EPCOT 2009 Food & Wine Festival By The Numbers

Plenty of positive reports have been pouring in from the 14th annual Epcot International Food & Wine Festival where Walt Disney World guests can sip, taste and enjoy live entertainment all day long from Sept. 25-Nov. 8. But it’s hard to understand the scale of the event without actually being there. Disney just released a few numbers that might help.

Here are a few facts about the 14th annual event:

• More than 300 national and international wines
• More than 76 kinds of international foods, each appetizer-sized portion priced $2-$7
• More than 160 of America’s most celebrated chefs and Walt Disney World chefs
• 405 wine and beer seminars
• More than 1,200 fireworks rockets exploding each night over World Showcase Lagoon in “IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth” grand finale to the festival
• 135 Eat to the Beat! concerts performed
• 33,000 bottles of wine and champagne
• 1.2 million hors d’oeuvre plates
• 2.1 million Vanity Fair napkins
• 750,000 beer cups
• 690,000 sumptuous samplings
• 600,000 forks
• 338,000 wine glasses
• 100,000 miniature desserts including crème brûlée, traditional apple strudel, Grand Marnier parfait with Orange Coulis and warm chocolate lava cake with Bailey’s ganache
• 3,000 gallons of soup, including cheddar cheese soup (Montreal marketplace), chicken and coconut soup with mushrooms, lemongrass and ginger (Bangkok, Thailand marketplace) and Mealie soup with crabmeat and chili oil (Capetown, South Africa marketplace)

The six-week outdoor festival at Disney’s Epcot theme park serves up authentic cuisine, wine, entertainment and cultures of more than 25 international regions. Exotic marketplaces from Rio de Janiero to Shanghai offer exciting taste treats. The festival is the largest food and wine event of its kind in the world, beginning at the Festival Welcome Center in the Wonders of Life pavilion and fanning around the promenade encircling World Showcase Lagoon.