Recent News

Howdy all! We just finished taping a WDW Today episode about the 2010 Epcot Food and Wine Festival, but I thought it’d be fun to highlight the new additions for this year and remind you of a few key dates to help in your planning.

Specs:

When: October 1-November 14, 2010
Where: All around Epcot
How Much?: Variable. You can drop a month’s pay at the festival or you can have fun for free.

International Marketplace Booth

• Free: Many events held in the Festival Center are free, including Authentic Taste Seminars and Authors Without Borders. You’ll also find several seminars set up throughout the World Showcase that are free. Find out more here.
• Low-Cost: Several culinary and beverage demonstrations are in the $8-$13 range. Tastes from the International Marketplace booths will run from $2-$8.
• Expensive: Dozens of special events from celebrity chef-studded signature dinners to chocolate seminars with renowned chocolatiers to the uber-popular Party for the Senses are again available this year. Costs range from $40-$450 and up.

Booking Details: Booking for the special (expensive) events opens on July 20th at 7am. Just call 407-WDW-FEST for details or to book. If you’d like tickets to the lower-cost seminars and demonstrations, booking opens August 26th for Tables in Wonderland and DVC members and Annual Passholders. Booking opens August 28th for the General Public. Again, 407-WDW-FEST is the number to call.

New Events and Attractions to Anticipate

In addition to some old favorites like the French Regional Lunches and Sweet Sundays, Disney is introducing several new events on the 2010 Food and Wine Festival docket:

Graphic for 2010 Festival

Delicious Discoveries First Bites
This is basically a festival sneak peek. Disney is promising glimpses of celebrity chefs, tastes of new Food and Wine Festival dishes, and other exciting secrets to be revealed before the festival officially opens. The event will be held September 30th from 6:30-9pm and sounds pretty exciting, but the $195 price tag — not including tax — might make folks a little skittish.

Don’t forget, the Food and Wine Festival usually has a “soft opening” the day before the grand opening, so you might get a chance to try some of the World Showcase booth menus prior to the big day anyway.

3D: Disney Dessert Discoveries
This is being touted as a private Illuminations Dessert Party…and then some. Taking place on most Fridays (with one Thursday tucked in there on October 21st), the $45 ticket price will get you plenty of desserts, wines, and cordials along with reserved seating for Illuminations, Reflections of Earth — Epcot’s fireworks show.

Belgium, South Korea, and Charcuterie and Cheese Booths Come to the Festival
Every year Disney introduces a few new booths to its International Marketplace — a set-up of over 25 mini-kiosks offering small portions of food and drinks from different regions and countries around the world. These booths are set up around the World Showcase, and items can be purchased a la carte for around $2-$8.

This year, we get to try waffles from the Belgium booth, barbecue from the South Korea booth, and fondue from the Charcuterie and Cheese booth. Of course, there’s plenty more to sample. Check out all of the menus here.

Passport Stamp Example

Marketplace Discovery Passports
Another fun addition to the International Marketplace this year are the Marketplace Discovery Passports. These are free pamphlets that you (and your kids!) can use to keep track of which marketplace booths you’ve visited and which you’d still like to enjoy. At each booth, just ask a cast member to stamp your passport!

New Eat to the Beat! Concerts
Disney’s Eat to the Beat! Concert series is a free (with Epcot admission) group of concerts that take place three times per night throughout the festival. Every few days the band changes, but you’re bound to find a few of your favorites on stage. This year, new acts include Sugar Ray, Air Supply, Howard Jones, 38 Special, Roger Hodgson, Hanson, and Rick Springfield. To see the full line-up and dates for each band, go to our Eat to the Beat! page.

Low-Cost Wine Tasting Seminar

Taste Shake and Indulge: Grand Marnier Tastings
For those who love this orange-flavored liqueur, you now have the chance to immerse yourself in it. (OK, not literally — there won’t be any bathtubs of Grand Marnier sitting around Epcot.) On Saturdays from 2:30-4pm, $45 will buy you not only a tasting of a full range of liqueurs, but also a short class on shaking and muddling Grand Marnier cocktails as well as some sweet treats from Bistro de Paris where the event is held.

Grape Getaway
For those who just can’t get enough of the Food and Wine Festival, Disney is introducing a full vacation package this year — the Grape Getaway. While we don’t know pricing or booking date, yet, we do know that the package will include 4 days and 3 nights of exclusive Food and Wine Festival fun. The package is limited to 100 people and will run from October 24th-October 27th, 2010.

Those are just a few of the new events and attractions scheduled for this year’s festival, and you can believe me when I say you can have a great time no matter what your budget. As always, check out the Disney World Website for more information, and don’t forget to come see us over at the Disney Food Blog!

Just in time for the winter holidays! (Yeah, we know that’s what you were thinking.) For those of you already planning a spring or summer 2010 trip to Walt Disney World, we’ve added full coverage of Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach water parks to the site.

We’ve also created touring plans for each park, for adults and for parents with small children (under 48″) who can’t quite yet ride some of the more intense slides. These touring plans are the first to feature full color maps of the parks. And to save on ink when you’re printing these at home, the backgrounds for each page are not colored.

Disney’s water parks are larger and more heavily themed than almost any water park you’ve seen. If your upcoming WDW trip includes a day at either, a subscription to the site will tell you what you need to know to have fun.

To soften the blow by a price hike for all ticket, including annual passes, Disney is offering guests who renew their annual passes for 2010 to get 15 months of access for the price of 12 months. To qualify you must renew your pass within 30 days of its expiration date.

Bob Sehlinger was quoted and our Least-Expensive Ticket Calculator was highlighted in today’s USAToday article entitled “Disney on a dime: Yes, Mouseketeers, you can do it.”

On June 4th through June 7th, 2009 the annual “Gay Days” event will hit Walt Disney World. Since 1991, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered community as well as their supporters were encouraged to “Wear Red and Be Seen” at Orlando’s theme parks . The events are not officially Disney sponsored but they do represent enough of an increase in crowds that we add it to our crowd calendar. Each day, the event rotates through one of the four major parks starting with June 4th at Animal Kingdom; June 5th at Disney’s Hollywood Studios; June 6th at Magic Kingdom; and June 7th at Epcot.

Normally, we encourage our readers to avoid parks that are holding special events but on June 4th we have recommended Animal Kingdom. It is one of those cases where the Animal Kingdom represents the best choice among the four parks. Magic Kingdom and Epcot are out for June 4th because they are hosting Extra Magic Hours. Disney’s Hollywood Studios would be a good choice but there is a Fantasmic show scheduled that night. Add this all together along with our dozen or so other crowd statistics and Animal Kingdom still looks the best.

If you’ve always wanted to wear those rainbow colored Mickey ears, now is your chance! Take our advice and head to the Animal Kingdom. If touring the park with your family and a few thousand of your gay and lesbian red-shirted friends doesn’t sound appealing then go to plan B. Really, choosing amongst the other three parks is at your discretion. Unfortunately there are valid reasons to avoid all four parks that day. Pick your favorite park, take advantage of Extra Magic Hours, try a Water Park or go off-site.

If you do take our advice, tote the red shirts and be proud! Also, send us the wait times you experienced so we can see if we were right.

A quick look at Tomorrowland, so you don’t have to waste valuable touring-time on seeing what the refurbishment of Space Mountain looks like or visit Stitch’s new show unless you really want to. First up, Space Mountain:

We are hoping for some cosmetic changes to the entrance area but we’re aren’t holding our breath. Mostly we’d like to see the Arcade’s facade reworked. The arcade is closed during the refurbishment. Nearby, the Stitch stage looms over the previously barren plaza.

And the control booth blocks the view of the stage if you’re standing in line for the Astro Orbitor. The space between the two is plenty big enough for the small number of people that gather to watch the new show.

The Universe of Energy recently underwent a refurbishment to improve it’s ride control system and receive a general sprucing up inside. Outside the building was repainted back to it’s original 1982 color scheme, which surprisingly enough makes the building look more modern then the 1996 refurbishment color scheme.

We previously posted a news bit declaring that Spaceship Earth at Epcot was finished after its recent refurbishment and that the finale was not going to receive any level of overhaul or addition. We posted this after contacting several people at Walt Disney World and even riding the attraction several times ourselves looking for proof of upcoming additions. None existed and everyone told us the same story: the ride is finished and it is supposed to look the way it does.

More recently, we’ve been sent many links to rumors and reports of changes in the descent/finale of Spaceship Earth. Primarily the rumors report that the video sequence at the end has been modified (with new character head animation) and that new lighting fixtures have been added.

They have not. We compared film from multiple trips on the ride on May 8th to previous filming and photographs since the refurbishment months ago. Nothing has changed. We regret to inform the hopeful/optimistic few that Spaceship Earth is still “finished” and will likely remain this way for several years.

Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration has begun test-showing at the Magic Kingdom with a grand opening scheduled for tomorrow, May 6th. After getting a glimpse of this new show we have to say it is almost painful to watch. Other nearby guests commented that it was only slightly more fun then a root canal.

If you have morbid curiosity or a strong liking for really poor quality theme park productions feel free to check out this YouTube video of an early preview showing.

Yes, it really is that bad. While we like to think the test and adjust period will work out the kinks in any attraction prior to the official opening, this one really seems to be a stinker in any variation. We’d be surprised to learn of any noticeable improvement in the show quality in the coming weeks. If this was Disney’s attack plan to keep crowds of people away from Space Mountain while it is undergoing refurbishment – it’ll work.

The show is scheduled to run 6 times a day so check park’s Times Guide to avoid direct exposure and be prepared to flee the area should a show begin unexpectedly.

The Unofficial Guide photogs have been hard at work over the past few weeks, covering hotels and restaurants in and around Walt Disney World. We’ve uploaded many of their photos to the website, and should have the videos posted soon. Here’s the list of new photo galleries:

Hotels
Celebrity Resorts Kissimmee
Rosen Shingle Creek
Marriott Harbor Lake
Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort new Pirates of the Caribbean and Finding Nemo rooms. We have almost 500 photos of this resort, and the new rooms begin at photo 442.
Disney’s Port Orleans Riverside New photos of the playground.
Disney’s Yacht Club ResortMiscellaneous photos from around the resort.

Magic Kingdom
Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party 2008

Magic Kingdom Restaurants
Casey’s Corner
Columbia Harbor House
Cosmic Ray’s
The Crystal Palace
El Pirata y El Perico
Liberty Tree Tavern
Tomorrowland Noodle Station
Pecos Bill’s Tall Tale Inn and Cafe
Pinocchio Village Haus
The Plaza Restaurant
Tony’s Town Square Restaurant