Sunday, October 22nd - Behold the Heretofore Unsuspected Negative Vacation Powers of the Grimace!!!
Before beginning today I fear that I must return to yesterday - time travel is a risky undertaking so I'll understand if some of you choose to remain behind. For those of you willing to assume the molecular risk, join me now as we slip through a little known DIS-wormhole provisioned with nothing more than a bottle of Dasani, two hard boiled eggs (that's pronounced ehh-ggs, not aaaaeeeeeggggs) and some low-fat cottage cheese...
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There.
That wasn't so bad, was it?
Well, except for that Pa Wraith...he was pretty freaky...
and the Bjorn Borg...
I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when I saw that massive ship shaped like a Donnay tennis racket bearing down on us. It even had a leather wrapped wooden handle! That's the kind of dedicated attention to detail you can only find in Disney-related time travel.
So, why did we brave these terrors to come back to Saturday...again?
Well, for one thing, I wanted to show you our cute Mickey Mouse STL Cardinals pin. You will notice that I had to travel into the future to take this picture so that I could then travel backwards to share it with you in the present which is really the past...
You know what? It's probably better if we don't dwell on the metaphysical aspects of this journey or someone's brain (probably mine) is likely to explode.
Here...take a look at Mickey dressed like a Redbird. And if you want to admire the collection of Post-Season baseballs I gave my hubby at Christmas, well, who am I to stop you?
The other reason for our return to Saturday is that I neglected to tell you about Grimace's reaction to her initial F&W Festival introduction. Annoyed indifference is probably the best way to describe it.
It was crowded; I'll concede that. But what do you expect on a Saturday night?
And there was a lot of good natured alcoholism on display; I'll concede that, too. But do you expect anything less in the World Showcase?
There was no brawling, belching, or barfing; no pushing, shoving, or trampling. In fact, people were quite friendly. I even approached an intoxicated stranger as he was cheerfully lurching out of France with a Grand Marnier Slushy in hand.
"Ooohhhh, does that taste as good as it looks?"
"Yesh it doessss, litthel lady."
I was just getting ready to ask him if he thought it was better than the Lemon Citron Slushy when my mom reached over and grabbed my arm - hard.
"Don't talk to strangers, especially drunk ones! He'll think you're coming on to him!!"
I tried to explain that the F&W Festival was all about shared experiences - people ask questions: Hey, that looks great, what is it? Where'd you get it? How much did it cost? Can I have a bite / sip? Have you got any spare change? Do you come here often? Are you guys swingers???
Or maybe he said swing-dancers?
Well, regardless, she didn't like it one bit. And she didn't like the cute little food booths that I dragged her and Jon to while we were waiting for our table to be readied at Rose and Crown.
"Isn't Ireland precious with that thatched roof? And don't their samples sound yummy?"
"Hmmph. It's alright. I don't think I'd eat any of this. And I don't drink, you know that."
***Sigh***
"Look at Canada - it's like a little cabin; it even has shutters. And you like salmon, don't you?"
"Salmon is OK, I guess. Jon is really the one who likes it, not me."
Thank God the pager went off just then or this trip report might be ending with the gruesome tale of a middle-aged woman braining her recently retired mother to death with a bottle of Inniskillin Ice Wine.
And that would have been a terrible waste...
...
...
of ice wine.
All joking aside, I thought she was just tired from the flight and probably in need of a good meal to restore her equilibrium. How could I have known that her reaction was a taste of things to come?
- A
taste of things to come...oh, I kill me sometimes!
What can I say? This foreshadowing was lost on me at the time - in retrospect I actually feel pretty stupid for not picking up on it. That's what senseless optimism does to a person. And now that you know more about what may or may not happen in the coming week, it's time for us to go back to the future.
So sue me, Robert Zemeckis! I've got half an egg and a little bit of cottage cheese to my name - 
Hang on everybody...
"Tonight I say we must move forward, not backward, upward, but forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"
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Whew! No more time travel during this trippie...my head feels like someone drove a railroad spike through it.
On to Sunday... Sweet Sweet Sunday...or so we thought.
I must alert those of you who have waded through my food report...this next segment is deja vu all over again. If you don't want to read through approximately 1,750 pages about EPCOT's surprisingly poor event planning and total lack of crowd control then I will see you on the other side, where MGM, Hurricane Hannah's, and the Magic Kingdom await us.
For the rest of you...I present:
Sweet Sundays Leaves a Karmic Cavity
In addition to the tasty food booths and "free" seminars and cooking demonstrations, EPCOT offers a plethora (there's that word again) of culinary programs and educational opportunities during the length of the F&W Festival for a small
large fee.
In years past Jason and I were content with eating and drinking our way around the World Showcase, but this year we wanted to try something new. I love to bake and had read so many great things about Sweet Sundays that it seemed like a no-brainer event choice.
Here's the program description: Cakes, pastries, and all things sweet take center stage. Guests are welcomed with sparkling wine and either a light breakfast for the morning session or a light lunch for the second session. While seated, a celebrity pastry chef creates three items that are sampled throughout the demonstration.
$60 per person, plus tax - gratuity included.
When I saw that the guest chefs for October 22nd were Warren Brown and Mary Meyers I was in heaven! Jason and I love the Food Network show
Sugar Rush so we were really looking forward to this.
To truly understand why I was so angry about what is about to unfold, you need to know what it's like trying to book a F&W Festival program.
First...180 days from your arrival date you are forced to make reservations for every meal you want to have during your vacation, although if you are anything like me you don't know what you're having for dinner tonight, let alone six months from now. Then, one week before the end of July the event program schedule and price list is released - you have exactly seven days to rearrange your ADRS and theme park itineraries in order to accomodate the events you are most interested in attending once you are revived with smelling salts, having fainted dead away when your brain registered some of the prices being charged for said events.
You may make reservations on July 31st, promptly at 7AM EST...in my world that means I must be out of bed and capable of coherent thought before 6AM in order to win the nationwide WDW speed-dialing competition. Some events are very popular and sell out within a day or two so you must call early or risk complete and utter digestive devastation. If you are lucky enough to get through exactly at 6AM (and I was) you will spend upwards of 30 minutes on the phone racking up long-distance charges while a CM who has never heard of the F&W Festival attempts to book your events. Your credit card will be charged at the time of booking.
Let me say that again - Your credit card will be charged at the time of booking.
You have the ability to cancel up to 48 hours in advance in order to get a refund, but let's make this very clear - Disney gets their money before you even know what's on the menu.
They also take down the name of each person in the party - the better to manage seating, or so I thought.
We were told to get to the Odyssey before 9AM so that we could check-in and be seated before enjoying a light breakfast buffet. That is exactly how it was phrased when I made the reservation in July and that is how it was phrased by guest services the day before the event - I'd like to stress the words
be seated.
Here's a pic of me and the Grimace before embarking on our odyssey at the Odyssey - we call this:
Don't Touch Me
Since we were staying at the BCV it was no trouble to enter EPCOT through the International Gateway and make our way over to that funny shaped building that I don't think I've ever been in before. There was already a line outside the pavilion by the time we got there but we still waited about 10 minutes before they threw open the doors and allowed us all entry. No one questioned Jason or me as we walked in, but they stopped my parents to make sure they were on the list (you've seen their picture - don't they look like the type of people who would sneak into EPCOT before official opening just to steal some dessert?). Well they weren't on the list because the reservation was under my name, not theirs. It only took a minute to straighten out but I'm still puzzled because I didn't see anyone else get stopped on the way in.
So, remember the comment I made in an earlier review about the great way event seating was handled at the Coral Reef F&W tasting? Well, EPCOT and their event production team blew this one big time.
There was no one directing traffic so it was a free-for-all to find a place to sit; the result being that if you weren't one of the first people to enter the dining room or if you had a party of more than two people you probably weren't going to find a seat at the same table.
There were also issues where people at some tables apparently didn't want to sit next to scary strangers and so left an open place between themselves and the unknown fearsome dessert lover to their left or right. This situation could have been easily rectified if those people hadn't all then rushed up to the breakfast buffet as soon as they nabbed a table - once they were seated and stuffing their faces no one on staff was going to ask them to move to accomodate our party of four or the other displaced party which had five members.
Of course, the entire situation could have been avoided if they'd just had someone standing at the front part of the dining room inquiring about the size of each party and then seating them accordingly. I didn't pay $250 to attend an event so that we could all sit at different tables and wave at each other - I did that at my wedding reception and once was enough.
Here's a shot of the dining area:
I know - you're thinking that all those tables look empty. They are. All the people who got there before us are already decimating the breakfast buffet. I took this picture while the nine of us were standing around being a nuisance to the management team.
Initially we were told that we were all just going to have to suck it up. "Sorry - there is nowhere else for you and your party to sit together and enjoy this event you registered and pre-paid for three months ago." Perhaps I expect too much, but to tell nine people that they can all sit at different tables for a dining event that they had to pre-register and pre-pay for is unacceptable. It would have been different if we had arrived late, but we were there before the doors even opened, just as instructed. Talk about piss-poor planning on their part.
The woman who was leading the charge for the other group was great, and if it hadn't been for her I'm not sure what I would have done at this point. But she demanded a refund - the one thing you must never ever do at WDW. It's funny how the introduction of money suddenly made this a more important issue to resolve.
I chimed in with the suggestion that in the future they seat people according to party size rather than allowing people to storm the room. We all paid the same amount to attend, but because my family got stopped at the door and entered the room later than almost everyone else we were somehow not entitled to sit together while everyone else was? Sorry...error....does not compute. When I made the reservation no one told me that I needed a line ticket to guarantee my family could sit together.
The catering staff, the event staff, the manager...they all kept saying the same thing: "we're sorry but there's nothing we can do."
Well, we had another solution for them. By this time the other lady and I kind of had an unspoken "good guest-bad guest" thing going on. We could see tables on an elevated section of the dining room in the back of the room and suggested that they simply put us all together at one of those tables.
Do you want to know what their response was or would you like to see some pictures of the buffet?
Buffet? OK.
So, where were we? Ah yes, where on earth are we going to sit? They had already refused to add places to any of the existing tables because other people then wouldn't be able to see. I'm still trying to puzzle that out because a) the stage was elevated; and b) the entire cooking demonstration was being filmed and shown on two very large video screens on either side of the stage.
We were then told that there were no other tables in the dining room, otherwise they would be more than happy to seat us all together.
The conversation went something like this:
"We're sorry, but there are no other tables available."
"Ummm..what about those two tables over there?"
"There aren't any other tables."
"Those tables over there on that dias aren't tables? You can't spread a cloth and move some plates and let us pretend that we're at a table?"
"No."
"Where's the real manager because we all want a refund."
******three minutes later******
"Would you like to have some coffee while we set up a table for you?"
TBC...
What's up with that? Did she burn them off with your step-father's bunsen burner? 
- figure skating
Not staying for Illuminations when you had that prime viewing spot is definitely inconceivable! (I love Princess Bride, too!)
Now back to Brenda's regularly scheduled trip report.
