has so many delicious sounding items on it, for just the food itself on the menu and photo perspective, I still think I would like to go back and try it again because I always try restaurants at least twice before I dismiss them, but we literally had an awful time there, we still have not had enough time to want to go back, and that was 2 and a half months ago now...haha! Although, hearing that you guys and other have had mediocre food there too kind of cements my opinion a little more!
 
I'm sorry you had a less than favorable experience at Homecomin. I have never understood all the hype. I live in the Midwest and there are many places where you can get decent southern cuisine. There are so many great options in Disney Springs that I don't think we'll ever dine there.

I can't believe the server was so openly flirty with Jeremy! You handled that really well. I'm not sure I could. Knowing my husband, though, he would have enjoyed it!
 
I was glad (maybe a little sad) to read your review of Homecomin'. I have read such great reviews and we have a reservation there in December. Hmmm what to do? I may take another look at the options in DS and make another choice. But, I had my eye on the fried chicken. I did see a comment that the fried chicken was better at Prime Time. Hopefully it was just an off night. Glad your actual anniversary day was good!
 
Just found your report and have binge read it. Thanks for sharing your good( and less so good) experience!
 
I'm sorry you had a less than favorable experience at Homecomin. I have never understood all the hype. I live in the Midwest and there are many places where you can get decent southern cuisine. There are so many great options in Disney Springs that I don't think we'll ever dine there.

I can't believe the server was so openly flirty with Jeremy! You handled that really well. I'm not sure I could. Knowing my husband, though, he would have enjoyed it!

Yeah, we were definitely disappointed afterwards, and you are absolutely correct, there are so many fantastic places at Disney Springs, we won't ever even miss Homecomin'...we will definitely go everywhere else before returning there, if we ever do.

Yeah...it was one of the strangest experiences we have ever had with a server, especially on Disney property...I know the restaurant isn't Disney specifically, but they are still affiliated and you would think they would have experience dealing with anniversary, couples, families, and everything all the time? Who knows...I didn't feel like I handled it well, but I guess I did, I don't really know, I know the manager definitely knows how we both felt after that email detailing the evening...haha!!
 
I was glad (maybe a little sad) to read your review of Homecomin'. I have read such great reviews and we have a reservation there in December. Hmmm what to do? I may take another look at the options in DS and make another choice. But, I had my eye on the fried chicken. I did see a comment that the fried chicken was better at Prime Time. Hopefully it was just an off night. Glad your actual anniversary day was good!

I'm sorry, I have you a little deflated...we were so looking forward to this restaurant after all of the awesome reviews we read. The food still looked delicious, I mean even what we had, so hopefully if you guys go it will be better for you...it really could have just been an off night, I'm not really sure exactly, but now after I have heard a few other people had not so great ones too...if I was going to recommend any restaurant at Disney Springs right now...hands down it would be Boathouse...you will find out why over the Anniversary post and the final day post!
 
Just found your report and have binge read it. Thanks for sharing your good( and less so good) experience!

:welcome: Thank you so much!! I am so glad you are enjoying the TR!! Yeah, this time we definitely had our fantastic and mediocre experiences, it was definitely a fun and memorable trip though, that we are going to think about for a long time!!
 
Last Trip Report I did a budget post so we could see how we did in relation to how much I budgeted for our trip. We got a lot of positive feedback on it, so I am going to do the same thing this time, only a tad differently. Instead of doing a budget post at the end of each post, I am going to do one for an entire day once I am finished with it. That way, with it being in a separate post, if someone wants to read it they can, and if not they can just skip over it!

Our total budget we have saved for this vacation is $3500.00 in the savings account, the day we left we transferred that to checking and kept all of our receipts along the way, we also tallied everything up for each day at the end. Anytime we would have additional cash from other sources we would add that to a vacation envelope and we also always toss all change into a jar and so the change was converted into cash too, we were thinking we would use the cash for anything not budgeted for, souvenirs, snacks, things of that nature, in total we ended up with $578.00 in our cash envelope to take with us! So the totals at the bottom represent how we are doing as far as budgeted vs actual, and then below that, the cash is what we have left of the original $578.00. If you have any questions about how we budgeted for the trip or anything, just let me know!

Thursday, June 15, 2017 Budget
Budgeted Amounts
Breakfast - $25 - Quick Service
Mini-Golf Tournament - $100
Afternoon Tea - $100 - Garden View Tea Room
Dinner - $100 - Homecomin'
Total: $325.00​
Actual Spent
Starbucks Breakfast - $15.34
Fairways Course at Fantasia Gardens - $12.68 (Someone in front had an extra free pass, so they gifted it to us! That was so generous, we really appreciated it!)
Winter Course at Winter Summerland - $25.35
Afternoon Tea - $130.00
Dinner at Homecomin' - $78.00
Total: $261.37​

Budget Status
$63.63 Under Budget For Today
$299.09 Under Budget Overall :banana:


($343.33) Remaining In Saved Up Cash for Extras
 

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