Disney's Pasta in the Parks: Why We Did It Again

Our first experience with Disney's Pasta in the Parks Party was during Marathon weekend last year. Although we enjoyed our time there we didn't think it was necessarily something that we would need to do again. Just experiencing it once was sufficient and we were glad that we did it. 

The Pasta in the Parks party includes, early admission to Epcot, a buffet dinner, dessert, character meet and greet, and a reserved seating location to view Illuminations.  Last year we debated on whether or not we wanted to stay for the Illuminations show. Of course we wanted to get our monies worth out of the ticket price so we stayed, but boy were we exhausted by the time we got back to the resort and it didn't help that we had to be up at 2:30 am the next day.

Fast Forward to Princess weekend 2014. We decided that we would go ahead and buy tickets for the party again. We did have fun last year and since our mom would be with us this time, we wanted her to be able to experience it once too!

Since we were allowed in early we were able to play in the park a little bit.  Last year we made our way over to Soarin but this year we didn't want to waste the good daylight hours waiting in line!  So we used our time to visit some characters.

We also had enough time to make our way over to Innoventions and get our free Character Picture done for being a Disney Visa Card holder. If you have a Disney Visa, don't forget to stop there for your free picture! This is on our must do list each time we visit!  The rest of the time was spent looking for a tutu that I could wear for the 10K race the next day because I forgot mine at home.

A bit goofy we know, but we figured this might be the only picture we would have from the pasta party because we remembered it being so dark in there last year that many pictures did not come out. We were just being prepared!

The pasta party is in a pavilion that is behind Canada in the World Showcase. it is usually blocked by a big door. I think we may have actually ran by this building during one of the races.  We arrived just as they were letting people in but had we been the last ones there it wouldn't have mattered. There was so much food and I bet there was probably 50 buffet lines. Nobody had to wait to get food!

                      A sampling of our food ( what we remembered to take pictures of anyway)

Last year we didn't know about the character meet and greet at the party until it was too late. This year since we were already wearing our medals from the Cinderella 5K earlier that day we thought we would have some fun with Cinderella Characters!

This is the very first time we've ever seen Cinderella's Step Sisters and Step mother! Our photographer told us to look serious so of course I gave my best Mckayla Maroney Smirk. Apparently my mom and sister didn't get the memo!

         We were actually surprised with how many characters were present and ones that you don't see too often. I think this would be a great place to bring kids because the character interaction was great and the meal was excellent too!

They were doing dessert a bit differently this year. They were going to be serving it at the Illuminations viewing. I heard it was going to be a dessert buffet but I can not confirm that for sure. We had about an hour or so till Illuminations and we all agreed that we didn't want to stay. It was already too late of a night for us. We were happy with our Mickey Ice cream sandwiches and decided to call it a night.   We did stop to visit with a few more characters on our way out of the park.

We were so happy that we were staying at a resort along the monorail line. We got right on and off the monorail, walked to our resort, and headed for bed!

So, the morale of this story is that Yes, the pasta party is a good time, but it does make for a long night!  It is a shame that we didn't stay for the dessert ( I was curious to see what was going to be served) and Illuminations since it technically is included in the ticket price, but we knew we were just too tired to really enjoy it.

Have you ever been to a pasta in the parks party?  Do you normally take advantage of the pasta parties at other races?   Do you normally cut your evenings short the night before a Disney race or do you stay till park close?