Try Epcot’s Food And Wine

Our first Disney World vacation was during Epcot’s Flower and Garden Festival and our second trip was near the end of the same festival. We had only had the pleasure of seeing Epcot with beautiful topiaries all over the place. I loved it and took advantage by taking as many pictures of my kids with the beautiful characters as often as possible! I had really wanted to see the parks during the Fall season though. So, I made sure our next trip was during the Fall! Of course, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party was the main focus. While picking my dates and the night for the party, I came across the fact that, Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival was also going to be taking place. I had heard it could be a little crowded and we aren’t huge fans of crowds. I figured maybe we would try Epcot’s Food And Wine Festival but I didn’t have high hopes. Boy was I ever wrong!!

Arriving At Epcot

When we arrived in Epcot on our designated day, the kiosks weren’t open yet. We could smell the amazing food already! We made sure to get a Food and Wine Passport so we could see what everyone had to offer and started to make a plan of attack. When I say a “plan” that means we just got into the shortest lines! The kiosks opened around 11 am and the lines got long pretty quickly. We would spread out and get into different lines to maximize our time.

You can use snack credits for most of the food if you are on a Disney Dining Plan. However, any alcohol you purchase is something you will pay out of pocket for. We spent the entire day in Epcot using our Fastpasses and stopping by different food locations. We tried so many new things in countries we have never tried before. My kids enjoyed the sweet stuff. My son really enjoyed a waffle with a fruit compote and whipped cream on top! It was delicious! There were four of us so we had a lot of snack credits between us. 15 snack credits per person and we used a fairly good amount of them up during this Festival. We tried lots of different ciders, beers and wines on top of all of the amazing foods!

Try Epcot’s Food And Wine With The Dining Plan

When we go, we usually get the Disney Dining Plan and we end up using up a ton of snack credits on the last day in the resort gift shop. We buy bags of candy (most of which we never eat)! So I was adamant that if we went to the Food and Wine Festival we were going to use our snack credits!

A Few Tips When You Try Epcot’s Food And Wine

Here are a few tips for visiting the Festival that we learned very quickly. One is to get one of the food items and share. You don’t want to fill up too quickly! We did not make any sit down reservations for our Epcot day because I figured we would be eating a lot. Boy, was I was right. We ate so much that we didn’t use any dining plan credits other than snack credits.

Another tip is to try to avoid the Festival on Friday and Saturday nights. We had reservations at Via Napoli on a Saturday night and we had to walk through Epcot in a huge crowd. On top of the crowds, people were getting a bit rowdy at that point. We prefer not to visit during the evening hours. 

Once Was NOT Enough!

When we finished our trip, we discussed the best parts of the trip. My husband and I both agreed that our time at Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival was a HIGH point for us both. We were able to use all of our dining credits between our time in the other parks and the Festival. To us, this was a great use of the Disney Dining Plan. We tried new foods that we would not ordinarily choose. We both agreed that we would absolutely attend Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival again!

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