Thanks for sharing your strategy! This will be our first PFTS and we have WVL reserved. How many people were in your group? Since there are only 2 of us, do you think this approach will work? Did anything get cold while you were gathering all the plates to taste? I am so excited!!
Hi Karen, I know you'll have a GREAT time at F&W! There were three in our group, and the strategy worked extremely well. Another thing that we really liked about WVL was that if/when a vendor offered extras to us, we had less worry keeping up with the items for the rest of the evening. For instance, we had been to a wine seminar and a dinner that included wine from a particular vintner last year, and when he saw us at PFTS, he gave us a wonderful bottle of wine (corked) to take home. Well, it would have been a true pain to wander around carrying an extra bottle of wine all night. Our waiter offered to take it and bag it for us. He brought it back to the table with our gift bags at the end of the evening. The year before, one of the beer vendors was very generous. He had brought logo glasses for his beer and he encouraged us to keep the glasses as souvenirs. He said, "We always use new glasses at events, so these would go to waste!" So, we came home with a nice collection of Leffe, Hoegaarden and Stella Artois glasses! Can you imagine what a pain it would have been to walk around with those all night?! Again, our waiter offered to bag them and brought them back to the table at the end of the evening. All in all, I really have found the extra level of service is worth the additional cost.
Most dishes were not piping hot or extra chilly when served, so temperature did not change too much between service time and when we sat down to taste. Also, with the past configuration, the WVL was more spread out than other areas, so it definitely didn't seem as warm around our table as elsewhere in the arena. The biggest plus to us in having more dishes gathered to taste at once was that it gave us an opportunity to truly compare techniques and seasonings that had been utilized with each dish. If the dishes are chosen the same way as in the past, each chef will be given a category for his dish, and then he is free to prepare his own dish within that category. You will find that several chefs may have prepared "similar" dishes by description, but it's really hard to analyze the true differences in their dishes if you are tasting them with a lot of lag time in between. Gathering all of these similar dishes before tasting eliminates the lag time and, in my opinion, increases the enjoyment.
REGARDING LEAVING YOUR PURSE AT YOUR TABLE... Someone above mentioned that they enjoyed WVL because they could leave their purse at their table. I urge you to use caution with this. I also had felt safe doing this, but learned it was a very poor decision last year. I had lost an earring back during the event last year. Rather than wearing just one earring, I took them both off and put them in my purse. I was seated at our table when I did this, and I then placed my purse in my chair and tucked it under our table. As table placement is assigned by when you make your reservations for WVL, we were the second table in the second row... so not right by the ropes or in a walkway. Someone would have had to have a WVL wristband and would have had to walk specifically to my table to take my purse... and someone did. This was during one of the shorter "wine trips" and so we were only away from the table about five minutes. My purse was found about fifteen minutes later underneath the artisanal cheese display, with my room key, annual pass and lipstick still there... but minus the earrings. Lesson learned. I probably will not bring a purse to future events and will just stuff any extras I want to bring inside my poor husband's pockets!
i don't mind not getting the wristband giftcard if using my kttw will be easier. but i still plan on buying an f&w giftcard to at least keep as a souvenir. i think the minimum amount i can load is $5. so i will do that and use it at one of the kiosks, and then i have my souvenir! 
