Epcot Flower and Garden Festival 2014: Flora and Food!

The annual Epcot Flower and Garden Festival officially opened yesterday, but I went mostly for the food! Here’s a quick mini-tour of some of the flowers — and the food.

Snow White Topiary at Epcot Flower and Garden Festival 2014

First up is the Snow White topiary (click on any of these images for a larger view). Is it just me, or is this the first year that Snow has actually had EYES painted onto her face? To me this looks way better than previous versions.

As a comparison, take a look at Belle in the image below, who is stationed in the gardens near France.

Creepy Belle

A bit creepy, no?

Like last year, Disney is offering FOOD for the Flower and Garden festival this year, and in my opinion, this really helps kick the whole experience up a notch. There aren’t as many food kiosks as you’ll see during the Food and Wine Festival, but the selection is still very good, and for the most part, Liesle and I both found the food delicious. We didn’t sample everything (all the more reason to go back!), but here’s a quick take on what we did try.

Lemon scones near UK

First up are the Fresh-baked Lemon Scones near the UK pavillion. This may have been Liesle’s favorite treat of the entire day. The dish could use a bit more of the raspberry and creme dipping sauces, but otherwise these were really, really good!

Peter Pan Topiary at Epcot

Look up and find Peter Pan watching over the festivities. #peterwantsafacetoo

Parisian-style Dumplings

Next up, in France, we tried the “Gnocchi Parisien à la Provençal” (or Parisian-style Dumplings with Vegetables and Mushrooms), shown above. This was also very good, sort of a rich pasta dish with enough vegetable “accents” to provide some variety in the flavor.

Orange Blossom Macaron with White Chocolate Ganache

Also in France is the Orange Blossom Macaron with White Chocolate Ganache (or the “Macaron à la Fleur d’ Oranger” for those of you who prefer to eat in French). A very tasty dessert!

Lumiere Topiary

Along with Belle, the Lumiere Topiary is also nearby. I’m still not sure why Lumiere gets a face and Belle doesn’t. Maybe the candlestick union just had really good representation at the face-bargaining-table?

Temaki hand roll

The Temaki hand roll in Japan was probably one of our least favorite dishes of the day, although it was still OK, I guess. I’ve lived in Japan for a couple of years, so I’m somewhat used to the nori seaweed flavor, but there was so much of it here in comparison to the rest of the dish that it sort of overwhelmed the other flavors. We ended up scooping out the “insides” and enjoyed the rest of the dish nori-less.

Japanese Torii in Epcot

It looks like they’ve recently repainted the Torii Gate in Japan. It looks a lot more “orange” (less red) than before. I think these are supposed to be “Vermillion” in color. Maybe this is closer than the previous shade of red?

Pulled pig slider with cole slaw

Next up is the “Pulled Pig Slider with Cole Slaw” near the America Pavillion. This was very good, and very filling. The cole slaw added just enough change in texture and flavor to the rest of the dish that it enhanced it quite a bit.

Epcot Bacon cupcake with maple frosting and pretzel crunch

Also near America is the bacon cupcake with maple frosting and pretzel crunch. This was a very good, but also very dense, cupcake. It also contained a surprisingly generous supply of bacon. If you try this, make sure you have a beverage nearby to wash it down with. (I say this because I didn’t, and regretted it.)

Epcot - Shrimp and stone ground grits

From the Florida Fresh kiosk near Germany (why not?!!), this dish is “Shrimp and stone ground grits with andouille sausage, sweet corn, tomatoes and cilantro.” Be forewarned that it’s a bit spicy, but it was also really, really good! Our dish contained three large-ish shrimp, and was quite filling. I think I’ll be having this one again before the Festival is over.

Epcot Watermelon Salad

This is the watermelon salad, also at Florida Fresh. The dressing was a balsamic reduction, and the combination of flavors, including the watermelon on the bottom of the salad, made this one of our favorite dishes of the day.

Rafiki and Simba Topiary at Epcot

Hang on, Rafiki!

Epcot Beijing-style candied strawberries

By this point in the day we were pretty full, but the Beijing-style candied strawberries are one of Liesle’s favorites, so we had to stop and get these. Delicious, as always!

Epcot frozen desert violet lemonade

We finished the day by washing everything down with the frozen desert violet lemonade, at the Pineapple Promenade.

Bambi topiary at Epcot

Finally, here are a few more scenes from the park. Above is Bambi. Note the face. Not sure how Bambi qualifies for membership in the candlestick union though.

Epcot Flowers

Pretty flowers everywhere!

Pretty flowers under the monorail at Epcot

More pretty flowers still!

Inside the butterfly garden at Epcot

The picture above was taken inside the butterfly garden, as are the two below:

Epcot butterfly garden

Epcot butterfly garden

Epcot sand sculpture

Still working on the sand sculpture. It’s looking good so far!

All in all, we really had a good time touring the Flower and Garden Festival, and I expect we’ll be back soon to try some of the dishes we missed this time!

What about you? Will you make it to the Flower and Garden Festival this year? Do you have a “must try” dish? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

 

 

 

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Avoiding the Wait at the New FP+ Kiosks

FP+ Kiosk

This is a short post for those planning a visit to Walt Disney World in the near future. Disneyland visitors can rest easy — at least for the time being!

After visiting both Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Epcot yesterday and looking again at the situation with the new FP+ kiosks, it’s pretty clear that your selection of which specific kiosk to visit can make a huge difference in how long you’ll have to wait at the kiosk itself, especially if you don’t arrive until after opening time and there are already crowds in the park.

Consider the line for one of the FP+ kiosks yesterday at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. I took this picture at the kiosk near the Tower of Terror shortly before 11:00am:

Line for FP+ Kiosk

I should note that setting up those FP+ reservations inside the park is something of a labor-intensive process for the cast members staffing the kiosks, so these folks could be standing in line for a while. (And the irony is that FP+ is supposed to help reduce the time you spend standing line.)

Now, look at the line for the kiosks near American Idol. The picture below was taken just a few minutes after the one shown above. Here you can see two very unbusy cast members, complete with FP+ tablets in hand, who without prompting from me were nice enough to pause and smile for the camera, as there wasn’t anyone in line for them to help at the moment:

FP+ Kiosk Near American Idol

As this was only about a three-minute walk from the very crowded kiosks near the Tower of Terror, it would have definitely been worth the walk for the poor folks standing in line over there.

FP+ Kiosk Near Muppets

I should also note that if you were in the back of the park, the line for the FP+ kiosks near Muppet Vision theater were also non-existent. Note the open machine on the right in the picture below.

FP+ Kiosk - No Line

Given how unevenly the lines for the kiosks are playing out so far (I saw similar disparities at Epcot), we expect to have some in-plan “tips” in RideMax soon to help steer folks to the shorter lines. In the meantime, remember that it can really pay to look around a bit before you commit to a particular FP+ kiosk.

Have you experienced FP+ yet, and if so, what did you think of the experience?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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Disney Spring Break: Three Tips for Beating the Crowds at Disney’s Theme Parks

It’s that time of year again when folks start planning spring break vacations to Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Although crowds during this time of year can be very heavy, there are a few simple things you can do to help beat those crowds. I’ll expand on each of these below, but to cut right to the chase, my three tips are:

  • Arrive early
  • Have a plan
  • Choose the “right” park for your visit date

Let’s hit each of these in more detail.

Tip #1: Arrive Early

Regardless of whether you’re visiting Disneyland or Walt Disney World, it’s very important to arrive well before the park opens for the day so that you’re among the first group of guests in the park right when it opens for business.

Consider the two pictures below, taken last year at the Magic Kingdom during spring break. The first shows what Fantasyland looked like just after the park opened for the day:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/i-8f7jvBt/0/X2/i-8f7jvBt-X2.jpg

Now, check out the following picture taken two hours later:

Magic Kingdom Spring Break -- Mid-morning

Not only are the lines for the attractions lower first thing in the morning, arriving early also gives you an important advantage in using Disney’s FASTPASS (FP) system at Disneyland, or in using the FASTPASS-Plus (FP+) system at Walt Disney World.

To explain more, first thing in the morning the FP “return windows” for most attractions at Disneyland and at California Adventure are just 40 minutes away, and this is also the time at which you can get your next FP ticket. Contrast this with later in the day, when you may have to wait two hours to obtain your next FP ticket, if they’re even available at all.

Similarly, at Disney World’s theme parks, where the FP+ system is now in full use, arriving early gets you quicker access to the FP+ kiosks which are scattered throughout the parks.

Arriving later in the day could result in a line for the FP+ kiosks that looks like the following picture from the Animal Kingdom, taken at around 11:00am during another busy season of the year (the way some of these folks are camped out makes it look like they’ve been waiting a while):

FP+ Kiosk at Animal Kingdom

Tip #2: Have a Plan

OK, I know this one is self-serving, since I earn my living from the RideMax custom itinerary planning toolBut even if you don’t use RideMax, I recommend you at least do some planning before you leave for the park, even if it’s just to sit down and make a list of priority attractions and their general location within the park. (And if you are visiting Walt Disney World and don’t feel like you need the detail that RideMax offers, you can also find good touring advice at the easywdw website. No affiliation, BTW.)

Tip #3: Choose the “Right” Park For Your Visit Date

Radiator Springs Racers

In addition to arriving early, it’s important to choose the “right” day of the week to visit a given park. For example, the above picture shows the empty line for Radiator Springs Racers first thing in the morning, right after the park opened for the day.

The catch is that for the majority of guests, this scene is only possible on certain days of the week.

What’s important to remember is that both Disneyland and Walt Disney World host some sort of “early entry” program for their hotel guests, which gives these guests access to one of the parks one hour early on specific days of the week. For example, Disney hotel guests are normally allowed early entry to Disneyland on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and to DCA on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Walt Disney World also normally hosts early entry at one or more of its parks on any given day, but the exact day of the week is not always as predictable as it is for the Disneyland resort. (RideMax subscribers can find our “Which Day, Which Park?” recommendations in the RideMax “Tips & Hints” pages, or you can consult the Disney World website for the early entry information as well.)

If you’re not staying at a Disney-owned hotel and still want to get a jump on the crowds by arriving early, the best way to do this is to simply avoid the park hosting early entry on the day of you visit, and go to another park instead. For example, the picture above was taken on a Tuesday, when Disneyland, and NOT DCA, was hosting early entry. Had I gone straight to Radiator Springs Racers when the park opened to the public on a Monday instead, I would have found a large line for this attraction right at opening time. (And don’t even attempt to visit Peter Pan on an early entry day for Disneyland if you don’t have early entry access yourself!)

During a busy season like spring break, a similar scenario can play out at the Disney World theme parks, with hotel guests streaming into the park hosting early entry (or “Extra Magic Hours” (EMH), as Disney calls it) well before the park opens to the public. To start your day with lower crowds, I strongly encourage you to visit a non-EMH park instead.

Do you have a favorite crowd-beating tip you’d like to share? Leave it in the comments below!

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The End of an Era: FASTPASS Removed from the Magic Kingdom

As of today, the traditional FastPass system which been in use for more than ten years at Walt Disney World, is no longer available at the Magic Kingdom. If you look for the FastPass machines, this is the scene you’ll see all over the park:

With this change, the Magic Kingdom joins the Animal Kingdom in only offering the new FastPass “plus” system, or “FP+” for short.

Disney has offered FP+ to hotel guests as a “test” for several months now, but until today, the system was unavailable to off-site guests and annual passholders not staying at a Disney hotel.

Now, instead of the traditional FastPass machines, Disney has FP+ kiosks installed in four locations around the park. These can be used by folks like me who aren’t staying at a Disney hotel to make FP+ reservations on the day of their visit.

FP+ kiosk sign
This sign marks the FP+ kiosk location near PhilharMagic

Before Liesle and I visited the park today, I created a RideMax plan that utilized FP+. Once inside the park, I went straight to a FP+ kiosk and made the FP+ reservations shown below. I matched the time slots on the reservations to the times shown on my RideMax plan for the FP+ attractions:

FP+ kiosk screen

I may write more detail about our day in a future post, but overall, the day went smoothly, although the park was very uncrowded today, so I’m sure that helped.

What are your thoughts about FP+? Is it a good thing, or was the old system better?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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“Magic Bands” FastPass+ Support Now in RideMax!

Magic Bands at Disney World
As most recent Disney World guests are aware, Disney has been rolling out a new program called “FastPass+” (note the plus sign – very important)!

This new system allows guests to reserve ride times in advance — before leaving home — for up to three attractions per day. Advance ride reservations can also be made using Disney’s own app, called “My Disney Experience” (MDE). Guests participating in the new system receive special wrist bracelets containing an RFID chip.

These bracelets are called “Magic Bands,” and they allow these guests entrance to the park, as well as admission to the attractions where they’ve made FP+ reservations. Guests touch the Magic Band to the RFID readers, located at the special FP+ entrances, to access these attractions. (Note the reader, emblazoned with a light-up Mickey head, lights up “green” when a valid reservation-holding guest holds his or her Magic Band up to the reader, a shown in the image below.)

Magic Bands at Disney World Attraction Entrance

Eventually, this new system will replace the traditional paper-ticket-based FastPass system, which has been in use for more than a decade now at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland. (It’s important to note that the new FP+ system is not being implemented at Disneyland, at least for now.)

Officially FP+ is still just in testing mode, so most guests using the new system will also have use of the traditional, paper-based FastPass system, at least for the next few weeks. (For brevity, I’ll refer to the traditional FastPass system as “FP-” from here on out — note the “minus” sign).

I say “most” guests will still have access to FP-, but there are some guests who have already been moved exclusively to FP+, and who can’t use FP- now. The move to “exclusively” using FP+ appears to be moving from resort to resort, beginning with guests staying at Pop Century.

So for now, there are three categories of guests:

1. Those who don’t have access to the new FP+ system, but who can still use the old, paper-based FP- system.

2. Those who can use BOTH the new FP+ system as well as the old FP- system.

3. Those who have access to the new FP+ system, but not FP-.

So, what does this mean for RideMax?

We’ve added a new option in the web- and mobile web-based versions of RideMax to allow you to tell RideMax if you are using the new FP+ system, as well as which specific attractions you wish to use the FP+ system for. You can also tell RideMax to either include or not include use of “traditional” FP- when it creates your itinerary.

So, what do plans using these various options look like? I thought you’d never ask!  🙂

Just for fun, I’ve created four Magic Kingdom plans for use TODAY — a busy fall Saturday in November — each with the same set of attractions, but with different FastPass settings. The list of 13 attractions I’ve chosen to visit are:

  • Barnstormer
  • Enchanted Tales with Belle
  • it’s a small world
  • Jungle Cruise
  • People Mover
  • Peter Pan’s Flight (twice)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean (twice)
  • Splash Mountain
  • Tomorrowland Speedway (twice)
  • Winnie the Pooh

And, here is the screen shot showing my list of plans, taken from RideMax:

RideMax for Disney World - Sample Plans with FastPass Plus Options

Let’s now take a look at each of these plans in detail, starting at the bottom and working our way up!

First, here’s the plan at the bottom, which just has us visiting EVERYTHING standby. No FP+, no FP-. No FastPass at all, of any kind:

RideMax Sample Plan - No FastPass

And sure enough, with NO FASTPASS at all, this plan looks pretty lousy. There is one really long wait — for Enchanted Tales with Belle, as well as some painful waits at the Tomorrowland Speedway. Our total estimated wait is 193 minutes, or just under 15 minutes per attraction, on average. (This average may not seem too bad, but we can do MUCH better, as you’ll soon see.)

Next, let’s take a look at the plan which ONLY uses the new FP+ system. I told RideMax I wanted to use FP+ to visit Peter Pan, Enchanted Tales with Belle, and the Tomorrowland Speedway. (Note that I’m restricted from using FP+ to visit the same attraction twice, so I can use FP+ for one of the visits to Peter Pan and the Speedway, but not for both visits to each of these rides. Since my plan includes each of these attractions twice, RideMax will use FP+ for one ride, and standby for the other, for each of them.)

RideMax Sample Plan with Only FP+

As you can see, just using FP+ has cut down our estimated wait almost in half, to 100 minutes total. There is still a long-ish wait for Jungle Cruise on the plan, but we’ve eliminated that long wait for Enchanted Tales with Belle by using FP+ to visit it. Note also that the plan has us strategically visiting both Peter Pan and the Tomorrowland Speedway using the standby line early in the morning, but using FP+ for our second visit later in the early afternoon, while still respecting the fact that Disney won’t typically let us use FP+ for two attractions during the same hour of the day.

Our average estimated wait, using just FP+ for these three attractions, is now down to just under 8 minutes for each attraction in the plan.

Now, let’s take a look at the plan which ONLY uses the “traditional” FP- system, but with “aggressive” use of FastPass. In other words, we’re using the “FastPass Runner” setting in RideMax, as well as the setting that tells RideMax that our FastPass runner is willing to skip *any* attraction while off gathering FastPasses for our group. (For those unfamiliar with RideMax, we could have also told it which specific subset of attractions the runner was willing to skip, if any. For this test, we’re being aggressive and telling RideMax that our runner can skip anything if it might help our overall wait.)

RideMax Sample Plan using Traditional FastPass Only

As you can see, this plan isn’t quite as good as the FP+ plan, with our overall estimated wait bumping back up to 125 minutes, or just under ten minutes per attraction. This is mostly due to the fact that we’re back to being stuck in the long standby line for Enchanted Tales with Belle, which doesn’t offer FP-.

And as a side note, you may be wondering why RideMax didn’t just have us visit Enchanted Tales with Belle first thing, rather than waiting for later in the day when the line is so long? It’s simple, really. If we had visited Enchanted Tales with Belle right when the park opened, we’d have spent our first 30-35 minutes on just that one attraction. And while the wait there certainly would have been shorter, we’d have sacrificed some of the other Fantasyland attractions and the Speedway, which also doesn’t offer FP-, but which takes less time to ride. We’re essentially trading one long wait for several really short ones. If I were using these plans “for real,” of course, I may make some adjustments to the plan to see if I could reduce this crazy-long wait. Maybe by visiting the Tomorrowland Speedway and Peter Pan only once each for example, the software might have me visiting Belle earlier in the day, and reducing the estimated wait as a result. Experimenting is key to arriving at a good game plan!

OK, finally let’s use BOTH FP+ and the traditional FastPass system — still very aggressively — and see what RideMax comes up with:

RideMax Sample Plan Using Both FP+ and Traditional FastPass

As you can see, we’ve really cleaned up here, with a total overall estimated wait of just 66 minutes, or just five minutes per attraction! This is basically one-third of our estimated wait using NO FastPasses at all, which is pretty amazing.

I guess the bottom line for me is that as long as you have access to at least ONE or BOTH of the FastPass systems during the FP+ rollout, you should be able to do pretty well.

If you’re using the new FP+ system, my suggestion is to experiment with the various settings in RideMax until you arrive at a plan you’re happy with.

Happy Planning!

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