Cin and I got up at 4am for Florida Ironman 70.3 and headed out to the race site. For details on the race, check out my Race Report over on Tri,Jeff,Tri! Really...it's a good writeup. :)
We ended up back at the Beach Club around 3pm or so, exhausted. As you can probably tell from the writeup, this race was very hard ... the hardest that either myself or Cin have ever done. We were very tired, but not as sore as we thought we would be, so that was a positive. After getting back to our room, we split a bottle of Disney Fairy Tale Champagne, which was quite good, took some long showers, and ended up stretched out on the bed, exhausted. After an hour an a half or so, we put some decent clothes on and headed out for our celebratory dinner reservation, at the Yachtsman Steakhouse (their TripAdvisor page is here) over in the (connected) Yacht Club Resort. We ate at this place the day before the Disney Marathon in 2010 and remember it being very good, so we decided to go after the race this time since we would (1) need protein, and (2) wanted to relax in a nice setting with great food, after such a long event. We ended up at the bar for a few minutes to wait for our table and I found that they had Sam Adams Boston Brick Red, which I only remember ever seeing before at this same place last time we were here. It was quite good...yummy. After we got seated, we had a delicious dinner. I had a caesar salad and the rib-eye steak and Cin had a tomato salad, a filet, and a side of mac and cheese that was quite good as well. We ended up with dessert too thanks to the Disney Dining Plan (more about that in a bit) and I had the Habañero-infused flourless chocolate cake, which was quite spicy and deliciously chocolately as well. By the time we had finished our steaks, we were exhausted and it was a real effort to even stay away at the table, but we pushed through. After dessert, we headed back to our room and right into bed...such a long race and such a long day.
As mentioned, Cin and I tried the Disney Dining Plan this time around. Basically, for an added cost to your resort reservations, you can add dining on that includes one snack, one quick service meal, and one table service meal, per day per person. As we knew we would be on Disney property for the entire trip, we decided to see how this would work out. A snack ends up being things like muffins, big cookies, fresh-popped popcorn (in the parks), a bag of chips, and also things like sodas and bottled waters. A quick service meal includes things like a individual pizza or french toast sticks at the resorts, things that are designed to be obtained from a counter and then eaten. At the parks, these sometimes includes dessert too. A table service meal would be a sit-down restaurant and some of the more high-end restaurants require two table service meals per person for a meal (as did the Yachtsman Steakhouse). For these, you get a main dish, a dessert, and a non-alcoholic beverage. At this visit to the Yachtsman, each two-meal-set that we used included the steak, dessert, and some iced tea. We paid additional for the salads, the side item, and the beer, as well as the tip on the entire value of the meal.
From this trip, we learned that we tend to favor the table service meals (duh!) and also had no problem getting through our snack credits. The quick service meals are really designed for use in the parks (there are sooooo many more options in the parks than at the resorts for these) and ideally for grabbing something quick between rides and attractions. As we had not been to a park yet at this point in this trip (it's coming tomorrow!), we hadn't used any of the quick service meals and did not know how we would get through five each. So, the dining plan is really designed for families (as kids make quick service meals much more appealing) as they visit the parks and resorts. However, we made this work for us and ended up using all of our table service meals (this was the easy part), all of our snacks, and most of our quick service meals by the end of the trip (stay tuned!). More about this as the trip progresses.
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