How a few... Perhaps a bit more then a few, taint the Epcot Festival.
We have gone to the Epcot Special events for almost ten years. Most are wonderful, in fact, it's one of our favorite parks, special events or not. In the fall they have the Food & Wine festival. Over the years we have come to call it the Beer & Wine Festival. Yep, there's still lots of food around world showcase, and lots of wine, but also lots and lots of beer. This year the promo signs around World Showcase emphasis "eating your way around the world" ... But beer and wine seem to hold the majority of prominence. We have seen ever increasing percentages of guests drinking more and more beer and wine as the years have gone on. Last year the promotions centered around "Drinking your way around the World"... There were even T-shirts to promote more drinking. More drinking equals larger profits... It also encourages more drinking which will lead to more problems... And they have! The biggest problem, aside from availability and promotion... Thousands of people, moving from one beer stand to another, no one to monitor their consumption, like a bartender or waiter in one location, which adds to the abusive nature of the problem. Coupled with the fact that one person buys the drinks and shares or gives to someone else. Disney has a program and training course for selling and serving alcohol and monitoring the guests... But how do you do this when thousands of drinking guests are buying beer stand by stand, to many different cast members who are in a hurry to keep the lines moving and getting everyone in and out as quickly as possible. We have ourselves complained to area managers about a group that was very loud and disruptive, and using bad language. Their response was that they were watching them... Not really good enough... "Watching"? ... They should have been warned to quiet down or be escorted out of the park. But the managers watched, as they went to the next beer stand and got more to drink. Perhaps unsure of how to handle the situation... But certainly this was not best thing to do. And this senecio repeated itself in varying degrees as we continued around World Showcase. Not only is this not appropriate for family oriented guests, but offensive for us just as adults. Sometimes isolated things happen at Disney, and the media goes crazy... But this has been ongoing for the past few years and getting worse each year. So I have to agree with the media on this one... Something needs to be done to reverse this disturbing trend. Develop some kind of controls to limit personal consumption and monitor their behavior... Give warnings, cut them off from more drinks, and escort out if the park if necessary. Epcot is still a Disney park for families, and uncontrolled and non-monitored drinking should have no place here! We have seen guests walking drunk back to the Epcot resorts after closing... not what I'd call family oriented. Then there's the occasional vomit on the sidewalk or in the grass... things have gotten out if hand. Pleasure Island at downtown Disney shutdown because of this which lead to a tragedy... Is Epcot next for a tragedy? I certainly hope not! Hopefully a change is in the making. Here's some of the recent posts on the problem. 
This may all come to head soon and positive changes will be forthcoming. I can't help but think... what Walt would think about all this. How could his influence of family entertainment gotten this diluted. I sure hope things change.
