Hot Epcot Hot Food and Hot Wine Festival of Heat

Greetings once again from central Florida.

Today, we took it slow and left the hotel around 11:00ish. We took a bus to Hollywood Studios, then took a boat on a scenic trip to see the Swan and Dolphin, Boardwalk, and Yacht and Beach Clubs. Hindsight, we should have taken the walkway from the Studios. A boat ride sounded fun, but, gosh, the boats we've ridden in the past around Magic Kingdom were open air. These had windows so we enclosed, and no air conditioning.

Fortunately, we'd bought Mal a stroller fan and used that to keep me from dying. It was very beautiful, for sure. But I was kind of fried by the time we got to the park.

We were looking forward to enjoying the Food and Wine Festival, and we did have fun, but we ended up eating not too terribly much, because there's just a LOAD of food available, and there were a couple of things from permanent restaurants we wanted to try.

Our first stop was France, where Mal got a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and James and I shared the brioche ice cream sandwich. You heard me. Sea salt caramel ice cream with chocolate sauce, then smashed like an Uncrustable. Mercy. Great breakfast.

We made our way counter-clockwise and didn't eat in Morocco, but spent a LOT of time there. It's just gorgeous, and Mal loved the little gallery. He ran around for 20 minutes or so, and we had a great time enjoying all of the artistry that went into the space.

The first Food and Wine booth we hit up was India. They had a chickpea curry James thought looked good, and I'm always about bread. And the frozen mango lassi. Oh my. I told James that I liked him better than that drink, but it was by a slim margin.

It's been fun having Memory Maker, so that I actually get to be in pictures. We explored the other countries, and found Japan to be particularly beautiful. We ended up in Norway just in time for our FastPass to ride "Frozen," then enjoyed some School Bread there. Mal got the Frozen mini-cupcakes.

Interesting note: although only the School Bread was listed as being eligible for a snack credit, they both rang up as a snack credit. Even though the cupcakes were trice the price! So if you go to Norway and want the cupcakes, try to get it charged to your dining plan. They would have been $8 otherwise!

Also: obviously, there's the troll, and Olaf, and the blue and white icing with snowflakes is Elsa. So what's the pink one? Is it supposed to be for Anna? Couldn't they think of something more evocative??

Touring Plans has Epcot at a 3 out of 10 today, and though that's only for ride waits, it seemed VERY busy, because of the festival. When we go back in a couple of days, they have the estimate at 1 out of 10, so it will be interesting to see. Anyway, we made our way around to Mexico, and agreed we'd skip the UK and Canada and see if maybe we could hit them next visit. And if not, we shall survive.

Mal wanted French fries, so we were making our way past Electric Umbrella on our way to the exit, anyway, and though I've never eaten there, it seemed a safe bet for fries. We stumbled across the Greece booth first, though, so had to do try a couple of things. James got the vegetarian "nachos" on pita bread. And I got spanakopita, which I have to have any time it's served, because why wouldn't you?

As we ate that by the lake, I pre-ordered Mal's dinner. LOVE MOBILE ORDER! It was ready when we walked into the restaurant. Mal was being crazypants, though, and fortunately the Electric Umbrella is really close to where there's a family play area during the festival. Mal ran off a LOT of steam there before we headed out.

It was tough to pass by Club Cool and Spaceship Earth, which had a 5-minute wait, when means walk on, without doing them, but we were all a little refreshed from the clouds and spending some time in the a/c and it felt right to cut out while we were buoyant.

Here's what's funny: I'd gotten Mal an adorable turkey sandwich with his fries, which he did not want. So I ate it for my dinner. What Mal DID want was a jelly sandwich. Not peanut butter and jelly. He doesn't like peanut butter. They sell Uncrustables down in The Mara, but he wasn't interested. So I had an idea: I looked and there were jelly packets with the condiments. I snagged three of those and went into the grab-and-go area. They had two slices of white bread shrink-wrapped for $.99. Whatever. I walked up to the cashier and said, "Yes, I'm buying two pieces of bread." He just smiled and waved and said, "That's fine. Go on." So never let anyone tell you Disney doesn't give anything away, because today they gave me a couple of slices of bread. So with everything available at Food and Wine, my son had a jelly sandwich. In the bathtub.