Month: August 2017

Several weeks ago, we announced the end of the Sparkling Dessert Party at Epcot, replaced just a short while ago by the new Frozen Ever After Dessert Party. The event is described by Disney as follows:

Regardless of weather, event check-in is held just outside of the attraction.

Just off to the left of the attraction entrance, you’ll find the check-in spot. If weather is bad, this is also where you will head to enter the Norway lounge where drinks and desserts will be. Otherwise, you’ll head over to the space towards the front of World Showcase.

Once upstairs, we checked in to receive our assigned seats and are then lead to our shared table.

The podium had menus for both food and drink.

Tables are broken up by number and are lightly themed with Frozen character lanterns. Guests receive special glasses to wear during the fireworks that turns bursts of light into snowflakes. This is especially fun for the kids, also any 3-something Disney bloggers that may be in your party.

I was pretty excited to attend inside of the lounge as it is a fairly pleasant atmosphere. Sure, as a fan of EPCOT Center, I love these musty old lounges, but I think it fits this party quite well.

The dessert spread is pretty adorable and everything is themed well enough.

The blue velvet cupcakes certainly worked better as snowflakes rather than being associated with gangsters, as they were at our Great Movie Ride event…

The prescreens of fruit wasn’t odd, but the fondue area left me scratching my head a bit.

While the Star Wars and Jingle Bell, Jingle Bam Dessert Parties both have warm, non-dessert food, it didn’t feel as out of place as the bread and broccoli here. I’m not really complaining because it was fine, but most guests are probably ready for dessert at the dessert parties.

I probably could have spent the night at this pudding station and been quite happy with what I had paid to attend this. Elsa’s warm cottage pudding with salted caramel glaze is very good, but Olaf’s warm double-chocolate s’mores pudding cake steals the show, especially with a scoop of ice cream.

The not-advertised frozen caramel corn seemed fun, but wasn’t all that exciting to eat. I was ready to write this off until we had a similar offering at our Great Movie Ride event and it was ten times better there. Perhaps we just had a bad batch at Norway, but on the off-chance it might be as good as it was on August 11th at GMR, give this a try.

A selection of non-alcoholic drinks are available as well.

Here’s a closer look at some of the desserts:

The bar is capable of making 3 specialty beverages, but they also have a large selection of beer and wine.

The non-alcoholic drink station has two specialty offerings as well. They were both pretty enjoyable.

The advertised “melted snow” was nowhere to be found, but we tried all of the other specialty drinks.

The Pina Colada was good, although I always find it weird when this isn’t a frozen drink.

The margarita was fine as well, nothing special though.

The Sangria was way too sweet.

The desserts were pretty fantastic overall. Here’s a breakdown:

Must Have:

• Olaf’s warm double-chocolate s’mores pudding cake (with the hand-dipped vanilla bean ice cream)
• Elsa’s warm cottage pudding with salted caramel glaze (with the hand-dipped vanilla bean ice cream)
• Wandering Oaken’s éclairons
• Anna’s blue velvet cupcakes

“It’s Fine”:

• Hans’ key lime tarts with red glitter glaze
• Living Rock crispy bonbons
• Grand Pabbie’s winter-spiced snack mix
• Sven’s fresh fruit and berries
• Nitros frozen caramel corn

Don’t Bother:

• Kristoff’s no-sugar-added lemon curd with blueberry
• Duke of Weselton’s cheese fondue served with country bread cubes, broccoli and grilled flatbread

I would come back just for the chocolate s’mores pudding cake…

I’d still give the popcorn another shot…

Obviously, the entire event takes place outside if the weather is nice, but in this case, we were then whisked outside to our private viewing space for IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth.

The viewing area was big enough and not overcrowded, and offered a pretty good view of the show. This area is located just to the left of the FastPass viewing area, in front of the small gift shop that flanks that side.

After the show, we were held for a few minutes while guests were leaving the park, and then it was on to Frozen Ever After.

We followed the guides past Mexico and into Norway, to the entrance of the attraction.

Once inside, we found that the standby queue had already been emptied for the night. I expected we would wait a few moments to board just because of the size of our group, but we literally never stopped moving once we entered the building and were on the ride in under a minute. I was very impressed.

I’d love to complain that this is another money grab event and that it is wildly overpriced and that no one should do it, but the Frozen Ever After Dessert Party doesn’t necessarily feel like a waste of time. The food lineup was very good, the drinks were solid, the view of IllumiNations was enjoyable, and the wait to ride Frozen Ever After was nonexistent, which in the end, is the entire point of this thing. If you can get a FastPass for Frozen Ever After, you really don’t need to do this, but if you want to enjoy bottomless desserts and drinks for a bit, watch IllumiNations without fighting a crowd, and don’t wait to wait to ride this, then the Frozen Ever After Dessert Party is a no-brainer. Families who are looking for more Frozen stuff to do should absolutely attend this, and if you really want the perks I listed above, you should as well, but otherwise, this isn’t something any other guest should go out of their way to do. That being said, there’s more than enough of the aforementioned families and guests to fill this event every night, and that’s why the Frozen Ever After Dessert Party is still pretty hard to find availability for.

The Frozen Ever After Dessert Party at Epcot is a solid upgrade over the Sparkling Dessert Party that opens the event up to more guests and makes seeing IllumiNations and Frozen Ever After a breeze. Oh, and did I mention the chocolate s’mores pudding cake?

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