Sunday, December 24th
Dinner at Ohana
Still completely full after a three-hour experience at CG brunch, we were kinda dreading the dinner at Ohana as neither of us were hungry. We wanted to get a pre-drink at the Top of the World Lounge, but I wasn't sure exactly what the rules are regarding who is allowed up there. We were staying on DVC points, but the points were my parents, not ours. I figured I would explain to the CM who mans the elevator that takes you up to the TOTWL and see what they say. To my surprise, the CM working there, Sonya, looked at the two of us before we could say anything and said "hey guys! Are you back for more?" Before I could reply, she came back with a "I remember you guys from last night; go on up and have a great time!" I still am not sure what the policy is, but I wasn't about to stand there and explain, so we happily jumped in the elevator and headed upstairs. We were greeted by our server, Emily, and the other server, also named Emily, and had a wonderful chat with Emily #1. She was asking about our day and we were talking about the brunch, and she had mentioned her boyfriend works in the kitchen at CG and was there during the brunch. Since she was working the evening shift at TOTWL, they were "two ships passing in the night!" lol We then ordered our drinks: an Apple Pie Martini for me and an Angry Orchard for Greg:
Emily said the slowest times at TOTWL are during the DVC Moonlight Magic events, when all the DVC members are in the parks. After chatting some more, we paid our tab and headed to the monorail for Ohana.
It had been quite some time since I've been to Ohana, but I had a pretty good memory of it being great. We were 15 minutes late for our 7:45 PM reservation, checking in right at 8:00 PM. Then we waited... and waited... and waited...
FINALLY, around 8:50 PM our old antiquated pager went off (no text messaging here) and we were sat at a table for 3. These tables for 3 are a little odd- they're long rectangles, with a chair on each end and one in the middle. We were sat on opposite sides of the table, and pretty far away from each other. I ended up moving to the middle chair so we wouldn't have to yell to each other from across the room. Similar to the CG brunch, we were sat right by the food, in this case, where all the meat skewers were. Bread was brought out immediately by our server, who took our drink order. The bread wasn't that good- it was dry, cold and kinda hard. The butter that went with it was pretty good and sort of made up for the bread. We were then presented with the salad and the skillet of food:
The pork dumplings were really good! The noodles, though, weren't that good at all; it was like they had been sitting around for a while. The chicken wings were also pretty greasy. I ate all the water chestnuts out of the vegetables, but not much else. We both had our hearts set on the shrimp, so I was trying to save room for that. We were first offered chicken, then steak, then chicken again. I asked if we could have shrimp, to which the server holding the chicken skewer replied, "yes, we have shrimp." Finally the server came with shrimp, and it was really good! By then though, we were both pretty full and weren't feeling up to that much shrimp. During all this, the HEA fireworks were going on, and we had a really good view! It was nice to hear the music that accompanied the fireworks.
Overall, I'm not sure if I had built up Ohana in my head, but I remembered kids rolling coconuts around the restaurant, or playing with hula hoops; there was none of that going on. I wasn't sure if it had to do with the fireworks and the time of the evening or not. There was a guy strolling around playing a ukulele, but that was about it. Greg's chair kept getting repeatedly bumped by servers, no matter how much he moved his chair forward, and the whole dining experienced felt completely rushed compared to Boma and CG.
Dessert came- the bread pudding, and somehow we forced ourselves to eat it. We then boarded the monorail for BLT, but when it stopped at MK, it was a mob scene. Throngs of people from a Christmas Eve day at the park all shoved in. Fortunately, we were only one stop away from our hotel! We went right to the room, pretty disgusted with how much we had eaten in a day!