Disney as many of you know is a long time favorite of M and I. We're regulars and save for a couple of years, we've made a stop in a Disney Park every year since we've met. In fact, Disney World is the first vacation we went on together back when we were dating. By and large Disney doesn't hold much new for us, but this year saw big changes at the Disney World Parks.


Many of the innovations have been talked about ad nauseam on multitudes of blogs and boards, so we won't get into any specifics. Suffice to say that the advent of the MagicBands, the changes to the FastPass+, and the My Disney Experience app heralded the arrival of a new way to experience the Parks. I will say this, it was a lot more scheduled but said scheduling allowed M and I to experience many new restaurants that we hadn't considered before. Truly there is much to gain in pre-planning, though the adventurer in me laments the loss of the unknown, still it was a wonderful experience.

We stayed at the beautiful Animal Kingdom Lodge, which was new to us, as we tend to save a few dollars on the accommodations in favour of our dining. Our go to resort is the always wonderful Port Orleans Riverside. This year we discovered something new, which allowed us to stay at the deluxe Animal Kingdom Lodge for the price of the Port Orleans Riverside... how did we do it? We purchased Disney Vacation Club points off MouseOwners.com. You need to have some trust in the process, but read up on it, it may work as well for you as it did for us. The highlight is, of course, the savannah view from the room.

New restaurants visited on this trip included:

• The Rose and Crown Pub where we had a wonderful seat for the Illuminations: Reflections of Earth fireworks
• Tony's Town Square Restaurant - a surprisingly enjoyable table service restaurant at the Magic Kingdom
• Jiko at the Animal Kingdom Lodge for our anniversary
• Kona Café - where M thoroughly enjoyed the Tonga Toast
• Whispering Canyon Café - inside the absolutely stunning Wilderness Lodge
• The Hollywood Brown Derby - at the Hollywood Studios Park, incredibly good for Park food I assure you
• Be Our Guest - the newest restaurant at the Magic Kingdom Park, nearly impossible to get into for dinner, we enjoyed a very nice lunch... and yes the Grey Stuff is delicious

As usual the highlight of our dining experience at Disney is Victoria and Albert's at the Grand Floridian resort. We tried something new here as well, getting a seat in the even more swanky Queen Victoria's Room. While the regular dining room meal is splendid, the menu served in the Queen Victoria Room is largely the same as the Chef's Table. You can see the full menu here. Of course, wine pairings for a meal like this one are a must... but that's just our opinion.

Now I know I said earlier that all of the planning can cramp your style a bit for adventure, but M and I wanted to preserve at least a semblance of this feeling, so we took our inaugural Monorail Pub Crawl. It's explained in the link, but suffice to say, it's a pretty standard Pub Crawl only instead of walking you use the monorail to get you from place to place. I promise, it's worth doing and honestly a great way to spend an evening at the World.

Well that's about it for Disney May 2014. I hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane with me, and maybe even found a tip or two for your next trip.

If you're curious about Ontario wine, specifically the Niagara Peninsula, make sure to visit our newest post (Niagara Peninsula Wine Region) where we chat about our Niagara wine weekend in July 2013.  We provide some recommendations for accommodation, dining and wineries to visits.  Check-ch-check, ch-check it out!