![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutParticularly attentive readers may have noticed that I ate at a lot more table service restaurants on this trip than I usually do. I often don't even have table service for every evening meal on our trips to Florida, never mind lunch AND dinner.
Several factors drove this seemingly insane approach to touring. First, I had noticed that reservations tended to get the whole group back together, so we had more time to chat. Which my sister and I like, never mind what anyone else might or might not think. Second, I noticed that after sitting down for table service at lunch, I was a lot more refreshed than counter service plus perching at some tiny table outdoors (indoors, air conditioned, etc.). Third, even before my sister's shrimp / shellfish thing became apparent, I knew our group had acquired some additional food constraints (R.'s onion family Thing turns out to really be So Much Better when treated with respect than when ignored). I figured table service gave us our best shot at actually all avoiding suffering from allergy / intolerance consequences.
How did this turn out?
Well, we did get more time to chat. And it was genuinely fun checking out several new dining options (I really liked Jungle Navigation Canteen, even tho the menu is not favorable for my kids'). We did (once we figured out about the shrimp) have much better results from eating food that wasn't triggering allergies / intolerances -- and we ate less fried food, too, and got a lot more vegetables. I have since discovered a lot of the counter service restaurants have allergy menus (I knew some did -- more research online has turned out a lot more of these menus, so I can pre-plan more counter service meals to be successful AND I can pick ones with indoor seating, like Pecos Bill and Starlite Cafe). Unfortunately, if I feel rested after lunch, I'm not motivated to head back to the hotel and go down to the pool, which means sometime around 3 p.m. I'm dead on my feet and short on time to rest before the dinner reservation. So this is tricky. I'll probably be doing more table service in the future than I did in the past, but probably not quite as much as on this trip. And I'll probably talk to T. and R. a bit more about which meals they would like to opt out of, since the lost time kind of cramps their touring style, which is much more completist than mine. (My touring style is probably best characterized as, "I've already been on it a dozen times. It'll probably still be here next time. If the line is more than 10 minutes long, I'll do it on some future trip instead." Which translates into, I'll do new rides, and then A. and I collect princess photos and hang out in gift shops and maybe stop in on a couple shows. Which is not a bad thing at all.)
Several factors drove this seemingly insane approach to touring. First, I had noticed that reservations tended to get the whole group back together, so we had more time to chat. Which my sister and I like, never mind what anyone else might or might not think. Second, I noticed that after sitting down for table service at lunch, I was a lot more refreshed than counter service plus perching at some tiny table outdoors (indoors, air conditioned, etc.). Third, even before my sister's shrimp / shellfish thing became apparent, I knew our group had acquired some additional food constraints (R.'s onion family Thing turns out to really be So Much Better when treated with respect than when ignored). I figured table service gave us our best shot at actually all avoiding suffering from allergy / intolerance consequences.
How did this turn out?
Well, we did get more time to chat. And it was genuinely fun checking out several new dining options (I really liked Jungle Navigation Canteen, even tho the menu is not favorable for my kids'). We did (once we figured out about the shrimp) have much better results from eating food that wasn't triggering allergies / intolerances -- and we ate less fried food, too, and got a lot more vegetables. I have since discovered a lot of the counter service restaurants have allergy menus (I knew some did -- more research online has turned out a lot more of these menus, so I can pre-plan more counter service meals to be successful AND I can pick ones with indoor seating, like Pecos Bill and Starlite Cafe). Unfortunately, if I feel rested after lunch, I'm not motivated to head back to the hotel and go down to the pool, which means sometime around 3 p.m. I'm dead on my feet and short on time to rest before the dinner reservation. So this is tricky. I'll probably be doing more table service in the future than I did in the past, but probably not quite as much as on this trip. And I'll probably talk to T. and R. a bit more about which meals they would like to opt out of, since the lost time kind of cramps their touring style, which is much more completist than mine. (My touring style is probably best characterized as, "I've already been on it a dozen times. It'll probably still be here next time. If the line is more than 10 minutes long, I'll do it on some future trip instead." Which translates into, I'll do new rides, and then A. and I collect princess photos and hang out in gift shops and maybe stop in on a couple shows. Which is not a bad thing at all.)