While I'm somewhat envious of my friends posting selfies from Cedar Point this summer, obviously we have theme parks here. I realized last night, while at Epcot, that if we weren't frequenting the parks here, it would be Cedar Point if we were still living in Cleveland. In Seattle, it would not be theme parks. See, everywhere has its pros and cons.
The big advantage now is that we're not constrained to the relatively short summer season, which is a nice perk, to say the least. My favorite part of the year though, and I wouldn't have guessed this prior to moving, is the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. It used to last, I dunno, like six weeks, and now it's running for four months. That's about as long as the Cedar Point summer. Not every stand is opened yet, but they will gradually add more throughout the festival. Unfortunately, because of the gradual emergence from the pandemic, there is no concert series this year, which has surprisingly been one of the highlights of the season. We've seen a lot of great "nostalgia bands" over the years.
Enjoying the food and beverage is not an inexpensive endeavor, unfortunately, but depending on what you get, it's still way better than what you would spend on crappy counter service food. A lot of dishes are under $7, and while they used to be more of what I would call a sample size, many are what I would describe as a reasonable portion for a meal. But instead of some deep fried thing, it's something that might be "foodie quality." I'm a picky eater, but a lot of things push my limit to try new things, provided they're not red meat or seafood.
Drinks are not cheap, and there's obviously a whole lot of margin there. They're printing money. A lot of the drinks aren't even full pours, so you'll drop ten bucks or more for not a lot of drink. On the plus side, this is not the case at the regular stands, and there are a lot of great options in most of the countries, with full service in the UK and Morocco bars. And of course, the margaritas in Mexico are available three ways (regular and frozen outside, plus the super deluxe stuff in the pyramid). It's expensive to tie one on at Epcot, so I generally don't do that unless it's with friends. Or when I need to decompress.
Tactically, we've learned to use a gift card. It's way easier to reconcile a single charge to plus a gift card than it is a few dozen charges. And we can gas up one card and I have the bar code in my phone.
We have a lot of fun on these visits, and we can bring Simon and not have to sink a fortune into babysitting. He's old enough that he can ride stuff while we eat stuff and have an almost-date night. It's not the same as going out for dinner in non-tourist areas, or downtown for dinner and a show, but it's not a bad compromise.
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