Chapter 46
Disney Food at Last

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(Originally posted July 16, 2013)

Continuing in the same direction through Disneyland, we made our way into Critter Country.

There was almost no wait for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, so we decided to get in line.

While this ride doesn’t attract too much popularity here at Disneyland, there’s no denying how well-themed its queue area is. I really enjoy the little stream that flows beside you while you wait.

I’m also a fan of all the hidden speakers, like the one in Eeyore’s house.

There are some beehives to take us into the Hundred-Acre Wood.

Our vehicle was Heffalump.

The ride was cute and fun as always. Tracy and I will always be suckers for Disney dark rides. We knew going into having our APs that these would be the types of rides we looked forward to riding again and again, and we have continued to love them with no sign of tiring of them.

By now, the sun was setting, and we were starting to get hungry. The meal we chose as our first in the parks seemed like such a big decision. Was there some counter service restaurant we had been dreaming about going to that we could now finally eat at? Really, we decided, there wasn’t. We were excited for Disney food, of course, but we wanted to try all sorts of things at restaurants all over the parks. So we decided to eat based on convenience this evening.

We had read praises on Lines chat about the new Fried Green Tomato Sandwich at the Hungry Bear Restaurant, and we were intrigued. While not normally something we would jump at, it sounded pretty good. Plus, we were right there and ready to eat.

We ordered (getting our first 15% discount), and had a pleasant chat with the cast member at the pickup window all about our new passes. Before too long, however, our sandwich was ready.

I don’t know if we were more excited about trying the sandwich or devouring the Sweet Potato Fries that came with it. We love sweet potato fries, and these were definitely DELICIOUS! The sandwich, on the other hand, was… hard to judge. The overall flavor was good, but we were expecting something a little heartier. First off, there were only two fried green tomatoes, and they weren’t really that big. When a certain food is the centerpiece on which you build your menu item, it seems like that should be the main taste. Instead, however, much of the flavor of the sandwich was derived from the jicama-mango slaw. While this was pretty good (if a little eclectic), It just left us a little unfulfilled.

On the whole, we definitely took a risk with our first in-park Disney meal, and it didn’t entirely pay off. It wasn’t bad, but maybe we should have played it a little safer. At least the Sweet Potato Fries were everything we dreamed of…

We loved the location of the Hungry Bear Restaurant at least. The views of the Rivers of America were beautiful.

And there was a whole paddling of ducks (apparently “paddling” is one of the correct plurals for a group of ducks, along with “skiff,” “raft,” “team,” and “dropping”) sitting beneath us waiting for food to be dropped down to them.

After dinner, as the sun set properly, we went back out into Disneyland. After all, there was still so much of it we hadn’t explored yet.

We started off by walking back along the Rivers of America and through New Orleans Square. The crowds were starting to gather as Fantasmic! wasn’t too far off.

We ended up cutting through the Big Thunder Trail and into Fantasyland!

Our lovely little castle looked very pretty in the dusk from behind.

While we would have liked to start queuing up for every attraction in Fantasyland, unfortunately, the darkness had also made it start to get quite chilly—it was still February, after all. We needed to make a trip back to the car, therefore to switch out our sweatshirts for our proper jackets. The ability to just run back to the car (even if it does take a while) is one thing we would come to love about driving to Disneyland. I think about our trips to WDW when we would leave the hotel in the wee hours of the morning and not return until after midnight, and I think it would be hard to keep that up in the months when the temperatures vary. Since we’ve only been to WDW in the summer, it’s never been an issue, but I love how we can stash a variety of layers in our car here and go back to change as needed.

After taking the tram back to the car, grabbing our coats, and then taking the tram again to the Main Entrance Plaza, we actually decided to walk through Downtown Disney and take the mode of transportation that had been so openly taunting us since we arrived in SoCal.

We arrived at the Monorail station in Downtown Disney as one was getting ready to pull out, and there was a decent crowd in front of us. We missed Monorail Blue, therefore, and had to wait about 10 minutes until Monorail Orange showed up.

We were already standing on the portion of the platform that lined up with the nose of the monorail, and we saw some guests vacating that spot when it pulled up. So we decided to ask if we could ride in the front.

The conductor had no problem with letting us into the front car, so Tracy and I climbed in and had the whole nose all to ourselves.

Of course, the conductor got in eventually, but we had our couple minutes alone to totally geek out. We had never gotten to ride in the front of the monorail before they stopped allowing it at WDW, and we hadn’t known to ask on our last trip to Disneyland.