I realize that I am old but I gotta tell you, I never understood the allure of the "drinking around the world". I have a few young 30'sh coworkers with young kids who go to disney and then exclaim how they try to "drink around the world". I always end up saying..Seriously you take your kids, spend 1000's of dollars and the highlight of your family vacation is to get plastered???
In the past when I went to Epcot my pattern typically was, "Oh, I'm in the UK.. I think I'll have a beer..," and then sometime later repeating the same thing but in Germany.
That's pretty much where it ended for me for walking around beer. I liked it but it wasn't a "drink around the world" or "see how drunk I could get"-sort of thing.
I know people who do that. They love the F&W festival and Epcot is basically a huge outdoor bar to them. They're paying big bucks for a cover charge to go drinking around a lake which has roughly what you'd find in your local Publix but selling a glass for what you'd pay for the bottle (at Publix) or a six pack. It's a thing and they do it.
F&W, while popular with everyone else, is not a thing for me. The expensive samples from various kiosks are typically equivalent to mediocre food trucks. The drinks you can typically find at Publix (also expensive).
I've signed up for one or two chef shows (not sure what you call them) where the chef prepares something and tells you all about it and then you get to eat a resulting plate of the product. That was usually pretty good (food) but I remember watching those and thinking, "I'm never going to do that in my own home." It was neat but I didn't feel like I learned anything from it. Conversely, I have learned things from Alton Brown (Good Eats!) and actually applied what he taught in my own kitchen.
I've done a wine tasting or two and, again, while interesting as the presenter would point out some subtleties in the wines or some things unique to the vineyard their from, a lot of it seems like over pretentiousness on the part of the wine tasters. I very much got the feeling from the wine tasters that were constantly popping up with comments that it was less about enjoying the wine and more about showing how much more sophisticated they were than others.
The F&G festival has always been a favorite. I really like to see Epcot with all of the flowers in the Spring.
