Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Epcot?

From this point on, we were in Epcot everyday for some portion of the day. It seems pointless to give the day-by-day blow for the Epcot portions of the trip. We'd repeat phrases like "...sat in La Cava de Tequila", "watched Off-Kilter...", "...Chicken sausage from Canada" way too much. We'll split this up into a couple of posts.
It's Food & Wine Festival. For several weeks Epcot has over 25 additional food and drink booths around The World Showcase. In addition, there are culinary seminars, special lunch and dinner events, and 3 sets nightly from a headliner music act. The whole low-down is listed at Disneyfoodblog.com. This is our favorite Disney event.
On three occasions we came into the park at opening time (called "rope-drop"). For us that meant walking really fast (never run) from International Gateway (by England) to Future World. For three days we were within the first dozen on line for respective attractions: Soarin',Epcot's Character Spot, Soarin'. Yep, we burnt Power Hour time on character lines. In total, we spent about 6 hours at Future World attractions. On this trip Future World was there to kill time before World Showcase opened.
One of the features of the Festival this year was Ocean Spray's Cranberry Bog. In some early photos this looked huge. In real life not so much. Not sure we'd wanna stand there all day.

Deminars

Since we had ample time this trip we went to a couple deminars: demonstrations/seminars. These were around $12pp and you got a glass of wine and featured food item you learned how to cook.
Our first one was will Bill Clark, Grand Floridian Pastry Chef. When we signed up it indicated it would be a cheese dish, which it was......but we were thinking cheese plate. Ended up being baked brie in a puff pastry. Nice.
A few days later we went to Jamie Deen's seminar on chicken. He's Paula's son. He was very entertaining and actually walked through the line to say hi to folks before the demo. Nice guy.
We also attended one special dessert/cocktail event called “Taste, Shake, and Indulge Like the French: Grand Marnier Tasting and Interactive Experience” . This event was $55pp.
The brochure described it this way: "showcases the talents of a Grand Marnier cocktail master. Included:
* Indulge in a glass of Moët & Chandon Ice Imperial, the first Champagne to be served on ice
* Sample Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge, Grand Marnier 100th Anniversary and Grand Marnier 150th Anniversary
* Savor Crêpes Suzette and dessert au Grand Marnier made by the Chefs of Bistro de Paris
* Mixology lesson

Dave describes the event as a "chance to watch older folks get looped after having a glass of champagne, 3 shots, and a cocktail in 20 minutes". The host, a French lady, was entertaining, but at times we felt truly regarded the group as ugly Americans and told us to leave our country more often. Dave liked everything, Holly did not enjoy the traditional "cheaper product". We loved the Moët Ice Imperial and had a friend bring us a bottle last week since we couldn't fit one in our luggage.



Next up we'll explore some of the food and drink from the festival booths.

Dave's Artsy Picture of the Day:

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