With Halloween season behind us and Food & Wine Festival winding down, I can't help but reflect on my own October trip last year. This time of year is when the seed was first planted... "Wow look at the pics of Epcot Food & Wine Fest on the Disney Parks Blog", "Have you seen the Halloween fireworks videos on YouTube?"... but then the holidays rolled in (and Christmastime is my favorite time of the year) and we'd had a trip planned for February to Disney World and then August to Disneyland so it wasn't until summer that we really decided we wanted to go. And with a round of beers at a friends house the 4 of us started discussing our plans. We picked the perfect weekend, booked with our favorite agency, and off we went. We were up in the wee hours of the morning on our departure day (as always) with a flight leaving at 7:00am and arriving in Orland at 9:58am.
So for the purpose of this 4 day, 4 person trip I will call our crew by character names: henceforth I will refer to myself as Minnie, my husband as Mickey, and our companions for this adventure (another Disney loving couple) will be Donald and Daisy. lol. In any case, when we arrived at the airport Donald & Daisy were waiting for us (we all live up in New York but their flight came in about 20 minutes before ours I believe). We grabbed a rental car, which was kind of a hilarious senior citizen-esque mobile and we laughed about how one day we would all be in our 70s driving to Disney together in the Crown Vic we owned. :) When we rolled up to our hotel, Boardwalk Inn, we could not contain our excitement! We were here!!! We checked in, checked out our room, and headed out towards International Gateway! Food & Wine Festival HERE WE COME!
We stumbled upon Alice as we entered the park so of course we stopped for pictures! The park was empty and the temperature was nice and cool. A warm mix of sun and clouds that was a nice chance from the particularly rainy Fall weather we have been having in New York the past few years. After me and Daisy got our pictures taken with Alice our fab four headed around to the Canada booth immediately and grabbed a round of Moosehead. It was 11:17am but we were toasting to the beginning of a magical trip (and a magical day)! Our travel agent over at
It's All About the Mouse travel had sent us a booking bonus of a $25 Disney gift card and wouldn't you know that a round of 4 12ox Moosehead at the Canada booth came to exactly $25 even! I took a picture of us toasting to send to our awesome TA.
The first item we devoured? Mexico Shrimp tacos!! These quickly became my favorite F&WF choice! I think between the 4 of us we ordered about a dozen in the span of the long weekend! We all loved them! We continuted around World Showcase stopping for Pot Stickers at the China Booth, Beer & Brats at the Germany booth, Shepard's Pie in the UK, and some Mouse at Fife and Drum. We headed off to the Festival center around 1pm and I grabbed a Remy stuftee, the commemorative 2011 F&WF vinylmation and of course the cookbook (I knew I was going to need more shrimp tacos in my life!)
Once we were full we hopped on a few rides, then headed into Future World for some more. We grabbed some pics of the signage and with photopass since we had entered the park via International Gateway we wanted to check out the Spaceship Earth set up... and of course I had to ride SE since its my fave! We hit up some more favorites and then strolled back to Boardwalk to get ready for our evening of Halloween fun at Mickey's Not so Scary Halloween Party!!! We got dressed and ready to go and headed over to Magic Kingdom around 5pm. We wanted to grab some pictures early and non of us had ever been to this party!
I dressed up as Hermione from the Harry Potter saga, Daisy dressed as Cinderella after her step family had torn her dress apart, and the boys were "New York Giants" which was there way of simply wearing jerseys instead of dressing up! (I know, total cop out!)
We headed into the park and snapped lots of pictures. We were all hungry and since we all love a good Burger and Fixins at Pecos Bill Tall Tale.... we headed straight there! As we ate we signed up for the text message party alerts and checked out the layout map. We knew our party night was sold out so we decided candy was not a priority and instead we would make sure we rode the best rides and got in the photo ops we'd been dying for (Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean). Then we would see Hallowishes and the Boo to You Parade!
I guess it would be best for me not to give too much away for those planning to be here so I will let my pictures speak and post a few party favorites below. This was a long night for Mickey, Donald, and Daisy and by about 8pm the super duper early wakeup had been apparent. They were tired and worn out sitting on benches and I had to take my wizard wand and zap them with some magic to get them re-energized about what was to come! My childish excitement somehow wore off on them because as we headed back to our room later that night (after all the rides, photos, watching the parade from the Main St train station, the amazing fireworks and shopping up Main Street) we all agreed it was the best day ever. :)
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