One of our favorite bloggers, Leigh Caldwell of ThemeParkMom.com, was lucky enough to attend the Orlando International Pow Wow last week, which launched with a party at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom on Sunday evening! She’s put together a little review and shared with us some awesome pics of the delectable goodies available to attendees. Thanks, Leigh!
Have you ever wondered what it’s like inside the Magic Kingdom during one of those “The park will close early for a special event” nights? Now I can say that I know. I attended the International Pow Wow (a travel industry convention) in Orlando last week, and the opening night party was at the Magic Kingdom. I snapped plenty of pictures to try to show you the kinds of food available.
The first thing to note is the first thing I saw – beer! on Main Street U.S.A.! When we walked into the party, we were greeted by servers offering trays of beer and wine right on Main Street. And the usually forbidden alcohol continued to flow after that, with bar set-ups in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, where most of the party was centered.
But enough talk, you guys came here to see food pictures, right? It was quite dark throughout the park, so these aren’t the greatest, but I did my best:
First up was this cup of smoked tomato soup, accompanied by two tiny sandwiches — one smoked salmon, the other prosciutto. The sandwiches were threaded on a skewer.
Shrimp gyros served cone style. I’m allergic to shellfish, so I couldn’t give these a try.
These tiny black pots were set up Pooh-style in Fantasyland.
And what was inside? Mickey mac and cheese with pork belly or beef short ribs, topped with a tiny nugget of corn muffin. This was like an item served at the EPCOT media event in February with guest chef Robert Irvine of “Dinner Impossible.”
This was a meatloaf grinder of sorts, topped with onions and mushrooms. The mushrooms were huge on these sandwiches, and it made it kind of hard to eat.
The vegetarian grinder option, a black bean burger with chipotle ketchup and microgreens. Chefs were preparing these on large, round grills in front of Mrs. Potts Cupboard.
Here’s a view of one of the food stations in Tomorrowland, right in front of the Carousel of Progress. There were fancy set-ups with light effects, everywhere. The Tomorrowland buffets had a “fire and ice” theme.
The quickly-becoming-ubiquitous salad cones. There were a couple of salad cone choices. These were “Sunset Salad” with romaine, raddichio, red beets and red wine vinaigrette. The dressing came in a tiny plastic tube.
Pan-seared scallop over lentils with a pepper sauce. I missed out again because of my food allergies. My husband says this dish might be the best scallop he has ever eaten.
Lamb chop on one of the eerily lit Tomorrowland food stations.
On to dessert: This is a chocolate banana ganache torte, which was quite yummy. I failed to take a picture of the “Cosmopolitan cheesecake push-up,” but I loved it. The push-ups are great stand-up and mingle party foods.
Fresh raspberries and blueberries with sauce in a little tube like the salad dressing above.
Disney did a great job handling the service at this party. There were about 4,000 people there, the best I can tell, and there was rarely a wait to get to a food table or bar.
Thanks, again, Leigh! These photos are so colorful and appetizing — what an exciting opportunity to attend an exclusive event held throughout the Magic Kingdom. I hope you had a great time through the rest of the weekend!
Readers — you can find more of Leigh’s fantastic writing and photographs over at her blog, ThemeParkMom.com!
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Those Cosmopolitan cheesecake push-up look divine! No one does yummy like Disney!
Doesn’t it look great! Speaking from experience, those cheesecake push ups are wonderful, but I’d LOVE to try the one with chocolate!
Very Very Cool! Thanks for sharing. Goes to show you, you cant do Disney without Food.
So cool! It would have been like the Twilight Zone for me, serving alcohol in the MK!
These pictures are awesome!! I was down in Disney May 8-22, and I have a question. Was this event on May 16th? Because I know the Magic Kingdom closed early that day. Also, did this event have a special version of Wishes? We were sitting on our balcony at Bay Lake Tower and we saw fireworks, but it seemed like there were a lot more of them than normal. Thanks!!