Food and Wine Trip II 2010, Robert Irvine Meet up
Typically we go to Disney for the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival in mid October or later so we had planned to go the weekend of the 22nd-24th. There was a little logic behind this particular weekend because we had been on both Halloween and Columbus day weekends and both seemed to have heavier than usual crowds, so we booked the weekend in between way back in December. We’ve always had mediocre luck in the weekend we chose because someone cool had either JUST been there and left before we got there, or were coming in the day we left, so we always seemed to miss the cool celebrity chefs of bands playing the Eat to the Beat concert series. We usually book far out like this so well before Disney has booked anyone to come but we’ve tried to wait until later to see who was coming but then we had a harder time getting the resort we wanted for that weekend. So we finally decided “this is what we’re doing and when we’re doing it and we’ll have fun regardless.” This was also planned well in advance of even knowing about #epicoctober2010 since that trip was booked just 3 weeks or so out so we had assumed this would be our only Food and Wine trip.The next part of the story involves recalling that we had met Food Network’s Robert Irvine, star of Dinner:Impossible, in 2007 at the Food and Wine Festival and discovered we lived about 45 minutes form each other near Savannah, GA so sometime back in June of this year I posted a link on his Facebook page to the post here on the site with the picture from that trip with him and that he probably didn’t remember me but that we were fans and appreciated the few moments he spent talking to us, and withing an hour he wrote back and said that he absolutely remembered us, and that he was traveling at the moment shooting a new show called Worst Cooks, but that when he was back in town that we should come eat at his restaurant on Hilton Head Island, SC. Unfortunately our schedules never matched up and we never got over there. So sometime right after #epicoctober2010 I wrote on his Facebook page again asking if anyone knew when he would be in Disney for the Food and Wine Festival. It had been put out that he would be there but not when, the official Disney schedule that normally covers the whole festival had been pared down to one week at a time, and someone wrote back in a few moments that he would be there the 22nd-24th, the same weekend I had booked to go 10+ months prior. My wife then wrote “cool, we’ll be there that weekend” and within moments Robert himself wrote back saying that we needed to meet up. Not too long after that another fan wrote saying she would be there as well and that we should get together for drinks and Robert came right back saying “great, who’s buying?” After a few more posts between us all it was decided that there were a few people that would be there that weekend and Robert would meet with us somewhere for drinks after he was done for the day, as his schedule permitted and that we should put something together, he threw out Rose and Crown as a possible meeting place.
Knowing Disney as I do, my first thought was that on a Friday night during the Food and Wine Festival, the Rose and Crown would be packed already and if Chef Robert Irvine walked in, he would be mobbed. I also selfishly thought that our little group that was forming would hopefully stay small so he wouldn’t be mobbed and he would be inclined to spend more time with us. SO I wanted somewhere close to EPCOT since I knew that’s where he would be most of the time so my first thought was the lounge in the lobby at the Yacht Club, Compass & Ale. Afterward I remembered it was pretty open to the lobby and not very large and fortunately recalled the Crews Cup Lounge next to the Yachtsman Steakhouse which sometimes serves as a waiting area overflow for the restaurant but was a lot more private and larger that Compass and Ale. So I called Disney to confirm things though there was no “official” reservation, Crews Cup doesn’t take reservations, made the Facebook Event, and invited everyone on Robert’s Facebook page thinking “he only has a few thousand fans at the time, what are the chances many will be in Disney or live close by.” Also having met a few of the Disney bloggers/tweeters, I invited a few of them but asked that they not publicize it too much to keep a mob from showing up and I asked them not to turn it into an interview session, the more comfortable we made him the better off we would all be. But I wanted to have a few of them there to document it on their sites, Disney freaks love that kind of stuff, and have become good friends with many of them and thought it would be a great meeting for us all. Shew, I think that’s all of the back story, on to the trip!
So we arrived that Friday at our usual pre-lunch time and met Amanda Tinney of DisneyEveryDay.com at our resort, Bay Lake Towers, we rode the monorail to EPCOT together. Since we had spent a lot of time together just a few weeks before at Food & Wine, we knew a few places we wanted to hit that we had tried and liked, and a few other places we missed but wanted to try. Purple Haze beer at the “15 Beers for 15 Years” booth celebrating 15 years of the Festival. Puerto Rico, mussels from Belgium, Rose & Crown, probably a few more. By then it was after 4:00 and we needed to go freshen up and get ready to meet Chef Irvine, and we had ridden the monorail so we wanted to go get our car to go to the Yacht Club.
We got back to the Yacht Club and found a parking place, something to remember, it’s not always easy because they have weddings there. We were supposed to meet at 6:00 so we got there a little early and checked out the Crews Cup. Fortunately they weren’t busy so we got a bunch of tables on one side when you first walk in and shoved them all together and staked our claim. I could talk for paragraphs about waiting but basically Robert was held up shooting stuff for the Mouse, we had communication with his handler for the weekend who said he would do his best to get there but that he had another engagement at 8:30 so if it was too close to that our little Facebook gathering would miss out. By now there were about 14 of us there or so, but by 7:20 no one had left when the handler called and said they were on the way, the cheer sounded like survivors stranded on an island being spotted by a passing plane.
I had been checking the front door of the Yacht Club frequently for the past 90 minutes because I didn’t want him hijacked or delayed so upon hearing that he was coming I went back and as I walked across the lobby in they walked. I re-introduced myself and he caught my name and shook my hand and I turned around and led them back to the Crews Cup. Everyone jumped up excited to see him and he greeted everyone and happily posed for a picture with everyone and signed something. Somewhere in between I asked him what he wanted to drink and he said a Heineken so I went to the bar and bought him a beer. I thought surely that would be the end of it all but sure enough, he walked to the middle of our table and pulled out a chair and had a seat, you would have thought we were playing musical chairs and the music went off, everyone quickly grabbed a seat. He immediately apologized and everyone quickly dismissed it, like he owed us anything, and then told us a few stories about the shows, about shooting Worst Cooks and a new show called Restaurant Impossible which sounds a lot like Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, but Robert said even though the premises are similar he assured us it’s different. There were a few more stories and he quietly relayed a little bit of inside info that he would be doing prep work for a ticketed event the next afternoon but would be at the Rose & Crown 3:00. Then he turned around and ordered us all a tequila shot. When the shots arrived he asked the other lady from Facebook and me to give a toast and then he finished the toast. By now it was getting close to 8:30 so he stood up and apologized again, really chef? Out the door he went. Everyone sat there still kind of amazed that what happened, had actually happened. We’d had a long day so we all split after that and Kriss and I went back to the room for the night.
Saturday Kriss and I went to Hollywood Studios, a place you need to get to for Rope Drop or thereafter to make sure you can hit the big rides like Tower of Terror, Rockin’ Rollercoaster, and the new Toy Story Mania. Then we hit Animal Kingdom for some Expedition Everest and Dinosaur. This is all important info people because Kriss and I NEVER get to ride these rides together, there is always a kid there that can’t/won’t ride so we end up doing baby swap, so we enjoyed doing the thrill rides together. Next we debated grabbing lunch there or going to EPCOT so we ended up at the Animal Kingdom Rainforest Cafe, we wanted to actually sit down and eat before hitting Food and Wine again and knew this was easier without reservations, then we headed to EPCOT.
We hit a few booths and made our way to Rose and Crown around 2:30 and staked out a place that I was sure would be where Robert would go to. Of course he was behind again but around 3:45 he showed up with his handler and a few other people and walked right to where we were without noticing me, turned around and saw us and and yelled “HEY KRISS!” Amazingly none of the people from the night before showed up. Around the left side of the bar at Rose and Crown there is a sort of nook that is hidden from the main part of the bar which is why I assumed that’s where he would go to and I was right. A few people recognized him and came over and posed for pics and then he was left alone. He asked his Disney handler about eating so they walked through the gate that divides the bar from the restaurant, there was hardly no one in the restaurant, so they sat down and ordered food. After the previous night we were more than content with the time he had given us but unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of Kriss and I with Robert so I asked to get a picture, set up my camera and handed it to the Disney handler, posed, and we thanked him again for meeting us both times and we headed out, we had groupied enough for one weekend.
We hit a few more booths but again wanted to sit down and eat so we walked to Italy to see if we could get into the new Via Napoli for some pizza. Inside was full so they sat us outside but the weather was amazing so it was a great time sitting outside ad enjoying our margherita pizza, wine, and to finish it off, tiramisu, one of our favorite desserts of all. We really had no plans so we wanted to take it easy and remembered Night Ranger was playing the Eat to the Beat show that night so we walked over and saw them. Like I mentioned before, we usually don’t get to see the acts we would prefer to see due to scheduling, so we were again excited to see one of the big bands of the 80′s that we both loved. They played an almost entirely acoustic set of all of their big songs. After a quick stop at Test Track to use our fastpasses from earlier we headed back to Bay Lake Towers.
It was only 8:30 and after the relaxing afternoon we’d had, we thought we’d do the quad and hit Magic Kingdom, thats it, 4 parks in one day, BAM! We did a few rides, saw Main Street Electrical Parade, rode Jungle Cruise which we now always save until night and then saw my favorite fireworks, Wishes. We didn’t get a chance to see it a few weeks prior with everything else we were doing and back in the summer they weren’t doing Wishes at all. We’d had a long day by the end though so we walked back to the Contemporary and went to bed.
Somewhere along the previous day I’d tweeted some other local friends we’d met a few weeks back at #epicoctober2010, John and Sarah, to see if they could come at all but they were busy the whole weekend until Sunday so we decided to duplicate our previous breakfast at Whispering Canyon, they had sat at our table even. I had been craving the bbq eggs benedict I’d had that day as well so it was a double win. I’d assumed we would have breakfast and then head on back to Savannah but we were having a great time with our waiter Rafe and somehow the decision was made that we’d all go to Downtown Disney. I really had a great time with them and wish we’d been able to spend more time together but I knew we had a long drive ahead. Unfortunately what I didn’t know was that there was a wreck on I4 northbound so we ended up on an outback trek through central Florida winding our way through swamps until we worked our way back to the interstate and bee lined it home over an hour behind schedule, thank goodness for gps.
You can read a few of my Disney Blogger friend’s posts on the meeting with Chef Robert Irvine;
Amanda Tinney’s review at DisneyEveryDay.com
Suzannah DiMarzio’s review at Zanaland.com
Chef BigFatPand’s review at DisneyFoodBlog.com
Leigh Caldwell’s review at ThemeParkMom.com
John Frost’s post about not being there at TheDisneyBlog.com (sorry John we should meet sometime)
