You know you’re a completely naturalized Floridian when you make a loop of Epcot’s World Showcase lagoon in late October, and your group’s most repeated, most excited comment is, “Wow, the weather is not bad.” All of Walt Disney World agreed.
So, it was a mellow meandering this year with my friends’ annual outing to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. My mind wandered, too, bringing up random Epcot musings. (Before you ask, we went around clockwise. We aren’t animals.)
• The Mickey-shaped liquid nitro cake available from the fest’s Swirled Showcase marketplace is sold at a lower price than the everyday Mickey’s Premium Bar. That’s $4.75 versus $6.50. Sure, the Mickey Bar is ice cream, and the festival one is cake, but they’re about the same size and basically sweets on sticks. This makes the festival treat 27% less expensive.
• Did the pickle milkshake craze from Brew-Wing Lab pass? It was the buzz of the early days of the festival, but the newness/gag reflex may have faded. But the Odyssey building was nearly full of people – standing room only during our stop – even though the weather was gorgeous outside (perhaps you heard).
• It’s good to have an agenda for the festival. My willy-nilly meat-and-potatoes menu started with yuca fries from Fry Basket marketplace, then got very beefy at Belgium and whole-hog Canadian with both the filet and cheesy soup, festival favorites. But then the nitro cake impulse struck, and my stomach and I had to sit very still after we got home. (My group of nine people hit 18 festival kiosks by my morning-after calculation.)
• There are two kinds of people in the World Showcase: Folks who love to listen to Voices of Liberty, the a cappella group, and those who are confused by folks who love to listen to Voices of Liberty. I’m confused by the latter.
• There are two other kinds of people in the world: Folks who line up for hours for standby seats for Hanson, the brothers who are Eat to the Beat concert series staples, and the rest of us. Nothing against Hanson. I’m sure they’re very nice. Actually, wouldn’t they be a great Candlelight Processional narrating team? Where’s the suggestion box?
Disney: 9 new narrators set for Candlelight Processional
• I shouldn’t share this aloud, but a prime location to sit in peace is the waterfront slice of seating next to Rose & Crown in the United Kingdom pavilion.
• Job I don’t want: Monitoring all those lights attached to Spaceship Earth.
• My group agreed that jumping into the lagoon feels like a boneheaded move, even with thousands of dollars on the line and the chance to go viral. Disney hasn’t said if the dude who did this – and got international attention – has been banned for life. But you know that’s an option.
• We didn’t last long enough for another round of “Epcot Forever,” and now the countdown can begin for “Luminous: The Symphony of Us,” the next nighttime spectacular, which debuts Dec. 5.
The Epcot International Food & Wine Festival runs through Nov. 8. The Epcot International Festival of the Holidays begins Nov. 24.
Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com. My Threads account is @dbevil. You can subscribe to the Theme Park Rangers newsletter at orlandosentinel.com/newsletters.
