37: Hosts Ariel and Stefanie embark on a journey through Disney’s culinary delights, from the treats at the Food and Wine Festival at California Adventure, unexpected finds at Disney Channel Nite, to the surprising food merchandise. They navigate the rising prices, sustainability efforts, and the art of indulging at Disney parks. This episode invites listeners to a broader conversation on food and fandom.

Summary of HPOE37

00:11 – 00:17
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Happiest Pod On Earth. I’m Stef. I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my

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students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

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And I’m Ariel, a licensed therapist who uses clients’ passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental illness.

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Here at Happiest Pod, we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens.

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Why? Because we’re more than just Stefanie, and we expect more from the mediums we consume. Speaking of consuming, what are

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we discussing today, Steph?

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What a perfect word to describe what we are talking about today. We are talking about food, specifically Disney food, obviously.

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But I feel like this is a long time coming. We have not touched upon this. Despite the fact that we’ve done multiple panels

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at Comic Con about food and its impact culturally, socially, mentally, physically, I mean, everything. Food is life. Right?

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That’s the saying. Yes.

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And then we did a presentation at Geek Therapy’s tags on using food in the classroom and using food in the therapy and talking

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about ways to address individuals who might have various forms of eating disorders or individuals who want to embrace the

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culture of their food, but they don’t know how.

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Mhmm. Food itself has many different dimensions. I mean, people love it. They make livings around it. We love to consume it.

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It brings people together. I mean, as you said, I talked about how food in the classroom and food when it comes to translating

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what it means for kids is so important as they grow and develop, and their relationship with food too. So I think it is fitting

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as we are coming into the spring season now here in California, and specifically

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in in as, like, something to drive people to get to the parks, which has definitely worked on me. Yes. Okay. So starting with

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the park specifically, right now we are during the middle or just starting food and wine festival, which I don’t think we’ve

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talked about on the show before. Correct?

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No. We haven’t. We’ve done many different events that are very similar to Food and Wine, but correct me if I’m wrong, everyone

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out there, and, you know, my to my cohost as well. I feel like food and wine festival was kind of like the genesis of people

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coming to the park specifically to have specialty foods, specialty wine and beverage, especially since California Adventure

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in itself. I think going with the theme of California and how we are, what, the largest in the United States of America, and

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that we have such a large culinary scene. We have many celebrity chefs who live out here and make a living out here. They

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really wanted to capitalize that with the California theme. So, you know, you see there’s a winery in the middle of the park.

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You can drink alcohol in the park. There’s specialty restaurants like the Trattoria, which is Italian inspired. You have different

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areas of the park where you can get different sorts of regional foods that you wouldn’t otherwise find at Disneyland.

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And this year’s theme is it’s avocado time, avocado shaped like clock. Interestingly, though, there are not many avocado items

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or that that’s not the main ingredient in most of the dishes, at least what we saw on the menu and what we tried. I don’t

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remember, like, avocado being so featured, and yet that is the theme and that is the merchandise. Which yeah.

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I think this is the first time they had a hard theme for Food and Wine Festival. Normally, it’s just, here, come try regional

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foods. It’s happening. And for all of you who don’t know about the Food food and wine festival, basically, every single year,

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they line the main veranda, the main street of California Adventure Park. They line them up with these little booths that

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you can purchase small kind of tapas like items, very small. You can share them if you want. But, yeah, the food and wine

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festival gets you certain dishes that you can use the little tabs to redeem. It does exclude alcohol, and it does exclude

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some other dishes that you would have to go to the restaurant to get. So it’s not just the little booths that have themed

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items, but also the restaurants that already serve things like in San Fransokyo or the plaza in the back, the garden plaza,

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I think, but not necessarily with the little sip and saver pests. A lot of rules.

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Yeah. Which I think is a a little the marketing, is I feel like this year, it’s expanded even more in more tiny booths. I

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think last year, I don’t remember as many booths. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I just feel like it it’s grown in the

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amount of options. It’s that you don’t have to go up to the booth to order your, like, each individual item. You can just

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find 1 booth, order them all there, take your tickets, and go retrieve them, which is such a time saver. Because when I f...