In early February, my Grandpa Mickey turned 70 and to celebrate he invited me and my cousin Panos (and our parents) to join him at DisneyWorld (what my mom refers to as "The World") for a celebration vacation. The cool thing was that since my Grandpa had been to DisneyWorld many times, he knew exactly where to go and had it all planned out. Ms. Wendy, his wife, is really the one who made all the reservations for the hotel, park tickets, and dinners along the way - he took care of the entertainment and she did the research for the trip and the food. Thank you both for an awesome celebration weekend!
The first day, we spent the morning in the sun, swimming at the pool, and hopped the noon bus to "The World" to begin our adventures at the Magic Kingdom. Other than ice cream we didn't really eat that much that day until dinner. We left the Kingdom and took the monorail to the Grand Floridian, which is a very grand hotel with a surprising number of spa and beauty shops inside, as well as a wonderful six-person jazz ensemble playing music in the lobby.
This was the day that was my grandfather turned 70 and so we had a special dessert plan that would take us back into the Magic Kingdom after dinner. While this was all exciting, it meant our dinner was a bit more rushed than usual. BUT with the excellent service, everything went off perfectly.
Dinner was at Citricos. Because I have a few small food allergies, the chef came out to our table to discuss items that I should avoid (hardly anything). While he was at our table, my mom asked him if he had any particular favorites or recommendations from the menu that night. He replied with such enthusiasm and exciting detail, that we ended up trying all his favorites - between seven people.
A few of us had the braised baby beet salad with lemon-chive goat cheese, balsamic reduction, petite greens, and golden beet coulis (notes from the menu, I'd never be able to remember all that so long after our visit). I love beets and this was a wonderful and unusual treat that was really VERY good (what I'm eating in the picture above), but . . . I still like Habitat's beets more. Maybe it the teeny tiny drizzling of honey in Habitat's preparation . . . . For my main course I couldn't resist their chicken noodle soup because I'm a soup lover. It was really good and I could have eaten another bowl but was trying to save room for dessert and wanted to help my cousin finish his Mickey Mouse head-shaped pasta.
Momma and Auntie both had their own beet salad and then shared the pan seared grouper - they LOVED the grouper! Daddy had the grouper by himself but he RAVED about his starter, which was called arancini with a crispy risotta with cremini mushrooms, asiago, and charred tomato coulis - he said it was mushroom and cheese heaven!
Citricos had a dessert, which was a warm chocolate banana torte that was topped with a chocolate tiara - it looked like a tiara but was made out of chocolate! We saw a server carrying a tiara and saw one of chefs making them, oo la la! I really wanted one but we were saving room for our dessert buffet that came next but before I talk about that, I want to mention that Citricos had the VERY BEST service of any meal on our trip - thank you!
After dinner, we danced a bit in the lobby of the Grand Floridian (the video of our dancing is on my Auntie's blog) then ran for the monorail to get back to the Magic Kingdom, where we sprinted toward the Tommorrowland Terrace for our dessert buffet extravaganza. It was a little hectic on the terrace as everyone was trying to position themselves for the best views of the light and firework show to come, but we ended up with a great spot and headed in shifts for the buffet to figure out how it all worked and what we might like. My favorite desserts were the giant strawberries dipped in chocolate, a small serving of the tiramisu (though I finished Grandpa's and my cousin's), and I liked their brownies too. While we had our dessert a light and fireworks show was happening on Cinderella's Castle and my favorite part was when Tinker Bell flew from a tower in the castle all the way over to where we were having dessert - it was thrilling!
Day 2, 3, & 4 to come soon . . . thanks for sticking with me and my blog - it has been a crazy busy spring.
