Epcot Food and Wine Festival: Around the World in 8000 Calories

AJ has tips in today's Disney Food Blog for navigating your appetite through Epcot's upcoming Food and Wine Festival (which runs this year from October 1 - November 14).

It's a long article but well worth reading: I can't think of anything about the Food and Wine Festival that AJ doesn't cover. Her best tip (at least for an obsessive list-maker and list item checker-offer like me) is to pick up a Marketplace Discovery Passport at the Festival Center. The Passport lists the 27 International Marketplaces (otherwise known as booths) at the Festival so you can check off each one after you've sampled its fare. You can also have your Passport 'stamped' at each booth to prove you were there.

What a great gimmick to encourage guests to visit every booth!

My own touring plan, perfected over the years, is to start in Mexico, sampling (and often re-sampling) every item at every booth as I walk, then crawl my way around the park, finally collapsing in Canada.

DisneyFoodBlog has gotten hullabaloo here before, most recently in the August 16 edition for Flying Fish Cafe Leaves Monitor Moist.

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A Headline About Cupcakes? Yeah, Baby!

So far today I've mentioned topics as diverse as Reedy Creek, Disney haiku, and Andrew Dice Clay. Now let's talk about cupcakes.

One of the ladies at CupcakesTakeTheCake, a website about cupcakes, nothing but cupcakes, blogged today about the simple, perhaps under-appreciated jumbo vanilla cupcake sold at Disney World's Main Street Bakery.

The blog post is more than a description of that cupcake: it's a rhapsody, a defense of the plain vanilla cupcake against such pretentious floury fops as the Swiss meringue buttercream.

It's also an excuse for me to remind everyone about the imminent grand opening of the Cupcake Store in Disneyland's Downtown Disney. The store will be a permanent location for the popular cupcake kiosk last seen during the 2009 holiday season. The kiosk sold over 200 cupcakes in its first five hours of operation. Disney's Cupcake Store will be an off-shoot of the original Cupcake Store in Mission Viejo, California.

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Down and Dirty on Reedy Creek

The Reedy Creek Improvement District has jurisdiction over Disney World's world - the land upon which the parks and resorts were built.

I hope you have plenty of interest in the future of Reedy Creek - and plenty of time - because Sam Gennawey just published on SamLand's Disney Adventures his seventh installment about the Reedy Creek Improvement District Comprehensive Plan.

It is not your typical breezy Disney read. Sam's article is technical, well-researched, and in some sections well-argued. And for me: fascinating. The story of how Walt Disney took central Florida swampland and turned it into a consumerist wonder of the modern world is compelling non-fiction that often reads like fiction.

If you want to dive deeper into this topic, I also recommend you pick up a copy of Chad Denver Emerson's recent book, Project Future: The Inside Story Behind the Creation of Disney World. You can learn more about that book on its official site and buy it discounted on Amazon for $13.45 (slightly less than its retail price of $14.95).

But I started this headline with Sam's Reedy Creek article and I want to end it with an enthusiastic recommendation not just for that but for all of his past articles. If you like hard-core Disney trivia, dig-in-deep stuff you won't find anywhere else, then Sam is your man and SamLand your site.

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In Sickness and in Wealth: Weddings at Disney World

A Disney wedding is several steps (about 24,142 of them) above a simple civil ceremony. It costs money, lots of money, but it delivers magic and hopefully provides some pixie dust armor against that other word that starts with a 'D' and that no one at a wedding (other than the future in-laws, possibly) dare mention.

Franck's Bridal Studio in Disney World assists couples plan their nuptials. It's nestled next to Disney's Wedding Pavilion, is themed as a Victorian summer house which means it's floral and prim and gauzy and bride-friendly (groom-friendly, not so much).

The official Franck's site has details, brochures, videos, and ... prices. Brides for whom money is no object will want the Couture package, starting at $65,000 (plus tax). Ah, love!

Today's headline, however, isn't about wedding cost but rather the new on-line planning tools available for Franck's clients. In a short feature published last night, the MouseForLess announced Disney's new Facebook application to help couples plan off-site their on-site wedding - and perhaps drum up donations for the Couture package. Ah, debt!

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Coronado Springs Photo Essay: Part 1

As I wrote several Dispatches ago, Jack Spence from AllEars is one of my favorite Disney writers. He often brings historical perspective to his blog posts and always packs his articles with exquisite trivia and insider details.

His two-part article about Coronado Springs is a good example of his craft. In Part 1, published earlier today, Jack begins not with the same tired facts about Coronado Springs but with a brief biography of Francisco de Coronado, the Spanish Conquistador who rambled through the American Southwest long before the Pilgrims docked at Plymouth Rock.

Then, and only then, does Jack delve into the history, architecture, and layout of the resort itself, capping each of his points with a gorgeous photo, including one of what appears to be Jack's receipt for a Chicken Quesadilla at the Coronado's food court, the Pepper Market.

Jack promises Part 2 of his Coronado Springs opus tomorrow.

Jack Spence has gotten hullabaloo here before, most recently in the August 12 edition for Living with the Land Photo Essay.

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In Which We Learn the Disney Significance of 24,142

This is unprecedented in the five-day history of Disney Dispatch: two headlines from the same site!

Just an hour ago, I headlined Bruce's recent blog post on UnknownMagicWithinWaltDisneyWorld about the jokes and puns he enjoys while visiting Disney World. Now here's Bruce again, and this time he revels not in bad puns but in the fantastic detail that makes each Disney resort unique.

Bruce cleverly begins his post with a math quiz. (Come back, please!) Each number in the quiz represents a numerical fact about Disney World: for example, did you know that Disney resorts have 24,142 rooms? If you challenge Bruce, I'm sure he'll count them again for you.

The 'magic', according to Bruce, is how Disney World has avoided the pitfalls of quantity (everything looks the same) and instead delivers unique accommodations in each resort and sometimes within the same resort.

Bruce, as always, delivers a unique, entertaining spin on his theme.

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Disney World Humor: Laugh It or Leave It

I like my laughs a bit on the nasty side: Jon Stewart, Howard Stern, and yes, in my younger years, Andrew Dice Clay. What passes for humor at Disney World isn't meant to be funny; it's meant to be comical and then comically familiar as you hear the same lines over and over again to the point where you do start laughing simply because you've heard them so many times before.

Bruce from UnknownMagicWithinWaltDisneyWorld likes a good laugh, too. He enjoys Disney humor and in a recent post on his blog shares a short list of his favorite jokes, puns, and funny scripts, such as the one used since time immemorial on the Jungle Cruise. And I admit it: I smile at some of the lines delivered by the boat captains on the Jungle Cruise. The jokes are so bad, intentionally bad, that a few of them come out the other side to funny.

Like Bruce, however, I do enjoy the epitaphs on the tombstones outside the Haunted Mansion. Disney comedy is at its best with such dead-pan one-liners as "Dear Departed Brother Dave - He Chased a Bear into a Cave". Or the stencil on what's supposed to be a box of dynamite that credits 'Lytum & Hyde' as the manufacturer.

Disney's got a million of 'em. Tour Disney Comedy Central with Bruce, and be sure to gander at his photo gallery of Haunted Mansion tombstones and other examples of sturdy but classic Disney one-liners.

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Mouse of Zen: Disney Book of Haiku Now Available

Good morning! Disney Dispatch is five days old. Let's go for six!

When I think of 'police literature', I think procedural not poetry.

But J.B. Conway, a police officer, has managed to bridge the literary chasm between police and poetry with his new book, Mouse of Zen, released August 11 and available through Lulu (and soon through Amazon, as well).

Mouse of Zen teems and bubbles and delights with the delicate haiku found daily on Conway's website. What makes his poetry especially relevant for us is that it's about Disney.

Conway visited Disney in 2006 for the first time and something there, or maybe everything there, inspired him to begin expressing his perhaps otherwise inexpressible feelings in poem. Each haiku subtly brings to mind a specific Disney experience.

For example:

fly from the troubles
leaving circus life behind
see elephants fly

The book lists for $18.95 which buys you not just paper and ink but a profoundly new perspective on familiar rides, attractions, and resorts. Mouse of Zen won't help you beat the crowds; but it may help you regain some wonder. Recommended.

MouseOfZen has gotten hullabaloo here before, most recently in the August 16 edition for Daily Disney Haiku from the Police.

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