Touch-Screen Ordering at Food and Wine Festival Booth...Trial Run for Next Year?

Touch-Screen Ordering at Food and Wine Festival Booth…Trial Run for Next Year?

I’ve heard from several sources (thanks Epcyclopedia!) that a touch-screen ordering kiosk has been added to this year’s Cheese Booth at the Epcot Food & Wine Festival!

Cheese Booth Touch-Screen Ordering Kiosk

Methinks this is a harbinger for things to come. Will all of the booths have touch-screen ordering next year? Is this part of Disney’s technology push?

Main Screen at Ordering Kiosk

Based on the screen below, guests are able to choose how many of the menu items they’d like, then [Read more…]

Disney Food Post Round-Up: October 16, 2011

By AJ Leave a Comment

Tuna Poke with Seaweed Salad at Hawaii Booth

There’s lots happening in the Disney Food world this week — new menus, new dining locations, new dining policies, and more! And don’t forget…that Epcot Food & Wine Festival is still going strong!

Disney Food News

Here’s the latest in the Disney Food World this week…

A new cancellation policy for signature and character dining locations in Disney World will begin October 26th. See details and other Disney Dining Reservations news here.
Epcot Food and Wine Festival Merchandise is on sale at DisneyStore.com!
Check out this year’s Disney World Resort Gingerbread House pins
There’s a new frozen drinks stand in Animal Kingdom, and these aren’t your standard frozen drinks…
We’ve got a review of the brand new Epcot Food & Wine Festival Pizza and Beer Tasting in Italy for you!

Of course, we’ve got TONS of Epcot Food & Wine Festival coverage happening over on our Epcot Food & Wine Festival Pages — click on breaking news to see the latest!

The DFB Mini-Guide to the 2011 Epcot Food & Wine Festival e-Book Review

Thanks to AllEars.net for another great review of our Food and Wine Festival Mini-Guide! We hope this book is helping lots of folks who are visiting the festival this weekend! Pick up your copy of the DFB Mini-Guide to the 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival e-Book today!

Here’s an excerpt from the AllEars.net review:
You’ll not only want to buy this guide to help you plan for your visit to the Festival beforehand, but also to have it in your pocket during your visit. I plan to take it with me on my iPhone next month when I visit the Food and Wine Festival with my family.

Read the full review here!

You can download your copy of the DFB Mini-Guide to the 2011 Epcot Food & Wine Festival e-Book today; and don’t forget to use code ALLEARS for a discount!

On to the Round-Up!

WDW for Grown-Ups

recommends the Top 7 Epcot Food & Wine Festival booths.

Hello My Sweet has some awesome Star Wars party eats to try!

Yesterland has a rainy review of the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. I was there on this day, and it was crazy!

DisneyShawn takes a look at the details of Toad Hall Restaurant in Disneyland Paris — “No Consumus Froglagus!”

AllEars.Net has a review of the first Discovery of Chocolate seminar at the Food and Wine Festival!

Main St. Gazette has another great recipe for us! From the 2010 Epcot Food & Wine Festival Spain booth — Spanish Almond Cake!

Epcot Food and Wine Festival Food Pictures: Singapore and Belgium Booths

By AJ 3 Comments

It’s time for more 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival booth food pictures! Let’s head over to two very different booths: Singapore and Belgium!

As always, if you want to see full coverage of each booth, check out our Epcot Food and Wine Festival Booth Pages! Click on any booth or country name for detailed information, menus, photos, and prices.

Belgium Booth

The Belgium Booth was just introduced in 2010, but there were a few changes and updates to this year’s version!

Back again were the delicious (and incredibly yummy smelling) steamed mussles with roasted garlic cream and baguette. These are gorgeous!

Steamed Mussels with Roasted Garlic Cream & Baguette -– $3.75

And the waffles with berry compote returned again this year. This is beginning to become a Food and Wine Festival classic!

Freshly Baked Waffles with Berry Compote and Whipped Cream -– $3.00

New this year is the addition of Guylian Belgian Chocolate Seashell Truffles. These have long been one of my favorite chocolate candies; so I was VERY excited to see them appear on the menu. With a slight hazelnut taste, these have [Read more…]

Epcot Food & Wine Festival Review: Chef Ming Tsai Cooking Demo

By AJ 6 Comments

Thanks to guest reporter Brooke Fehr of DisZine.com for covering an awesome event at the Epcot Food & Wine Festival on behalf of the Disney Food Blog! Cranberries, Chef Ming Tsai, and some great new recipes — sounds like fun to me! Take it away, Brooke!

Earlier this week, I headed over to Walt Disney World to see Chef Ming Tsai in a cooking demonstration at Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival.

If you aren’t familiar with Chef Ming, he is the James Beard award-winning chef-owner of Blue Ginger in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and has written several cookbooks. He’s also a veteran of cooking shows, having hosted the Emmy-award winning East Meets West on Food Network, and he is currently in his ninth season on PBS with his Emmy-nominated series, Simply Ming. We’ve been fans for a while of his fusion style, and we were really excited to get the chance to see him cook a dish live!

Chef Ming appeared at the event courtesy of Ocean Spray®, who is a sponsor of this year’s Food and Wine Festival. If you get the chance, check out the cranberry bog that Ocean Spray® has created in the middle of Epcot. It’s beautiful and fascinating, and has even been manned by real cranberry farmers who have chatted with guests, answering all kinds of questions.

CRANBERRY BOG!!

But here we go — on to the [Read more…]

Waldorf Astoria Orlando “Trick or Treating for Adults” Event

By AJ 6 Comments

Waldorf Astoria Orlando is celebrating the Epcot Food and Wine Festival with their own Food and Wine Weekends!

If candy isn’t your thing and you’re looking for something a little bit more adult, you’ll love the Trick or Treating for Adults Event on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. No costumes required!

Simply purchase a passport and you will enjoy a featured drink at each of the Waldorf Astoria’s six lounges: Bull & Bear Lounge (don’t forget to try the AMAZING new burger on the menu!!!), Aquamarine Pool Bar, Peacock Alley Lounge, Sir Harry’s Lounge, La Luce Lounge, and Sena Lounge.

Waldorf Sour at Sir Harry's Lounge

For JUST $25 PER PERSON, here are a few more of the treats you’ll [Read more…]

Dining in Disneyland: Storytellers Cafe and the Happiest Haunts Tour

By Heather 10 Comments

Dining in Disneyland columnist Heather Sievers reviews a fun Halloween-y evening: dinner at Storyteller’s Cafe followed by the Disneyland Happiest Haunts Tour!

Located inside The Grand Californian Hotel, Storyteller’s Café is usually one of our go-to breakfast/brunch stops. This trip, however, was for dinner. With tickets to the Happiest Haunts Tour in hand, we needed an early, low-key meal. We wanted to take care of business and get out of there so we could get over to California Adventure’s Tower of Terror to start our “haunting.”

Eats

Storyteller’s is known for its buffets. They have a breakfast/brunch buffet as well as a dinner buffet. But we opted for the menu/table service action this time around.

Dinner starts off with a bread basket overflowing with freshly baked cornbread muffins and loaves of white bread. And if you’re sitting at our table, there are usually mojitos involved. Our party included 3 adults and 2 children, so there were quite a variety of dishes to examine!

Mojito

The menu options are not aplenty, but as far as I can tell, there isn’t a bad one on the list. As a starter, I had the Charred Nebraska Corn Chowder. This soup is one of my favorites. It’s creamy, sweet and savory, full of chicken, and topped off with bacon. Yum!

Nebraska Corn Chowder

For my entrée, I chose the Margherita Flat Bread with grilled chicken. I do have to say that [Read more…]

Epcot Food and Wine Festival Food Pictures: Ireland and France Booths

By AJ 14 Comments

It’s time for more 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival booth food pictures! Today we’re headed to two more popular booths: France and Ireland!

Ireland
Ireland has long been one of the most beloved booths at the festival. This year, the Kerrygold Cheeses return, along with the famed Fisherman’s Pie and the Lava Cake!

Kerrygold® Cheese Selection (Aged-Irish Cheddar, Dubliner and Ivernia Cheese) with apple chutney and brown bread -– $3.50

Everytime I passed by this booth I could smell this buttery, delicious pie! Don’t forget — you can get it with a snack credit on the Disney Dining Plan!

Lobster and Scallop Fisherman’s Pie–$5.75

This Lava Cake was a true winner again this year! It was my first “bite” after running the [Read more…]

New Boneless Chicken Wings at Mr. Kamal’s and Frozen Drinks at the Animal Kingdom

By AJ 11 Comments

As I was slogging through the rain at the Animal Kingdom in Disney World last Saturday, I was starving.

Let me say — I’m rarely starving in Disney World. I usually book two or three meals per day, so my stomach doesn’t get much of a break. But last Saturday I hadn’t eaten a thing, it was going on 2pm, and I was on a mission to get pics of a new cupcake (post coming soon!), so didn’t have time to stop into a counter-service joint and battle the lines.

Introducing…the Animal Kingdom “Boneless Chicken Wings!”

So just when I was resigned to having zero sustenance, I came upon Mr. Kamal’s:

Boneless Wings Ahoy!

If you voted in our Corn Dog Nuggets VS. Spring Rolls post last year, you know that this little shack on the route between Africa and Asia in Disney’s Animal Kingdom used to serve Corn Dog Nuggets.

These days, however, it’s purely a new menu of “boneless chicken wings,” which are pretty much chicken nuggets as far as I can tell!

Chicken Nuggets Take Over for Corn Dog Nuggets

I chose to sample the Teriyaki “wings” on this very rainy day, and let me tell you — they were [Read more…]

New Credit Card Guarantee Requirements and Technology Affect Disney Dining Reservations

By AJ 53 Comments

Chef Mickey's Cracking Down on Skipping Reservations

UPDATE: See bottom of post for some FAQs and answers via a Disney Dining Phone representative.

In the past several weeks, Disney has instituted a few new technologies and requirements to better regulate the Disney World Dining Reservations Systems. These are largely being put into place to deter the ever-increasing practices of double-booking dining reservations, or simply skipping reservations without canceling them.

Double-booking and skipping reservations in restaurants that fill up six months in advance means that a large percentage of dining reservations are not being used, which, in turn, means that fewer guests are able to dine at these locations, and less money is made in each restaurant.

To improve this process, Disney has (or will be) instituting three new practices:

Mandatory Credit Card Guarantees on Signature and Character Dining Location Reservations
Reservation Reminder Emails
Disallowing Double-Bookings

Credit Card Guarantees Required for Signature and Character Dining Locations Starting October 26th

In order to deter skipped reservations at Disney’s most expensive and popular properties, Disney will begin requiring credit card guarantees on many restaurants beginning October 26th, 2011.

What does this mean for us as guests? Basically, you’ll be required to give a valid credit card number in order to make your reservation for these popular dining spots. No money will be charged to your card at the time of booking (unless the location is a pre-pay meal). However, should you neglect to cancel a credit card guarantee reservation within the allotted timeline (usually 24 hours prior to the meal), a $10 surcharge — per person — will be charged to the card.

California Grill Cancellation Policy Warning

Starting October 26, 2011, the following restaurants will require the credit card guarantee: [Read more…]

Review: Epcot Food and Wine Festival Beer and Pizza Tasting Event

By AJ 11 Comments

Beer lovers beware! Beer and Pizza Tastings at Via Napoli in Epcot’s Italy is a new event being offered at this year’s 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival!

We got a chance to head to the very first one last week, and we really enjoyed ourselves! Here are the specs on these new-this-year events:

When: Tuesdays from 2-4pm
Where: Via Napoli, Italy, Epcot
Pricing: $50, plus tax. Gratuity included.

All beers

Atmosphere

We checked in for this event at the regular podium at Via Napoli and were then escorted into the side room at the restaurant (the side room had recently been enclosed — it was all open to the elements last year when the [Read more…]

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Touch-Screen Ordering at Food and Wine Festival Booth…Trial Run for Next Year?