October 12, 2007: The 2007 Epcot Food & Wine Festival

[Werner Weiss]

The Epcot Food & Wine Festival is great example of how Disney is attracting guests during traditionally slow times of the year.

Epcot's shuttered Wonders of Life pavilion is the Festival Hall of the 2007 Epcot Food & Wine Festival. Take a look inside. Is Wonders of Life gone forever?

Link to It Keeps Getting Better - The 2007 Epcot Food & Wine Festival

Please discuss it here.

[BALASADA]

The Samuel Adams Beer tasting needs to be shut down by the health department. I visited it last year and it was nasty. When you enter they sit you at a table in order to fill them up. Beers are already poured in small plastic cups. The seating I was at had about 10 tables left open. They came and poured all the beer back into the pitchers. After tasting the first beer I left the other three alone. I am sorry but beer is not to be served warm in plastic cups. I got a feeling that the beer they poured back in the pitchers was reused for the next seating. Avoid at all costs.

[Werner Weiss]

Originally Posted by BALASADA

The Samuel Adams Beer tasting needs to be shut down by the health department. I visited it last year and it was nasty. When you enter they sit you at a table in order to fill them up. Beers are already poured in small plastic cups. The seating I was at had about 10 tables left open. They came and poured all the beer back into the pitchers. After tasting the first beer I left the other three alone. I am sorry but beer is not to be served warm in plastic cups. I got a feeling that the beer they poured back in the pitchers was reused for the next seating. Avoid at all costs.

I dropped by Samuel Adams' The History of Beer in America at Epcot today.

The good news is that the issues that BALASADA raised are groundless.

The beer is poured into plastic glasses from pitchers right before each tasting. There are four beers. Three of the beers come from taps. The Sam Adams Light comes from bottles.

I participated in the tasting a few days ago. The beer was cold. The presenter was good.

After the guests depart, any unconsumed beer from guests' cups and from spots that were not occupied by guests is poured into pitchers for disposal. All four types of beer go into the same pitchers because the beer is destined for the drain. The pitchers are washed.

No beer is reused at later tastings. No dirty pitchers are reused at later tastings.

[pongee]

hopefully this will continue as an annual project for Epcot
if it could be integratedc into the World Showcase it might be even more enjoyable but crown control very likely would be more difficult

[Werner Weiss]

Originally Posted by pongee

hopefully this will continue as an annual project for Epcot
if it could be integratedc into the World Showcase it might be even more enjoyable but crown control very likely would be more difficult

I think we can expect to see the Food & Wine Festival return to Epcot year after year.

A few years ago, the F&W Festival was expanded from 30 days to 45 days.

Epcot used to be dead in the fall, when most schools are in session (and most families can't travel). Because of the F&W Festival, Epcot now draws adult guests who come down each year for the Festival. The F&W Festival not only fills Epcot, it also contributes to filling Disney resort hotel rooms during a historically slow time of the year.

The F&W Festival takes place all around World Showcase Lagoon as well as in Future World. The 2007 F&W Festival used the Wonders of Life pavilion very well.

Crowd control isn't really an issue because Epcot, including World Showcase, has a huge capacity. The only big crowds are three times each evening when Eat-to-the-Beat concerts let out, and thousands of guests stream out of the America Gardens Theatre. But the crowd clears itself fairly quickly.

[pongee]

well thats certainly good to know
the Wonders of Life pavilion was so dull to me when I was there in the 90's
Body Wars was the big thing then and it just didnt do anything for me.
Its nice to know that the Food & Wine Fest has such a positive effect on Epcot since for a long timw it seemed as they had run dry on ideas for things to do and such.