Sadly, today was the final day of our
Disneyland trip but then again, five days is such a long time for just the two parks (compared to WDW, that is) that we felt we had really seen and done everything we had wanted to, and in an almost relaxed way, even.
(I say "almost" because that I have found that I can never tackle Disney in a totally relaxed way, I always stress a little bit because there is yet more I want to see and do. Others here on the DIS may or may not be familiar with these symptoms.
)
Just the day before we had spontaneously booked today's breakfast at Café Mickey, when DH had said he wouldn't mind having at least one nice hot breakfast during the trip, after all those mornings of croissants. Sure thing anything to make hubby happy and get me some scrambled eggs!
For Disneyland standards, this breakfast was almost a steal since we were staying at a DLP resort hotel we only paid EUR 14.00 per person, and with my Shareholders' Club card that was further reduced to 11.80 each. Not bad!
We had gotten ourselves an 8 a.m. reservation, and our plan was to have breakfast rather quickly, then go back to the hotel, get packed up, check out, store our luggage at the hotel and hit the parks one last time until about 3.30 p.m. (we had managed to get a late flight back to Germany, so we still had, well, almost a full day left).
Sadly, my camera battery died on me after just one photo, and I had left the spare battery in our room (we took more pictures with our mobile, but they didn't turn out well enough to post here, plus I still haven't quite figured out how to get them off my phone onto the computer) so the only evidence I can show for having been to Café Mickey is this:
A friendly rabbit who happened along while DH was busy getting some breakfast. I must admit I don't know who this is, though
Something to do with the Pinocchio movie, maybe? I have never gotten around to seeing that one, and given that Ghepetto was making his rounds in the restaurant as well
Could anyone possibly enlighten me?
Anyway, the breakfast was really nice, especially considering the good price. Of course it was more of a childrens' thing with all the characters, and subsequently the whole experience was pretty loud and frantic but that was totally to be expected and not a problem at all.
I really loved the character interaction, actually they were all totally sweet with the toddlers at the surrounding tables, of course, and danced a highly energetic dance for a slightly older birthday boy. But they also gave us a childless couple - all the time we wanted for handshakes, hugs and photographs.
The breakfast in itself was okay nothing to blow our minds, but they had all the usual staple of hot and cold foods, the coffee didn't taste mouldy like it did at the hotel, and there was drinking water to be had, so all was well.
After finishing up at the hotel, we were on our way to Disneyland Park needless to say, we paid Salon Mickey one final visit:
We then spent a few more hours touring, until noontime found us here:
at Agrabah Café, where we had a lunch reservation.
Checking in was in fact a bit weird: At a first podium, a lady gave us a drinks menu and told us to proceed to a second podium around the corner. We walked the few steps (there was nobody but us checking in) to the next lady, who keyed the amount for two persons into her registry, then asked what we wanted to drink and was pretty upset with us because we had not yet figured out what we wanted hadn't we been given a drinks menu after all? She needed to know what we wanted now, please, after all we had to pay for it now!!! Er, okay, sure.
I then gave her my Shareholders' Club card, she rolled her eyes at me and muttered something under her breath. Then we waited for almost five minutes with her for her supervisor to arrive, who apparently was the only one authorized of booking shareholders' discounts.
(We have seen the same thing at some shops, too apparently they are afraid of their own staff somehow cheating with shareholders' discounts so they only let the managers handle those cards?
). Anyway, never before did it take so long or were we made to feel so much like annoying intruders for wanting our discount.)
So yeah, the regular buffet price was 22.60 per person, and we saved a total of 7.31 for the lost time and the angry looks we were given. Oh well.
Then, finally, we were shown to our table and left to our own devices, so we went to explore our surroundings a bit:
The place was beautifully decorated, like straight out of 1001 nights (well, the Technicolor version, anyway).
Took me a while to spot the monkey up in that window.
The appetizer buffet. Oh, where to start
?
The mint tea stand. Yum! I rushed straight over there as it looked to me like this was self-service, but a server was with me immediately and told me the tea would be 3.50 each, and he would serve them. Hmm, okay I ordered one anyway, I can never pass up a good mint tea
.
I didn't dare ask the server to apply the shareholders' discount though, as I didn't want to go through that whole scene again. I made sure to walk over and surreptitiously throw a few additional mint leaves into my teapot, though sneaky me
.
Now, as for the food, I am afraid I didn't write down exactly what was on the buffets, so I will pretty much leave you to the pictures without many explanations. Let me just say that we really, really enjoyed our meal here. We took our sweet time and actually almost stayed for two hours, as we figured the rest of the day (which wouldn't see us home until 11 pm) would be hectic enough, so we just relaxed in the dark, and quiet, and ambled over to the buffet occasionally to get another plate of food.
The food itself was very pleasant, some of it wonderful, some just nice, nothing bad at all. As usual, I wouldn't have minded finding stronger and more unusual spices, but given how they have to cater to a whole diverse theme park crown, I understand why they have to go easy on the more exotic stuff.
This was DH's first plate:
Some chicken kabobs, meat balls, and a very tasty cold lentil salad that I also helped myself to more than once ...
as you can see on my first plate as well:
which also held some very nice hoummous, a rice salad quite strong on mint, chick pea salad, some other salad I dont quite remember and cold, sweet carrots that turned out to be maybe my least favourite thing on the menu just because they were so boring.
Next for me was this:
Meat balls! Fried potatoes! Aubergines! Loved it.
By now, I think we were already on our second pot of stealthily enhanced mint tea:
Aren't those pots beautiful?
Yet another plate of food:
No good meal without olives!
I am not sure how I somehow managed hardly to take any pictures of the warm foods I assure you I had as much of those as I did of the cold stuff! When I finally moved onto dessert, though, my camera was ready again:
The cake on the right was nice, but the one on the left oh boy, that was the best cake I have had in years. It's a very sweet, heavy pecan tart, and I would give up pretty much anything except for my husband and my cats to have a plate of that right now
. Had I not been so full already after about five plates of food, I would have had another slice.
I may even have contemplated getting one anyway, but then I discovered this:
They had crepes!
With three different syrupy sauces to choose from!
Oh, and the little thing in the upper left corner came from a big basket of little Arabian pastries not too sweet, flaky and extremely good.
Honestly, for me it would be worth the cost of the buffet just for the desserts. From my meals so far during this trip, I guess you have gathered that I am not usually that much of a dessert person at Agrabah Café, everything changed!
After sitting and lazing for another twenty minutes, I was even able to sample the last of the desserts on offer:
The fruit salads. One was a regular, mixed fruit salad but the other one (on the right side of my bowl) was simply to die for: a very plain salad of fresh orange with chopped mint leaves. This was about the best fruit salad I have ever had incredibly fresh and tasty.
So, seriously, this buffet blew us away. We weren't treated as nicely as in the other restaurants, true, and the experience at a buffet isn't the same as when you receive excellent table service.
For a buffet, though, this may well be the best we have ever had in a Disney park, and I include the Florida parks in this. Great buffet food, great variety, affordable prices, and a beautifully decorated and quiet place to get out of the heat (especially on a hot summer day like we miraculously had on this September 30th).
I am not sure how it is with picky eaters and/or kids, I admit, as they do not have very much of the "meat and potatoes" variety of food but if you are willing to try a little bit of adventurous food (and like I said, it really is only a LITTLE adventurous), I do not think you will be disappointed.
Well, this was our trip to Disneyland Paris, and technically this dining report is over. On the other hand, like I already mentioned at the start of this report, I still have all these I hope appetizing food pictures sitting on my hard drive, pictures I have taken during the Mediterranean cruise we took on the Disney Magic a few months prior to our DLP visit.
So, while this is not really the right place for it, I figure I will lump our 2011 European Disney Dining experiences all together in this thread and continue with:
Coming up next: Disney dining on a cruise ship, day 1- Let the Magic Begin!
First, though, I wish you all a very merry Christmas and (just in case I won't make it back here before then) a happy new year 2012!
), and absolutely nobody was sitting in the large upstairs seating area. Since I am naturally nosey, I had to go up there and take a look (even though DH rolled his eyes at me and I could almost hear him think "Can't this woman just sit down and let me have my food for once, instead of wanting everything PERFECT?").
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