Garden Grill Review

Garden Grill is a family style character meal in Epcot’s The Land pavilion at Walt Disney World, in a rotating restaurant offering views into the Living with the Land attraction. Just to make sure you caught all of that, we have: 1) all you can eat, 2) characters, 3) restaurant rotation, and 4) views into an attraction. Does it have ALF and dinosaurs? Because if so, with those 6 things, it would be the greatest restaurant ever! In reality, it’s not quite the greatest ever, but we’ll get to that in the review. Since Garden Grill is a family style all you can eat meal, the menu options are more limited than a standard Disney buffet. It’s still fairly pricey, making it one of our top values for character meals on the Disney Dining Plan. If you’re not on the Disney Dining Plan, Garden Grill accepts the Tables in Wonderland card for a 20% discount.

This restaurant has existed since The Land pavilion opened, but not always as Garden Grill. It used to be The Good Turn Restaurant, and before that it was The Land Grille Room. The restaurant has always rotated (hence its first name), but it was previously a higher caliber of restaurant before characters came onto the scene. Back in the day when Kraft sponsored it, they served classy stuff…like Easy Mac! That’s not to say the character version is worse (I don’t recall our meals at The Land Grille Room, so I’m not qualified to make that judgment), it’s just different. I’m also fairly certain they used to do breakfast and lunch (I’m pretty sure we did lunch here only a few years ago), but now it’s only dinner. (more…)

Le Cellier Review

The delicious meats of Canada beckon carnivores like us from opposite ends of the park. Le Cellier is one of the most popular restaurants at Walt Disney World, and it has a legion of fans. While we like the restaurant, we don’t believe it’s as great as many make it out to be. Le Cellier is located in Epcot’s World Showcase in the Canada pavilion. Le Cellier participates in the Disney Dining Plan. It also accepts the Tables in Wonderland card for a 20% discount.

We last dined at Le Cellier in 2012, but 2013 changes to Le Cellier’s status (it’s now a Signature Restaurant for both lunch and dinner, and has one single menu so you can’t choose less expensive options for lunch) have caused us to revise this review slightly. We typically pay out of pocket when dining here, as this restaurant is not a good value on the Disney Dining Plan because it requires two credits. (more…)

EPCOT Center Tickets & Maps

A lot changes have changed about EPCOT Center over the years. Attractions have come and gone, entertainment has changed, even Walt Disney World guests look different now than they did in 1982. Another thing that has changed is the printed material available in the park. Tickets, maps, and other ephemera have all changed. In some cases, these changes have been for the better–many old maps look archaic by today’s graphic design standards. In other cases, beautiful art on napkins or shopping bags has been replaced by generic “DisneyParks” script.

Ephemera can tell a lot about the history of a place, so I think it’s useful to look at the these old maps, tickets, and times guides and see just how much has changed over the years as EPCOT Center changed to Epcot ’94 and changed to just plain Epcot.

It’s interesting to look at these old times guides and see how many bands used to appear at EPCOT Center for the “Future World March” and “World Showcase March.” I doubt Disney paid much, if anything, for these high school bands to appear, so I wonder why they stopped the practice. During lighter seasons, World Showcase still is only lightly crowded in the early morning, so it seems this type of cheap/free entertainment could still be offered. (more…)

Christmas 2012 Disney World Trip Report Day 3

At the end of day 2′s installment, I forgot to share photos of the Swan & Dolphin Christmas decorations. They have an interesting tree that I doubt many people bother going to see, so I figured I’d share it here.

I also want to thank you all for the feedback on poll for the next trip report. I think I might have prejudiced the result, but I’m pretty pleased (and surprised!) that Disneyland Paris won. Expect to see the first installment of that report next Monday. In the meantime, I am requesting more feedback on Facebook, this time requesting tips for visiting Walt Disney World with kids. I’ll be quoting some of you on the blog in that post, so make sure to choose your words wisely! Okay, on with the meat of this installment…

Being the last day of the trip, we knew we needed to get to Epcot again first thing if we wanted to experience Test Track. Sarah took our luggage to Bell Services while I snapped a few photos in the lobby.

From there, we headed to the International Gateway, arriving right as the turnstiles opened.

I want to preface this review with the disclaimer that we experienced no technical difficulties on our many rides that morning, but from what I understand, these difficulties are incredibly frequent. This is really too bad…

Over the years, I’ve learned to temper my expectations for any redo of an Epcot attraction. I’ve been disappointed time and time again, and have come to expect as fact that Disney no longer desires to build attractions fitting of the original EPCOT Center and its vision. I figured Test Track 2.0 would continue this trend, but on the upside, at least it wasn’t replacing anything special. (more…)

EPCOT Center Vintage Character Photos

Since opening day on October 1, 1982, EPCOT Center had walk-around meet & greet characters. The most famous of these were Figment & Dreamfinder, who are still sorely missed by Epcot fans (for more photos of them, check out our Vintage Journey into Imagination Photos page). There were also some other bizarre and short-lived characters, such as the World Showcase dolls and various robots, such as SMRT-1. In more recent years, Disney has reprised odd characters with “Figzilla” a giant walk-around Figment character that met guests outside the third version of Journey into Imagination.

When EPCOT Center opened, there were not walk around characters, with that ‘void’ instead being filled by the above aforementioned odd characters, as well as Figment & Dreamfinder. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon how creepy you find those other characters), only Figment & Dreamfinder caught on. The other unique characters were abandoned relatively quickly, and by the late 1980s, Disney characters made appearances in EPCOT Center.

These characters consisted of Disney characters in World Showcase clothed in attire representative of their host countries and also random characters that rode around the double-decker World Showcase buses. Neither these country-specific costumes nor the double decker buses are currently used. Instead, characters from stories set in the various countries do meet and greets in those countries. For example, you’ll often find Marie of Aristocats or Belle of Beauty and the Beast in France. (more…)