Epcot Food & Wine Take 2

After a morning run, we had a leisurely breakfast in the room and then headed over to Epcot.  Fastpasses to Soarin’ acquired, we hopped on one of my favorite rides – Living with the Land.  I’m not much of a gardener myself, but for some reason I really love this ride.  We got front row seats and were excited to see how much of the produce was nearing full ripeness:

They had some seasonal details out as well:

For lunch – we again wandered the promenade – yes we were drinking by noon – I started with a Sunny Guava with Coconut Rum from China while Derek one-upped me by going for a beer flight from the Brewer’s Collection:

Food items today – Spinach and Paneer Cheese pocket and the Seared Filet of Beef with smashed Sweet Potatoes and Braai Sauce – both from South Africa.  I have to say – I loved the spinach and paneer cheese pocket – I had it at least one more time that week (possibly two more times, I can’t recall) – while it’s not much to look at, it was tasty, delicious, and filling.  The Seared Filet was ok – but the whole flavor is just a bit too sweet for me.  Braai is like the South African version of BBQ.

Derek also had the Lettuce Wrap with Roast Pork and Kimchi Slaw from South Korea.  The picture doesn’t look that great – but he said the dish was pretty tasty:

Around 4pm – we headed to the Festival Welcome Center as we had reservations for the wine seminar – Kim Crawford wines.  I love, love, love New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs – absolutely my favorite wines – so I was interested in Kim Crawford.  It was an interesting story and the focus on small production and quality impressed me – it also didn’t hurt that the winemaker (in pictures, not in person unfortunately) was really cute too.

At night – we magically transformed into:

Chip & Dale!!!  Costume idea courtesy of my good friend Beth, we got dressed up for Mickey’s Not-so-Scary Halloween Party!  We are not normally big costume folks nor Halloween folks, but we had heard good things about this party and figured we should check it out.  It’s a hard-ticketed party (meaning you need to buy a separate ticket for it) and they close the Magic Kingdom down so that only people with tickets can get in.  They have many trick-or-treat stations, a special parade and special fireworks.  We had been to the Christmas version of this and thought it was ok.  This time we had a blast.

I think the Halloween party was extra fun because we got involved by getting dressed up. Lots of people commented on our costumes which was nice.  And we got to go trick-or-treating which caused us to revert to childhood, as we made sure to get in just about every candy line and came home with full bags of candy.  The lines for all of the rides were really manageable and short – so we got to do just about everything in the Magic Kingdom that we wanted to.  We also got to experience a dress rehearsal of the new Fantasyland – which was awesome.  The theming details are really impressive – just the pavement details and rockwork – they really put a lot of effort into recreating that world.  And I can definitely see how Belle’s adventure and the Little Mermaid ride will be big hits with the little ones.

We actually waited on Main Street to get a good position for the fireworks and then the parade. The fireworks show included 360 fireworks which were really impressive – if you stand in the right spot – you definitely feel surrounded by light.  The headless horseman headlines the parade – but he seemed to just have the horse walking.  We had heard that there had been an accident with the horse a few nights before, so they may have been taking extra precautions.  The rest of the parade was a lot of fun and that song stuck in our heads (it’s really not so scary, it’s not so very scary).

We stayed ’til closing then headed home – full bags of candy and happy like little kids