Florida Guide > Dining
New Year's Eve 2009/2010
We have just spent our second New Years Eve in Orlando and it was just fantastic. We managed to book a table at the Gaylord Palms Hotel in the Villa Flora Restaurant. As some of our party had never been to Gaylord Palms before, we decided to arrive a little early so we could take them round and show them this magnificent hotel.
As we entered the Atrium we all just stood in wonder. The decorations for the Xmas festivities were absolutely mind blowing. The Xmas Tree was one of the tallest trees we have encountered and was adorned with many glittering baubles and lights. There was the sound of a band performance coming from somewhere, so we slowly wound our way around to the stage where there were several rows of seats which we full of revellers enjoying the music of the band. We then walked around to see what the individual gift shops had to offer. If you are ever looking for a gift that is a bit different, visit these gift shops. The items were all reasonably priced and of course if you wanted something absolutely super duper top notch, you could find that as well.
After posing for photo’s in front of almost every huge decoration in the place, we ventured to Villa Flores to be seated. We were lucky enough to have a table where we could almost see the band, and could definitely hear the music without it being too obtrusive to our conversation. After reading the Wine List we then went to view the ‘buffet’. For those of you who have never visited Villa Flores, they do a buffet every evening that you can help yourself to as much or as little as you wish, and each night also has a special ‘theme’ to it as well as all the regular items on the buffet. The cost is normally around $30 but for New Year’s Eve it was $45 which we thought was very reasonable.
The presentation of the buffet was outstanding with everything you could think of, lobster, crab, fresh salmon, smoked salmon, turkey, beef, lamb, ham, a pasta station that they cooked to order, an assortment of home made breads, so many cheeses we could not count, a salad bar with around 20 different salads, chinese dishes, indian dishes, numerous types of olives and so much more I can’t even remember! ! !
The desert station had of course the inevitable ‘chocolate fountain’ where there were huge bowls of sweet strawberries and marshmellows for you to cover in chocolate. Yummy and they also had a white chocolate fountain! ! ! ! There were many flavours of Hagen Daz ice creams to choose from along with around 15 different types of ‘homemade’ deserts made by the Chef de Patisserie. I think we all made at least 7/8 visits to the buffet - small portions of course - and then 2/3 visits to the desert station. On top of all that, we then had steaming hot coffee to finish our fantastic and value for money feast. This will certainly be on my list of places to visit again if we are fortunate enough to be in the area next New Years Eve.
We had our parking ticket stamped by the restaurant (they charge for parking if you are not eating) and feeling well fed and able to face anything, we then decided on the next step of our adventure on New Year’s Eve. All will be revealed in another article. . . .
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