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Welcome to the disneygeek.com Geek Speaks section. In this section I will post my comments on trips to the parks or other Disney related events.

2/28/25 - Disneyland Resort - Food & Wine Festival Opening Day

Hello everyone,

Friday marked the opening day for the Food & Wine Festival which meant higher than normal crowds in DCA. Disneyland felt about average. The weather turned cooler topping out around 70 vs early in the week that had temps in the 80s.

Thoughts and Observations:

  • I thought I was in for a long parking wait as I drove along Disneyland Drive and neared the parking entrance. The sign was telling people it was jammed and to go to Toy Story. It did not seem busy so I ignored the sign and was met with no wait at the toll both nor to reach a floor. I had bad timing though and was a handful of spots from the far corner of the structure.
  • At the Mickey and Friends Tram Stop the billboards are generic still, no Food & Wine Festival. There was no Lunar New Year this year either.
  • Thought it was interesting the two tram stops closest to World of Disney were blocked off and not in use. I walked by a few times and the same was true each time, even in the evening.
  • The work on the new turnstiles has moved on to the next set at Disney California Adventure and across the way at Disneyland the walls were all gone for the time being. The new ones are still operating in the manual mode with cast members using hand scanners and not the new system.
  • Since my last visit a Red Car has been permanently parked as a photo op at that Buena Vista Street station. It is a sad reminder of what was once there. Maybe someday someone will find the budget to bring them back to operation.. or will it just be a permanent memorial like the Keel Boats at Disneyland?
  • Soarin' Over California returned for the Food & Wine Festival again. Unfortunately the attraction was down when I stopped by. I kept checking and it was down for hours. I saw someone post over 5 hours. Once it did reopen the stand by wait shot to over 3 hours with the back log of Lightning Lane returning guests. Interesting to note the attraction is not showing up on the map view of park with wait times. You have to look at text to find it. On my first pass by cast members were passing out Cuties to mark the reopening.
  • Today was the opening day of the 2025 Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival. I did not see anything special on the schedule to mark the occasion, it seemed to be just a regular festival day. As I walked the performance corridor it was busy as you would expect all afternoon with queues spilling out into the walkway to order food. The pickup queues appeared to be much short and moving quickly at most locations. This year there seemed to be more carts with external vendors along the corridor.
  • I was disappointed with the entertainment offerings today. There are two live bands, one on a small/ground level Palisades Stage and one on the bandstand. Both were returning acts and neither were high on my interest list. I still find it awkward at best the way the Palisades Stage is set up. Anyone know why the large/main stage is not used anymore for festivals? The Jammin' Chefs returned and the show is the same as recent years. The Backlot stage had nothing scheduled today. There were a trio of presentations on the Sonoma Terrace scheduled. The offerings seemed on par with recent years but less than years ago. I am not a Foodie but I always enjoyed seeing the demonstrations and seminars throughout the festival. In recent years this has shifted to Saturday and Sundays only so I have seen many unfortunately.
  • Along Hollywood Blvd the window display now honors Imagineer Lanny Smoot. When I walked by the glare was not good so I could not get pictures of many of the items and plan to stop by another time when you can see better.
  • Outside of Stage 12 in the far corner of Hollywood Land there is a photo op set up for the Oscars which will be broadcast on ABC. This seemed a bit out of the way and there was no one paying attention to when I walked by. It seems that something like this should make it onto the app or a social media platform to let guests know it exists.
  • I walked through Avengers Campus a couple of times and spotted Iron Man out once and no other characters.
  • In Cars Land Red's Community Garden entrance was uncovered and appears complete. The area looks nice and provides some much needed seating. I wish they could have figured out a way to save the one road sign, maybe it will re-appear elsewhere.
  • I took a walk through Downtown Disney mid afternoon to see what was going on. Tortilla Jo's demolition has started. You can see into the building and some more of the exterior elements are gone. Further along the Monorail project looks to be wrapping up. The new entrance seems to match the style of the lawn area, but the bulk of the station still looks the same. Earl of Sandwich appears to be stalled. There is no visible progress again. The same still is visible as previous visits. The former ESPN building work is moving along but no indication of what is coming yet.
  • Disneyland is in between seasons with no events going on. There is no special entertainment or festivities. Season of the Force is next up the end of the month.
  • Madam Leotas Somewhere Beyond shop project looks to be complete. There is now a drain around the perimeter of the entrance area to funnel water away from the store.
  • Almost every day at sunset you can see a large number of birds circling around the Town Square area of Disneyland. This evening we were waiting for the Dapper Dans as they were doing their daily routine. It is always interesting to hear people's reactions as they pass through the area. I do find it interesting the number of kids that reference the Birds or Hitchcock. Adults you expect that but there seems to be a number of kids that know the reference too.
  • The Dapper Dans put on an entertaining set as usual. I would like to see them have some more freedom with the script though. They drew a good size crowd this evening.
  • Walking through Downtown Disney after 7pm it felt busy as you would expect for a Friday night. It is still a bit disappointing to walk through and see no live entertainment. The only performances are in the Lawn area (plus the Jazz Kitchen and Splitsville but those are for diners there). I always enjoyed seeing the variety of acts that were out as you passed through.
  • As we were leaving today I was surprised to find almost no one entering at security at Downtown Disney nor the parking structure. The last handful of visits the lines to enter had been extremely long.

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Disney Related Press Releases

Be sure to check out the picture update that goes with this Geekspeak column, it can be found in our Disneyland Resort Pictorial Update section

Trip logs and mileage reports are in the Park Miles section.

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