2018 Fall Trip

[TN22.....Brady 22]

Our trip started with a weekend stopover at the Big Green Egg festival, known as Eggtoberfest. This event is held at Stone Mountain Campground near Atlanta, Ga. This has become an annual event for us, and somewhere along the line, my DW realized we were only 7 hours from WDW, so we decided to go on down to WDW for a visit. This has also become an annual occurrence for us, so I wanted to start sharing some of the experiences along the way. First let's talk about the festival. For those of you that don't know, a Big Green Egg is a Ceramic Komado style cooker, that is extremely versatile and can be used for smoking, grilling, baking, and wok cooking. They use all natural lump charcoal, as the ceramics have a habit of absorbing any chemicals, so briquettes and lighter fluid is a strict no no. The biggest advantage to these style cookers is that you can cook low and slow for many hours without adding charcoal. I have cooked Pork Butts, or Beef Brisket for upwards of 18 hours. I will attempt to upload some pictures from the event, since this is my first time using imugr, be patient.

The Egg ambulance is a cooking team sponsored by Big Green Egg (BGE) and they make appearances at many festivals.

There are many sizes from the MiniMax (shown here) up to the XXL (which holds an entire 15 lb bag of charcoal).  The MiniMax is very portable and typically goes with me camping.

Each cooking team is made up of volunteers who provide the ingredients at their own expense, and cook for the spectators throughout the day. This year 205 teams participated, and each team can consist of 2 cooks to one egg, so this group had a few cooks in their tent. The eggs and charcoal are provided by BGE and are sold as demo units after the event, where you can typically get around 25% off MSRP for these lightly used eggs.

Here is the line to get in, I heard there were 3,000 spectator tickets sold.

One of my favorite pictures of the day, smoke rolling with Stone Mountain backdrop.

My morning view at Stone Mountain Campground looking out over the lake as the sun came up.

Next stop WDW......

[Grumpy and Grandma 740]

1st.....looks like fun

[ImDownWithDisney 342]

Brady,

You sure know your way around an egg. Those vittles you cooked up in Defeated Creek were on point.

[TN22.....Brady 22]

1 hour ago, ImDownWithDisney said:

Brady,

You sure know your way around an egg. Those vittles you cooked up in Defeated Creek were on point.

Thanks Blake! I enjoy cooking, especially on my BGE. 

[YENSIDCAMPER 66]

On 10/17/2018 at 1:59 PM, ImDownWithDisney said:

Brady,

You sure know your way around an egg. Those vittles you cooked up in Defeated Creek were on point.

I second Blake's comment.  We are going to make a trip to a Green Egg festival sometime soon.

[Travisma 1,317]

2 hours ago, YENSIDCAMPER said:

I second Blake's comment.  We are going to make a trip to a Green Egg festival sometime soon.

They have a fairly good sized one on the east coast of FL. 

Maybe you can do a combo Fort/Egg trip.

[YENSIDCAMPER 66]

11 hours ago, Travisma said:

They have a fairly good sized one on the east coast of FL. 

Maybe you can do a combo Fort/Egg trip.

That may just be the best trip idea ever!

[Littleolwoman.aka.Kristie 119]

I have always found them interesting. Maybe I should take a closer look. Great start.

[Tony 27]

I'm in, and now hungry 😀

[TN22.....Brady 22]

Day 1 -We arrived around 10:30 and requested a couple of our favorite sites. Unfortunately none were available, however Jean was fantastic and offered several options. We ended up in the 1200 loop only a couple site over from one of our favorites. This site has been awesome, and we will add it to our favorites list. After getting setup and all decorations out and placed we headed to the Magic Kingdom, where we had reservations at Tony’s. Now, we had heard very mixed reviews on this place, but since Lady & the Tramp is one of DW favorite movies, we thought we would see for ourselves.

First the seating was on the outside porch area, and we didn’t necessarily mind it, however it was 93 degrees and FL humid. There were a lot of people that were seated out there after we got our table, that requested to move. Much to my surprise and theirs, they were asked to go back inside the lobby and wait for another table to become available. This happened to several families, and some were back in the lobby waiting on an inside table when we left. I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t ask if outside seating was acceptable before seating someone out there, this seemed very UN Disney and inefficient. We were seated approximately 5 minutes after our reservation time. This is the point where my waiter Ben informed me there was no more Pomegranate Lemonade, at first I thought he meant only Tony’s had stopped serving it, but he went on to say that Coca-Cola had stopped producing it. This set the tone for the rest of the evening, I was very bummed. I now know what DIT felt like when the Ooey Goody Cinnamon Rolls were no longer. Anyway, on to the food, DW ordered the house made Gnocchi Prima Vera,

 

and I ordered the Caprese salad.

Approximately 35 minutes later our food was served, the Nochi was a pleasant surprise with the Nochi being very good, with a few more green peas than we liked in the vegetable portion but not bad. The Caprese salad was just OK, the Balsamic Vinegar tasted very generic with no strong vinegar punch that I would expect from an aged product, the tomatoes were fresh and the mozzarella was good. Overall we would rate the total experience a 3 out of 10 and agreed we would not return. The service was a 5 and the wait time for what we ordered seemed a little long.

 

After Tony’s we checked out a few shops and were pleasantly surprised to find they had the AP Pandora Charm in stock. This made my DW very happy. We had a fast pass for Haunted Mansion, the stand by lines were 60+ minutes and the park was crowded, so we decided to head back to the Fort and finish decorating.

 

 

When Tuesday arrived, I had a conference call that started at 8:30, so after that we decided to decorate the Golf Cart.

 

 

 

Once the decorating was done, we headed to Hollywood studios where we had a fast pass for Toy Story. We checked out a few thing in Andy’s back yard and decided to head over to BaseLine Tap Room and have one of my favorite Charceutirie plates and an adult beverage, too bad it wasn’t open for another hour, we decided to ride the boat to Epcot and for Food & Wine to check out some of the items on our wish list. First stop was Ireland where I had the Sausage and potatoes dish and DW had the Chocolate Cake (her must have when we are anywhere near the vicinity.

 

The sausage links and mashed potatoes were very good, the gravy for the potatoes was excellent ,I would most definitely order this again. And of course, my DW said the cake did not disappoint.

 

We then worked our way to the front of Epcot and tried the Bloody Mary Cocktail salad, I really liked it as well.There was a lot of seafood in this small cup.

 

 

We made the circle around the world showcase and I stopped into Germany’s wine cellar and had the Spaten Optimator Beer and cheese plate. This is my go to items and location any time I am in Epcot and the best part is that it is available year round.

 

I will end this update here.

[mouseketab.....Carol 1,261]

I'm getting really excited to arrive in less than a week!!

[LONE-STAR 370]

Looks like fun

[twiceblessed....nacole 433]

Tom had wanted to go back to Eggtoberfest, but we already had FL plans.  Maybe next year☺️

We too have never eaten at Tony’s.  Thanks for the feedback on that one!