Tag Archives: Epcot

Thank Disney it’s Friday – October 5!

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Well we’ve reached the end of another week, I hope you’ve all managed to include some Disney in your daydreaming ;)

The week started with Disney folks celebrating 30 years of Epcot and so here’s a question which every Disney fan has been asked…but with a special twist for my readers….

 

If you could add ANY PLACE (town, city or country) to World Showcase where would you choose and why? Maybe it’s your hometown, village, or favourite place outside of WDW to vacation….let’s see what your imagination can come up with!!!

 

Now the Friday question is taking a break for a couple of weeks but make sure you check back at the beginning of November for an extra special ‘Thank Disney it’s Friday’ giveaway!!

:) :) :)

 

 

 

Thank Disney it’s Friday – September 28!

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Hi all…it’s Friday again and what a super exciting weekend Walt Disney World has planned for all those lucky guests who happen to be there right now!

With the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival starting today it only seems right to have a foodie themed Friday question…..

 

It’s dinner time and you’re hungry….do you choose to dine family style at the Liberty Tree Tavern in Magic Kingdom or enjoy some signature dining at the California Grill at the Contemporary Resort??

 

I can’t wait to see which one you pick!! YUM :)

 

:) :) :)

 

That’s a first!

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As I put the final details in place for our forthcoming trip to the World I realise that this visit could yet again be full of magical first time Disney experiences.

It’s clear to see that by simply changing the time of year for our visit it has opened up a number of new experiences and events which I will see for the first time. By visiting Walt Disney World in October I will see Magic Kingdom decorated for Halloween and get to attend Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.

This also means that I will be visiting Epcot during the Food and Wine Festival; I’m looking forward to not only sampling some of the dishes on offer but seeing how World Showcase looks with the addition of the international marketplace booths.

Due to a special promotion I was able to include the Disney Dining Plan for free on my vacation booking which means I’ll be experiencing Disney dining on a whole new level. I’ll be visiting Signature restaurants for the first time and some of our advanced dining reservations will take us into resorts that we’ve never really had the chance to explore before.

After attending the Key To The Kingdom tour on our last visit I knew that I wanted to book at least one tour or special experience on this trip….well, I decided to fit three in! We will FINALLY get to Dine With An Imagineer, we will be taking a unique look at Animal Kingdom on the Wild By Design tour and last but by no means least we will be taking in the detail of Magic Kingdom during a park tour with Lou Mongello.

Something else which will make this trip so unique is the number of friends that we hope to be meeting up with during our two week vacation. A few years ago, before I started blogging and talking to fellow Disney fans across the social networks, I had no idea that I would make friends with so many people who lived close to or worked at my favourite vacation destination.

And lastly…now this could well make or break a vacation….we have unplanned days on our WDW daily schedule!!!! That’s right, I threw out the original daily plan which I had spent so long researching and planning! So the new schedule includes the booked tours, ADR’s and a couple of planned meet ups but that’s it! We are going to decide that morning or the night before which park we feel like going to each day….if we wake up and feel like stuffing our faces at the Food and Wine Festival we’ll head on over to Epcot, if we feel like spending a morning people watching in a busy Magic Kingdom then we’ll head on over there!!! For a mega planner like me this is pretty scary stuff but there’s a first time for everything!! :)

So what about you? Do you like to visit at the same time of year or stay at the same resort because you like to know every detail of your vacation? Do you make sure that you experience at least one new thing during each trip or do you throw caution to the wind and never plan your trips, hoping that magic and surprises come along to make memories that you’ll cherish forever???

 

 

 

 

Thank Disney it’s Friday – August 17!

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Greetings fellow Disney dreamers….it’s Friday again!!

With lots of things changing across Walt Disney World right now I’ve chosen a question that gets you thinking about all four parks today…..

 

Tell me, which is your favourite park entrance and why???

Is it the Magic Kingdom with the Walt Disney World Railroad station, Epcot with its futuristic open space and sight of Spaceship Earth, Disney’s Hollywood Studios with the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood or Animal Kingdom with its nature and foliage inviting you to be a wilderness explorer for the day?

 

Thanks for sharing your daydreams and have a great weekend everyone!

:) :) :)

 

 

All fine for the Food and Wine!

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This October will see my first ever visit to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. Now this Walt Disney World special event is a huge hit with guests; many making it the reason they return to WDW at this time of year, every year.

As you all know I like to read about Disney A LOT so it comes as no surprise that I’ve spent years reading details about past Food & Wine Festivals and have a pretty good understanding of what actually happens during the event. But do I know how to go about actually attending the event myself AND getting the best out of my visit? With so much information available it can actually make it difficult to know what you need to remember, and know what you can afford to forget!

And that is where the Disney Food Blog and the DFB Guides come to your rescue! These guides are downloadable and can be used at home or on the go. So far the collection includes the DFB Guide to WDW Dining 2012, the DFB Mini-Guide to Epcot Snacks, the DFB Mini-Guide to Magic Kingdom Snacks and the DFB Dining Adventures: Magic Kingdom.

 

 

So when I heard that there was a DFB Mini-Guide to the 2012 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival I just knew that this would have the answers to all my questions and more!

Firstly….who knows why it’s called a ‘mini’ guide…with over 160 pages of details and photos covering everything there is to know about the Festival! There’s an introduction giving an overview of all the happenings at the event, then chapters on the International Marketplace Booths, Special and Signature Events, Seminars, Celebrity Chefs, Eat to The Beat, RunDisney events and Frequently Asked Questions.

I found the guide really easy to follow and the linked index at the beginning takes you straight to the information you’re looking for…it’s so much easier than having to spend time searching through several websites trying to piece the information together.

The guide makes you feel like you know what’s going to be happening when you arrive at Epcot and makes you think in advance about how you want to experience the event. I particularly like the Festival Touring Strategies and the World Showcase Booth Crawls….I’m a fan of anything that helps me plan my time!

But do you know? Even if I wasn’t able to attend the Festival this year I think that this e-book would still make a good read for any Disney fanatic wanting to learn more about the different happenings at the World. I picked up the original DFB Guide to Walt Disney World Dining last year; not because I had started planning my 2012 ADR’s already but because I just wanted to read more about WDW dining!

So there you have it…I have my DFB Mini-Guide and I’m all fine for the Food and Wine!! ;)

 

 

 

Thank Disney it’s Friday – April 13!

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Happy Friday everyone!! Let’s ignore the fact that it’s scary Friday 13th and get on over to our happy place with the Friday question :)

 

Let’s head to Epcot and grab a bite to eat…….tell me….

What is your all time favourite Epcot snack? And of course, please let me know why!!

 

:) :) :)

Gettin’ around….

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As I have previously mentioned we don’t drive whilst at Walt Disney World. Letting someone else take the strain of getting us from A to B is part of the break for us.

I do however have a vivid memory of having a hire car in Orlando and I think I have just about recovered from the experience! It was during a family holiday back in the 90’s, in the days before everyone had GPS and sat navs. I will spare you all the gory details but I will say that we left Universal Studios in the dark, via the wrong exit, and spent hours trying to get back to our hotel….well, it felt like hours to the scared and embarrassed teenager that I was at the time!!!

Now that I’m all grown up and have the luxury of staying on property we make full use of the complimentary Disney Resort Transportation, or ‘Disney buses’ for short! We love the convenience of hopping on and off the buses, going from resort to park and back again.

Once you know your way around the transportation system you can work out how to get to just about anywhere on property. When we stayed at Port Orleans Riverside we started to notice that the buses going from the parks to Port Orleans French Quarter would often arrive more frequently and there would be less of a queue, so we soon started hopping on the French Quarter one and walking the short distance along the river back to Riverside.

During our last stay at Wilderness Lodge we noticed that the Magic Kingdom bus only took 5 to 10 minutes to get to the park so we started hopping on that one and then making our way elsewhere from MK. Whilst trying to get to Epcot from Ft Wilderness one night a Wilderness Lodge bus turned up so we jumped on that, knowing that we could start the journey again from our home resort!

Unfortunately in recent years the Disney Company has chosen to limit the bus drivers’ interaction with guests. I’m not sure of the official reason for this but I wonder if it had something to do with the negative ‘situations’ the bus drivers seemed to be experiencing with guests. I still get an excited feeling when I hear the recorded message announcing where the bus is heading to, for you to “have a nice day” or when the familiar music starts as you head towards your home resort, but it’s not quite the same as the crazy interactions we used to have with drivers in the past.

On our last trip we were on a bus around midday heading to Downtown Disney with only a few other guests on board. I assume the driver decided we looked like a friendly bunch as he switched off the pre-recorded announcements and decided to have a quiz with us! We had such fun answering his trivia questions about the number of fireworks let off in WDW during a year or how many cars are on Disney property on New Year’s Eve!! It felt even more fun as he sounded EXACTLY like John Candy!! The driver really made our day and we departed at DTD with huge grins on our faces; that was a magical Disney memory right there.

I know that some people have bad things to say about the Disney buses but I think they do a pretty impressive job of transporting thousands of guests around the WDW property each day. Yes, you can be stood at a bus stop for what feels like ages, seeing every bus go by except the one you want, but that’s no different from being in your home town or city…traffic is traffic no matter how much pixie dust there is to go around!

The only downside of Disney buses for me is unfortunately the other guests who use them. For some reason at certain resorts guests waiting for a bus choose not to queue, just stand in a crowd around several of the bus shelters, and then try to push their way to the front when a bus arrives. If you want to be first on a bus why not form an orderly queue? The other unfortunate habit is the people who think they can board first by using the side doors…you know….the doors that say ‘exit only’!!

So I’m prepared to put my hand up and announce that I love the Disney buses ;) I will continue to tolerate other people’s bad behaviour in order to use a transportation system that suits my needs whilst in the World.

And all I ask is the next time you use a Disney bus make sure you smile and thank that driver for his or her hard work, for they are responsible for getting us to the magic everyday :)

What time is the 3 o’clock parade?

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Been on the Keys To The Kingdom tour? Chatted to a cast member about working with WDW guests? How many times have they been asked “what time is the 3 o’clock parade”? Well this post is about people who genuinely need to know the answer!

I love being a Disney fan in the 21st century. I can connect to fellow Disney geeks from all over the world through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, websites, forums, live broadcasts etc etc. I love the fact that my closest friends live in various states across America. And because of technology we can be at WDW any time of the day, no matter where we live.

I really enjoy taking part in live broadcasts from the parks. I remember watching Lou Mongello do his first live broadcast from within WDW; it was from Magic Kingdom on a very cold January day. I couldn’t believe that I was sitting in my living room, in front of my laptop, watching and interacting with people that were in Magic Kingdom right at that moment; it was brilliant!!

But…there’s a problem with live broadcasts…and it’s time zones!! I now know that different states in America are in different time zones and that makes it very interesting for us here in the UK. Every time a new event or broadcast is announced I hop on over to a useful website http://www.timeanddate.com/. It gives me current times, future times, a meeting planner, and anything else I need to know about setting the UK time for a broadcast.

I now also have their World Clock app on my phone; which allows me to set up my favourite places and instantly see the current time, relevant time zone, and whether they observe Daylight Saving. It’s worth noting that different places put their clocks forward and backward at different times…so we’re not always 5 hours ahead of Orlando…but the app lets me know that.

And so, now I know the time differences and I can plan my diary accordingly. Sometimes it’s frustrating that we’re 5 hours ahead of our friends at WDW but sometimes it can make for magical experiences. Like the time that I set my alarm for 1.45am. I sat up in bed, in the dark, and reached for my laptop. Not wishing to wake anyone else in the house I plugged in my headphones. I logged into Beci Mahnken’s live stream account just before 2am and waited, in the dark, in silence. And then it happened. The screen came to life, and there in front of me was IllumiNations, taking place in Epcot at that very moment. It was a surreal and magical moment for me…and perhaps makes me a little strange, but aren’t we all?!! When I saw Beci in December I retold that story and she also thought it was magical; she couldn’t believe that someone had set their alarm to wake up in the middle of the night just to watch something she was broadcasting from the parks.

So because of us all wanting to take part in the magic of Disney as often as we can perhaps we should change that original question to “what time is the 3 o’clock parade in the UK?” ;)