Originally Posted By leemac <<They had about six different carbonated sodas at the places I dined today, but they couldn't offer Coke Zero?>> Soda choice is entirely down to the sponsors - TDR is in the unique position of having two soda sponsors - Coca-Cola and Kirin. There is minor overlap as Kirin doesn't have a decent cola brand (Kirin Cola is rank - they are a CC bottler anyhow). Hence there is little consistency across the parks.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< I'm not a fan of Coke Zero - and I can't get near any of the Pepsi variants like Max. Yuk! >>> I agree. Pepsi Max is rank dog dork. Usually when I don't like something, it's just one of those things where I think it's not to my taste, but Max makes me seriously wonder how anyone could like it. There must be quite a few, as I would imagine a major brand like that doesn't get released without extensive market research. But for me, they might as well call it Pepsi Beverly.
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer Awesome stuff, Spirit! So... seeing that you've hit all the Kingdoms now... Where does this one rank up? What does it do that the others don't? And what doesn't it do? Anything in WDW that compares to this? LOL.
Originally Posted By Mr X ***Think I'm gonna just do full serve and hotel dining from here on out*** I know what you mean on the portion sizes (reason why we generally just snack around DisneySea...I believe you know about the various tasty snack options, I hope!?). Don't expect much different from the full serve places though. You'll pay 35 bucks or so for the full "course" menu and you will get several lovely courses, but all tiny.
Originally Posted By SuperDry I found the prix fixe dinner menu at Magellan's to be a reasonably good value. At least three courses, and although the portions may not have been huge, I thought that it was enough food for dinner. As far as overpriced, small-portion food, avoid the Teddy Roosevelt Lounge (don't know about the dining room upstairs), although it's a great place to stop for drinks.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< Soda choice is entirely down to the sponsors - TDR is in the unique position of having two soda sponsors - Coca-Cola and Kirin. >>> Also, the soft drink selection in the parks kind of mirror what's on offer in the rest of the country. Take a look at any drink vending machine: instead of just a cola, diet cola, lemon-lime, and perhaps 1 or 2 other options as is common in the US, there may be 25-40 different selections in a single machine, sometimes NONE of which is a brand-name cola, let alone diet. For whatever reason, the soft drink market in Japan is highly diversified as far as product goes. I get the sense that most consumers will choose a drink that suits their mood or the situation, rather than always choosing a single flavor as is common in the US. Since many of the the fountain stations in the parks have only 3 or 4 flavors, they rotate what's available among the different outlets. To always have a diet flavor on tap would really limit the other choices.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< And isn't the fountain variety just got a little saccharin to preserve it? >>> First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is SuperDry, and I'm a Diet-Coke-aholic. As far as there being just a dash of saccharin in DC as a preservative, that had not been my understanding. But I saw exactly that written in the Wiki yesterday - perhaps that's where you saw it. So I went straight to the authoritative source, and called Coca Cola Consumer Relations today and got all the facts. In an 8oz serving of Diet Coke, the canned and bottled varieties have 125mg of aspartame, and 0mg of saccharin. Fountain variety has 23mg of aspartame, and 47mg of saccharin. Adjusting for the difference in relative strength, it looks like fountain gets 80%+ of its sweetness from saccharin, whereas cans and bottles is all aspartame. So there you have it.
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer Also, Spirit... on the matter of portion sizes, it could very well be a cultural thing. I think our super sized culture reflects that.
Originally Posted By barboy2 /// on the matter of portion sizes, it could very well be a cultural thing/// I would go further and say absolutely it is a cultural thing.
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer Being that I wasn't certain, I'd thank you for backing me up. ;-)
