This trip report was written by Douglas, who sailed a back-to-back on the Disney Dream beginning on November 18, 2019 on 2 Very Merrytime cruises from Port Canaveral.
Pre-Cruise: Epcot Food & Wine Festival
This is my second Disney Cruise after doing my first one last December on the Dream. This year is a back-to-back cruise to the Bahamas, again on the Dream. I went on this cruise with my parents so sometimes there will be pictures of them popping up at times.
Before I start on the cruise I’m posting a bonus day: Food & Wine Festival at Epcot!
We stayed at the Pop Century hotel (sorry no pictures since I was driving), which is the second time we’ve stayed there. We chose this hotel because since we were only staying here for one night we wanted a cheap hotel while also having the Skyliner as an option.
In case you don’t know, Pop Century is a hotel celebrating the pop culture of the 50’s thru the 90’s. It’s an okay hotel in my opinion but it worked for this particular trip and 1 night was more tolerable than spending a whole week there.
Once we got inside to get checked in they had this Christmas tree all set up:
I saw this picture of the cruise line among the 90’s photos behind the check in counter:
There were also these giant wreaths hanging around. They could almost be used as the base of a hoop skirt:
We got settled into our room and made our way to the Skyliner. Sorry for not getting the entire station in the shot but this is a nice view of it against the lake:
Here’s the bucket that would take us to Epcot… kind of. The way the system works is that the line goes to Caribbean Beach and you have to transfer from there to head to Hollywood Studios or to Epcot.
We arrived at Epcot and picked up a Festival guide:
The Skyliner drops everyone off at the International Gateway which is in between France and the UK, so the UK was our first stop. Before hitting any food stations we stopped by the Twinnings tea shop! It’s so nice in there and is heaven for tea enthusiasts.
We didn’t buy anything at this point but did get some tea on the way out later. Our next stop was at the Ireland booth:
This was the only menu I took a picture of because I kept forgetting! Here’s what we got at Ireland:
Roasted Irish Sausage with Colcannon Potatoes and Onion Gravy (good)
Warm Irish Cheddar Cheese and Stout Dip with Brown Bread (good with an interesting flavor in the cheese)
Warm Chocolate Pudding with Irish Cream Liquer Custard (Excellent! The custard was good on its own as well)
Guinness Baileys Shake (I’m not into alcohol – it doesn’t taste good to me) and Honey Mead (at the bottom of the picture):
Ireland was a good booth to start with with the food choices. Next up was Appleseed Orchard in Canada. It’s located inside the theater of O Canada. On the pathway down to the station they had this decoration in the gardens based off the Butchart Gardens in Victoria:
Here’s what we got at Appleseed Orchard:
Charcuterie and Cheese Plate with Burton’s Maplewood Farm Applejack Brandy Barrel Aged Maple Syrup (excellent)
Caramel Apple Popcorn (I liked the apple more than the caramel)
Frozen Apple Pie (good until I hit the bottom where it was a little scoop of canned apple pie filling that wasn’t great)
Cider Flight (my parents did not like it that much)
I had totally forgotten to take pictures of this stuff but I did take this photo from the menu outside:
Next up was the Canada booth:
Canadian Cheddar and Bacon Soup with a Pretzel Roll (excellent)
“Le Cellier” Wild Mushroom Beef Filet Mignon with Truffle Butter Sauce (my dad got this and said it was good)
Next up was Australia:
Deconstructed Pavlova with Pastry Cream, Citrus-macerated Berries and Lemon Myrtle Meringue (excellent)
Next up was Hawaii:
Kalua Pork Slider with Sweet and Sour Pineapple Chutney and spicy Mayonnaise (Excellent! I don’t even like pineapple so that says something)
It started looking a bit rainy by this point but it never rained the whole trip.
Next up was The Alps:
Warm Raclette Swiss Cheese with Baby Potatoes, Cornichons and Baguette (good)
Blueberry and Almond Frangipane Tart with Creme Fraiche (good)
The cheese was scraped off from these wheels:
Next up was China:
Male Chicken and Shrimp Bao Bun (it was pretty spicy so I didn’t enjoy it too much)
Next up is Germany:
Schinkennudeln: Pasta Gratin with Ham, Onions and Cheese (excellent)
Roast Bratwurst in a Prop & Peller Pretzel Roll (just okay – not a fan of mustard so I avoided that)
Apple Strudel with Vanilla Sauce (excellent)
Next up is Italy:
Ravioli Carbonara (good but pretty filling)
Cannoli (excellent)
Chocolate Hazelnut Cake (excellent – it’s the one on the stick)
The next booth is called Hops & Barley and is located in the America pavilion:
New England Lobster Roll (excellent)
New Brunswick Slider: Slow-braised Beef Brisket “Pot Roast” Style with Horseradish Cream, Fried Onions on a Potato Roll with Pickled Veggies (this thing was so spicy I didn’t enjoy it)
Carrot Cake (didn’t taste):
After this I’m starting to feel uncomfortably full but I still have a couple booths after this to go. Next up is Belgium:
Golden Malted Belgian Waffle with Warm Chocolate Ganache (excellent)
The final stop is France:
Croissant aux Escargot (excellent)
Creme Brûlée with Chocolate Hazelnut Creme on the bottom (excellent)
After this we headed to the Skyliner to head back to the hotel. While waiting in line I saw this backstage door open on the side of the restrooms:
After returning to the hotel, we decided we wanted to go to Disney Springs so we caught the bus to get there. My mom wanted to grab a couple of the holiday popcorn buckets so we went in search of them. Because my dad has trouble keeping up with us, we parked him at Ghirardelli. One of the buckets was only available in the Christmas tree trail. It was so crowded in there that my mom was getting to the point of “get me out!” I took some pictures of some of the trees in the trail:
After getting the Christmas bucket my mom went to a regular popcorn cart to get the other bucket but the cart didn’t have any electricity so they couldn’t sell anything so we didn’t get the bucket at this time.
We were getting hungry enough to want dinner so we went in search of food. Sadly, everywhere we looked was too long to wait so we went to the buses and went to Art of Animation – it’s connected to our hotel so it’s easy to get back – and had a lackluster meal there which was disappointing since we had stayed there a few years back and the food was good. We returned to our room after this.
The next morning we got the luggage into the car. On the way down to the car I saw the end of the mouse.
After packing the car we headed to Disney Springs to get something to eat and so my mom could get her second popcorn bucket. We decided on brunch at Homecomin’. It was going to be around 45 minutes until we got a table so me and my mom went to get popcorn buckets while my dad stayed at the restaurant. None of the popcorn places were open yet, so we went wandering through the stores nearby. We bought some stuff at the honey store and the Ganachery which I’ll show in a bit. When we got back to the restaurant our table was ready and we were seated.
We ordered the biscuits:
For my main dish I got the French toast. It was so big and delicious!
I don’t remember what my parents had and I didn’t take pictures – sorry about that.
Now it was time to drive to Port Canaveral, where we were staying the night before the cruise. It only takes an hour to get there so we are there before we know it.
We get checked into Country Inn & Suites, get the luggage into the room and then my mom and I go to get gas into the car while we leave my dad at the hotel. My mother prefers using Murphy USA gas stations and I had found one a couple of towns down. When we get there it turned out to be a Murphy Express (we loaded a Walmart gift card to cover gas and the Express doesn’t take the gift card at all) so I had to look up another Murphy USA and found one. Overall this whole escapade took an hour by the time we got back to the hotel.
We spent the afternoon making sure we had everything for the cruise straightened up in our cruise luggage and nothing from our post-cruise luggage in there. By the time we had finished checking the luggage it was time for dinner and we went over to Kelsey’s.
My mother ordered the Hawaiian pizza:
My dad and I shared the BBQ pizza:
This was one of the best pizzas I’d ever had, definitely a top 10 for me. One thing that was sad was one of the girls there said they always get good reviews of their pizza but they recently had one bad review and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with that pizza.
We returned to the hotel and had our chocolate from the Ganachery. The first one here is a chocolate Olaf to promote Frozen 2.
OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!
These were chocolate covered marshmallows that came with Olaf. They are apparently supposed to be pumpkin flavored but I didn’t taste that at all.
And here’s our ganache in their nice packaging:
And here’s the actual ganache. They’re enclosed in chocolate so they’re creamy inside and so delicious. This is combination of the ones my mom wanted and the ones for me so that’s why there’s doubles of some. The flavors are, from left to right, Candy Cane, Vanilla, Gianduja (it’s Italian Hazelnut), 65% Dark, Coconut, Orange and Raspberry.
Other flavors they have at The Ganachery are Caramel with Sea Salt, Chipotle, Cinnamon, Coffee, Egyptian Sea Salt, Milk Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Mint, Passion Fruit and Pistachio. There can also be other flavors depending on the season so look for that if you’re ever there.
After this we went to bed to get ready for boarding the ship in the morning.
Up Next: Day 1 – Boarding the Disney Dream
I really enjoyed seeing all the pictures from Food Festival. I am looking forward to your cruise posts too!
Thank you! I’m currently working on the 2nd leg for Diana to post and should have them ready by the time she puts the 1st leg up.
One thing I forgot to mention in the trip report that my mother wanted me to include: The Skyliner is so much better than the buses. It was much faster and should be easier to keep clean and maintained compared to the buses. I wish the system went to more hotels to be honest.