To start off I’ll say that post doesn’t include any new pressed coins.  Instead this week I was going to go over a recent visit to the Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot that ended with a new pressed penny booklet.  I’m still hoping that one of these years Disney decides to put out a special pressed coin design with the Festival logo which I think would be a fantastic collectible.  But for now let’s take a stroll around the World Showcase.

Epcot has become known for all it’s festivals and they seem to have very few days during the year where there isn’t a festival going on.  The biggest is the Food and Wine in the fall, but the Flower and Garden in the Spring has been getting pretty popular.  The festival for 2018 runs from February 28th through May 28th.

Each year there is usually a passholder giveaway, and for this year they are offering some new magnets.  You do have to show up in person with your passholder card and ID to get your magnet and it’s limited to one magnet per pass.  After picking up our magnets my wife and I headed towards the main area of the festival around World Showcase.  The festival included topiary of your favorite Disney characters, a butterfly tent, more flowers than you can imagine, and my favorite the foods booths.

I’m not sure if it’s because I originally was from Canada or not, but for some reason we always seem to head towards the Canadian Pavilion.  The first food stand we tried out was the Northern Bloom.

The line at this location is always long which is usually a good sign the food is good.  Each stand has usually about 3 food items and 3-4 beverages both with and without alcohol.  I’m not a food critic so I’ll leave the reviews to the professionals but did want to share some pictures of what we sampled.

First up were some Seared Scallops with fresh green beans, butter potatoes, brown butter vinaigrette, and applewood smoked bacon.

We also decided to try the Beef Tenderloin Tips with a mushroom bordelaise sauce and whipped potatoes with garden vegetables.

Just before the UK pavilion we found one of our favorite stuffed bear friends with his favorite hunny pot and balloon.

In front of the France Pavilion was a really cool topiary of Beauty and the Beast.  We  continue on to the next food stand that was in-between France and Morocco called Florida Fresh.

We tried one entrée here and we both thought this was probably our favorite from everything we tried this day.

Above is the Shrimp and Stone Ground Grits with Andouille sausage, sweet corn, tomatoes and cilantro.  We continued our way around the World Showcase and relayed enjoyed the other topiary and food options.

Over near Japan they had the above pictured item called Frushi.  This was as you can probably guess a fruit sushi filled with strawberries and pineapple with coconut rice.

Woody from Toy Story was located right in from of the Smokehouse in the American Pavilion.  The food here was already really good.

Lady and the Tramp in front of the Italy Pavilion.  This is always one of my favorite animated Disney movies.

Then over by the African Marketplace was Rafiki and Simba in their famous pose from the movie.  By this time we had done a lot of walking, a lot of eating and looked at more flowers than I thought possible.  Even thought we are locals and come to the parks on a regular basis I’m still a sucker for the gift shops and this was no different.  On our way out of the park we stopped in at the Mouse Gears store to see if there was anything new.

We did decide to pick up a few items and as we waited in the queue to check out the above caught my eye.  A new pressed coin booklet.  As you can see the price was $11.99 which is pretty pricey for these but the Disney booklets do hold quite a few more coins than the standard booklets found at museums and zoos.

This booklet was really cute and I liked the design on it.  The front cover has the Magic Kingdom with Mickey and Minnie.

Inside there is Hollywood Studios with Goofy and Pluto, and Epcot with Donald and Figment.

On the back cover was the Animal Kingdom with Daisy duck.  I will admit that I don’t actually use these booklets to store my pressed coins in, but am still a sucker for anything pressed coin related.  I have quite the collection of these types of booklets and picked this one up as well to add to that collection.

The Flower and Garden festival is really fantastic and seemed to set it up a bit this year.   The beautiful colors of the flowers and the fun of walking around and trying different foods is something we have really come to enjoy.  The festival ends soon on May 28th so if you are in the area be sure to go check it out, or at the very least maybe you just need a new booklet for your pressed pennies.