DCA FOOD & WINE 2018 - SIP AND SAVOR PASS REVIEW
Disney California Adventure Food and Wine Festival 2018.
This was our first time attending the DCA Food and Wine Festival. We had the opportunity to attend the Walt Disney World Food and Wine Festival 2017, also for the first time so that is our only comparison.
First off, the DCA Food and Wine offers a wide variety of foods and beverages, some alcoholic and some not. The prices range from $4.50 - $16.00 depending upon the item. Drinks with alcohol or "flights" of wine or beer were the most expensive, while single items such as the chocolate whoopie pie (shown below) was only $4.50 each.
For annual pass holders, they offered a "Sip and Savor" deal. For $45.00 per person, you could purchase a Sip and Savor pass which included a lanyard, a card with eight removable tabs that you could break off and exchange for 1 non-alcoholic, single item. When you redeemed one of the tabs, you also received a special "AP" button, each booth had a different color button.
Marzz (#marzztravelsdisney) and I each purchased the Sip and Savor pass and recorded our purchases to see how we fared throughout the festival. Here are our results.
We utilized our Sip and Savor pass over 5 days. For the two of us, it cost $90 for both passes and between us, had we purchased the 16 items with cash, we would have spent $87.50 total. This means we over paid by $2.50, or $1.25 each.
In my opinion that isn't bad considering we did get the lanyards and buttons as keepsakes, the tabs made it very easy to redeem without worrying about the cost of each item. For $1.25, it was well worth "over paying" to take part in this experience. We felt that the food was overall very good, with the exception of the chicken wings (shown below), they were bland and certainly would not have been worth the listed price of $7.50.
Just some fun facts, we only redeemed our tabs after 4:00PM with one exception; on March 10th we had the jalapeno mac and cheese at 12:49PM. This was not planned, it just so happens we ended up attending the Food and Wine area in the afternoon and evening times. We did have the same cast member serve us at two different booths on different days. Keane was his name, and he first served us on March 2nd at 8:50PM, a bread bowl with cheddar cheese lager soup. Then again he served us on March 12th at 4:19PM, a helping of fried artichoke hearts.
We definitely recommend this event to anyone looking to enjoy some food and drinks. We understand that if you had not planned on attending this event and were just at DCA by chance during this time, that you may be less likely to partake due to the added cost. We suggest skipping the regular park food for this food as we believe it to be better.
As for the Sip and Savor pass, despite coming up $1.25 short, we highly recommend it. It may sound silly but we enjoyed collecting the buttons (shown below) as well as the feeling of getting something extra for having the annual passes. To us, taking advantage of experiences or perks from the annual pass makes the annual passes worth having.
Cheers!
Nate
