Disney World. Day 2. We Bought Kaftans.
Hallie came in to wake us up around 7:30. We had ordered breakfast for 8:00, but it showed up early at 7:40, so that kind of worked out. For breakfast we all had avocado toast with scrambled eggs, except for Hallie who had a waffle, except she didn’t really eat the waffle.
We had planned on leaving for Hollywood Studios by 8:30, but somehow we didn’t make it out until 9:00. We again took the hotel car (which, if I didn’t mention yesterday, you still have to pay for) and got dropped off right at the entrance to the park. Once inside, we rented a scooter for me. This was my moms idea and it was great.
Tzvi: From there we went directly to the new Star Wars land called Galaxy’s Edge. I wasn’t super impressed by the new land. They did a great job of creating a stunning, immersive land, but it was just too big and spread out. In all of the other lands you can kind of just walk through and see everything - here I felt like it was so sprawling that you had to really look for things, and I never found the milk café or the main store. Steph and Hallie waited on line to take a picture in front of the Millennium Falcon while Lisa, Ofek and I went single rider on the new Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run ride. It was eh. It’s basically just a simulator ride, but everyone gets a job and they make you press a bunch of buttons, which in my opinion really detracted from the simulator part of the ride.
Steph: After we were done in Galaxy’s Edge Tzvi realized he didn’t get the photo of me he wanted with my Star Wars shirt and then got mad that I didn’t want to go back. Cranky Tzvi is what we called him. Then we walked to Toy Story Land, which Hallie was pretty excited about. We first went on the alien flying saucer spin ride, then Toy Story Midway Mania. As always, I was best in car. This means I beat Tzvi, my mom, and four other strangers. [Tzvi: In my defense, I only scored about 20,000 points less than Steph and I had Hallie on my lap and Hallie did the shooting for the first two rounds.] We bought a bunch of stuff at the Toy Story store. Hallie asked the cashier for a sticker, but she didn’t have one, so she instead took one of the little alien toys off of a display and gave it to Hallie.
November 2018 to October 2019, almost exactly one year later
After Toy Story land we walked back through Star Wars land (to get the photo which he then wasn’t even happy with) to the New York area and had lunch at Pizza Rizzo, which I guess is muppet themed? Hallie ate two whole pizzas, but she pulled off the cheese, so basically she just ate a lot of bread and sauce.
At that point it was almost 1, or after 1 actually, so we left and took a boat to EPCOT. It feels like we did nothing, not that I could do much. Anyway, once inside EPCOT we found pretty short lines to meet Mickey and Minnie, and then made our way toward the scooter rental and Spaceship Earth, which I wanted to go on because they recently renovated it. Or at least that’s what I thought. Turns out they’re not renovating it until 2022, so it was the same ride as usual. Still great, but the same. Hallie was a little scared of how dark it was, but she survived.
The EPCOT Food and Wine Festival is happening now, so there was a lot of food that Tzvi wanted to try, except I think he only got like 3 things. The first stop he made was at the Earth Eats pavilion, where he got an Impossible Cottage Pie, which was impossible meat (if you don’t know what that is, it’s a plant-based fake meat that tastes a lot like meat) with veggies and topped with a cauliflower puree. He said it was pretty good. After Spaceship Earth we headed into the countries. Hallie, my mom and I got Mickey ice cream pops and ice cream sandwiches, which Hallie got all over herself and her stroller. Tzvi got corn fritters at the Donut Box, which were okay.
Next we made our way to Norway where we had a fast pass for the Frozen ride. Hallie was really scared of the big snowman, so she kept her head in Tzvi’s lap for most of the ride, although I think she actually enjoyed it. Then we waited about ten minutes to meet Anna and Elsa from Frozen, but Hallie was pretty shy. From there we walked around the countries and looked for more food for Tzvi to try. We got hummus fries from Morocco, which was basically falafel and pretty good. They came with a red sauce that spilled all over my scooter because Tzvi put it in my scooter basket. After that we met my parents and went into Morocco where my mother shopped, for over an hour, for kaftans and fez hats to wear to the henna party before Rachel and Austin’s wedding. At one point Tzvi went to get a bottle of water from the morocco drink stand, and the two guys working there gave Hallie a free strawberry slushy, which she enjoyed, until she spilled half of it on her shorts and needed to be changed.
After Morroco we walked a few feet until my mother stopped at the Cutco knife stand and decided to buy a new knife block. Disney, where ALL of the shopping gets done. The guy who sold us the Cutco knife was named Kadeem Samuels. He’s a wrestler from the Bronx and hopes to be competing in the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020. He was very nice and my mother kept asking him questions so we got basically his whole life story.
After the knives it was time to head to dinner. There was so much we didn’t get to do. Figment. The Land. England. Soarin. But at least my mother got kaftans and a new knife block.
Dinner was at Chefs de France (in the France pavilion in EPCOT). The restaurant is nice and looks like a classic French brasserie. Our waiter was an older French man named Lidio. He asked where we were from and we said New York and then Long Island. He asked where Long Island was and we, like idiots, tried to explain it. When he came back the next time he told us that his wife from Roslyn and he lived there with her for many years before moving to Orlando. He said he misses Long Island because you get better bread and produce, and that the only thing fresh in Orlando is oranges. Then he asked where Ofek was from, and then told us he used to work for Princess Cruises and stopped many times in Haifa and saw a lot of Israel (but hasn’t been there since 5 days before the 6 Day War, though he feels he’s seen it all and doesn’t need to go back).
For our dinner they started by sharing yet another cheese plate, which they said was pretty good, and a tomato and goat cheese bread (which was really just a pizza). They also brought fresh warm bread which was really good; Lidio said the bakers are all French, so the bread there is actually good. We must have gone through like at least 4 loaves. For our mains Tzvi and I shared the vegetable lasagna and the salmon with haricot verts. The veggies in the lasagna were basically ratatouille, so I had the noodles and some of the zucchini. Tzvi ate most of the salmon. My father also got the vegetable lasagna and didn’t like any of the vegetables; when Lidio came back and asked how it was, my father said, “I wasn’t a fan.” For dessert we had a crème brulle and a chocolate tarte, both of which were pretty good.
After dinner we made a quick stop in Mexico where we rode the Donald Duck ride. Hallie was scared to go in, but then when she saw it was all bright and Donald Duck she loved it. Around 9:00 the fireworks started. It was a new show - EPCOT Forever - which replaced the old Illuminations. It was a pretty good show and Hallie loved it but thought it was too loud. It’s called Epcot Forever because it brings in favorite songs of Epcot over the years, Walt Disney speaks a bit, there’s even a song from the Disneyland Fun video. Once it was over we made the long trip out of the park (best part of having a scooter was right now), got an Uber and went back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel we found they had left a really nice plate of cut up fruit in Hallie’s room (but not ours). She enjoyed that. Then Hallie went to sleep and Tzvi and I watched the Nationals win the World Series. I took a bath and was able to watch the game in the bathroom in the TV mirror. Tzvi fell asleep and then was upset that he didn’t get to take a bath.
Good day.
