The Food and Wine Festival . . . welcome to Cop-Out Land

Scott and I love this time of year in Central Florida. The weather is starting to get a little cooler, and the tourists crowds have thinned out, and best of all . . . it's the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival! Woo hoo!

Heck, we love this time of year so much, that when it came time to decide when to have our "Big Fat Gay Disney Wedding" in 2008, we didn't hesitate to plan it so that the dates coincided with the festival. What better time to have all of our friends and family in town, right? It was great, and we're glad we booked the weekend we did.

So the anticipation for this year's festival has been building for the past couple of months, and we went for the first time today. And as much as we love it, this year is a bit of a let-down.

Firstly, the wine seminars and guest chef presentations that used to be free, now have a charge associated with each one. This isn't the end of the world to us, as we've attended relatively few of these in past years, but honestly, getting into Epcot ain't cheap and the "extras" of going during the festival were a great perk.

Secondly, we're a bit peeved at the changes to "Party for the Senses" this year. Party for the Senses is a fairly high-end event that we have loved in the past. Guest chefs from all over the world at food stations preparing sample sizes of whatever they want to make, alongside wine purveyors, a few beer sellers and usually a representative from McCallan Scotch. All this is accompanied by performances by select act from Cirque du Soleil. This year, however, they've decided to take the winning formula for this event and change it. Now, each week's party will have a different "theme" for the chef's to match. The themes are things like "Comfort Food with a Twist" to "Italian". Honestly? This event doesn't need a theme. "Party for the Senses" IS the theme! In addition, they added a V.I.P. section where for an additional charge of $75 (in addition to the $125 plus tax they charge for the party itself.) The V.I.P. section gets guaranteed seating additional artisan cheese displays and an open bar. The seating is a nice perk, but why an open bar at an event that already features all you care to drink wine and beer? Especially since wines and beers pair so much better with food than liquor does. So it wasn't broke, and they tried to fix it anyway; and because of that, we're skipping it this year. Hopefully the new concept will bomb and they'll return it to the old way of doing things next year. I'm not holding out much hope on that though, Disney isn't making the best decisions lately.

Thirdly, the food booths. While the offerings from the food booths are pretty good this year, and all; it once again seems that portions sizes have gone down while the prices have increased slightly. And the really cool things like the mini-pavilions that we've seen in past years (like the sections for Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Australia) are not there this year. The huge grassy areas adjacent to the French and German pavilions are not utilized at all this year. One friend asked "What country is this?" My answer: "Cop-Out Land". Yes, I realize that they probably couldn't get anyone to sponsor those pavilions this year due to the economy, but the fact is that Disney has set an expectation that the Food and Wine Festival would have these fun experiences, and they're simply not delivering them.

Yeah, we'll go back to the Food & Wine Festival every week this year like we have in years past, but we'll continue to realize that we're getting less and being charged more. That doesn't make us happy.

It seems to me that Disney as a whole has begun to suffer from "corporate thinking" the past few years. Disney used to understand that if you build a really great guest experience, that people would flock to it, return time after time, and recommend it to their friends. Thus creating a great guest experience leads to a great bottom line. Rather than focusing on the guest experience, they've begun to focus on the bottom line. And while a great guest experience leads to a great bottom line. A decision based solely on the bottom line, has never, in the history of the world, led to a great guest experience. It's a short-sighted and dangerous decision to make; because if Disney continues to dilute and diminish the guest experience, the guests will eventually stop coming.

And Disney is diluting and diminishing the guest experience everywhere we turn. They closed the clubs at Pleasure Island a year ago (including the astounding Adventurers Club which was unique experience in all the world, and is the pinnacle of Disney Imagineering's accomplishments in themed entrainment and guest interaction) in order to replace them with "shopping and dining" from third party companies who would pay rent. In other words, they took a unique guest experience and plan to turn it into an outdoor shopping mall, just like any other shopping center in the country. What's the draw there? Why would people travel to get an experience that they can get at home?

It's a lame, short sighted way of doing business, and I hope Disney comes to its senses soon. Because eventually, they won't be able to recover. Which would be a really sad thing.

Oh, and I got a sunburn at the Food and Wine Festival today, but can't find any way to pin that on Disney, so I'll blame myself for that one.