Who's heading to WDW for Food and Wine?

[agame2323]

I need a good strategy on how to do food and wine. How many days do you typically stay? Onsite or offsite? How will the new FastPast + effect F&W?

 

[amg35]

We are!!

We will be at Beach Club for 9 nights, park hoppers. So we will probably be at Epcot in the evenings quite often, only avoiding Friday/Saturday.

Don't the think fast pass will affect food/wine at all. (unless you are trying to time rides at Future World with dining)

 

[agame2323]

How many days does it take to do F&W? I did research on this but lost the information.

 

[amg35]

I'm not sure really, never been. It just depends on how crowded, how many kiosks you are going to stop at, will you also be exploring the other countries.

I would plan at least two full evenings or one full day for food sampling. Or maybe more to go for seconds! I think it all depends on your touring style and how much time you want to spend eating/drinking.

 

[TDC Nala]

How much of it do you plan on doing? What other plans do you have? Are you park hopping?

There are about 30 kiosks in WS, and there's also the festival center, the concerts and the extra cost events for those who are interested. You can make it a day or you can make it a week.

The only real advice is to do as much as you want, and to avoid Friday nights and Saturdays.

I have serious doubts that Fastpass Plus will affect F&W at all.

 

[mommyrosa2]

I need a good strategy on how to do food and wine. How many days do you typically stay? Onsite or offsite? How will the new FastPast + effect F&W?

We've been several times (pre FP+), with the most recent trip last October (with FP+) and didn't notice any difference with crowds because of FP+ to be honest.

We are "onsite" folks and found that by staying at an Epcot resort during F&W, we were really able to maximize festival time by being so close and having the abiltiy to stroll in at any time .

This past October, we were there the 3rd week & stayed 5 days. It was DH & I's first trip without the kids and we had a blast...so much so, that we are returning again this October for another solo F&W trip.

As far as strategy goes....not sure there really is a strategy. It will really depend on your touring style and what you wish to accomplish. We tend to hit F&W with a much more relaxed style...no rushing around for us. We also enjoyed sampling the food & drink kiosks more during the day when the crowds seemed lighter.

 

[snayak]

I'm going to F&W this year after a fantastic 5d WDW trip in 2012. My strategy was to look at the menu ahead of time and make a list of what looked good (I kept the checklist on my phone). I think I picked at least one item from each country, often multiples, so I wound up going to F&W most nights for snacks/drinks/dinner (only 1 or 2 TS ADRs).

Every morning I went to other parks/futureworld and US/IoA. I stayed at the Swan so it was no issue just walking over whenever I wanted to.

I think I walked the showcase about 20 times around so lots of calories burned, but I ate just about everything they offered. It wound up being kind of pricey, but was 10000% worth it.

 

[glamdring269]

FP+ shouldn't impact F&W at all unless there is a FP line to get me to my beer faster.

 

[cruisingkat]

We have seriously done F&W for the past 4 years. It takes us (DH and me) 4 days to do F&W. We divide the WS into 4 sections and do 1 section a day. We get one of each food item and a specialty drink at each booth and share. We usually go around 1pm on weekdays and do this in place of a meal. By doing weekdays during the early afternoon we can normally just walk up to a booth - there are only about 2 people at the most in line.
One quarter of the booths are enough to be filling - so much so that we end up sharing a counter service meal for dinner.
We don't do the dining plan as that is way too much food for us. And we would never use all the meal credits during F&W and not enough snack credits since we do use the kiosks as a meal each day.
We do use gift cards to pay for our "tastings". We get Disney gift cards at Target using our Target charge card to pay for them. By using our Target card we get a 5% discount on the Disney gift cards.

 

[cruisingkat]

Sorry - double post

 

[GDUL]

We nosh around the world for lunch over 4 days. One quarter of the booths each day. We usually go with 4 or 5 people in total so everyone usually gets something different - we share and get to try most everything. Lots of fun!

 

[JennyDrake]

In 1 1/2 days I did not sample everything I wanted (and I don't drink.) Definitely on site!!! No strategy other than to try to avoid F&W on weekends when it is very crowded. I don't think FP+ will have any impact.

 

[Hopefully]

We stay at BCV and have APs (so Hoppers) so we end up in WS at least 5 of 7 nights we are there. We also spend 2 full days and often 1/2 arrival day in Epcot.
We love Noshing around the World.
Do avoid Friday and Saturday evenings.
Have Fun

 

[skier_pete]

We are flying down for the weekend of 10/16-10/20 specifically to do Food and Wine while leaving our DD at home.

My opinion is there are many, many ways to do food and wine, as there is much to do. There are just the booths, then there are all the extra events you could possibly sign up for. (Party for the Senses...etc.) I'll ignore those for now, purely for the food and wine aspect of it, here is how we plan on doing it:

We are going to allow two days, and we are basically going to split WS in half. We'll go Friday and Sunday, and will use the Food and Wine booths for our lunch/dinner. Particularly on Friday we will probably wrap up the F&W portion early enough to avoid the worst crowds, and head over to Jellyrolls for the evening. Sunday we may do something similar, or stay for Illuminations.


Alternately, you could do it where you go every day with hoppers and only eat a few things. Or you could go there in the evenings just for a drink.

If you are smart, you would plan to do it on Monday - Thursday. We can't because we are just flying down for the weekend, but that is the way I would do it. In fact, Epcot on Thursdays during F&W in my experience is the absolute emptiest you will even see that park. (Well, maybe January.)

Understand that while the prices aren't bad, the spending adds up very quickly. If you are going for the day, expect to spend $100+ per person, unless you drink heavily and then it will be much more.

 

[Virtucomp]

We are heading down to the F&W for the week it opens. Does anyone have any recomendations for paid events? Is there a "Must Do" event that would be worth the money?

I'm thinking we may skip extra events and just put that money on a gift card to pay for more food samples and drinks. If there was one event that was really a good food demonstration or diner I might consider it.

Any experience from past F&W events would be helpful.

 

[prudence64]

Our trip will include the last 2 days of the festival. We might go on the last night but I don't know if that will make it to crowded to tolerate.

 

[DizDaD7]

We're heading down as well. I will reiterate that weekends are much more crowded, but honestly in the last few years, Everyday is even a lil more packed than usual too. With that being said I would say 3 days should be sufficient to get everything done that needs to be.

I actually love Epcot in general, food & wine or not. So I'm always heading over there even just for Adr's.

HTH. Have a great trip.

 

[skier_pete]

Our trip will include the last 2 days of the festival. We might go on the last night but I don't know if that will make it to crowded to tolerate.

We've done the last weekend of F&W in November in 2011 and 2013. That Sunday wasn't too bad in both cases. Last year, F&W extended to Monday (Veteran's Day) which we didn't realize until it was too late to change our plans - as in the day before. That Monday I heard was very uncrowded, I suppose because a lot of people didn't know about it. They are doing that again this year with the last day being on a Monday. I highly recommend if you are there for that, that you choose the Monday especially over Saturday. Saturday's for food and wine are nuts.

Here's a side by side picture of crowds from the last Sunday of F&W to the Thursday following F&W. These were both taken around the same time of day - 5 PM. (This would explain why they've added days to F&W!)

 

[lovin'fl]

We did F&W last year in Oct. We went for 3 nights and stayed at BLT. We did 3 lunches and 2 dinners at F&W so that we could hit (and get a stamp for) every booth (all 30). DH and I shared the things we got and we got 1-3 food items at each booth and quite a few adult drinks sprinkled in (so we got 2-4 things at each booth). I figured we spent about $340 on the F&W booths. Our 3rd dinner we did a CS (Pecos Bill) at MK the last night where we went for MNSSHP. We also watched a little of the 2 concert series shows...Wilson Phillips and Pointer Sisters and we FP+ stuff at Epcot (was before the tiering, I think so YAY!!!) We did a little time at HS with FP+ and went to MK for the party. It was a blast!!!

We are going again this year and even just added more DVC points (at BWV) specifically for F&W. But we waited too long to book our resort and could only get VWL. We will NOT be hitting all 30 booths this time and plan to only go for 3 dinners (each night). We made 2 ADRs (early breakfast at Tusker House the morning we do AK and lunch at LTT one morning we do MK). We will FP+ 2 nights at Epcot and 2 mornings at MK (will hit MK on departure day since we can take boat easily to MK and have later flight) and will hit AK before RD thanks to TH ADR. We will see Boyz II Men in the concert series at F&W.

In the future we will book at BWV as it will be so sweet to hop in and out of F&W from there. We really wished we were there or at BCV last year when we went to F&W. Getting to Epcot from BLT via monorail was a pain and LONG.

We don't do any of the paid events but met some folks doing some wine pairing event in Italy. It sounded really cool. maybe someday we'll do that. right now F&W is still new to us and we are fine with taking advantage of the free concerts and the booths for now.

ETA: Oh, and last year as well as this year we stay 3 weeknights to avoid the crazy weekend crowds at F&W.