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2011 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival - The Top 5 Reasons to Go
by AJ Wolfe

From now until November 13, 2011, there will be pretty much one main thing on my mind — The 2011 Epcot International Food and Wine Festival!

Over at Disney Food Blog we’re working hard to gather every piece of info we can so that folks can start planning, but sometimes you really need to be reminded what’s so great about the event in the first place! Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival is a global tasting experience that’s included with your regular Epcot admission. (Of course, the food and wine have an extra cost.) If you just want to nosh and sip your way around the World, you’ll find the menus have nominal prices. Cooking demos, Meet ‘n Greets with Authors/Chefs, wine seminars, and other special experiences will entice foodies to linger all day and evening. Whether this is your first Festival or you are a seasoned Festival foodie, you’ll find plenty of reasons to attend this multi-week event. Here are our favorite reasons to go:

1. Tasting Food From Around the World: When most people head to a theme park, they don’t expect to get the chance to try any dishes other than the standard hot dog, burger, and fries. Well, maybe ice cream.

But at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, where food marketplace booths representing more than 25 regions around world form a semicircle around the World Showcase, exotic food becomes the focus! Guests have the chance to sample tapas-sized portions of dozens of different kinds of foods indigenous to the regions represented — all for the low price of just $2-$8 per plate! Re-visit favorites (Irish Fisherman’s pie, Canadian cheddar cheese soup) and try new dishes too! This is a great way to introduce younger, picky eaters to new foods as well! What better place to test out your palate than in Disney World?

2. Taking a Wine Trip Around the World…In One Afternoon: At the Food and Wine Festival, wine-tasting becomes a team sport! Guests can choose to book the lower-cost wine seminars that take place almost daily in the Festival Center, or shell out for a full-blown wine pairing signature meal — learn directly from sommeliers each wine’s history and why it was paired with the food on your plate.

Prefer to pick and choose your wines? Head to the World Showcase to visit the regional marketplace booths, many of which will have imported wines local to specific countries and regions. Some of them may even be debuting at the festival, or not found anywhere else in the United States!

Don’t forget to find your favorite wine for purchase at The Cellar inside the Festival Welcome Center — sometimes you can even get your bottle signed by the company representative!

3. New Exhibits Every Year: No two festivals are the same! Even if you’ve been to the Epcot Food and Wine Festival before, what you’ll experience this year will be different from what you’ve ever experienced before! New chefs, new seminars, new dinners, new beverages — there’s always something to discover.

In 2011, look for Portuguese, Caribbean, and Hawaiian eats at the World Showcase Marketplace Booths, brand new chocolate seminars at the Festival Center, and new beverages throughout the festival with a focus on mixology!

4. Rock Out to the Eat to the Beat Concerts: Each evening, Eat to the Beat! Concerts in the American Gardens Theatre in Epcot’s World Showcase enhance digestion with live music from some of your favorite bands from the 80s and 90s!

With three free shows each evening, you’re sure to be able to catch Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Air Supply, Howard Jones, Taylor Dayne, Boyz II Men, Hanson, Starship, or another band that will bring back great memories of school dances and lovesick crushes… oh wait, maybe that’s just me. Anyway, be sure to work these into your evening schedule!

5. Meet Celebrity Chefs: The festival isn’t just about the food and wine, it’s also about the hundreds of celebrity chefs that grace Epcot grounds during those spectacular 45 days! The best part? You can meet many of them for free!

Over 270 chefs make the magic happen with food at the festival, and many of them preside over seminars and presentations during the days they’re there. If you’d rather not spend $10+ to see the culinary demonstration, most chefs do a meet and greet autograph signing after their events! Just ask a cast member where that will take place and head over there to be first in line!

Of course, you could always attend the demonstration and get a taste of one of their culinary masterpieces! I hope you can join me — and thousands of other Disney food fans — at the 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival (and at WDW Foodie Fest, the Disney Food Blog week of meet-ups). We’re covering the event closely, so feel free to visit our 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival page for the latest details and breaking news.

Added to PassPorter's Article Collection on 07-12-2011 09:07 AM

What do you think? Please add your own comments, experiences, or news related to this article in this thread! Reader feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

[chezp]

Great article! I wish I was going back to the Food and Wine Festival, but it'll be another couple of years yet...

[shnewell]

F&WF is definitely on our bucket list! I have gone on to the Disney website to price a quick solo trip for this year's festival and saved my offer in the hopes that a PIN code might come my way!

[Sirbogoff]

After receiving the latest Passporter news letter with the news about the upcoming Epcot food and wine festival, I felt I had to chime in and say something. This is not a festival for families with kids.
You may be wondering what I mean by this well let me explain.
We went to Epcot as our last port of call on our vacation (Oct 24th 2010). We had spent 2 wonderful weeks in the area going to the parks, shopping and taking in the other sights. Epcot is always our last park as it is by general consensus, the favorite (although my wife’s is the Magic Kingdom). There were 6 in our party. My wife, my 2 step sons, my son, my ex-wife (I know it sounds strange) and of course, myself. We arrived reasonably early and did most of the lands and inventions first. It was about 2.00pm by the time we hit world showcase. We started at Canada and worked our way around from there. It was about 4.00pm by the time we reached Japan (one of our favorites) and were having some difficulty getting around. There seemed to be quite a lot of larger groups of younger people. When I say younger, I mean early 20s. They were (some of them) wearing t-shirts with things like “Drink your way around the world”…. And they were loud, offensive and a good few of them were drunk. Now, my boys are 14, 16, and 17 and no they are not angels by any means but they are good kids. Well mannered and know the difference between wrong and right and they knew that this was not right.
One of these groups was in no way concerned with whom they offended and was just barging along, more concerned with where the next drink was coming from and not the people in their way. One barged past my wife and my eldest son stepped up and politely asked the young man (and I use the word man loosely because I was always told that men respected women) to please be care full as he had just pushed his mom. He was replied to with a number of words that were 4 letters in length and that not only are not appropriate for most places but especially Disney. I stepped forward at that point and he was then backed up with a number of his friends (Girls and boys alike). I knew that this could get ugly so wanted to try to diffuse the situation and was hoping that some of the cast members would be around but no such luck. I turned my boys away and was taunted and called other names. I am not one to turn away normally but there are times and places and this was not one of them. My wife was then asked by one of them what it was like to be married to such a wimp… My youngest son then said to me that he didn’t think I was and that we should just walk away (the boy has brains) at which point one of the group told him to “shut the f$@$ up” and pushed him to one side stepping on his ankle and foot as he did so. I stared the kid (as I can only think of him that way as I am 45) straight in the eye. He stepped back; I turned my kids, my wife and ex-wife around and walked away. As we walked away, we were shouted at some more. More obscenities and foul language and names were thrown our way but we just kept going (unluckily still no cast members). I noticed lots of other parents moving away as well, people wanting to get their kids away from the scene as quick as possible. As we got out of ear shot, I found the first place to sit everyone down (oddly enough the UK pavilion. Familiar and comfortable surroundings as half the party are English) and collect our thoughts, maybe get a coke or something cold to relax everyone. My youngest at this point burst into tears and was pretty inconsolable. He wasn’t hurt (although he did end up with red scrape and bruise down his ankle from where he was stepped on). I have to say that I had had enough as well. The day had been ruined. We took a vote and decided to leave. As we were going, I felt I needed to report this. My family kept going and I told them I would meet them by the gates and I went to the guest relations office and spoke to a cast member. He was very sympathetic but did not ease my mind.
All he could do was tell me that at this time of year there are groups of people who do come here and drink way too much and that he would not recommend it to families at that time of year…. especially at the weekends. He told me that cast members are trained in this kind of situation and that they do say something to people who are getting shall we say “out of hand” but was very sorry that none had been around when this was occurring.
No resolution was met. No solution was found no compensation offered and our last memories of this vacation were ruined.
How can Disney allow this to happen to a place that is meant for families? Why let these people do this. I understand it is a business and that profits have to be made but at what cost to something that for years has always been our first choice for vacations. Don’t get me wrong, we still have some amazing memories of this vacation but human nature always remembers the bad over the good. It is just a psychological thing. Always has been and probably always will be. My youngest son especially mentions it more than the others.
I do not know if anything can be done about this in the future but something needs to be. Could limits not be set? You have to show your entrance ticket and by scanning that, a limit be put on how much an individual can have. Or would this cut into the profits to much? I know I sound somewhat bitter and that is probably because I am. My son (the 16 year old) flew with his mum (my ex-wife) all the way from England for this vacation. I only get to see him once a year and to do that at Disney world adds a little magic to it but even his friends have told me that he talked about that more than his good memories. No, our vacation was not wasted. No it was not completely ruined but it sure had the edge taken of it. Even to the extent that my wife has mentioned maybe looking at other places next year and she is the biggest Disney fan of us all.
Oh and just to add to that, we also had problems with drunks the year before as well… Thankfully it was just my wife and I that time.
So, anyone else as excited as me?