Live! - 10 Nights at Riverside for Food & WIne

Hi guys! Our cab should be here to pick us up for the airport in about an hour. I'm anxious to hit the road, so I thought I'd pass the time by starting a trip report of sorts. I'll do a few updates when we have downtime on what I expect will be a very leisurely-paced vacation. I guess anyone who's interested can also see my Tweets, and starting tomorrow, my Food & Wine Festival photos on Foodspotting. I'll try to post some photos also when we're back at our room at night.

In the title, I indicated that this vacation was for Epcot's International Food & Wine Festival, but that's only partially true. Yes, we do favor the Festival, and during its run is, in our opinion, the best time of year to go. It's for this reason that pugmalion1 and I decided to plan our wedding (and future anniversaries) for this time of year. That leads me to the other reason we're going to Disney World. A week from today, we get to meet our wedding planner for our Swan/Dolphin wedding that will take place next year! I'm so excited to get some of the details hammered down and finally secure our date. If all goes according to plan, we'll be marrying on November 5th, 2013 in one of the Swan's beautiful outdoor ceremony locations, and then having a dinner reception with our closest friends and family at Todd English's bluezoo. I guess that means we'll be celebrating our -1st anniversary on this trip as well!

Anyway, I'm done blathering now, we'll see ya real soon!

 

[Sweet Melissa]

Oooooh! I wonder if this is common? I would love to meet Louis!

ETA - Loving this TR! I'll be following along. Congrats on the upcoming wedding!
NYC to Montana?! That is quite the transition! I bet it is beautiful in Montana though!

Thank you! We're getting excited about the wedding. We are calling today our -1st anniversary since the wedding will be one year from today.

Our move was actually from north Jersey to Montana, but it has been a very big, exciting, positive change and quite an adventure. We had never set foot in the state until the day we moved in to our new home, but it's been the most rewarding leap of faith I could hope for.

I'm not sure how common it is for characters to be in the moderate resort lobbies. This was our first time seeing it. I was wondering if it was just a Halloween thing.

I haven't really updated this report since midday Saturday, but we're back at the Festival now so I'm going to run. Cliff's notes: I loved Wreck-It Ralph, resort hopping was fun, I'll review the "progressive dinner" we had at Swan/Dolphin lounges in detail on the Dining forum when we return home. Yesterday and today were all about Food & Wine, so those reviews will come soon as well.

 

[MouseDreaming]

Love the report so far. My DD and I loved the pictures. Especially along the Sassagoula. One of my favorite places to be!

 

[Sweet Melissa]

It looks like today is fixing to be pretty rainy. Ponchos, umbrellas and hats are at the ready. As we haven't had a single drop so far and this is Day 7, I can't complain. We'll be headed back to Epcot this morning for a couple rides in Future World and more Food & Wine Festival tasting. I'm sure we'll hop a little in the afternoon, but I don't know to where yet. We have dinner reservations tonight at Captain's Grille at 8:30, but I'm hoping to get back to Epcot a couple hours before that so we can see Blues Traveler perform at the Eat to the Beat concert.

 

[Sweet Melissa]

We're stuck on Living with the Land right now. We haven't had breakfast yet and staring at these cherry tomatoes is making me so hungry! I hope we move soon so we can make rope drop at World Showcase. It's high time for some F&W brunch.

 

[jlsHouston]

wow it's 10 pm and I am starving to death now just imagining all the incredible food you are enjoying at the F&W event..love the live trip report!

 

[Sweet Melissa]

My sad little P&S camera that always lives in my purse is on its last leg. I tried to turn on the flash today and couldn't get it to work. The button was working fine, but the software wouldn't respond. That was a little frustrating, but I still managed to take a lot of pictures and so did Pug. Oh well. I've been really good this year, so maybe Santa will bring me that DSLR I've been wanting, right @pugmalion1?

 

[Sweet Melissa]

Our meeting with our wedding planner went very well yesterday. We viewed ceremony and reception sites, and also went over other details like musicians, cake, floral options, and other periphery stuff. She told us when we parted ways that it could be up to two weeks before the Swan got back to us about approving our date, but we just heard back a few minutes ago. Our date is officially set! Remember, remember the 5th of November (2013, that is). We're going to go celebrate now. Tomorrow is our last full day here. We'll wrap up at Food & Wine in the afternoon and then head over to Osbourne Lights in the evening.

 

[Sweet Melissa]

We board the Magical Express in about 45 minutes. It's been a great trip. I realize in hindsight that this was the wrong vacation to do a report for. We just didn't do a lot that would interest most people. We wandered a lot and just enjoyed the beautiful weather and Disney atmosphere. We didn't go on many rides at all.

Most days, we rose late and went to Epcot in the late morning, spending the bulk of our time in the World Showcase for the Festival. We would leave by about 2pm and either hop to another park, explore a resort, or go back to our room to relax for a while. It was an ideal slow-paced trip, and I don't regret how little we did at all. According to my pedometer, we still walked about 100 miles over the course of the vacation.

I'll upload a few more photos when we get home, and will probably work on a dining report with some capsule reviews of the Festival Marketplace Booths over on the dining forum. Thanks for following along!