Summary of HPOE37

1. Introduction (0:11 ): Stef and Ariel set the stage for a delicious discussion on Disney food, touching on its cultural and social impact.





2. Disney’s Food and Wine Festival (2:03 ): They dive into the Food and Wine Festival at California Adventure, expressing surprise over the lack of avocado-themed dishes despite the event’s theme.





3. Favorite Festival Foods (6:04 ): The hosts share their top picks and experiences from the festival, including standout dishes.





4. Merchandise and Marketing (43:46 ): Discussion shifts to Disney’s strategic merchandising of food-themed products, highlighting the new “Disney Eats” monthly release strategy.





5. Educational and Therapeutic Use of Food (32:13 ): They explore how food can be integrated into educational settings and therapy to foster learning, healing, and a deeper understanding of cultural identity.





6. Closing Thoughts (45:49 ): The episode wraps up with details on an upcoming panel discussion at WonderCon and an invitation for listeners to share their favorite Disney foods and food fandoms.

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

00:17 – 00:20
students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

00:20 – 00:27
And I’m Ariel, a licensed therapist who uses clients’ passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental illness.

00:27 – 00:31
Here at Happiest Pod, we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens.

00:31 – 00:37
Why? Because we’re more than just Stefanie, and we expect more from the mediums we consume. Speaking of consuming, what are

00:37 – 00:38
we discussing today, Steph?

00:38 – 00:46
What a perfect word to describe what we are talking about today. We are talking about food, specifically Disney food, obviously.

00:46 – 00:52
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

00:52 – 01:02
at Comic Con about food and its impact culturally, socially, mentally, physically, I mean, everything. Food is life. Right?

01:02 – 01:03
That’s the saying. Yes.

01:03 – 01:10
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

01:10 – 01:18
about ways to address individuals who might have various forms of eating disorders or individuals who want to embrace the

01:18 – 01:19
culture of their food, but they don’t know how.

01:19 – 01:27
Mhmm. Food itself has many different dimensions. I mean, people love it. They make livings around it. We love to consume it.

01:27 – 01:35
It brings people together. I mean, as you said, I talked about how food in the classroom and food when it comes to translating

01:35 – 01:41
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

01:41 – 01:47
as we are coming into the spring season now here in California, and specifically

01:54 – 02:03
in in as, like, something to drive people to get to the parks, which has definitely worked on me. Yes. Okay. So starting with

02:03 – 02:10
the park specifically, right now we are during the middle or just starting food and wine festival, which I don’t think we’ve

02:10 – 02:12
talked about on the show before. Correct?

02:12 – 02:19
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

02:19 – 02:26
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

02:26 – 02:33
coming to the park specifically to have specialty foods, specialty wine and beverage, especially since California Adventure

02:33 – 02:40
in itself. I think going with the theme of California and how we are, what, the largest in the United States of America, and

02:40 – 02:46
that we have such a large culinary scene. We have many celebrity chefs who live out here and make a living out here. They

02:46 – 02:52
really wanted to capitalize that with the California theme. So, you know, you see there’s a winery in the middle of the park.

02:52 – 03:00
You can drink alcohol in the park. There’s specialty restaurants like the Trattoria, which is Italian inspired. You have different

03:00 – 03:05
areas of the park where you can get different sorts of regional foods that you wouldn’t otherwise find at Disneyland.

03:05 – 03:14
And this year’s theme is it’s avocado time, avocado shaped like clock. Interestingly, though, there are not many avocado items

03:14 – 03:21
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

03:21 – 03:27
remember, like, avocado being so featured, and yet that is the theme and that is the merchandise. Which yeah.

03:27 – 03:32
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

03:32 – 03:37
foods. It’s happening. And for all of you who don’t know about the Food food and wine festival, basically, every single year,

03:37 – 03:44
they line the main veranda, the main street of California Adventure Park. They line them up with these little booths that

03:44 – 03:50
you can purchase small kind of tapas like items, very small. You can share them if you want. But, yeah, the food and wine

03:50 – 03:57
festival gets you certain dishes that you can use the little tabs to redeem. It does exclude alcohol, and it does exclude

03:58 – 04:04
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

04:04 – 04:11
items, but also the restaurants that already serve things like in San Fransokyo or the plaza in the back, the garden plaza,

04:11 – 04:16
I think, but not necessarily with the little sip and saver pests. A lot of rules.

04:16 – 04:33
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

04:33 – 04:39
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

04:39 – 04:46
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

04:46 – 04:52
find 1 booth, order them all there, take your tickets, and go retrieve them, which is such a time saver. Because when I first

04:52 – 04:57
did food and wine fast with you, I remember waiting in each line to try and get our food.

04:57 – 05:03
Yeah. Like, you would basically be hungry by the time you got to the next thing. And you would keep just getting hungry and

05:03 – 05:10
then being satiated and then hungry again. But that comes with a disclaimer too because as I learned during lunar new year,

05:10 – 05:18
you can only get certain things pre ordered. And some things are excluded from that, which I unfortunately had not the best

05:18 – 05:23
interaction with a cast member when it came to that. I think because it was so busy, this was during lunar new year, and I

05:23 – 05:30
did not know the rules. And the little booklet that they give you kind of explains it, but I think they did a better job explaining

05:30 – 05:35
it this time for food and wine festival. But, yeah, you have to look for the little there’s like an icon that says where you

05:35 – 05:42
can pre order things. And if that item doesn’t have an icon, you’re most likely gonna have to stand in line. But I think it

05:42 – 05:51
is a, a step forward in trying to save people money and time. Because not only are you foregoing writing things and foregoing

05:52 – 05:59
other experiences to do this, but you are also, you know, if you have a park hopper, this is like the majority of your time

05:59 – 06:04
just trying to figure out what you’re gonna eat and where you’re gonna eat it at. Mhmm.

06:04 – 06:11
So in the Food and Wine Fest, maybe, like, in the past now, what comes up to your mind as, like, the top eats that you’ve

06:11 – 06:14
had or maybe, like, the different kiosks or booths that you prefer to

06:16 – 06:22
stop at? So I think they have organized it, like, consistently over the years. I always know there’s a