How Many Days In A Row Will We Wear Tie Dye (or Disney 2009 review): Part 11.3featured

We headed to the Italy pavilion after exploring (and stopping for Mom’s lunch) in the Germany pavilion. I love the Italy pavilion…the architecture is just gorgeous and the theming is just so beautiful. There’s a running joke between me and one of my friends because a few years ago, she went to Italy while I was in Disney World and we joke about being in “Italy” at the same time (though I think her experience was far more noteworthy than mine).

After our tour d’Italia, we walked past the American Adventure (which we’ve never ventured into in all of our trips to Disney…maybe because we live in America, the allure isn’t there? Or maybe because it’s underdeveloped and just an exhibit instead of a pavilion) and headed straight to Japan.

I say this about almost every pavilion, but I really love the Japan pavilion. There’s just SO much to explore. There’s the Mitsukoshi Department Store, which is huge and just FILLED with fun souvenirs (including the ever-popular pick-a-pearl). There’s the large koi pond. There’s Miyuki, a candy artist who does demonstrations multiple times a day. There’s the pagoda and other structures. I did a quick sweep through Mitsukoshi and didn’t find anything I really wanted, so I left Mom and Stephanie to shop while I explored the rest of the pavilion.

Our 6:00 pm reservation time for dinner at Le Cellier was quickly approaching, and having explored every World Showcase pavilion over the course of the week, we headed to dinner with my mission accomplished.

It’s become a tradition, of sorts, for us to eat our last meal at Disney (or, at least, our last meal at Epcot if our last day is at another park) at Le Cellier. We’ve ::knock on wood:: never had a problem getting dinner reservations here, so just like our previous vacations, we started our trip at ‘Ohanas and ended it at Le Cellier. As usual, even though we checked in a bit early, Le Cellier had a full house and was packed, so we waited outside for a bit before heading back in to wait for our table.

When the small waiting area in Le Cellier had cleared out a bit, we settled in to wait for our names to be called. An endless of parade of people looking for walk-up reservations kept streaming in and out and the hostess told me this is an everyday thing and they so very rarely have an opening. I joked that they should post a sign on the door to save the patron the time and to save the hostesses from constantly repeating themselves and she told me they actually used to have the podium outside for that reason. I’ll touch on this again later, but I’ve just got to say that of every place we’ve ever dined in Disney World, Le Cellier always has the friendliest staff from top to bottom.

We were seated about 20 minutes after our ADR time (not bad by Le Cellier standards) and were taken to the main dining room to be seated. Le Cellier’s dark, wood tones, low lighting and closely placed tables (along with the menu options and prices) would suggest a more intimate, romantic dining experience, but with the popularity of the Disney Dining Plans, it’s mostly families. On this particular night, it was just grating because there were so many kids running around and screaming. A few tables over, there was a baby that cried the entire meal and the parents did nothing to soothe it or remove it from the dining area. Because the tables are so close to each other and the restaurant is so small, it just magnified the entire situation.

Thankfully, though, we had the most amazing server (the best we’ve ever had at Disney) in Sean and between his excellent service and the good food, and in the spirit of enjoying the last night of our trip, we tuned everything else out. But back to Sean. He was insanely friendly, knowledgeable, quick with the suggestions and very intuitive. He and I had a similar sense of humor and I enjoyed our slight sparring. Sean took our drink orders (iced teas for Mom and I and a diet Coke for Stephanie, though on the dining plan, you could order the smoothies or some bottled water) and brought out a basket of soft breadsticks (with three different varieties: a plain breadstick, a multi-grain breadstick and my personal favorite, the pretzel breadstick) and some butter. Mom and Stephanie really enjoy the multi-grain stick while I’m a sucker for the pretzel bread, and Sean was amazing in making sure we always had enough.

Mom started with the Steakhouse Caesar (Romaine lettuce, parmesan sourdough croutons and a creamy Caesar dressing) and it was your typical Caesar salad. Now, unlike your more upscale steakhouse salads, this one came chopped instead of whole-leafed, but Mom much prefers the convenience of having her salad chopped for her.

Steakhouse Caesar

Stephanie started with the Tomato Stack (Caramelized onions, cucumbers, crumbled bleu cheese and Yuzu vinaigrette), which was kind of like a stacked wedge salad sans the lettuce (and with a citrus vinaigrette instead of the traditional blue cheese dressing). Stephanie thought it was a wonderful balance of textures and flavors, with the sweet, ripe tomatoes and the pungent blue cheese.

Tomato Stack

I started with the house specialty- the Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup (Made with Moosehead beer and smoked bacon). You can get this in either a cup or a bowl, and I opted for the cup because the rest of the meal would be pretty heavy anyways. The soup was fantastic as always. It’s so velvety and smoky and it’s insanely amazing when you dunk some of that pretzel bread in. I actually tried the recipe from AllEars.net at home and bought some pretzel bread from Trader Joes and it was almost exactly like eating it in Disney World. Very yummo.

Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup

For her main course, Stephanie debated between the chicken, the filet and the vegetarian dish (a potato gnocchi dish) and she ultimately went with the Roasted All-Natural Chicken Breast (with potato croquettes, peas and carrots) and it was the best chicken dish she ate all week. The chicken was so flavorful and juicy and she said the potato croquettes were like fried mashed potatoes and were just fantastic, as well.

Roasted All-Natural Chicken Breast

Mom and I both ordered the famous Le Cellier Mushroom Filet Mignon (with wild mushroom risotto and finished with white truffle-herb butter sauce) and as always, it didn’t disappoint. Here’s the thing, though- if you don’t like mushrooms, you probably won’t like this dish. It’s very heavy on the mushroom. I can’t get enough mushrooms and so I order it every time I go to Le Cellier. The filet was soft, tender and just perfectly cooked and the light truffle butter was a nice accompaniment. The risotto was on the heavy side, but I never eat much of it anyways because it’s so rich (another recipe I’ve tried at home off of AllEars and it came out identically as the restaurant version). I think I made it through about half the filet and called it a meal. Mom really enjoyed hers, as well, but she didn’t get much further through her dish than I did.

Le Cellier Mushroom Filet Mignon

Stephanie ordered the seasonal sorbet for dessert, which I believe was a coconut sorbet. After such a heavy meal, she enjoyed the light refreshment of the icy sorbet.

Seasonal Sorbet

As she always does, Mom ordered the Canadian Chocolate Mousse. I always mean to sneak a taste off of her but I never have room to try. But I guess the fact that she always orders it must mean it’s pretty tasty, right?

Canadian Chocolate Mousse

I ordered one of the newer menu additions, the Mont Blanc Semifreddo (with chilled fruit soup) and it was one of the best things I ate all week. A semifreddo is basically a semi-frozen custard. Here, it was served kind of like a baked Alaska without the cake, with a flambeed exterior. It was just fantastic. It was heavy on the wine flavor, but I like wine so no complaints there. It was placed in a pool of fruit sauce with some berries and the sauce was a nice addition to the sweet custard and the tang of the wine.

Mont Blanc Semifreddo

As we were finishing our meal (after joking around with Sean as he cleared my empty dessert plate that I clearly didn’t enjoy it and wanted to send a complaint to the chef), the restaurant manager came around to see how our meal was and we had to rave about Sean’s service. The cheque came to $148.87 and we used three meal credits (and even though it was our last meal, we had eleven meal credits remaining). On our way out, Mom stopped at the hostess desk to fill out a commendation form for Sean (we did this on our previous visit for our server then, too…we’ve just had phenomenal service at this restaurant and I encourage anyone who has an experience that’s above and beyond magical to fill out a commendation form, as well. It just takes a few seconds and it means so much).

We took our time walking around the Canada pavilion after dinner. The area surrounding Le Cellier is surrounded by ponds and lush gardens. There’s even a waterfall. It’s one of the quietest, prettiest areas in World Showcase.

I wanted all of us to ride Test Track together, but Mom really wanted to get back to the hotel to pack and see if grandma wanted to go out, so we decided to all ride Spaceship Earth together. A friendly passerby saw us taking pictures and offered to take a picture of us. Was it the smartest thing to hand over my expensive SLR camera to a stranger AGAIN? No. But sometimes you have to trust in the goodness of your fellow man. And the friendly passerby was indeed a friendly, well-intentioned passerby who took our picture and wished us a magical evening.

So earlier, Stephanie and Mom decided it was funny to ride Spaceship Earth with the track in another language. Stephanie wanted to ride alone so I rode with Mom and at the absolute last second, Stephanie convinced Mom to change the language to French (which Mom speaks and understands pretty fluently). I was TICKEDDDDD. It was my last time riding my favorite ride for who knows how long…and I had to listen to it in French. Not a happy camper.

After the ride, I was pouting, Mom went back to the hotel, and to make it up to me, Stephanie took the middle seat on Test Track again. We constantly fight over it and try to bargain our way out of it. Stephanie doesn’t always mind the middle, but the first time I rode in the middle, a middle-aged woman riding for the first time was seated next to me and threatened that she was going to throw up the entire time. Kind of ruined the ride for me. Anyways. We went on Test Track and it was a pretty short wait (less than 20 minutes). There’s something special about that glory lap in the dark…the wind in your hair…the lights around you…the dark sky. Perfect last Epcot ride.

After our last ride on Test Track, we headed to Mouse Gears for some last-minute souvenir shopping (where, amongst other things, I bought a nice, hard-cover theme park book and a tea ball) and then made our way to the front of the park. We dawdled a bit, taking our time, but as we noticed Illuminations starting, we decided to just get onto the monorail to beat the rush.

On the way back to the Bay Lake Towers, we stopped at the Polynesian so I could use some of our remaining snack credits to get some Polynesian Chips to take home. They travel and keep really well and they’re soooooo yummy.

We headed back to the hotel. Mom and grandma were out walking around so Stephanie and I took the time to finish our laundry and pack everything up. Stephanie really wanted to go to the Magic Kingdom extra magic hours, so I did my packing and laid in bed and rested for awhile.

Mom, Stephanie and I headed to Magic Kingdom right before midnight. The park was pretty empty, which provided for some nice photo ops. I was still in a pretty sour mood because of the Spaceship Earth thing and I was sore, tired as hell and we had eight days of driving the next day…and another 12 hours of driving the day after that. At some point, though, you have to choose to focus on the magic and live in the moment.

We started over in Tomorrowland so we could go on Buzz Lightyear. I rode with Mom (who is nice enough to let me control the joystick…until I randomly start spinning us around in circles) and I whopped her score…Stephanies, too.

After Buzz, we walked over to Fantasyland because Stephanie had to see Mickey’s Philharmagic one more time and we hit It’s a Small World while we were out there. Peter Pan had an INSANE wait (as always)…even with the magic hours…so we skipped out on that one.

I decided I couldn’t leave Disney without a Dole Whip Float. They’re my absolute favorite and I hadn’t had one in our past two trips because I’m always so full, so while Stephanie went to get some popcorn, I went over to Adventureland to get me a float. And it was glorious.

Even though the park was open until 3:00 am, we only made it until 1:30 am or so before heading back to the resort. We took our time going down Main Street, taking it all in, stopping in some of the shops, because it was our last few park moments and we didn’t know when we’d be coming back.

We walked back to the hotel instead of waiting for the monorail and nothing felt better than the rush of cold air coming into the resort after being out in the hot sticky evening heat. A problem I noticed all week (that I don’t think I’ve remembered to mention) is that on the ground floor and on the bridge floor on the wall next to the door, it would be covered in tiny flies late at night. They would just congregate on those walls. I never saw bugs of any kind elsewhere in the resort and I’d hope they’d found a way to resolve this by now, but a wall of fruit flies is kind of…gross.

Anyways, back in the room, I was exhausted and achy. I took a quick shower and went right into bed. As much as I wanted to stay up and savor every bit of Disney that I could get in, the week had been just physically exhausting. I needed a vacation from my vacation. But even with that, I was sad we had to leave the next morning.