Epcot International Food & Wine Festival

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My wife and I were at Disney World for our honeymoon when Epcot held the first International Food & Wine Festival back in 1996. And yet, with all the times we’ve been to Disney World since then (which also was my first time ever), we’ve never been there again during the festival … until this weekend, celebrating its 15th year.

I took Friday afternoon off so we could pick up my daughter right after school and head over to Orlando and beat the traffic on both sides of I-4. We were in the Disney area by about 4:45pm and went to check into our hotel for the evening. Here we encountered a problem that threatened to ruin our little getaway weekend.

Some time ago we had acquired a coupon for a free night’s stay at the Hyatt Grand Cypress in Orlando and decided to use it for this overnight trip to Epcot. My wife had made the reservation using the coupon and had confirmed it would be good for just the one night. Well, while trying to check in, the desk clerk informed my wife that the coupon could only be used for a stay longer than one night. In other words, we’d have to stay two nights to get the one night free. The hotel was booked (due to a conference) so the rate they quoted us was over $200. Despite our arguing that we had confirmed, when making the reservation, that the coupon was good for only a single night, the clerk wouldn’t help us. She even said they had a lot of people who had been trying the same thing! So why was the reservation desk allowing people to make single night reservations, only to be turned down upon check-in? What a scam. We told them to forget it and just left. Needless to say we won’t be staying at a Hyatt any time soon, and they can expect a strongly worded letter about our recent experience. While walking back to the car, I called the Disney resort reservation line and got us a room at the Pop Century in less than 15 minutes.

With that unpleasantness behind us, we drove over to the Pop Century and were checked-in and unpacked in our room by 6:00pm. What a stark difference to the Hyatt. The room and resort itself might not have been as lavish as the Hyatt, but the whole experience reminded us why we really love staying on Disney property when we visit. This also allowed us to hop on the Disney bus to Epcot that evening, instead of having to drive.

The whole point of coming over to Epcot Friday night was to catch Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in concert at the America Gardens Pavilion. By this point (thanks to the Hyatt fiasco) we had already missed the first two shows, so we started walking around the World Showcase and sampling/sharing the international food at the various booths in each country for dinner. We made it halfway around to America just in time for the 7:45pm show, and it was great. I’ve got all of BBVD’s albums, but this was the first time I’d seen them live in concert. My daughter really enjoyed the show as well (“Go Daddy-O” is now her ringtone for me on her cellphone).

After the concert we did some more snacking around the World Showcase and then watched the Illuminations fireworks show before catching the bus back to our hotel.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the Pop Century and then checked out and drove to Epcot so we were there for the official opening at 9am. We followed the huge crowds into The Land to ride Soarin’ (apparently everyone had the same idea), and then walked over to the other side of the park to ride Mission: SPACE and Test Track. After a brief stop in Innoventions West to play The Great Piggybank Adventure, it was 11am which meant the World Showcase was open and it was time for lunch!

This time we started from the opposite direction as last night. Overall, we sampled foods from: Chile, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Mexico, Poland, China, South Korea, South Africa, Singapore, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia, Morocco, Belgium, Spain, France, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Greece, and New Zealand. Whew! All of them were fantastic and we really had a great time.

Good food, good drink, and good weather added up to a great time with the family.

One Comment

  1. After writing a letter to Hyatt voicing our displeasure on how the “free” night was handled we received a $100 gift card from them, good at any Hyatt. Gee, thanks, like I want to stay at another Hyatt after that. Even worse, I discovered they charged our credit card for $388! After repeated attempts to get that charge reversed through Hyatt I finally had to open up a dispute claim with Visa directly. Geez!

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