Walt Disney World

Epcot Food and Wine Festival 2014 – The Three-Minute Video Tour

It’s Thursday, September 18th, and even though Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival for 2014 doesn’t officially open until tomorrow, Disney has typically done a soft-open one day early, and today was no exception. I found a couple of new dishes that were also very delicious (see below), but I thought it would be fun to start with a timelapse video tour of the World Showcase, which I shot today as I made my way around the loop of countries.

Vivaldi background music seemed appropriate for Food and Wine:

“Patagonia” is a new food kiosk at the festival this year, which takes the place of Argentina, and offers some of the same food.

This is called Roasted Verlasso Salmon, and is a new dish being offered at the Patagonia kiosk this year. I thought this was quite good. The chimichurri sauce, as well as the accompanying quinoa salad, complemented the salmon well.

This dessert, called “Pavlova,” is also new. It’s available for $3.50 at the Australia kiosk. Disney describes it as a “crispy meringue shell with fresh berries and vanilla custard.” You’ll need a knife to cut through the meringue, but I thought this was delicious. I expect I’ll be eating this one many more times in the weeks ahead!

Do you have plans for visiting Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival? Share your favorite tips in the comments below!

“Frozen Summer Fun” Added to RideMax

Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios has added a set of “extras” this summer, all under the banner of Frozen Summer Fun. I stopped by earlier this week with Liesle and my daughter to check it out, and we found that we enjoyed it more than I had expected to. Although it’s nowhere close to a Star Wars Land, it adds to the experience of a park that’s long overdue for some sort of update.

(Note: Click on any image in this post for a larger version.)

Our first stop of the day was to get tickets for the lengthily-titled show, For the First Time in Forever: A “Frozen” Sing-Along Celebration. At 10:45 there were still plenty of tickets available for the first show of the day at 12:30.

The line to get tickets for the show is in the Streets of America. Look for the green umbrellas set up on the “side street” off the main thoroughfare. Based on the queue set-up, it looked like they were expecting much larger lines for this than actually existed.

We planted ourselves off to the side of the Sorcerer’s Hat for the 11:00am Anna and Elsa’s Royal Welcome, which turned out to be sort of lame, actually, and was our least-favorite activity of the day. It consisted of Anna and Elsa in a carriage, along with Kristoff and a handful of dancers, all making their way down Hollywood Boulevard to the Sorcerer’s Hat. Granted, we didn’t have a great vantage point from where we stood, but I’m not sure being up-close would have helped that much.

The festivities included Anna and Elsa being handed flowers by someone dressed up like a Disney manager. Not sure what more to say about this.

On the bright side, we did get to sing-along with Let It Go. (This is sarcastic or not, depending on your own level of Frozen fatigue.)

And the guy in the suit helps wrap the whole thing up.

With the brief festivities at the hat concluded, the processional continued down toward Star Tours, where I could see the characters a bit better. If you don’t care about the stage show, this location offers a better view and is less crowded. To give you an idea of the overall brevity of the show, this picture was taken at 11:12am.

“Say goodbye, to the…” well, you know the rest.

I thought these Olaf t-shirts were pretty cool (sorry). $21.95.

We next made our way over to Wandering Oaken’s Frozen Funland. This is located in one of the old “sound stage” buildings between Toy Story Midway Mania and the Backlot Tour. We didn’t have to wait at all to go inside, but the individual activities inside did include some waiting.

The longest wait by far was for the “snow ground” playground area, which included real snow. This was a real treat in Florida in July.

Folks also seemed to be enjoying the small ice-skating rink in this area, which is available for an extra $10.

Frozen-themed treats are also available here.

A close-up of the cupcakes.

By now, it was time to use our tickets for the 12:30 show of For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration.

As someone who downloaded the soundtrack for this show before I was even home from the movie theater — two days after the film was released — (and before every 9-year-old girl in the country had the lyrics memorized), these songs are near and dear to my heart. We really enjoyed this sing-along. It was fast-paced and fun, despite the fact that they left out one of our favorite tunes, Fixer Upper.

The show included segments of live acting…

…as well as a bouncing snowflake for the lyrically-impaired. (Not us!)

Sounds good, Anna!

The grand finale…

As I said, all in all, we really enjoyed the sing-a-long. (And hopefully we didn’t annoy anyone around us too much with our boisterous rendition of the lyrics.) I’ve given this one a fairly high rating in RideMax, and would definitely recommend adding it to your RideMax plan.

Note that the actual showtime came in at around 30 minutes, and this is how we’ve listed it in RideMax, despite Disney’s Times Guide indicating a 20-minute show length.

As a bonus, both the sing-along and Wandering Oaken’s Frozen Funland are a great way to get out of the heat and enjoy some *very* cold air-conditioning. In fact, both Liesle and my daughter were downright cold by the end of this show.

Frozen living up to it’s name, I guess.

We didn’t stay for the evening Frozen version of the fireworks, but I hope to see that in the near future.

For RideMax customers, you’ll find four of the “Frozen Summer Fun” activities listed in RideMax now through September 1st, so feel free to add these to your RideMax plans:

Anna and Elsa’s Royal Welcome
Frozen Sing-Along Celebration
Wandering Oaken’s Frozen Funland
Frozen Fireworks Spectacular

What about you? Have you seen or do you plan to see the new “Frozen Summer Fun” activities yet? Do people really smell better than reindeer? Leave me your thoughts in the comments below!

Beating the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train Crowds at Park Opening. Festival of the Lion King Opens in New Harambe Theater.

As you can see in the image above, Disney is now using a new “follow the rope” procedure when they open the Magic Kingdom in the morning. This is used to help prevent guests from running to the very popular new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride, as well as to the Anna and Elsa meet and greet.

I visited the Magic Kingdom yesterday, and followed pretty closely behind the Cast Members leading the way, as the picture above — and the one right below — shows.

What may not be obvious from these pictures, is the HUGE crowds following behind. I somehow managed to hold my camera over my head, pointing backwards, and caught the following amazing sight (click on any image for a larger view):

With most of these folks attempting to get to these new attractions, you can see how important it is to both arrive early and to know what you’re doing once you get there. The first one is up to you, and if you’re a RideMax subscriber, we’ve added an in-plan tip (our longest one yet) to help with the second one.

I also hopped over to the Animal Kingdom yesterday to check out the new Festival of the Lion King theater, which has been built in Africa, replacing the old location in Camp Minnie-Mickey. As you can see in the picture above, the standby entrance is on the left, with FP+ access on the right.

Just to put the new location in context, this is the wide-angle view from the bridge leading into Africa. Kilimanjaro Safaris is straight ahead on the right-hand side of the picture, with the new Lion King theater on the very far left-hand side of the image.

Once you’ve crossed the bridge, just hang a left here to get to the new theater.

Here’s the view of the theater building taken from the far end, looking back toward where the previous picture was taken.

It’s the same great show as before, one I consider a “must see” attraction!

A final note is that in my observations yesterday, there is no need to use FP+ to visit the FOTLK. For the noon show, you could still get in standby by showing up just 15 minutes before showtime. Arriving a half-hour early should be a safe bet on all but the busiest days of the year.

Seven Dwarfs Mine Train Available in RideMax

Just a quick note to say that the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is now available for selection in RideMax, for plans beginning May 28th.

I expect that we’ll update our wait time estimates after the attraction is actually open and we’ve had the chance to see the lines firsthand, so stay tuned for that.

Happy Planning!

Seven Dwarfs Mine Train Opens May 28th! Press Preview at the Magic Kingdom

The construction walls are down now around the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, and Disney’s two-day preview for the press began yesterday. Cameras and press people were everywhere.

The big announcement is that the attraction will open for all guests on May 28th, with FastPass+ reservations available beginning on that date. There could also be soft openings ahead of the 28th, but nothing official at this point.

Here are a handful of pictures taken yesterday:

Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom

Disney wasn’t allowing any “regular” guests to ride the attraction, but every now and then you could see some of the press folks on the ride.

I like the detail on the ride vehicles, but I’m not sure if these guys riding the cars could look any more excited… 🙂

Grumpy was playing his part well.

The above picture shows the location of the ride entrance which is on the far left edge of this shot. As you can see, the entrance is located just across the street from the Winnie the Pooh exit.

For those of you using RideMax, stay tuned! We expect to have this new attraction added to RideMax soon for dates beginning May 28th. We’ll use some very rough wait time estimates before it opens, and expect to refine those after we’ve had the chance to see the queue in actual operation.