Monday October 17th 2016

I got up this morning with the general plan to do something interesting today. This afternoon a more detailed plan of going over to Disney’s EPCOT to eat was put into action. I arrived at the park about three thirty and proceeded to join the crowds.

EPCOT Food and Wine Festival

There were a lot more people at EPCOT than I had expected. The Food and Wine Festival must be a successful draw, because the crowd level reminded me of the holidays not October. I’ll be able to judge better after I see how busy the other parks are. I had to park at the back of the second section of parking lot. All of the times I visited the park last winter, I never had to park as far away as today.

Festival Center

I really didn’t know what to expect of the Food and Wine Festival. It turned out that the primary feature is food kiosks around the park that sell International foods and wines. In hind sight, it’s pretty obvious that’s what it would be, but I hadn’t thought it through ahead of time. I had planned to have Fish & Chips at the British Pavilion. A better plan would have been to find something more unique from one of the kiosks. Now that I know what it’s all about, that’s exactly what I’ll do next time.

Chef Mickey holding a skewer of green.

Most of the kiosks served small reasonably priced (for Disney) portions of food that could be paired with a wine from the region. I saw many things that interested my somewhat limited palate. The American Pavilion even had a kiosk selling lobster rolls.

One of the Flower beds with fall colors.

The festival center is in the building between Ellen’s Energy Adventure and Mission Space. It originally held life science related attractions like the motion simulator ride through the human body. It has only been used for special events for many years now. For the Food and Wine Festival it had a couple of restaurants with white table cloths, a couple of lecture areas and several shops. You could buy cook books, wine and Ghiradelli chocolate. Ghiradelli was even giving out samples and discount coupons for the shop at Disney Springs.

One of the things I look forward to at EPCOT are the gardens and plantings. They are usually very bright and attention drawing. This time they were all in muted fall colors. Browns and purples were very prominent. It seemed appropriate for the season and the event, but it didn’t live up to my high expectations. There was one big topiary of Chef Mickey barbequing.

One visitor to EPCOT that didn’t seem to care about the crowds.

I only went on two rides; the Living with the Lands boat ride and Spaceship Earth. These are favorites that only had 20 minute waits. Had I planned better, I would have made Fastpass reservations for some of the other rides. The new Frozen Ever After ride had a two hour standby time. I’ll try to make Fastpass reservations for another visit in the next two weeks.