Epcot Food and Wine Festival

[Deleted]

Is this festival worth it?  It will be my ILs, us, and our 2 kids (4.5 and 15 months).  We get there November 12th and the festival ends November 14.  My husband and I love food and booze lol so I think we would like it but not sure if its worth taking everybody there.  I just need to decide in about a month for when I book ADR.

[mmmomof2]

Are you not splitting up at all? Sounds like a perfect date night to me!

I think the festival is worth it, but I didn't have kids with me when I went. The weekend crowds (particularly Saturday nights) are really heavy, and there can be some rowdy groups. Not dangerous, just loud and obnoxious. Also, the costs add up. I put money on a gift card so I never really felt it, but imagine $6 for tiny pours of wine and $5 for a few bites of food. The concerts can be fun depending on who is playing. We did one of the cooking demonstrations with wine pairing and a french luncheon, which I thought both were awesome, but again $$$.

[pinkpeony6210]

We went on a Saturday...big mistake. It was super crowded, and there were a lot of drunk people. Navigating a double stroller around the World Showcase was a horrible experience. However, we're definitely going back again in October, just on a Monday this time (hoping for it to be a little less crowded). A part of me wishes DH and I could just go and drink and snack around the world by ourselves, but that's not possible considering we'll have the girls with us

[Deleted]

Apr 7, 2016 10:41:32 GMT -5 mmmomof2 said:

Are you not splitting up at all? Sounds like a perfect date night to me!

I think the festival is worth it, but I didn't have kids with me when I went. The weekend crowds (particularly Saturday nights) are really heavy, and there can be some rowdy groups. Not dangerous, just loud and obnoxious. Also, the costs add up. I put money on a gift card so I never really felt it, but imagine $6 for tiny pours of wine and $5 for a few bites of food. The concerts can be fun depending on who is playing. We did one of the cooking demonstrations with wine pairing and a french luncheon, which I thought both were awesome, but again $$$.

Idk, the ILs will say they will watch them and then when we get there, they don't.  My parents do the same too lol so I trust no-one when they say they will give us a date night on vacation.  If we went with everybody, we would probably go Sunday or Monday and do Epcot rides in the morning and the world showcase in the evening. 

[lala]

Absolutely. Even with the kids. But I'd do my best to get the inlaws to watch them one night - if you can get them to bed early and get over maybe?

Or what we did because we didn't have childcare, we put them in pjs and walked over and they all fell asleep eventually. Then We had almost 2 hours to meander, 3 sleeping kids in tow.

[TBM]

Apr 7, 2016 11:06:12 GMT -5 @happybythekilowatt said:

The Food and Wine Festival is my favorite. We go every year. I have a great time waiting for the food lists to be published and making my list of all the stands we want to stop at and what we want to try. But, we are child free. I don't know that it would be quite as fun with kids, but I am sure someone else could tell you about that. We definitely do it during the week. We went back for a second day to kill some time on a Saturday last year, and I probably wouldn't choose to do that again. The lines weren't too long for getting food, but it was just so crowded when walking.

This.

We have AP and live locally though, so if we do go on a weekend, it is with a particular plan of action, and usually for a short amount of time.  I wouldn't go on a weekend if I had kids with me.

[Deleted]

Apr 7, 2016 11:22:37 GMT -5 TBM said:

Apr 7, 2016 11:06:12 GMT -5 @happybythekilowatt said:

The Food and Wine Festival is my favorite. We go every year. I have a great time waiting for the food lists to be published and making my list of all the stands we want to stop at and what we want to try. But, we are child free. I don't know that it would be quite as fun with kids, but I am sure someone else could tell you about that. We definitely do it during the week. We went back for a second day to kill some time on a Saturday last year, and I probably wouldn't choose to do that again. The lines weren't too long for getting food, but it was just so crowded when walking.

This.

We have AP and live locally though, so if we do go on a weekend, it is with a particular plan of action, and usually for a short amount of time.  I wouldn't go on a weekend if I had kids with me.

Do you think the last day will be bad crowd wise? It's a Monday, but I wasn't sure if it being the last day would make the crowds a lot higher.

[cbwm1]

If you're going to do it, definitely don't do it on the weekend (haven't looked at a calendar to see dates).

We did it with our 7 year old and we walked out SO full. It was totally worth it, and I wish we hadn't done an ADR for that night because we still weren't hungry by the time we got to dinner.

If you can do it without kids, I think it would be super awesome to get drunk and eat all the food and not have to worry about being responsible for little people. Especially since you can use Disney transportation!

[TBM]

Apr 7, 2016 11:24:28 GMT -5 @lindy said:

Apr 7, 2016 11:22:37 GMT -5 TBM said:

This.

We have AP and live locally though, so if we do go on a weekend, it is with a particular plan of action, and usually for a short amount of time.  I wouldn't go on a weekend if I had kids with me.

Do you think the last day will be bad crowd wise? It's a Monday, but I wasn't sure if it being the last day would make the crowds a lot higher.

We actually went the last Sunday this past year and it wasn't too bad, compared to other weekends, so my guess is that it won't be too bad.  

[peggy]

We went last year and it was fantastic. The steak from Canada was so good that I got it twice. Don't get the pierogies from Poland - they're Mrs. T's minis FFS.

[momin2013]

DH and I went last year and while we enjoyed it, I think that was largely because we didn't have 3 yo DS with us. If we had brought him, I'm pretty sure that:

a) it would have been difficult to maneuver the stroller through the World Showcase, which was quite busy.

b) we wouldn't have spent nearly as much time as we'd have wanted in the actual Food & Wine section, because it's largely extra kiosks with special drinks/food, so not really much for a LO to "do" in there.

c) we would have spent much more time in the front section of the park to keep DS happy, which would have been disapponting to miss out on the Food & Wine section.

Long story short, I think it's totally worth it without kids. Second-best scenario would be if your IL's would be on-board with taking the kids at least some of the time so you could split up and spend more time in the World Showcase. If not, I personally probably wouldn't bother braving the crowds during Food & Wine, and just do Epcot at another time for the fun of Epcot itself.

[Deleted]

DH and I went last year and had a blast! We don't have kids so I can't comment on that portion. It's something we definitely want to do again in the future. It was expensive, we spent about $250 on the food and drinks. If you have the dining plan you can use snack credits on most of the food samples.

[Wines Not Whines]

I didn't think it was too crowded during the day, but it got very crowded at night. We try to go around mid-day for lunch.

[lala]

So we were in Epcot at least 6 different occasions on our last trip and I grabbed at least one thing every time. Definitely did one or two lunches that way, dessert & drinks with illuminations. Aside from the one weekend night we were there (never again!!) it wasn't a big deal with the kids. They tried all kinds of things, too.

[kpol]

Apr 7, 2016 11:24:28 GMT -5 @lindy said:

Apr 7, 2016 11:22:37 GMT -5 TBM said:

This.

We have AP and live locally though, so if we do go on a weekend, it is with a particular plan of action, and usually for a short amount of time.  I wouldn't go on a weekend if I had kids with me.

Do you think the last day will be bad crowd wise? It's a Monday, but I wasn't sure if it being the last day would make the crowds a lot higher.

I went twice last year (I'm semi-local). The first time was on a weekend and it was crazy busy. Extremely long lines and tons of people but so worth it. The second time I went was on the last day and met my parents there. It was dead. No lines for anything and you could walk around no problem. I'm child free but I'd imagine that last day would be no problem with kids.

[spankswife]

Hmm. This makes me nervous. We are planning to go 10/1. We are doing the Halloween party the Sunday night, so I thought we'd do Epcot Saturday with hopes of getting a frozen ride FP. We live in Fl and are just doing a long weekend.

Is this a horrible idea? We'd go at rope drop and be fine leaving by early evening if it got too crowded...

[pinkpeony6210]

Apr 9, 2016 20:46:48 GMT -5 spankswife said:

Hmm. This makes me nervous. We are planning to go 10/1. We are doing the Halloween party the Sunday night, so I thought we'd do Epcot Saturday with hopes of getting a frozen ride FP. We live in Fl and are just doing a long weekend.

Is this a horrible idea? We'd go at rope drop and be fine leaving by early evening if it got too crowded...

If you can change your plan around, then do it. So many people told me it would be a nightmare on a weekend day, and I thought we'd be able to manage..I was wrong. WS was so crowded, it was horrible. We didn't get to see anything, which totally sucked. I opted for a Monday this time around, so hopefully we'll be able to see more of it. 

[ilikedonuts]

I avoid Epcot on weekends during food and wine. It's packed and I try to avoid my kids being around crazy drunk people.

It wasn't even food and wine when we went in December and the Saturday night we were there was horrible. Drunk people running into us and swearing at every thing around them.