Kingdom Konsultant Travel Blog

Mardi Gras at Universal Studios Florida is a time for a little extra jazz with your vacation.  All the Mardi Gras fun is included with your park admission from parades to headliner concerts (both on select nights.)  There are also specialty food and beverage items for purchase inspired by foods from around the world. Mardi Gras this year runs from Feb. 5–Apr. 24, 2022 giving you lots of opportunities to join in on the fun.   Concert highlights (for me at least) this year include Barenaked Ladies, Marshmello, Gavin Degraw and Jason Derulo. There's a variety of musical acts to suit many tastes!  Concerts are scheduled on most Saturday and some Sunday nights throughout the event.   The parades consist of beautiful floats and of course lots of beads.  Want to watch from a distance or see how many you can catch?  Find a spot along the parade route and take your pick. We enjoyed trying to collect one necklace of each color and taking in the details...

The Wave, especially the lounge, was one of my favorite spots to stop for a bite at Walt Disney World.  So I was understandably upset when they announced the permanent closure.  Steakhouse 71 is what moved in instead, and it celebrates the opening year of the parks and the Contemporary Resort.  It sounded like an acceptable replacement, but of course I had to give it a try for myself.   Upon walking in, black and white photos line the walls which I loved.  The lounge has an upscale retro vibe but our table was quickly called so we didn't get to sit and enjoy that area.   The menu sounded just wonderful, there were so many things I wanted to try.  We started off with some drinks and ordered appetizers.   Amaro Highball Fig Manhattan The cocktails were fine but not my favorites. I've definitely had more impressive cocktails across Disney property.  We opted to switch to wine after these initial drinks.  For appetizers we just couldn't...

Since I couldn't quite get everything done at Festival in the Holidays in one day, I had to go back another time to try just a few more things!  The size of this festival is much more approachable food-wise than the Food and Wine Festival since there are fewer booths, but I'd only really had a half day to squeeze in everything. If you started at opening, you could probably get it all done in one day if you tried!  Read more about my first day here .  First up, a holiday classic, roasted chestnuts from Chestnuts and Good Cheer.  We decided we didn't like chestnuts, whoops! They also had a variety of other roasted nuts to choose from along with hot chocolate and eggnog. Next we headed over to a popular festival favorite, Mexico for Las Posadas Holiday Kitchen.  We got a few things to try here but agreed we liked the food better than the drinks this time around. Both the savory options were simply delicious!  Giant Tostada de Chorizo: Chorizo served on a...

I'll be honest, ABC Commissary at Disney's Hollywood Studios was one of my least favorite counter service restaurants in the parks, but in recent years, they have revamped their menu and I'd heard good things so we decided to give it another try.  Spoiler alert: I loved our meal!  We'd been eating a lot this trip so we opted to split a salad to keep things light - and I'm so glad we did, it was huge!  Their salad option is a Mediterranean Salad with Chicken, which is Marinated Chicken served over Mixed Greens with Tomatoes, Cucumber, Pepperoncini, Kalamata Olives, and Feta tossed in a Mediterranean Vinaigrette served with Hummus and Grilled Flatbread.  This joins the menu of shrimp or pork tacos and a variety of sandwiches.  This plate was just filled with an abundance of goodness.  I loved the generous scoop of hummus to go with the pita and the chicken was nice and juicy with enough cheese to get some in every bite.   Because it's the 50th Anniv...

Raise your hand if you still have Christmas decorations up!  Me too, so I think it's still fair that we can chat about Festival of the Holidays over at Epcot which runs from about Thanksgiving to Christmas each year.  Similar to other Epcot festivals, this event brings food booths with specialty items around World Showcase along with themed entertainment, decor and merchandise.  There is also a holiday cookie stroll, which you can learn more about here .  First, I love all the red floral that the holidays bring to the park.  It just pops and really helps it feel more like the holidays when it's 80 degrees outside in mid-December.  But of course, I'm here for the food so let's dig right in!   We loved the food from Morocco at Food and Wine so much, we actually put the beef skewers on our wedding menu, so we were excited to see the booth (Tangierine Cafe: Flavors of the Medina) back for the holidays and headed there first.  This "booth" is insi...