Disneyland: The Food

I am not a foodie, nor do I play one on TV -- at least, not as I understand the definition of "foodie." I mean, I like food -- I really like food -- and I like knowing how my food is made and what's in it and how I could possibly recreate a certain dish at home and maybe what variety of boxed wine goes with what particular course, but I'm not really a foodie.

Well, wait ... maybe I am a foodie. But on my very best day, I am an extremely novice foodie, and also, I really only care about herbs and cheeses. My fine dining experiences are very limited because (1) I am basically working poor and (2) I am terribly cheap. The words prix fixe usually mean "too expensive for my blood," and I don't really eat at places that have "cuisine" on the menu anywhere because in my experience that means tiny little portions and big scary checks with lots of zeroes on them.

And don't even get me started on hipster locavores. Pshaw. I am lucky if I can remember what fork to use when. It's like that scene in Pretty Woman, complete with flying escargots.

But anyway: as I said, I really like food, so believe me when I say I had some of the best meals of my life (all over the course of only two days!) while we were in Disneyland, and in case you are ever thinking of going yourself, I'd like to tell you about them. (OK, brag a little. Whatever. Shut up.)

• On Friday, our first day in the parks, we had lunch at Ariel's Grotto for the Princess Celebration. This is where we saw all the princesses. It was almost overwhelming, how much food they brought to the table: a tower of antipasti, baskets of bread, fantastic entrees (you can see the whole menu here). I had the Santa-Maria-style Trip-Tip and I swear to God, it was the best damned steak I ever had in my life, and those mashed potatoes were nothing short of heavenly. And the desserts! I thought we'd get to choose one -- I was going to go with the Sea Horse Lava Cake -- but we actually got the WHOLE TRAY. (I don't know what I thought "shared dessert platter meant," but as usual, mistakes were made.)

Ariel is edible, and so is the seashell. No, really!
They're both made of white chocolate.

• Friday night we had dinner at Blue Bayou. Oh, sweet Lord -- if I could spent every day for the rest of my life at Blue Bayou, I would. I'd go completely flat-ass broke, but I loved this place. It's inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and it looks SO PRETTY, and the food is AMAZING. Granted, I could have been extra-impressed because we were tired and starving after spending 11 hours in the parks at that point, but I don't think so: good crab cakes are good crab cakes, and these were among the best I ever had. (Lunch menu and dinner menu.)

This is a terrible, terrible picture of absolutely delicious food.
I feel like I should apologize to the memory of these crab cakes.

• Oh, and an important caveat about all these meals -- I am raving like a lunatic about this food, and I didn't have ONE SINGLE DRINK when we ate in the great Disneyland Resort Metro Area. And everybody knows that a glass of wine or a cold beer or even a passable mojito makes everything better. This food was this good all on its own.

• Saturday morning, we had breakfast at Carnation Cafe, on Main Street U.S.A., in Disneyland. It's a cute little place with big sun umbrellas and wrought-iron tables and chairs and it's perfect for people-watching and it's exactly as typically Disneyland-kitschy as you would expect. Shae and I had "matching" Junior and Senior Mickey Mouse-shaped Belgian waffles. You know what? Nobody does Belgian waffles like Disney. NOBODY.

Shae was mad because her breakfast didn't come with bacon.
What can I say? She's a fan of the pig. (That's my girl.)

• Interested in Walt Disney World equivalents? No idea -- the size and layout of Disneyland and California Adventure is very different from the expanses in WDW. But as best I can tell, you can have a princess lunch at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall (Norway, EPCOT); for a fancy-schmancy gourmet-style dinner with excellent steak, go to Le Cellier Steakhouse (Canada, EPCOT -- we ate there on our honeymoon and it was FANTASTIC) or for great seafood try Fulton's Crab House (Downtown Disney); and for a lovely breakfast try Crystal Palace (out-of-this world French toast, my very favorite thing we had to eat on our honeymoon except for the fresh watermelon juice at La Cantina de San Angel in Mexico, EPCOT).

Now, these meals were not cheap. I'm not going to lie. Three meals in the parks, plus taxes and tips, came to about $300. That's a lot of money. Carnation Cafe was the least expensive, primarily because of the type of restaurant it is and the kind of food we ordered. But you know what? Every meal we had was worth what we paid. Especially those crab cakes. And you are paying for the experience blah blah blah -- all of which is to say that I definitely think it was worth every penny of the splurge.

Happy Birthday Pop-pop!

We interrupt our riveting and action-packed Disneyland coverage (which will go on for longer than the trip did, AS USUAL) for this important Special Public Service Announcement:

Keep calm and carry on. (And better late than never.) (And yes, that is Shae, not Joey, not that you can necessarily tell the difference on "Happy Birthday," but you should hear this kid sing Adele or Cee-Lo.)

Disneyland: The Characters

Here is my favorite part of our trip to Disneyland: we were having breakfast on Saturday in the park, at the Carnation Cafe on Main Street U.S.A., and while we were there, a barbershop quartet starting singing across the street. One of the songs they sang was "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" -- a song I have not heard since G and I were on our honeymoon, in Walt Disney World, at the Hoop-De-Doo Musical Revue, where they put us at our own little table and turned the spotlight on us, and we danced together, and it was my own little princess moment, and for just a second there, I got to relive it. Even if G didn't remember it. Whatever, he remembers our anniversary, so I can't complain.

Shae got her own series of princess moments, too:

Ariel

Snow White

Aurora a/k/a Sleeping Beauty

Belle

Cinderella

We went to lunch at Ariel's Grotto for Ariel's Princess Celebration. It was pretty amazing. We also got to see a whole bunch of other characters:

Vidia and Tinkerbell

Iridessa

Alice, in Disneyland

Gepetto

Minnie Mouse

Green Army Man and Woody

Mary Poppins

Shae doesn't even know who Mary Poppins IS, but that didn't stop her from chasing her down the street for an autograph and pictures.

Disneyland: The Scenery

As I already mentioned, we didn't see all of Disneyland or of California Adventure, and we didn't take a whole lot of pictures because we were, like, going on rides and stuffing our faces full of fantastic food and stuff, but we did manage to get a bunch of decent pictures of the park.

Palm tree, Paradise Pier, California Adventure

The Paradise Pier section of California Adventure was maybe my favorite section of both parks. It's done up to look like a beach boardwalk, and it's filled with carnival-type rides (plus, it's home to Ariel's Grotto, where the Princess Celebration Lunch is, which we'll get to tomorrow). We went on almost every ride here, because it's full of the stuff that is right in my wheelhouse: the Silly Symphony Swings, King Triton's Carousel, the giant swinging ferris wheel. (OK, I didn't go on the giant swinging ferris wheel, because: Exhibit A.) It also had the largest concentration of palm trees of any area of the parks, I think. No funnel cake, though, more's the pity.

Roses after dark, Paradise Pier, California Adventure

Paradise Pier is also where they have the big World of Color fire-light-water-laser show, which is AWESOME. And these roses, which smelled like heaven.

Sleeping Beauty's Castle, Fantasyland, Disneyland

Sleeping Beauty's Castle, in Disneyland. It's very small -- way smaller than Cinderella's Castle in Walt Disney World -- but it has a very charming old-world old-school fairy tale feel which is EXACTLY what people go to Disneyland for in the first place. And the Castle is GORGEOUS at night, especially during the fireworks spectacular, but I didn't get any pictures of that, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Mad Tea Party, Fantasyland, Disneyland

The Mad Tea Party is my very favorite ride visually, full stop. The colors, the spinning, the paper lanterns -- when I finally win the lottery and I buy my house in the Keys (or, dare I say it, possibly Orange County, but the part near the beach), I am going to decorate at least a part of my back porch to look like this ride. The Mad Tea Party is my Malibu Barbie Dream House.

Tomorrowland tower thing, Disneyland

I don't know if this sculpture thingy has a name, but it's a major landmark in -- wait for it -- Tomorrowland. We didn't really look in any gift shops, but I wonder if a smaller, desktop or mantel-sized version of this is available?

Blue Bayou, inside Pirates of the Caribbean, New Orleans Square, Disneyland

Okay, look, this is a bad picture, and I know it, but hopefully you can get a sense of what this restaurant looks and feels like. This is the Blue Bayou, which is inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and the food was AMAZING, and the ambience was even AMAZINGER, and the crab cakes were THE MOST AMAZINGEST EVER and I don't think I am saying that just because we didn't have dinner that night until like 8:30 at night and at that point we had been at the Disneyland Resort Compound Complex for in excess of 10 hours already. Dinner at this restaurant was a total splurge, way more money than we normally spend for the three of us to eat dinner, but absolutely worth it. There was this sauce on my crab cakes that was so delicious that I wanted to bathe in it and then lick myself clean. (Yes, that's a totally weird thing to say, but seriously: AH. MAY. ZEENG.)

The two loves of my life that aren't cheeseburgers

My very most favoritest pieces of scenery on the whole trip. She was all wide-eyed and drop-jawed for almost all of it, and he was just drinking it all in. I can't imagine experiencing Disneyland for the first time -- and even though I didn't get a cute little button, it was my first time in Disneyland too -- with anybody else.

Disneyland: The Rides

We lost a day and a half of our trip due to bad weather in Chicago and airline cock-ups and we reached a point around 11:00 AM on Thursday -- almost 24 hours later than we were supposed to be in California originally -- where it looked like we were never going to get the hell out of O'Hare airport. For serious, I was sitting in the middle of Terminal 3 at one point, weeping and blubbering and and cussing a blue streak, and for a little while I found myself hoping to get arrested so we could get out of there.

I mean, I figured my husband would visit me in jail, and bring me cigarettes. Absolutely nothing in the world is worse than being stuck on the secure side of the TSA checkpoint in one of the world's busiest airports with no idea if or when you're ever going to get out and no access to a smoking lounge when you're already on what is supposed to be Day 2 of your vacation but you're still 2,000 miles from your final destination and God only knows how many flights and hours left to go and you only have half an Ativan left in your purse.

Yes, I know I have a tendency towards melodrama, but yes, it really was that bad. And did I mention I was with my husband, who hates travelling, and my 4-year-old, who hates everything that doesn't blink, make noise, or dispense candy?

So when we finally got to Anaheim, and we rejiggered our schedule so that we could fit in as much as we possibly could while we were still there -- and once again I would like to thank the nice people at Disney Dining, who let us change our reservation at Blue Bayou not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES over two different days and never said a word or gave us a hard time or anything, even with me whining into the phone -- when we finally got to Disneyland, we were so busy having fun that we didn't stop that much to take pictures of the fun-having, you know?

Our final picture count is a bit disappointing -- just over 800 photos, and many of them not particularly good, as usual. I know it's possible for me to take upwards of a thousand pictures in a single day, and I'm pretty sure I did that last year at the shore, but it just didn't work out like that this time. Also, we didn't get ONE single picture of the three of us together anywhere. In retrospect, for a place like Disneyland, a little point-and-shoot that fits in a pocket or fanny pack might be a better way to go: not as heavy, for one thing, and not as difficult to whip out and start taking pictures in line for rides, in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle, etc. No having to change lenses and fuss with settings and whatnot. Or else I guess we could go on vacation with other people, so we don't have to ask strangers to please hold our jillion dollar camera while we pose here in front of this random scenic thing like a bunch of gauche tourists and move our stuff so my purse isn't in the frame and let me smooth her hair out a second and can you see us all or do I need to stand on this bench here since my husband is twelve feet tall and hang on while I spit into my hand and clean the chocolate and cotton candy off my kid's face face and ... hey, where is that guy going with our Nikon?

Shut up. I already know I'm crazy.

Anyway, here are the best of the pictures we got of the rides we went on at Disneyland. (Dear every English teacher everywhere, I am sorry for butchering the language right there, and if you need to punish me by making me diagram the previous sentence, so be it.)

Silly Symphony Swings @ California Adventure

King Triton's Carousel @ California Adventure

King Triton's Carousel @ California Adventure

Mad Tea Party @ Disneyland

Francis' Ladybug Boogie @ California Adventure

Heimlich's Chew Chew Train @ California Adventure

And around here is the point at which we all hit the wall. Which, I can't say I blame Shae for that, overmuch -- we spent 20+ hours in two theme parks in two days, which is kind of a lot for us grown-ups, to say nothing of how exhausting it must have been for her. We were in both parks on both days, and we covered just about every corner. It was Memorial Day weekend, and there were lots of people (although, thanks to Disney magic, there were no "crowds," per se). There was a lot of noise and movement and characters everywhere and excitement and music and fireworks and laser light shows and what have you. And walking, oh my lands. And the HILLS. Gentle though they were, they are still in fact HILLS.

But honestly? Disneyland and California Adventure were pretty much as awesome as I expected, maybe even more, all things considered, and I think G and Shae agree. It's different from Walt Disney World in Florida, where G and I went for our honeymoon, but different is not bad in this case. It is smaller, more intimate, if that makes sense to describe a place filled with 50,000 people. There was stuff we missed, like the Peter Pan ride and the Alice in Wonderland ride and the Snow White ride and the Matterhorn and the runaway train. Big sections of one of the parks were still under construction, and Star Tours was closed for renovations. I can't remember if we even passed through Frontierland, and we only ever saw Mickey's ToonTown from the train depot. We didn't get on anywhere close to everything, but we hit all the highlights we were hoping for: Pirates of the Caribbean. The Tiki Birds. The Jungle Cruise. My favorite, the Mad Tea Party. It's A Small World. MuppetVision 3D. Space Mountain, Shae's first roller coaster ride. (She didn't like the dark, but she didn't mind the coaster part.) The swings and the ferris wheel and every stinkin' boat ride in both parks. We got a sneak preview of the new Little Mermaid ride which doesn't officially open until this week. Everything in California Adventure was fantastic, especially Soarin' Over California, which is the single best amusement park ride that I have ever been on anywhere ever.

No, I never got my In-N-Out burger, and we didn't see the ocean in person until we were on the plane coming home, and we probably could have spent two more days at the parks, easily, but considering how crappily the trip started, it ended up being pretty damned fantastic. More tomorrow.