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2017 Epcot Food and Wine Festival to feature record number of Marketplace kiosks
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↩ replying to rael ramoneThen you can't comment on the quality of the food this past year, which was nearly universally excellent. I had a few things that were so-so, but plenty of terrific things that I most certainly couldn't easily make at home.
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↩ replying to rangerbobI successfully jumped the railing and saved the lives of the extended Johansson family from Minneapolis. Probably the biggest day of my WS lagoon life guarding career.
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↩ replying to rael ramoneWe go every year, and what you state about the food simply isn't true. We sampled many of the booths, and the food was excellent to outstanding this past year.
Oh, and they still sell the trays. We bought a few more just last year.
Yup, completely agree that the food was universally excellent. We can say the same for this years Flower & Garden. Not one bad bite in the bunch of booths that we tried.
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↩ replying to wdwmagicOne of the things we liked about Flower and Garden, which we attended for the first time in ten years this year, was how much more manageable the number of booths were.
Also, the locals don't really know/care about it...yet. So it was overall a more relaxed experience than even a weekday at Food and Wine.
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↩ replying to jakemanLet me ask you -- how prevalent were the "big t-shirt groups" at Flower & Garden? You know, the groups wearing custom shirts that say something like "drinking around the world!" or has some Disney character getting drunk on them? They were everywhere at the last F&W fest I went to, and made the environment pretty gross.
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↩ replying to OtterheadTypical for a day at Epcot. We were there on a Sunday though.
We've steered clear from F&W on Fridays and Saturdays for several years now just based on crowds (not the behavior of such). So during the week the groups that you mention are elevated during F&W but we've only encountered a handful of misbehaving ones over the course of the 15 years we've annually attended. It's increased over the years since Disney started marketing towards locals, but I've never found it as intolerable as some here have maintained.
Flower and Garden very much reminded the wife and I of what Food and Wine used to be a decade ago and Epcot is beautiful. I hope it stays that way.
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↩ replying to jakemanAbsolutely, to be clear, I never experienced 'drunkytown' or big groups behaving poorly, just extremely large crowds and very long lines on weekends. The only people truly misbehaving I've seen in the 8+ years I've been going to F&W have been some teenagers joyriding on scooters and running into people. It's never been intolerable. I've just noticed the homemade shirts getting more and more... borderline in terms of taste and family-friendliness to the point of being amazed they were allowed through the gate.
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↩ replying to LuvtheGoofQuoted twice on a post made 5 1/2 months ago on the same day....cool......
That said I stand by what I originally said. Haven't been in the last two years, but after going to the event for just about every year since 2001 I saw a pronounced decline in the quality AND quantity of the samples that they paired with a huge jump in price (and this decline added to a reason to not to continue to go during a time of year that is more crowded and has higher prices). The Cheddar Cheese Soup was always good, but that can be made at home (and I have).
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↩ replying to OtterheadNever seen that, thankfully.
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↩ replying to wdwmagicFinally some Indian food!
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↩ replying to jakemanIt really was. I had a great enjoyable time. I sampled quite a bit and found everything tasty and portions were decent. I was happy overall. And you can't beat how beautiful they make the park.
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↩ replying to rael ramoneSorry. Guess I should check the date on the older responses. :oops:
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↩ replying to jakemanI'm in no way a prude, but it was bad enough this year that I sent a complaint in and got a call from customer service to chat. They basically said that they're in a weird position; on one hand they appreciate the effort people go to with custom shirts, but huge groups with borderline-unacceptable shirts make the CMs at the gate into the 'morality police', judging whether to ask a 30-person group to all turn their shirts inside out, etc, and that it's hard to police that many people's attire. They said they'd gotten lots of complaints this past year and are trying to figure out how to fix the issue.
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Wish I could go to this (instead will be at Epcot for the holiday festival). Kudos to Disney for finally bringing some Indian cuisine to Epcot!!! :hungry: