more magic. less wait.
Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival kicked off yesterday, so of course Liesle and I had to stop by and check it out.
Today I’ll mostly focus on the actual menus, including prices, with a handful of food reviews thrown in for good measure. Before diving into those, however, here are some overall first impressions:
Just a quick note today for RideMax subscribers…
I was out at Disneyland in late June and earlier in July, and missed the opening day for the new Frozen Ever After ride at Epcot. I had the chance to visit the ride at rope drop earlier this week, and as a result of closely watching how Disney runs the opening procedure, we’ve updated the arrival advice shown on RideMax plans for those who are visiting Epcot first thing in the morning on non-EMH days.
We’ve also added a new tip to Epcot RideMax plans which gives very specific advice on how to navigate yourself to the new Frozen Ever After ride at rope drop, should you be following a RideMax plan which has you visiting that ride as soon as the park opens. You should see both the updated arrival advice and the new Frozen tip by just refreshing the RideMax plan in your web browser or on your mobile device.
Note that we’ve also made some adjustments to our wait time estimates for Frozen Ever After, so if you have a RideMax plan which includes this attraction, we recommend creating a new plan (which will pick up the new estimates) before you visit the park.
Enjoy!
Liesle & I stopped into Epcot yesterday to catch a few of our favorite Flower & Garden dishes one last time before the Festival wraps up on Monday.
I’m heading out to Animal Kingdom this evening to catch the new nighttime happenings there, but before we start focusing more on that park in some upcoming posts, I thought it might be worth a quick, three-picture blurb showing construction progress around the Arendelle area at Epcot.
Remember, the new Frozen ride is scheduled to open there in less than a month.
Above is the scene with the camera peeking over the construction wall just past the Mexico area. For those who are familiar with this area, this is almost directly across the main pathway from the spot where Mariachi Cobre performs.
As you can see, things are moving along nicely on the exteriors here. The small meet and greet building just to the left of center is much more finished than it was in my previous post covering the Arendelle construction.
Here we are viewing the scene over the wall from the right-hand side of the previous image. (And yes, I did get some “looks” taking these pictures. All in the line of duty lol…)
I’ll actually be out at Disneyland when this area opens, so you can expect my next blog post covering this scene to be available after the new Frozen Ever After attraction has been open for a bit — probably mid-July.
It will be nice to have the new attraction open, but I’m expecting it will add to the complexity of an efficient Epcot tour, especially if Frozen, Test Track, and Soarin’ all remain “Tier One” on the FP+ list.
We’ll see.
With that, here’s wishing a final goodbye to the Flower & Garden Festival.
And next year, Disney, please consider upping the portion size on those shrimp tacos. Madame Leota will thank you!
🙂
A relatively short post today, as Liesle & I stopped into Epcot this past Thursday, May 5th, for a quick tour around World Showcase. We also wanted to eat some of our favorite Flower & Garden dishes again before the festival wraps up at the end of the month.
As you can see in the picture above, we were greeted with beautiful weather — blue skies, not too hot. A great day, really.
We first stopped in front of the construction walls outside Norway, and I couldn’t resist pointing my camera over the wall to check on the progress.
The picture below is the result:
This begins the third and final installment of our Epcot Flower & Garden food reviews, and I thought I’d start and end with some merchandise this time, just to mix things up a bit.
(For those that missed the previous installments, I recommend reviewing our Epcot Flower & Garden Festival 2016 Part I and Epcot Flower and Garden Festival 2016 Part II before proceeding. Part I is especially helpful, as it contains all of the menus.)
The Dooney & Bourke handbag above was made especially for the 2016 Flower & Garden Festival, and will run you $248 plus tax. As with most merchandise, annual passholders are eligible for a 10% discount.
