Disney Gets Spooky

As usual, for our Thursday night, Girls’ Night, me (Anna), Ashleigh, and Shannon got together to watch the next movie on our top 100 Disney movies list. The only problem… we could not find the movie anywhere. And let me tell you, we used every method we could think of to get this movie. The culprit was The Scream Team (2002) (number 97 on our list). The movie was a Disney Channel Original Movie that they apparently never put out on DVD, and I guess doesn't play very often on Disney Channel anymore.

Since it was my week to host Girls’ Night, I had already come up with a menu to go with the movie theme and did not want to change the whole plan when it looked grim for us to find the movie. I served my guests “a snake", “blood”(tomato soup), a “spider’s nest”,“witch's brew”, and “poisoned apples” (traditional caramel apples). I think it all turned out great and would make it all again.

Because our meal was already planned, I went ahead and picked another Disney movie, that went with the “spooky” theme and that wasn't already on our list, called The Haunted Mansion (PG 2003). You might recognize the name as it shares it with one of the rides at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Both the movie and the ride are on my list of favorites. The movie is loosely based on the ride and stars Eddie Murphy. Although this movie wasn't as popular as the ride to movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, I still love to watch it. There are a lot of scenes from the ride in the movie, but it’s still not very scary. That being said though, I’d still go with the PG rating. The movie strives to show the importance of family and making time for the one’s you love, and pulls that off with ease. I would recommend this for a “spooky” family movie night film!

On another note, the new trailer for Disney's Frozen (2013) just came out! Check it out and get excited for Princess Anna!

Unleash the Villains....Bust!

It was only a matter of time before one of our many adventures to Disney would, well, come up lacking Disney magic. Our latest trip to Disney was last Friday, September 13th. A tip from one of our viewers and a friend, let us know that we could not possibly miss the Friday the 13th event. Of course, we became instantly interested and did a little research into the event. It seems Disney threw together quickly a Friday the 13th event celebrating the Villains of Disney called Unleash the Villains. The event was to start at sundown when the villains would be unleashed by Hades at Disney's Hollywood Studios. All of us made a big effort to get there as early as possible by leaving work early and meeting up for Neil to drive us over.

Upon arrival (we were early for the event), we took some time to check out stores for vinylmations and some food until the event began. We soon figured out how busy the park was based on the Villain Vogue store being absolutely packed. In fact, the store closed off the vinylmation section because so many people were there for the exclusive villain merchandise, which featured special Mickey ears featuring poisoned apples, Maleficent themed horns, and a Queen of hearts theme. Making our way around the park we stopped in at the Animation store for vinylmations. As a note, I (Ashleigh) have started my vinylmation collection with the release of the Little Mermaid themed items. I was happily surprised to get Prince Eric and his butler this time, but still in search of Ariel (all I want is Ariel and Eric lol!). Anna was disappointed to not find any Beauty in the Beast themed vinylmations anymore (we fear it's been discontinued). We trekked on stopping to watch the Muppets show and search out some autograph books. We finally choose the traditional autograph books and a pen from a store back by the Muppets show and stopped in at Pizza Planet for a quick bite before Hade's Unleash the Villains Party. Not much to our surprise, everyone else had the same idea and we waited in a long line for pizza.

Stuffing our faces with different pizzas, salads and some soda we made our way back to Mickey's hat where the stage was set for Hades. We were told the show was to start at sundown or 8 pm. This is when our evening started going downhill. The show was delayed to start and to my disappointment we couldn't get a good spot to see the show. Struggling to see, despite the extra screens we watched as Hades announced each of the 13 featured villains on stage, including some favorites like Maleficent, Ratcliffe, the Big Bad Wolf, and the Queen (referring to Snow White). All costumes were pretty awesome and unique. After the show, the DJ remained playing awesome music for a dance party. We, of course, made our way to get in line to take photos with the Villains and get autographs.

Now this is when chaos seemed to be unleashed (maybe part of Hades plan?). Rumors had spread that parking was full with many Disney goers having to park in Epcot and come over so you can imagine how packed the park was. We walked all around the areas with the "lines", talked with 3 different workers (the only 3 to be found anywhere), and discovered that the only distinguished line out of 3 supposedly formed lines went around the whole big circle across from American Idol. It seems that there were 3 lines supposedly (we could only find the one). Each line was suppose to lead to one of the three areas where a character was. If the lines weren't bad enough, we found out that the three areas were not three specific villains but constantly changing out so you were not guaranteed to get a picture with any villain you wanted. And worst of all, no autographs were being given. After all this chaos and many complaints amongst ourselves and others, we got out of line and decided to go back to Villain Vogue again and then leave the park. At Villain Vogue we bought other Vinylmations and waited in a line to check out and trade some Vinylmations. Upon check out we discovered the trades were moved across the street. Shannon and Anna made some trades then and we left Hollywood Studios to go to Downtown Disney.

At Downtown Disney, we checked out the D-store to trade again (not succeeding much for Shannon and Anna) and then finally going home very disappointed. It's with great displeasure for me to give Disney two thumbs down for this event. Overall, it was very disorganized with no defined lines for characters, little to no workers available or with knowledge, and lacking much of the Disney magic we typically feel. I would suggest for the next event, consider following how Star Wars weekend is set up to keep lines organized for the character spots. In addition, open up more than one bar with special drinks (forget to mention that disappointment). Perhaps make the event all day (considering Friday the 13th is all day not just 8 pm to 1 am) so people have more time with characters and enjoy the show, etc. I do hope the event happens again just better put together for enjoyment. Despite all this, we'll still keep visiting Disney (I don't know if anything could stop that) haha!

The Great All-Nighter

Sorry for being a week behind, but school has consumed my life of late. I hosted Girl's Night last Thursday at Neil's house and naturally I was also running way behind with my cooking. However, my made-from-scratch chicken pot pie and maple-honey cornbread was a big hit!

Without further adieu, here is my review of Midnight Madness (1980) by none other than Walt Disney Pictures.

Midnight Madness is another film on our "Top 100" countdown of Disney movies. None of us had heard of this one before, but it turned out to be refreshing from the standard formula Disney movies we had gotten so used to watching. It turned out to be pretty entertaining and despite its 6.1 on IMDB I'd give it a solid 7.

The plot surrounds a group of college students taking part in a "game" that spans the entire city over one night and turns out to be quite a fiasco but also ties in a coming-of-age story.

The "game master" selects five students to act as "team leaders." The teams have to search the city for clues that lead them from one scenario to another, with a good deal of comedy along the way. It comes off as a bit silly to us in 2013 (I loved seeing the huge cell phones!), but we found ourselves quickly choosing our favorite team and rooting for them throughout the movie.

A note for parents: even though the movie is rated PG (1980), there are a few scenes of mild violence and some mild sexual suggestiveness which may be considered inappropriate.

Teppan Edo at Epcot

This past Saturday, I (Anna) went to Japan with Matt and my parents. Of course it was only the Japan in Epcot, but it was really fun (and delicious!). A while ago I made reservations at Teppan Edo which is their Hibachi restaurant for lunch. Since it is fall now, and football season, it gets hard to make reservations and find a time to go to Disney around our teams’ football schedules, but we managed.

We got to the park a little early, so we went into the many Japanese stores to look around. We've been in there several times, so I had already eyed the oyster pearl station. After looking at the different oysters for a little while my incredibly sweet boyfriend offered to buy me one. I let him pick the oyster (I have horrible luck when it comes to this sort of stuff) and there turned out to be a beautiful pearl inside. As the ladies at the desk open up the oyster they teach you to count down from three in Japanese and are very enthusiastic. It makes the whole experience exciting. After getting the pearl they have a selection of earing, ring, and necklace settings you can choose from to put your pearl in. I picked a ring setting for mine. When Matt was done paying for my new ring it was time to go upstairs to lunch.

Teppan Edo is like any other Hibachi grill. You will normally sit with another family and have a Japanese cook prepare your meal right in front of you. Our chef’s name was Kaoki. He was very funny and an excellent cook. The best part though was that he was an Auburn Tiger fan, which also happens to be where I graduated from college. The food was excellent and the atmosphere was awesome. My dad and Matt ordered the steak. My mom got the chicken and I got the scallops. Everything was delicious and I would definitely go there again.

Number 99 - The Secret World of Arrietty

As usual another Thursday night was kicked off for our Girls Night with this week being number 99 on our countdown list. Number 99 was The Secret World of Arrietty. For a little background of the movie, it's a story of the Borrowers, who are little people living in your homes simply borrowing little bits of things as needed to survive. It may sound familiar to the original Borrowers that was produced in 1997. The concepts of both movies are the same but that is about it. This version is a Japanese animated version while the other was real live actors. As for the story of what happens, the two movies are different and even the family of Borrowers is slightly different in the two movies. Personally, I liked this version better than the 1997 movie. I enjoyed the colorfulness in the animation, the soothing music and the Japanese influence in the characters.

As typical Disney, the movie had good themes and morals to the story. Without giving to much away to the movie, there's a little bit of love and most definitely friendship. And overall I would say that the movie teaches children that no matter how different someone may be, you can often times be friends if you keep an open mind and heart. I believe that was our favorite part of the movie, the friendship/love developed between Arrietty the daughter of the Borrower family and Shawn, the young boy staying with his aunt while he is sick. Although you never quite know what Shawn is sick with, your heart goes out to him since he is very good hearted and sweet. There were a couple moments of sweet remarks made by Shawn to Arrietty which caused for us all to say "AWWW". Including my favorite line at the end of the movie by Shawn saying "My heart is stronger now, because your in it". I would give this movie two thumbs up and suggest it to families of all ages. This is definitely a must see for your Disney collection.

Be Our Guest

Booking a reservation

The day had finally arrived Monday August 26th, much anticipation had been building (at least for me) to finally get the chance to eat at Be Our Guest Restaurant at Disney! Sometime months ago I went on a computer clicking rampage to try to reserve a spot at Be Our Guest, unfortunately reservations were already into December and with none available for our party of 6. Therefore, I took to a different method of madness to search for a dining reservation and began checking every night reservation starting at the current month until getting through probably 4 months in their calendar I found the night for us. I immediately booked it and added all 6 guests names to the reservation. Afterwards I told everyone about the date and time and we were all very excited especially since it wasn't in December!

Getting to the restaurant

Now, I wouldn't typically suggest clicking through all the dates on the dining reservation calendar, but for a packed restaurant where your date and time are flexible it can work. Our time was for 6:25pm, making us a little nervous because some had to drive from work. Well we got there and discovered that me and Neil (the two who didn't have work times in the way) were the last ones to arrive, but still caught seats with Ash, Anna, and Mrs. Barrett on the tram to the ticket center. That should have been a bad sign to us, Ashleigh was waiting on the tram before anyone else got there for around 15 minutes without another one coming. Matt was waiting for us by the ticket center and we started for the Monorail, but to our luck this broke down as we got in line. Instantly we began rushing for the ferry boat, but it just left. Now, we were really pressed for time and a new boat took forever to come. Needless to say we hit the reservation time while on the ferry boat and still had to go through bag check, get in the park, and back to the restaurant where you also have to stand in line. In the end they only had us wait about 25 minutes for a new table because they must had filled ours.

The dining experience

Our time came as we were waiting just inside the entrance (it started raining outside) and our host greeted us and began taking us through the castle explaining the different locations. We ate in the West wing which had dimmed lights compared to the ballroom and we personally enjoyed this more. Of course, we also had the best seat because we sat right in front of the rose and enjoyed seeing petals fall. This of course became a big picture area, but it didn't disturb us. The menu consisted of pretty much one item from every type of dinner entrée. Also if you are looking to drink at the Magic Kingdom this is the only location you can. Always remember you can drink at other Disney parks. I personally love bread so I was very happy to see them give us rolls and butter to begin with, not to mention that we were all very hungry. I then ordered the Chicken dish, Ash, Anna, and Mrs. Barrett got the ratatouille, Neil got the salmon and Matt got the pork.

Chicken entree	Salmon entree	Pork entree

Conclusion

All in all our meals were presented very nicely and we enjoyed them thoroughly. Of course the best part was yet to come with desserts! Our waitress brought around the rolling cart of desserts and you have 5 to pick from. They aren't very big so they are perfect for one person or for everyone to get a taste. Me, Neil, and Ash all got one with them being strawberry, passion fruit, and chocolate. Each was delicious, but Neil and I agreed that mine was the best! During your dinner the Beast will also come visit so have your cameras ready because he comes and goes very quickly, but after dinner you can visit him in the study and get pictures with him. After dinner it was dark out so we just walked around a bit and Anna began looking for Beauty and the Beast vinylmations. We couldn't find them anywhere that night, but they will be restocked soon. Overall we really enjoyed our night and our dinner! We all even were a bit dressier at Disney for once(something us girls wanted to do and decided we would do for this dinner)!
Overall here is how I rate Be Our Guest on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best:

Food	1 2 3 4 5
Decor	1 2 3 4 5
Service	1 2 3 4 5
Value	1 2 3 4 5

On a side note it did appear that it is now possible to walk up to the reservation booth at Be Our Guest and be able to make a reservation or wait for a table to open, when we first tried months ago this was not available because all the times were filled. It would appear that the rush to eat there because it is the newest restaurant is dying down making it easier to get a seat.