I know it’s been a while, and I made a couple of entries previous to this, but Butterfly and I went to the Food and Wine Festival at EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World Orlando over the weekend.
Wow. What an amazing variety of food! We ate our way all the way around the world of nations, both garnering personal favorites: Laura’s was the empanada she had at Brazil, with a close second being the Etouffé she had at New Orleans. This was a personal favorite of mine as well; however, my favorite was France–with Escargot baked into tiny pastries and braised boneless beef ribs, topped off with chocolate crème brûlée–absolutely scrumptious.
I’ve been going to EPCOT for years–however, it was on this trip, late into the evening on Saturday, that I discovered that the Mexico pavilion had a ride! Butterfly had asked me if I wanted to go on the Mexican boat ride–”They have a ride?” I exclaimed. It’s kind of cute, too–sort of a Mexican version of “It’s a Small World,” but showcasing only Mexico, and starring the Three Caballeros–Donald Duck and two other birds. Wikipedia says the ride used to be El Rio de Tiempo (The River of Time)–which I think I would’ve liked better than what they turned it into, apparently, in 2007. But hey, anything to keep the kiddies entertained, right? I mean, hell, who actually needs to learn stuff anymore? *sigh* Oh Walt, man, I miss you… You would’ve killed the executive who even proposed defacing the ride like that… I’d better stop, before I have to add the “Rants and Raves” tag to this entry…
In any case, not only does Mexico have a ride, but they also have a beautiful restaurant inside the pavilion, too–made up to look like a Mexican marketplace at night. Simply stunning. I’m sorry I never went in there before, and will have to return with Butterfly to go to the restaurant.
We also got the opportunity to go on Spaceship Earth–without question my favorite ride at EPCOT (call me nutty). Siemens AG took over sponsorship of the ride, and with that came some fetching new ride redesigns, but more evolutionary than revolutionary. And while Judy Densch does a respectable job as current narrator, nobody will ever fill the shoes, in my opinion, of the first narrator of Spaceship Earth–the venerable Walter Cronkite.
I finally got to get a vacation alone with Butterfly for the first time in over two years. That was neat–we sure needed it. Butterfly’s mom was gracious enough to stay at our place and watch T-Rex for us. That’s the last time we will ever let that happen. She brought her two incredibly obnoxious malteses with her, who pissed and shit all over my fucking house. God I hate dogs–especially her dogs. Next time we ask her to watch T-Rex overnight, we’re going to take him to her place.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
[...] writing my post about The Food and Wine festival at EPCOT, I started to thinking back about what EPCOT was supposed to be, and what we eventually ended up [...]
November 14th, 2009 at 1:01 am
I’ve eaten at that Mexican restaurant. Back in the ol’ college days, my friend Sean Williams said he was going to drive up to Orlando to pick up a pair of shoes from his brother and drive back. We (that is, myself, Bill Lefler and Mark Hamzy) thought he was crazy to do just that and (being crazy ourselves) we tagged along.
When it was clear that Sean was really serious about picking up just the shoes, we forced him into Epcot (around 6:00 pm if I recall) and we had just enough time to eat dinner at Mexico.
Sigh. Back then, we all lived at home and worked at jobs that paid us ridiculous amounts of money.