SATURDAY - A ROUGH MIDDLE
We then attempted to ride Big Thunder Mountain. We waited an hour and then it broke down. They did not make an announcement- word got passed back from the front, which was very frustrating. We had a dining reservation for Captain Jack’s, so we had to jump out and head to that. Later on, we had heard that this was because of the heat. Indeed, a lot of rides really struggled that day. There seemed to be more closures than normal.
Which leads me to our planned late lunch (2 pm) at Captain Jack’s. I had noticed on the app that Pirates of the Caribbean had been closed all day, but I hadn’t thought anything of it given the other ride closures going on. Now keep in mind that we have had this reservation for at least a month, the reservation was done through the app, and we were staying onsite, so they had my contact information. We showed up to the restaurant at 1:45 pm, and… closed. No notice, nothing. We were told we could go to Plaza Gardens or Agrabah Cafe. We already had been to Plaza Gardens, so we went to Agrabah’s, though I wasn’t thrilled. We had Agrabah’s booked for Sunday, and we didn’t want to eat there twice, so that meant we lost our plans for the next day. We headed to Agrabah Cafe. Because of the issue with Captain Jack’s, Agrabah Cafe was overwhelmed. (I assume Plaza Gardens was as well.) We ended up waiting until just past 3 pm to sit down and eat. It wasn’t my proudest time- it was a hundred degrees out, I was hungry, and I was pretty cranky at the whole situation. It’s a good thing we didn’t have to interact with any cast members, since I was not in a great mood.
That said, I highly recommend Agrabah Café. The original “building” was a bazaar with smaller shops. A few years later they were merged into the restaurant, so it now hows a kind of labyrinth, organic feel. I would say that is has some Aladdin influences, but overall the restaurant is its own thing. It’s absolutely beautiful. Everything is colorful and detailed. I cannot overemphasize how gorgeous this restaurant is. We sat in one of the “alley” style rooms. The food is described as Moroccan and Middle Eastern. And it’s a buffet! There are some more adventurous items, and some more standard items. I can’t pretend to know everything I ate- I like to sample, so I tried a bit of most everything. Hummus, couscous, rice, veggies in different sauces, lots of meat options, potatoes, chickpeas, salads… Everything was excellent. And there were lots of dessert options- fruit, pastries, pudding- I recommend baklava. I am not vegetarian, but Agrabah Café seemed to have a lot of options. (They may be vegan, but I’m unsure on what is in the sauces.)
At this point, we bailed. It was too hot, many of the rides were broken down, the rest of the rides had ridiculous waits, so we decided our time was better spent back at the hotel.
Before we headed back, we hit up the World of
Disney store. We didn’t see a ton of merchandise we were interested in. Oddly, they had a pretty large “United States of America” merchandise section. We were pretty surprised by it. It was like they were prepping for the Fourth of July.
We got back to the hotel. Our original intention was to go swimming. We swung by the pool to see how long the wait would be. Someone in the back of the line said they were told they could wait one to two hours. Pass. We opted to take a nap in our air-conditioned hotel room and drink some cider we had bought earlier in the trip.