Tell me about Food & Wine Festival

[Donald is #1]

Hi everyone! I am contemplating at trip to DL in May and I noticed that the Food & Wine Festival will be going on. Can someone fill me in on the details on the F&WF at DL? I am familiar with the one at WDW but not at DL. Do the events occur on week days or just weekends? What kind of events are there? Are there food booths like those at WDW?

Thanks!

 

[fairycat]

They have been working on the F&W festival over the last few years seeing how they are going to do the event here, since it is a much newer event here. It is weekdays and weekends, I am unsure what the dates will be next year though.

Sadly no food booths, I heard because of CA law In 2007 they did have special appetizer sized treats like Epcot at one CS location, but this year they did full sized food at different CS places, which was sad, since things were more expensive and less options. They did have wine tasting booths this year, you purchased a "passport" for either Ca Wines, or World Wines and got a set amount of tastes for that cost.

They have all different food demos, last year in a big tent at the front of DCA, and then in the Pier area had free liqour and beer tastings and in the wine area wine tastings/classes. The nice thing I have seen is that the free tastings (at least the drinking ones) were actually not hard to get into, unlike Epcot. I know in the last two years we got into all the tastings we wanted to, including on a Saturday. I only did the food tastings in 2008 so I can't say if they were busier this year or not.

Overall I enjoy the event, I wish they could mix a few features from Epcot in, and I wish they would even adjust some things back to the way they used too, but over all it is a good event to visit!

 

[Donald is #1]

They have been working on the F&W festival over the last few years seeing how they are going to do the event here, since it is a much newer event here. It is weekdays and weekends, I am unsure what the dates will be next year though.

Sadly no food booths, I heard because of CA law In 2007 they did have special appetizer sized treats like Epcot at one CS location, but this year they did full sized food at different CS places, which was sad, since things were more expensive and less options. They did have wine tasting booths this year, you purchased a "passport" for either Ca Wines, or World Wines and got a set amount of tastes for that cost.

They have all different food demos, last year in a big tent at the front of DCA, and then in the Pier area had free liqour and beer tastings and in the wine area wine tastings/classes. The nice thing I have seen is that the free tastings (at least the drinking ones) were actually not hard to get into, unlike Epcot. I know in the last two years we got into all the tastings we wanted to, including on a Saturday. I only did the food tastings in 2008 so I can't say if they were busier this year or not.

Overall I enjoy the event, I wish they could mix a few features from Epcot in, and I wish they would even adjust some things back to the way they used too, but over all it is a good event to visit!

Awesome thanks! According to a search that I did yesterday, the F&WF will be occuring throughout the month of May (& part of April). I ended up adding on at VGC last week and I am thinking about changing my intented Mt Rushmore trip instead to a Disneyland/Joshua Tree NP trip instead.

Wow, that would be great if I can actually get into things. At Epcot, the lines are always so long.

 

[ScooterL]

They've announced next year's dates: April 16-May 31. Events take place daily, though there are more of them on the weekends.

I spent a fair bit of time at the F&W Festival earlier this year. Like fairycat, I was disappointed that they didn't have the appetizer-sized items for sale this year, though there were a few appetizer-sized items you could get on the Vineyard Room terrace, though they were on the expensive side. They had a wonderful chocolate mousse with strawberries dessert you could buy at the wine shop!

As far as getting into events...if it was any kind of celebrity chef, you needed to be in line at least an hour (and sometimes two, from what I heard) to get in. Otherwise, on weekends for the cooking demos you needed to be in line about 30-45 minutes early (except for the first session of the day, which generally didn't fill up), and on weekdays you could usually get in even up until the time it started. Wine tastings filled up maybe 20 minutes in advance on weekends, but were not that bad on weekdays.

The wine and beer walks were new this year, and I thought those were very interesting - the wine walk at least. My husband enjoyed the beer walk. Pretty reasonably priced. I also enjoyed one of the wine flights at the Vineyard Room terrace - the only problem with that was that there were not enough tables in the shade up there.

They also have "Signature" events that you pay extra (a LOT extra) for. But we really enjoy going to one of the Winemaker dinners each year, and this year they added Sweet Sundays, and that was pretty good. The session we saw was a little disappointing in terms of what they demonstrated - nothing too interesting/challenging - but the setting was really nice and they served us lots of Fairytale Cuvee and Magicale!

I already made my VGC ressies last week to be there for the first weekend next year.

 

[Dancind]

We are going to DL in May, and it will be interesting to see how they do it. When will they announce the events?

 

[ScooterL]

In the past they have announced the events in February or early March, and tickets go on sale about the middle of March. Keep an eye on the www.disneyland.com/foodandwine web site - that's where the information will be posted.