Foodie Friday: 'Ohana Dinner Review

This Friday's review is dedicated to the 

'Ohana dinner at the Polynesian Resort.

This happens to be one of my family's favorite restaurants (both for dinner and breakfast, but that's a different review). It's located on the second floor of the Polynesian Resort. Because it's on the monorail line, it makes this a nice option for days in the Magic Kingdom or Epcot as well as days not spent in the parks. 'Ohana is considered a Table Service meal if you're using the Disney Dining Plan. I highly recommend making a reservation for this as soon as possible.

'Ohana is a popular dining destination, so we arrived early. It was nice to go outside and snap some photos on the beach of the lagoon. My daughter also loved getting pictures of the beautiful flowers around the resort.

Again, it's a busy place, so there was a little bit of a wait for our table. Luckily they have a full bar there for drinks while you wait. Feel free to walk up or a server will make their way around to you if you're seated in the waiting area. The kids enjoyed their "Stitch Juice" and Shirley Temple, while mama and daddy had some drinks of the adult nature.

We didn't have to wait too long though before they took us in, grabbed our delicious pineapple-coconut bread, and took us by the grills as we made our way to the table.

It's a set menu and is served family style at your table. It's all-you-can-eat, so don't be afraid to ask for more! They start with a great mixed salad with Lilikoi dressing.

Next comes the wok full of some delicious appetizers- pot-stickers tossed in garlic-ginger sauce and honey-coriander wings (served with peanut and sweet-n-sour sauces).

After that they bring this pan of incredible lo mein noodles and stir-fry veggies. Hopefully you've saved some of those sauces because they're fabulous poured over these noodles and veggies!

Finally we're getting to the meat of the meal, literally. Servers will make their rounds carrying large skewers of oak fire-grilled sweet-n-sour chicken, spicy peel-n-eat shrimp, and szechuan sirloin steak. Oh. Em. Gee. These are soooo good!! I can honestly say one of the pieces of steak I had was easily the best steak I've ever had. Ever. And while I'm not a seafood fan, my little guy is. He was tearing those shrimp up! I literally couldn't get him to stop for a photo.

Oh, and if you have room, and you're going to want to save room, there's bread pudding a la mode with bananas-caramel sauce. I'm not even a bread pudding fan, and I loved this!

The food is obviously the star here, but there's actually entertainment to accompany the meal. Someone is singing and playing some island music on a ukulele. She leads hula lessons and coconut races throughout the evening as well. And if you're lucky, and things are timed right, you can see Wishes at Magic Kingdom. They'll lower the lights and pipe the music into restaurant. The whole back wall is made up of windows, so they can be seen pretty easily through the restaurant. It's pretty neat.

So, to recap, this meal is fabulous! You're going to want to make this a must on your next trip! And make sure you go hungry!!

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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Tower of Terror

I don't know that Tower of Terror is my favorite ride at Disney, but it rates right up there at the top of the list somewhere... in May 2011 I had the pleasure of riding with a newbie, my husband's Grandma. (She could have outdone us all at Disney!!)

Below is our ride photo. We were in the top row on the left. You couldn't see not one of our faces because each of them were blocked by an arm or a hand from the row in front of us. (You should be able to double-click on the image to enlarge it to see better...)

Boy, would I have loved to have seen her face! She had a pretty good hold of mine and Dad's arms during the drop, but when she got of she said she'd enjoyed herself! I'm so glad I got to experience her first Disney trip with her! So much fun!!

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Tip Tuesday: Stop for the Photo Booths

I'm what one might call "photo obsessed". I love capturing as many moments via photo as I can. So, if there's a chance to make a fun memory and capture it, I'm all in! Which is just what we did on our trip a few weeks ago!

Do you remember those fun photo booths where everyone squeezed in the little booth and tried to fit all of your heads into one little square and out popped a fun photo strip at the end? Well, Disney has a couple, and we decided to have some fun at the one in the Tomorrowland Arcade (at the Space Mountain exit) a few weeks ago. (There are actually two at this location)

Hop in the booth and have some fun. At the end you can pick a fun character border or commemorate your trip with a year date. Sure, at $5 for three strips, that's a pretty good deal- a keepsake for you and some to give to the grandparents, or split between friends. However, my tip, and the better value is- don't forget to scan your magic band!! These booths are compatible with Memory Maker!!

That's right, you can scan your band and all of your fun shots will be downloaded right to your account. If you've pre-purchased the Memory Maker photo package (which I highly recommend doing) you'll be able to download the digital images right to your device to share digitally or have printed.

It wasn't crowded (we were there late), and we were having a blast. We just kept switching people and getting back in. These are memories I'll cherish forever- cutting up and making faces with my kiddos. What a blessing.

Here's a list of the photo booth locations:

1.  Magic Kingdom- Tomorrowland Arcade (exit shop of Space Mountain)
2. Animal Kingdom- Games of Chance area in Dinoland (near Primaeval Whirl)
3. Epcot- PhotoWorks area (exit shop of Journey to Imagination or "the Figment ride")
4. Hollywood Studios- Pizza Planet Arcade

Check out some of the fun we had!

 Not only do you get the strips digitally on your Memory Maker, but they also include the individual photos! Win-Win!!

They also have some that come out as a single photo rather than photo strips

If you've done the photo booths I'd love to see some of your photos as well. Visit my Facebook page and share your photos with me!

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Foodie Friday: Be Our Guest Breakfast Review

 Welcome back, Mouse Fans.

Please join me for a quick review of our breakfast experience at

Be Our Guest in Magic Kingdom.

Unfortunately, my family is a picky bunch (me included), so we've kind of put off Be Our Guest in the past. Reading the menu online makes everything sound so frou-frou and a bit out of our realm. However, without a reservation we couldn't go in to see the Beast's castle. For the sake of my readers and clients, it was high time I got some first-hand experience with this highly sought after ADR restaurant.

BOG (Be Our Guest) is located in Fantasyland in Magic Kingdom. It's situated at the foot of the Beast's Castle. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This restaurant is unique in that breakfast and lunch are quick service meals here, and dinner is a table service meal. Most QS (quick service) meals do not require a reservation. At BOG all meals require ADRs (Advanced Dining Reservations).

Another unique thing about BOG is that for breakfast and lunch guests can go into their MDE (MyDisneyExperience account) 30 days in advance and place their order online.

We decided breakfast was likely our best bet as far as the menu went. I was able to secure an early 9:05 am reservation. We were all still pretty nervous about the menu, so we didn't do our online ordering until that morning around 7am. In our hesitance we also decided to order only one adult menu and one child's meal. I'd read that since the entrees come with a platter of pastries they could easily be shared, so we figured we'd try that for our first time.

Bag Check took especially long, as crowds were pretty high, so we weren't able to get in the park early. Once the Magic Kingdom's Welcome Show begins, they won't let anyone in the gates, early morning reservations or not. We high-tailed it straight back to the Beast's Castle with no problems.

The outside is accurately themed to the castle, down to the gargoyles.

You check in outside before entering the restaurant. Once you go in you enter a queue to your right. There are some fun armor suits to check out while you wait. Then you'll enter a room with several touch-screen terminals where you can scan your magic band and place your order if you haven't done so before. You can also confirm or change your existing order at this time. (We decided to remove the banana caramel sauce from our croissant doughnut.) I highly recommend ordering ahead of time to minimize your time in line!!

 

From there you're released to go find a table in one of the three dining rooms- the West Wing, the Grand Ballroom, and the Castle Gallery. Each room is themed to its name. The Grand Ballroom is the largest and on the morning we went, the most crowded. The West Wing is dark, a little loud, and the smallest of the three. (My 7 year old is wary of loud noises. He was okay to check the WW out, but he didn't want to stay) We chose the Castle Gallery.

Here are some photos of each of the dining rooms:

 

Utensils and soft drinks are self-serve in each of the rooms. You can find a cart with the silverware tucked up against the wall near the drink station. We were highly impressed with the ornate attention to detail, all the way down to keeping the theme true even to the Coke machine.

No need to worry about where you sit. They'll use their magic to find you an wheel a little trolley right to your table with your food.

As I said, we ordered one adult entrée- the croissant doughnut and a child's entrée- the French toast. The meals also came with a plate of pastries. Everything looked fabulous! So fabulous in fact, that my son scarfed down a piece of the French toast before I could even snap the photo! We left the banana-caramel sauce off (because my hubby doesn't like bananas), but we saw it with the sauce and sliced bananas and I think I want that all to myself next time. We had the pleasure of seeing several other entrees wheeled by us and realized we'd have eaten everything. It seems the menu made everything sound so fancy we thought it would be stuff we wouldn't like. Having seen it in person definitely changed our perspective. They just fluffed up the descriptions. All the food was still normal, delicious breakfast foods.

We all shared everything and loved it all. The croissant donut was definitely the favorite. Though I did really enjoy one of the muffins quite a bit, too. I asked a cast member what kind they were because I liked it so much. She graciously went to find out for me. When she returned she had 2 more for me! I highly recommend you snag the flax seed muffin from your pastry plate!

Having shared everything we all left feeling good. No one ate too much, but no one left hungry either. It was perfect! It definitely got the thumbs-up from my crew! We're looking forward to going back in November.

Click Here to check out the menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

That sums up this review. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments below. I'd also love to hear your opinions if you've had the pleasure of dining here.




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