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If you are heading to Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival this month, consider attending some of the events at the Orlando Waldorf Astoria as well. Designed to complement the offerings of Disney World’s popular food festival, the Food and Wine Weekends at the Waldorf Astoria offer plenty of foodie and gourmet fun in one of the most luxurious settings Orlando has to offer.

Each weekend in October, the Waldorf Astoria will host different wine and food themed events, including a session of “Adults only” trick or treating featuring a selection of tempting cocktails ($50 per couple). The Bull & Bear is hosting weekly gourmet meals with perfectly paired wine selections each Friday evening this month, while representatives from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and Glenlivet Scotch pair with Ashton Cigars to present several Wine and Cigar themed events this month.

Sweet-toothed visitors won’t want to miss presentations on chocolate and other confections, presented each Friday and Saturday evening this month at the Waldorf Astoria Chocolate Shop. Expect a variety of demonstrations and sampling at this sweet event.

You do not have to be a guest of the Waldorf Astoria to indulge in the Food and Wine Weekend events, and reservations are required for most scheduled programs. While the Food and Wine Weekends are luxury events aimed at adults, the resort offers a childcare program complete with dinner options, so parents don’t have to miss out on the gourmet fun.

The Waldorf Astoria is one of Orlando’s premier luxury resorts, offering complimentary transportation daily to the Disney World theme parks, including Epcot, home of the International Food and Wine Festival.

Happy Birthday, Disney World! If you are planning a visit to the Magic Kingdom as part of your Orlando vacation, you’ll become part of 40 years of history in the making. Disney is marking the occasion all year long with special “celebration” themed parades and shows, including the new night time “The Magic, the Memories and You” castle projection show, which premiered earlier this year.

The Magic Kingdom has been entertaining families for 40 years; long enough for people who visited the park as children to return to share the magic with their own families.  Part of the Magic Kingdom’s attraction for family groups is the longevity of some of the most popular rides and attractions. From Space Mountain to Dumbo, this park offers some of the world’s most enduring and popular rides.

Mark the occasion by visiting one of the parks original rides, including the Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion and “it’s a small world”, or pick up some special 40th anniversary themed merchandise at the theme parks and resorts. Some of the park’s initial offerings are still some of its best; all are included with your theme park admission.

If you haven’t been to the Magic Kingdom in a while, check out some of the park’s newest offerings, including character greeting areas for Tinkerbell and her fairy friends and Rapunzel, newly crowned star of Tangled. Other recent offerings include the return of the Main Street Electrical Parade and for October travelers, the extravagantly themed Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.

Make a visit to the Magic Kingdom part of your next Orlando vacation, and catch up on 40 years of magic; you’ll be glad you did.

The much anticipated International Food and Wine Festival begins in Epcot on September 30th, and this year promises to be bigger and better than ever. Some hotly anticipated food marketplaces will be joining the festival this year, along with a fresh new host of classes, tastings and demonstrations.

Highlights for the 2011 Food and Wine Festival include a brand new Hawaiian Marketplace, complete with savory pulled pork sliders and tropical Mai Tais; the tempting new dessert trio offered at the International Gateway booth includes a tart lemon chiffon, sweet white chocolate macadamia mousse and a classic tres leches terrine.

The casual visitor can simply enjoy flitting from booth to booth, and sampling small, savory morsels from around the world, some hot kiosks from previous years include specialties from Greece, Portugal and Japan’s always packed sushi station. The more dedicated foodie can visit several handcrafted and boutique world beer stations, or head to one of several wine tasting booth. The food booths are scattered throughout World Showcase, and a detailed Festival guide is available at the park entrance.

If you are serious about your food, want to learn more about exotic or specialty items or want to take a cooking class, then visit the Festival event center in Future World. Epcot houses the International Food and Wine Festival classes and programs in the usually closed Wonders of Life Pavilion. Even if you are not enrolled in a class, this is one of the only opportunities you’ll have to get a blast from the past — you can still see the now-closed body, nutrition and sports related exhibits in this area, along with the queue area for Body Wars.

Other special events are available as well; if you are interested in sampling some of Disney’s best food, consider attending the Party for the Senses, a culinary extravaganza offered on select nights during the Festival. This is a private, upscale dining event that requires a separate ticket and is ideal for the serious gourmet.

This is always a fun time of the year. The busy season is starting to wind down and now we can breath a little easier and start looking forward to 2012. The first thing we do when preparing for a new year is talk to all of our current hotel partners about rates. There is some good news heading into next and some bad news:

1) The hotels are expecting the travel business to stay relatively hot for the next couple of years, and they do expect hotel rates to rise a little bit. Now when I say a little bit, we are talking about $5 to $6 per night…nothing drastic. That is the good news.

2) Extra fees…almost every Orlando hotel is adding a resort fee and some are adding parking fees. Now, some of these fees are valid as to run a shuttle bus to Disney 3 or 4 times a day is not cheap, and to offer free internet and business services are not free either. However, you do need to watch yourself because many hotels are using the resort fees as a way to make a lot of money. Some hotels have even suggested that they might even go to a resort fee of $15 a night…now that is ridiculous. This is the bad news.

All in all, a Disney World vacation is going to cost about the same in 2012 as it did in 2011, with maybe a slight increase of 1% possibly 2%. Our promise to you is that we are going to fight as hard a we can to offer you the cheapest rates possible on Orlando hotels and Disney World tickets.

Disney recently released their numbers for 2010 and it showed that 2010 was the best year ever for Disney as far as attendance goes. Now many people might find this quite interesting especially with the economy the way it has been the past few years. However, Disney has really done a great job of marketing their product to potential guests, and they have also greatly reduced their prices to make a vacation to Disney much more attractive. If you are looking to come to Disney then there is not a better time than now. Many experts believe that the price of a Disney vacation is going to start to go back up. The only thing keeping the prices low right now is the high gas prices, but once those stabilize Disney will start to inch their prices up to a more profitable level.

Many of the hotels, including the Downtown Disney World hotels, are offering discounts for guests to come this summer. Many of these properties are offering gas cards or gas rebates if you stay with them for 7 nights or longer. These marketing gimmicks are nice, but shop their rates as you might be paying more for the room even with the rebate than you would if you just got the room by itself without the rebate.

Typically, the summer gas prices tend to go up during labor day weekend and then they usually settle back down. Most travel experts are not expecting the fuel prices to have much of an impact on the attendance. Sure, it might be a deterent to a few families but for the most part once a family has decided to go on a vacation they usually will stick to it.