Dining and Event News

The Busch Gardens Food & Wine Festival in Tampa will feature some great bands for their 2024 concert series — which will take place on Saturdays and Sundays only. The concerts start at either 6:00pm or 7:00pm — so please be sure to check the schedule for the group you want to see. There's usually also a smaller stage closer to the food booth trail — that features local live music acts during the festival. Concerts are included with daily admission to the park but ... there is a VIP ... ( read more ... )

The 2024 Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival takes place from Wednesday, February 28th, 2024 and runs through Monday, May 27th, 2024. Much like the Food & Wine Festival that's held in the fall, the Flower & Garden Festival features over 20 "Outdoor Kitchens" that are set up in and around the theme park. Most of the locations are open from 11:00am until park close. While the Flower & Garden event is included with park admission — food and beverage items are not — and ... ( read more ... )

There's one more festival update to add to the site – this time, it's a refresh of an old festival favorite... Bands, Brew, and BBQ is replacing the SeaWorld Craft Beer Festival this fall.  There's not really much in the way of new information to go over right now — but in the past, Bands, Brew, and BBQ had included — some bands, beer and… well, BBQ. The interesting thing (to me anyway) is that the Craft Beer Festival (more or less) replaced Bands, Brew, and BBQ around six ... ( read more ... )

I have another festival update to post about, and this one is a little surprising... and a little not surprising — all at the same time. It looks like Busch Gardens is replacing the popular Busch Gardens Bier Fest with a brand new festival called "Bourbon and BBQ at Busch Gardens, Tampa". The new festival starts just after the Fourth of July in 2024 and covers a seven week span, taking place on Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays only. Those dates almost exactly overlap when "Bier Fest" was held, and ... ( read more ... )

At first glance, this might seem like a duplicate page for the Seven Seas Food Festival, but it's not. When it comes to food festivals, I'm really interested in the food first — and then tend to drink whatever is around, close to the food. The full "food & beverage" list for Seven Seas is really long... so I usually put together this "food only" page — to help me figure out what I want to try and where it is on the map. Hopefully, it's useful to someone else out there too! I've kept ... ( read more ... )

There's brand new Red, White, & Brews event on the calendar at Busch Gardens, Tampa this year — so I'm adding it to the Festivals & Events list here at Mealtrip.com. While it may be a little too early to "officially" speculate if this new event is going to have a food component — I'm guessing that it will. Since the word "Brews" is in the title of the festival, beer will most probably be one of the featured components. Because you really shouldn't be walking around drinking too ... ( read more ... )

The 2024 Seven Seas Food Festival at SeaWorld, Orlando is taking place on (select) Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from February 2nd through May 19th, 2024. The food booths are said to open at 11:00am on all festival days (although in years past, we've noticed that on some Thursdays and Fridays — the booths didn't open until 2:00pm). The popular Sampler Lanyards are back for 2024! There's 10 and 15 sample options this year (along with an 18 sample option for annual passholders), and ... ( read more ... )

This colorful Bulging Eye Chicken Passholder Magnet will be available starting January 29th, 2024 at Epcot, and will be available until February 23rd, 2024 (or until supplies run out). The Bulging Eye Chicken's name is Hehei, an accident-prone rooster from the beloved Disney classic animated feature, Moana… who is dependent on, and yet contributes to the social fabric of the Motunui community. (You have no idea how hard it was for me to write that previous sentence.)Each Annual Passholder can get ... ( read more ... )