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| Our Daughter enjoying the Flower and Garden Festival, 2008. |
We can’t make it to the Flower and Garden Festival this year, so we’re taking a virtual tour via some of our favorite blogs. There are plenty of reviews of the Festival out there, but to get a complete picture, we had to pull from several different ones.
Come join us as we finish off our virtual tour of EPCOT’s Flower and Garden Festival. We’ll be taking a look at some of the gorgeous displays and sampling some of this year’s unique food offerings in the World Showcase from the American Adventure to Mexico, and we’ll finish off our tour with a special treat! It’s not too late to join in!
If you’re just joining us, you can find tour Future World with us in Part 1 here, and tour half of World Showcase from Canada to Japan in Part 2 here. Looking at our guide map, we can see that we’ve covered two-thirds of the Festival Offerings.
I don’t know about you, but I needed a little time to digest all the treats we’ve been experiencing throughout the World Showcase. Now that we’re together again and have a little room for some more, we’ll stroll along from Japan and head over to the American Adventure, where we can sample some items from:
We can enjoy our pork and beer while admiring the Disney Pixar Woody and Lotso Topiary display.
Also located in the American Adventure pavilion is “The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard & Shirley Kinsey”.
The Walt Disney Company describes the Kinsey collection as:
“a new art exhibit representing more than 400 years of African-American achievement and contribution. The exhibit draws from an extensive collection of rare art, documents, books and artifacts amassed by philanthropists Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, who share a passion for African-American history. Approximately 40 pieces will be on display on a rotating basis throughout the duration of the exhibit.”
Also located in the American Adventure pavilion is the American Gardens Theater, which is hosting the Flower Power Concert Series throughout the Festival.
Through the magic of the Internet, we can enjoy some of the acts that have performed up until now. Enjoy!
Micky Dolenz of The Monkees
Chubby Checker & The Wildcats
The Guess Who
- Ricky Nelson Remembered featuring The Nelsons
- The Turtles Featuring Flo & Eddie
- Paul Revere and The Raiders
- Village People
- The Orchestra Featuring Former Members of ELO & ELO II
- Tommy Roe
- Herman’s Hermits Starring Peter Noone
- Starship Starring Mickey Thomas
Moving on to the Italy pavilion, we get a glimpse of their wonderful Container Gardens. It would be nice to have something like this in my yard. Those containers do look “Fra-gi-le”… they must be Italian!
And look who is hanging out… Lady and the Tramp! What? no topiary spaghetti and meatballs???
Of course, no visit to Italy would be complete without a bite to eat. I’m always expecting there to be an Italian mom or grandma there ready to yell at you for being too skinny and not letting you leave until you eat something! For the Festival, Italy features the Primavera Kitchen.
As we say Ciao! to Italy, we move along and find ourselves entering Germany, and who is there to greet us? Why, it’s the fairest of them all, Snow White (and the Seven Dwarfs, of course)
Germany’s Bauernmarkt: Farmer’s Market is split into two stations, one for food, and the other for drinks. How about we split up and get on line at each, and we’ll meet up after with our food and drinks?
As we continue around the lagoon, we find the Garden Boutique, a merchandise stand featuring ??
I hope you’re still hungry, because our next stop is China, and our sights are set on the Lotus House.
I’ll follow that up with some of this intriguing Peach-Oolong Bubble Tea.
While we enjoy our pancake and tea, let’s take some time to admire the Topiary Dragons and Pandas on display. It’s interesting that here in China, as well as in our remaining stops, they did not do any Disney themed topiaries.
Next up for us is Norway, home of the Maelstrom! There’s no added food kiosk here, but we can take a ride and then check out the cool looking Topiary Troll. He’s not so scary looking out here in the daylight.
From Norway, we take our second longest journey across the globe to Mexico (Morocco to Japan is the longest. Funny, but it seems like walking distance here) Here we find a beautiful Orchid garden.
And after not having anything to eat in Norway, we are happy to find that Mexico has the Jardin de Fiestas. My Spanish is a bit rusty, but I think that means Party Garden?? Or maybe it’s Festival Garden?
Hmm… I think I’ll have to try the Taco de Carnitas…
Oh, and that Organic Tequila flight looks intriguing!
Our last stop on the tour is Florida Fresh, a food kiosk on the Mexico side of World Showcase Plaza
and wash that down with some Hot Sun Tomato Wine
Well, that does it for the tour! We’ve seen everything there is to see in both Future World and World Showcase, all from the comfort of our homes (or cubicle if you are at work, or maybe the train if you’re on your phone while commuting….) The point is, the magic of the Internet allowed us to get a sense of what it was like to be there when we actually couldn’t be. Perhaps this has inspired you to look into going for next year’s Flower and Garden Festival??
Oh, one last thing that was new this year. At night, the topiaries have lights!! Check out this video!
I hope you enjoyed our virtual tour. Be sure to visit the sites we borrowed from because we only took a few images and there are lots more pictures, videos, and reviews to be found of all the great food, topiaries, and fun stuff!
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