Thursday, July 14, 2022

Opening Day of EPCOT's Food & Wine Festival

When we found out that Brett would be able to join us in Florida this week, we decided to see if anything was going on at Disney during that time period.  We were a little surprised to see that July 14th would be the opening day for Epcot's Food & Wine Festival.  It seemed early to us, but we weren't complaining.  Even though we thought that it might be crowded, we decided to get tickets and try it.  We all agreed that even if we didn't get to do everything that we wanted to, we still wanted to be there on opening day.

We were all up at 6 a.m. this morning so that we could be at Epcot when the park opened.  On the way over, I was able to get Brett a reservation on the virtual queue for the new Guardians of the Galaxy roller coaster.  We were both happy about that.  We arrived at the park just before rope drop and soon were fast walking to Remy's Ratatouille Adventure.  It was only a 30 minute wait and soon we were off to our next adventure with Doug proclaiming Remy's ride to be a new one of his favorites.  

The three of us walked through the countries reading all of the menus for the food festival on our way to Norway for "Frozen."  The booths wouldn't open until 11 a.m., but we wanted to be prepared.  Unfortunately, Frozen was closed indefinitely.  The good news was that we weren't far from Test Track.  We were surprised to see that it was closed as well.  While we debated about what to do next, Brett headed to Mission Space.  We called him as soon as he reached the entrance to let him know that Test Track was looking as though it would be opening.  He hurried back and the three of us got in line.  Within five minutes we were pleased to be seated on a car together.

It was close to 11 a.m. when we finished on Test Track, so we headed to the Mexican pavilion.  We had just enough time to ride Gran Fiesta Tour before the Margarita bar opened.  They guys each tried one and really enjoyed their drinks.  We then walked through the countries trying various food from the different booths.  Many were the same from past years and some were new.  Everything was delicious.  My favorite dish was the cake/pudding from Ireland.  

Today was one of the hottest that I could ever remember.  Doug said that we had spent warmer ones in St. Louis over the 4th of July.  I know that he was right, but today was definitely blistering.  Thankfully, we had five indoor rides to cool off at while it was the hottest part of the afternoon.  I believe that it was the first time that I could remember Doug willing to ride both Figment and Nemo on the same day.  Thankfully, Sorain' was one of those available as well and it was a fun way to spend several hours before returning to the countries for dinner.

We had planned on leaving Epcot between 6:30 to 7:00 to get Brett to the airport for his 9:55 flight.  Brett had a few last minute purchases to make and we found ourselves in Germany around 6 p.m.  Doug and I noticed that the clouds were turning black and the wind was moving faster and faster.  We decided to head to the store at the front of the park just in case it did start to rain.  Brett met us there just as the skies opened up.  It was the biggest storm that I had been caught in at Disney World complete with high winds, hail and sideways rain.  Fortunately, it only lasted for about 35 minutes and was just drizzling when we headed to the car.  We had had a wonderful day at Epcot, did everything that we wanted to do and got Brett to the airport in plenty of time for his evening flight.  It was the perfect way to end Brett's time in Florida.  










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