Day 1, Part 3: Finally Back at Festival of the Arts!

We last left off making our way to Epcot. 

Our first stop, per usual on our first day, was the store at the IG to browse festival merch and pick up the scavenger hunt maps.

I was surprised that they hardly had any festival merch there this time, they only had the spirit jerseys, tumblers, and the passholder shirts.  I had wanted to get the passholder shirt, and was worried they’d be gone since I saw on Facebook they were out of all but extra smalls a few days prior to the trip.  So I was happy when I saw they had all the sizes, however I was also confused since I saw online that the shirts were embroidered, but the ones at this store were not.  I figured that they had run out of all the embroidered ones and just restocked with the cheaper screen print ones, which while not ideal, I still liked the shirt so got it. 

Purchases in hand we finally made our way to the food booth I was most excited about, Pop Eats! 

I have been raving about how good the grilled cheese is there to my mom so I couldn’t wait for her to try it out for herself. 

Now, this day was a dreary rainy cold day, which really helped with crowds to the point that there were basically no lines at the food booths, so we quickly got our grilled cheese, then made our way to the picnic benches in the new grassy area (also empty thanks to the drizzle).  We found a bench that was relatively dry thanks to the semi-cover so settled in to enjoy our food.

The grilled cheese was once again amazing!  I love love love this dish!

Once I finished my grilled cheese, I left mom at the table and ran over to the Craftsman’s Courtyard where I picked up the Beef Wellington, the Mussels, and the Nitro Oatmeal Stout.

Now I had high hopes for the beef wellington, I had the previous version at this festival before and loved it, and this new version also looked good.

Well, sadly I wasn’t a huge fan of it.  The croissant was just too much and didn’t meld well with the other flavors on the plate.  The beef was good and the sauce and mushrooms were good, but it was so overpowered by that massive croissant.  I ended up just eating the beef and sauce and leaving most of the croissant. 

The beer I got on the other hand was delicious!

My mom really enjoyed the mussels, but they were very messy to eat.

After finishing up the food we had a chore to take care of.  This day they released the new passholder magnets, and since the park was dead due to the icky weather, I figured this would be a great day to pick them up, so we made our way over to Creations.

Sure enough, we got there and saw there was basically no line for magnet pick-up, so we went and got them.  Happy we finally got passholder magnets!

After grabbing the magnets we decided to do some shopping since we were in the store already.

Next up:  Why Do We Keep Confusing Everyone at Disney??