#40 - Epcot Food and Wine Festival

Category: Seasonal
Category Rank: 5

Park: Epcot
Park Rank: 6

Our next item is the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, the rare seasonal activity that isn't connected to a holiday.  Much like the Lawn & Garden Festival in the spring, the Food & Wine festival is a free event with the price of admission, though you do have to pay separately for any food that you purchase.

The Epcot Food and Wine Festival began in 1995, just finishing its 20th year this past fall.  The duration of the festival varies each year, as this past year's 53 days was a record length.  Throughout the world showcase, new venue booths are brought in to provide additional flavors of the world.  In addition, special shows for food preparation, demonstrations, book signings, or concerts are a common feature as well.

The Food and Wine Festival is a favorite of many adults, as many plan their annual trip to come specially for this event.  The variety is amazing and makes the park, already a bastion of multiculturalism, that much more so.  In terms of enhancing Disney's theme of "we are all one world", this event does it as good as any on this list.

For our family, the event is a bit of a mixed bag.  Having children, this is not a must-do item, as its value is lost on people who are more happy getting a hot dog than trying anything exotic.  The timing is not very good either, being during the school year.  And, we are not connoisseurs of wine, which is most of the appeal for the majority of adults there (as the increase in the number of drink around the world t-shirts can attest).  But, we do like food, so yeah.

Still, I can't help but assess this as truly a neat and exciting experience that WDW provides, and thinking about food festivals in general will make one pine for this event.  Perhaps the spectacle outshines the nostalgia here, resulting in its lower rank than other seasonal events.

We return to Magic Kingdom for #39 on our list; it happens to be a show that is an original attraction from the park's opening, featuring a variety of songs to sing along to.  And, there are no bears in it.