Disneyland Resort Update: Food & Wine Festival 2020
Disney California Adventure, Anaheim, CA
Disney certainly seems to like stacking momentous events lately. In January, Disneyland opened Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance on the same weekend that marked the start of Disney California Adventure’s Lunar New Year Celebration, plus it was the final weekend of Haunted Mansion Holiday, and it was Pokemon Community Day, and the NAAM Convention was in town! And last Friday, not only did Disneyland kick off the new Magic Happens parade, DCA began this year’s Food & Wine Festival!
Of California Adventure’s food and cultural celebrations, the EPCOT-inspired Food & WIne Festival is the biggest and most comprehensive. Back for several years now after a hiatus during the time that the park was undergoing its Cars Land and Buena Vista Street expansion projects, this culinary celebration has become an eagerly anticipated spring tradition. Although the event has settled into a nice pattern and template, there are new features each year, so lets take a look at what you and your taste buds have to look forward to this year!
Festival Features
Though the Festival is most known for its food offerings and entertainment, there are educational opportunities afforded by a variety of culinary demonstrations, alcohol seminars, and celebrity chef cooking classes. Most of these are clustered in the Hollywood Land backlot area, though the alcohol tasting seminars occur in Pacific Wharf, in the Sonoma Terrace. In addition, a children’s activity area is situated in Hollywood Land across from Monsters Inc., along with an Instagrammable photo op.
Festival Merchandise
Disney loves to rake in the merch, and knowing that they can produce limited time souvenirs to celebrate limited time events, and the Food & Wine Festival is one of the pinnacles of this practice. T-shirts, housewares, souvenir pins, magnets, earse, and other fun memorabilia are available for purchase during the month and a half that this event will be running!
There are a couple of stalls/booths located along the parade corridor where these can be found. Some of the items are also sold in the park’s brick and mortar stores like Elias and Co. too. The designs are pretty cute!
Every year, Disney comes out with new, limited edition, seasonal merchandise. The 2020 Food & Wine Festival is no different!
The ears are kind of cute.
I think the apron is adorable.
Artist’s Corner
The Food & Wine Festival’s art feature returns, as Artist’s Corner—over by the Little Mermaid ride. This year, popular tiki artist Jeff Granito is the featured illustrator, as he has crafted a series of adorable works and designs for purchase in poster, postcard, and even pillow form! Other artists have created artwork featured at this gallery too. All of it is colorful and charming, and great to go on any Disney fan’s wall!
Artist’s Corner is back for this year’s Food & Wine Festival.
There’s a big focus on popular tiki artist, Jeff Granito this year.
There’s art for sale from a variety of artists, but Jeff is the feature.
This is kind of like a satellite location for Wonderground Gallery in Downtown Disney!
Festival Marketplace
The Festival Marketplace returns with its assortment of independent, local, small business vendors selling their wares in the high exposure setting of the Food & Wine Festival. There are familiar brands and new entries as well, with products ranging from macarons to syrups to soap.
Various indepedent vendor have set up along the Festival Marketplace—some new, and others familiar, like Kayla’s Cake.
The Food
The main feature is the food, of course, and this year, there are 13 booths stretching from Carthay Circle to Paradise Park (with one situated over by Grizzly River Run, by the way). One of the big, noticeable features this year is a greater emphasis in individualizing the booths by turning the signage for each into unique, designed works of art! Imagery celebrating the bountiful and different aspects of architecture in the state, moving parts, lighting incorporation, and fantastic use of color highlight selection of different marquees, and I think they all look great! In addition, some of the booths even have artwork or murals on the side of them, further amplifying the cultural aspect of the event! It’s fun just to walk up and down the Festival Marketplace to appreciate the creativity!
Some of the festival booths have fun murals painted on the side, and all of them have creative signage with a greater emphasis on artistic design. Kudos to the valuing of unique designs!
The Sip & Savor Pass is back again this year. For $56 ($51 with Annual Passholder discount), guests have 8 tabs to use on 8 different items. Use them on the pricier, savory items for greater value. Unfortunately, they do not work for alcoholic beverages, but they’re fine for desserts and non-alcholic drinks (but are less of a value that way). Guests can use them across multiple visits spanning the entire festival if they’d like. The Sip & Savor Pass also works for tapas-sized portions of full sized Food & WIne Festival special meals offered at participating restaurants.
And, as usual now, the Food & Wine Festival allows guests the opportunity to order food from a variety of different booths all from the closest (or least crowded) cashier. Just go to one cast member and list out the locations and items to be ordered, and they’ll print a receipt that will allow you to skip the payment line at the rest of the locations and go straight to the pick-up window. This is great for time saving!
The Sip & Savor Pass is back again for another year. $56 ($51 for Annual Passholders) for 8 tabs.
Here are the different menus for the 13 booths. Also, select restaurants are also offering seasonal menus or items. The Paradise Garden Grill is the biggest example—their entire menu is special for the festival. The snack cart across from Goof’s Sky School also has speciality bites.
Unlike previous years, I’ve actually not had a chance to try an of the foods yet. My quick update run last weekend included a little over an hour to photograph everything in this update and get food photos just to show off what’s offered this year. Thanks to all the random guests who were cool with this rando coming up to them and asking to take pictures of their dishes. Don’t worry, I didn’t give anyone Coronavirus or anything.
There’s a mix of new dishes and returning favorites this year, just like the past few, and in lieu of offering my own favorites (which haven’t been decided yet), I’m going to list Disney Food Blog’s Heather Sievers’ favorites from this year festival, because she actually did sample every item on the menus! Go check out DFB for their review of the event and plenty more DizFood news!
Pabana Cream Puff from One in a Melon (mango, passion fruit, banana mousse on a bed of vanilla bean-pineapple compote)
Brunch Fried Chicken & Waffle Sandwich from Golden Dreams (with mimosa inspired slaw & OJ bubbles)
Monkey Bread from LA Style
Smoked Bacon Barbecue Beef Loco Moco from LA Style (tender beef served on rice with smoked bacon BBQ sauce)
Farmstand Punch from Off the Cob (orange, pineapple & peach juice with grenadine)
Mickey Shaped Caramel Peanut Milk Chocolate Macaron from Off the Cob (tastes like a Snickers bar!)
Carbonara Garlic Mac & Cheese with Bacon from Garlic Kissed
Oikos Greek Yogurt Banoffee Tart from Nuts About Cheese (graham cracker tart shell filled with layers of banana & dulce de leche topped with Greek yogurt, whipped cream, pecan brittle & chocolate crunch)
Fiscalini White Cheddar Lager Soup from Nuts About Cheese
Impossible Cheeseburger Mac & Cheese also from Nuts About Cheese (it’s vegetarian and tastes like an In-N-Out burger!)
Other places like Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta are offering their seasonal menu items too.
Festival Beer Garden
And you can have good food without good booze. The Festival Beer Garden is back over by Goofy’s Sky School with another selection of local and craft beers on tap! You obviously have to deal with a bit of a theme park premium, but for those who are not beer aficionados, this might offer a good opportunity to sample new tastes and flavors!
Entertainment
And finally, once again, the Food & Wine Festival offers a wide assortment of musical acts for the duration of the festival. Performing at the Palisades Stage in the center of Paradise Park (along Paradise Bay) and the Paradise Gardens Bandstand, these artists put on multiple sets across a day and provide a lively diversion from all the feasting guests might otherwise be undertaking!
There are plenty of talented musical acts at this year’s Food & Wine Festival, rotating across the Palisades Stage in the center of Paradise Park and the Paradise Gardens Bandstand.
I caught two artists on Sunday. Tanner Howe mixed in Disney song covers and pop covers that had a mix of pop and sort of country influences. The intimate setting added energy to his enthusiastic set, and his band sounded great behind him!
Tanner Howe provides a bit of a country pop feel to a mix of original songs and Disney covers.
Tina Aldana took the big stage shortly after I caught Tanner Howe. It’s great to see her elevated to the higher capacity area. Like a returning artist at Coachella, she’s been working her way up the Food & Wine Festival circuit, and her presence on the main stage is well deserved. Her high energy, pop covers, powerful vocals, and fun and engaging band provide a dance party for all audience members. And even on a dreary Sunday afternoon, with less guests in attendance than usual, she was still engaging with those watching.
The Tina Aldana Band has graduated to the main stage but still has an energetic vibe and great covers of pop and Disney songs!
That wraps up our 2020 Food & Wine Festival coverage. The event runs through Sunday, April 19th, so there is plenty of time to check it out! The Food & Wine Festival at DCA is a big reason why other parks around town have started implementing their own culinary events, from Knott’s Boysenberry Festival to Universal debuting their new Top Chef Food & Wine Festival this month to Sea World’s foray into this whole beer and wine and food festival business.
There’s plenty of great gourmet to go around, so get out there and get indulging!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
