Food and Wine vs. Dine

[magic458]

We love food.
We love the dining plan.
We love taking more than we paid from the dining plan. It is a game.

That said....the stomach can only hold so much.

Food and Wine vs Dine
What should we do? Go country to country in the food and wine or have a reservation at a restaurant?
What is the strategy you have used?

 

[KeroKero]

Our past couple visits for F&W, we were also on the dining plan (free, thank goodness). We found that after spending an afternoon at the festival eating a full dinner was a challenge. We booked restaurant reservations as late as possible, and tried to get away from the F&W festival by late afternoon to free up some space in our tummies.

 

[PSUGuy]

We've never used a dining plan but we do have a strategy for F&W. We go for 10 days, we skip WS on Sat due to crowds but other than that we hit a non-Epcot park at rope drop every day then hop to WS around noon. For most of the rest of the day we 'Graze Around the World'. We have our favorites, Fisherman's Pie in Ireland, but we like to sample new things. We stay in a studio room at Board Walk so we toast a bagel for breakfast and occasionally snack at a lunch break but mostly we're grazers. On Sat we hit Raglan Road for dinner and we have ADRs for Cape May on the 2 Thursdays there, we'll do one for sure, may cancel the other.

Flying on South West we get 2 checked bags each so we take several boxed wines in a checked bag. We have insulated liquid containers with straps that we fill and chill overnight. After buying one wine there we keep the 'glass' and refill ourselves from the containers. Saves a ton of $$.

Bill From PA

 

[Linleedo]

It's probably best to avoid the ADR for dinner, if sampling at the Food and Wine Festival. Just use your DDP snack credits for the food samples. Maybe you can use your ADR for a breakfast the next day? We previously ate samples for lunch and had a late dinner ADR. We were still too stuffed to enjoy the dinner.

 

[loves to dive]

I go to F&W and don't make any ADRs the entire time I'm there. I'll be there for 6 days this year and have an afternoon tea at the GF on the day before the festival starts, a food and wine pairing meal and that's it. I'll get most of my meals at the Festival, I'll most like eat a child's QS breakfast (need my protein) and that's it. I had problems last year actually getting in at least one thing from every booth, I'm hoping for more than 1 this year.

 

[Stinky_Pete]

When are you going? What days of the week? The festival is busiest on Friday evenings, Saturday and Sunday.

When I go, I try to visit every weekday I am at WDW. I always get park hoppers so I can do part of a day there and part of a day somewhere else.

When I go to the festival, it is a meal for me.

So some days I arrive at Epcot before RD, tour FW, then move into WS when it opens. I graze around the WS for a few hours and that's my lunch. Then I move on to an afternoon break or to another park. I may or may not have a full dinner later. Usually I may have a couple appetizers and drinks at a lounge.

Other days to may go to the MK in the morning (especially on MNSSHP days), take an afternoon break, and go to Epcot in the late afternoon/early evening. In that case, the festival is my dinner.

I went last year with "free" dining. I ended up using many of my TS credits for breakfast, because I had so many meals around WS. Not the "best" value, but I was happy, and it cost me less than I would have spent out of pocket if I had done what I wanted to do on that trip.

I looked at prices before my trip and had a list of the items that were the most expensive and used my snack credits for those.

 

[Joeyswife3108]

We do a pre-park opening reservation at Akershus and then hit up F&W. We do not do any other TS this day lol

 

[ShannonMB]

Very smart to consider your tummy capacity when strategizing F&W. We will only go to EPCOT one day in our upcoming short trip, but we won't be eating anything but the offerings at F&W that day. Last time we were there we did not have a meal at all and I was stuffed to the gills by the time we left! I did a decent amount of drinking, too. One other time, I believe it was Flower and Garden, when they first started having food booths. It wasn't on our radar that we would be snacking heavily that day, so ended the day with a TS meal and I thought I was going to POP! I learned my lesson that time!

If you go on a weekend and it's really, really busy, it might be a lot of waiting in line if you were hoping to try multiple offerings. In that scenario I might be tempted to just try a couple of things and then have a meal. But generally speaking, it is much more fun for an adventurous eater like me to try a whole bunch of new, exciting things! My DD, who is just 15, is looking forward to F&W more than anything else in our upcoming trip. It's one of her favorite events of the year! \

Have a great time!

 

[magic458]

Great advice.

I am going to avoid ADR at Epcot.