For our final Disney Dinner of the summer, I didn’t use any of my cookbooks…instead I turned to the internet, where I first found a copycat recipe for violet lemonade like they serve at the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival, something we were able to attend on our trip. The drink had a lovely floral quality, and was such a pretty color!
The Disney Parks Blog had a recipe for Totchos as served at Woody’s Lunch Box in Toy Story Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The recipe included a simple, thick chili as a topper, and while it wasn’t my famous three-meat chili, it is perfect for things like totchos, hot dogs, and baked potatoes, so I’ll probably make it again!
For dessert, we had classic but simple Mickey Mouse cupcakes with Oreo ears! I know I saw a picture of this idea online somewhere, but it’s not like you need a recipe to make it happen.
While we’ll continue making recipes from our Disney cookbooks (we’re already looking forward to getting The Official Disney Parks Cookbook, a companion volume to Delicious Disney, when it comes out next year!), there was something really special about this summer of Disney Dinners that I’m really going to miss!
I didn’t realize until fairly close to the beginning of our trip that we were going to be at EPCOT for the tail end of the International Flower and Garden Festival…I’m so glad we were there! In addition to beautiful flowers, there were topiaries everywhere in the park. Most of them were of Disney characters, but there were a few others, as well.
The festival takes place EPCOT, but the Magic Kingdom had topiaries of the world’s most famous mouse couple out front, as well!
EPCOT has festivals of different types running pretty much year-round, and I think this was a particularly fun one to attend!
We thought this day would never come! We finally made it to Disney World and EPCOT (this would be the last and only time before my final park entrance that I didn’t get flagged by the metal detector)!!!
The had a really cool camera set up at the front of the park that took a very unique photo of the Fab Five:
My family tells me I ran to hug Minnie Mouse…I thought I was walking at a perfectly normal speed. I don’t know what actually happened, but I will say that I was not expecting to be so excited to meet Minnie…it was a total thrill!
After going on the Frozen ride in Norway we went on the new Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind roller coaster (our song was “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”). I was not prepared for how, um, intense the ride would be, and I can’t say that I’d go on it again. I’m glad I got to experience it with my family, though, and I’m really happy they all loved it (except for maybe Chickadee, who was about as thrilled as I was).
We then made our way back to the World Showcase, which is definitely my favorite part of EPCOT.
We tried to experience something special in each country. I was surprised to discover that one of my very favorite things was the Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros in Mexico. It was such a chill, fun boat ride, and it inspired us to watch The Three Caballeros pretty much as soon as we got home!
We saw a mime in Italy:
We didn’t eat a full meal at EPCOT, but we sampled foods in several different countries…here’s a look at a few of of the things we tried: Kringla in Norway, a Mickey Mouse shaped pretzel in America, and a niçoise sandwich in France (not pictured: pretzel bread with ham and cheese in Germany, chicken potstickers in China, and fish and chips in England):
This may be as close to Germany as I get!
There was quite a bit of rain while we traveling the world (although we did get a chance to dry off a bit while we waited to ride Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure), so we were still pretty soggy for the rest of our visit. We enjoyed walking around the rest of the park, anyway, and took in the sights inside and out:
The geodesic sphere that houses Spaceship Earth (which we road before the fireworks show) looked beautiful as the sun was going down:
And stunning reflecting off the water after dark!
The fireworks were amazing…the whole show was choreographed so well, the musical choices were excellent, and the reflections on the water were gorgeous! It was probably the best of the fireworks shows we saw (although it’s hard to compete with the display over the castle at the Magic Kingdom!).
One last look before we left:
Up next: Our most hands-on day at Disney World when we visited Hollywood Studios!
