A great annual event is returning this week—the Mighty St. Patrick’s Festival at Raglan Road Irish Pub & Restaurant returns to Disney Springs! Break out your green and celebrate for five days of fun March 13-17 with non-stop Irish-infused entertainment from morning until night, a mighty selection of beers and cocktails and of course, the most authentic Irish pub grub around.
The Disney Parks blog has released quite a bit of info on this event:
The regular menu will be available during the event featuring your favorite go-to dishes like the Guinness-infused Bangin’ Bangers and Mighty Mash. Planning to stop by over the weekend? The Rollicking Raglan Weekend Brunch will be served March 14 and 15 from 9 a.m. to 3 pm.
Guests who dine on Monday, March 16 can enjoy a new whiskey pairing dinner from 3-11 p.m. featuring a special prix fixe menu with locally sourced dishes like Whiskey Cured House Smoked Salmon and Apple Baked Dumplings paired with the finest Irish whiskey cocktails.
One of the most thrilling highlights of this annual event is the amazing live entertainment hand-picked straight from Ireland. Here’s a look at this year’s line-up:
Strings & Things will bring their contemporary Irish Trad/Folk/Roots crossover talent from Tipperary and Galway to the festival stage. Their unique sound and powerful stage energy promise a raucous evening of music and song.
TradGad features three talented musicians from Kerry, Dublin and Galway charming guests with their vibrant performances on guitar, fiddle, mandolin, uilleann pipes, tin whistle, banjo and bouzouki.
Maca, an Irish sister duo dubbed “Ireland’s next big thing” will rock the Raglan Road Pub stages with their extraordinary talent.
Fia Rua, featuring band members from Ireland and Scotland, will blend their musical backgrounds to perform and wow guests with a unique Celtic sound.
Mike Waters, from the southeast of Ireland, will perform Irish songs and ballads from traditional to contemporary with a good measure of chat and humor.
Emily Furlong, an extraordinary singer and entertainer from Wexford, Ireland will captivate guests with her stunning voice.
No Half Measures, an exciting, fresh and vibrant four-piece band from Scotland, Cork and Kilkenny will spin their youthful, contemporary sound for the Mighty Festival audience.
Of course, don’t miss the popular Raglan Road Irish Dancers plucked from the cast and stages of the world’s greatest Irish dance shows! They’ll be performing intermittently during the festival and ready to teach you an Irish jig – no experience necessary! Kids will also have a blast at this family-friendly party so be sure to bring everyone dressed in their best green garb and enjoy complimentary face painting.
For those planning to celebrate on St. Patrick’s Day, be sure to plan ahead for the fun! On March 17, guests will be seated on a first-come, first-serve basis with a cover charge of $10 for each guest 18 and older. Reservations can be booked online for other festival days, including brunch by calling 407-938-0300.
Disney has just released a brand new trailer for the upcoming Jungle Cruise, starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, in theaters July 24. Check it out below!
Disney also released a new poster for Jungle Cruise alongside this trailer. We’re certainly.. interested to see this one, so stay tuned here to see our review when the live action Jungle Cruise film comes out this summer.
Marvel Studios’ Black Widow is less than two months away, in theaters on May 1! To get you hyped on the upcoming action-packed spy thriller, Marvel has released this brand new final trailer. Check it out below!
In the trailer, Yelena gives more viewers (and Natasha) insight to the mysterious Taskmaster—he controls the Red Room, the program that churns out young women into the most elite assassins. Yelena states the women are manipulated, fully conscious but no choices. Nat hints that during her time, before the Avengers, she had made mistakes and a few enemies.
Nat expresses regret that she should have come back for Yelena. In order to take down Taskmaster, they must go back to where it all began—bringing the fam back together. With Alexei and Melina, their parental figures, Nat and Yelena have a shot in ensuring Taskmaster could never harm young women again.
We look forward to seeing the movie, so be sure to come back here to check out our review when it comes out this summer.
In addition to the trailer, Black Widow also dropped the latest theatrical poster, below:
World-renown daredevil Nik Wallenda has announced that he will be ‘walking the plank’ at the grand opening of LEGOLAND Florida Resort’s all-new Pirate Island Hotel. The stunt is scheduled to air live on ABC for all to view!
LEGOLAND Florida Resort writes,
In true pirate-fashion, Wallenda will “walk the plank” from inside the theme park to the new hotel to kick off the resort’s opening festivities on Thursday, April 16. LEGOLAND Florida Resort park and hotel guests are invited to take part in the fun and watch the nail-biting stunt safely from the ground.
This event will be no “walk in the park” for the Wallenda Team as they will construct a high wire longer than 500 feet for the walk. They will also work closely with LEGOLAND master model builders to craft LEGO bricks onto Wallenda’s 28-foot balance pole.
LEGOLAND and Nik Wallenda fans alike can stay tuned to Facebook and Instagram as the park releases additional details on how to watch the stunt unfold live on Thursday, April 16.
NEW! LEGOLAND® Pirate Island Hotel Grand Opening – April 17
Located just 130 kid-steps from the theme park entrance, LEGOLAND Pirate Island Hotel will feature 150 LEGO-filled rooms (including four suites), a heated pool (complete with LEGO soft bricks to build in the pool), hundreds of LEGO models, exclusive character experiences and in-room LEGO treasure hunts. Similar to the popular LEGOLAND Hotel, each room will include two separate spaces: a kid’s sleeping area and an adult area.
The five-story hotel will house the pirate-themed Shipwreck Restaurant with family-style dining, Smuggler’s Bar for adult swashbucklers, an entertainment area with kid-friendly nightly programming and LEGO play areas. Directly outside the entrance to the hotel, a pirate shipwreck will greet guests and offer a unique photo opportunity.
LEGOLAND Florida Resort has also prepared a brief video to tell us more about the event!
[videopress hF5wR6Ny]
The Pirate Island Hotel will officially open to the public on Fri., April 17. Reservations are available at LEGOLAND.com/pirateisland
It may be bold of me to say, but in my opinion, Pixar has somewhat of a rough track record. I think they succeed pretty well at making entertaining films. But only a few have been notably exceptional. Onward is in an interesting position to review. I’m still not entirely sure whether I liked all of it or not.
THE QUEST BEGINS..
I had absolutely no expectations of this movie before watching it. I enjoy Tom Holland and Chris Pratt on their own well enough, but I hadn’t really even been following much of the promotion for the movie. Some of the art looked fun, and I really enjoyed the music choice for the trailer – which is honestly enough to sell me most of the time (and why I plan on seeing F9).
I knew I would inevitably see Onward anyway because the trailer starts with 5 letters and a little lamp jumping on screen. That’s what begins the issues with Onward for me, conceptually.
The past couple Pixar releases have felt off, personally. I still haven’t seen the Good Dinosaur, I missed Finding Dory until 3 years later, Cars 3 was bad, and Toy Story 4 just felt like a tech demo for their animation interns to work on that they accidentally released.
And even though I did actually like Finding Dory, Incredibles 2, and Coco, they did still feel a bit lazy. Pixar definitely has a particular format they like to stick to – I won’t blame them, it seems to work commercially every time. But Onward is the 22nd film in their collection of releases, and honestly feels exactly the same as 98% of them.
Onward seems like it missed the mark on quite a few subjects to me. The art style feels weird, to be blunt. In a world with actual magic and fantasy characters, I don’t see the need to give every character an odd humanoid face, even if they have only one absurdly large eye.
It all looks a little odd, and I wish they would’ve done something a bit more creative. The main character of the film even looks like a recolor of Linguini from Ratatouille, which is something that I would think they could avoid.
But my disagreements with the world don’t stop there. Something about the atmosphere just feels kind of cheesy and almost lame. For all intents and purposes, the setting of the film is really doing the same job as that of Shrek, which somehow seems to pull it off more convincingly. That’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d be able to write.
What I did manage to like from the atmosphere of Onward is honestly just because I enjoy the fantasy genre as a whole. It could’ve been anything on screen but if they were doing magic with wizards and pulling out D&D terms I would be on board. There is certainly a bit of charm that comes along with the Pixar touch, but I don’t think this is something that had to try incredibly hard to pull off.
And that’s my biggest issue of all – it felt pretty easy. The art style was incredibly similar to things they’ve done before (even to things the Director had made before with the studio). The score was safe and almost nonexistent in some parts.
The things the “Inclusion Team” allegedly insured were in the movie were really bare minimum and easily modifiable for foreign markets that still don’t accept characters being openly gay. All of this making it all feel very unnecessary and almost as if they were forced to include them but were graded on completion, not accuracy.
ANCIENT HISTORY
So what’s the issue, really? Well, co-star of our Up the Waterfall podcast, Scott Otis, pointed out to me that Pixar has had a couple years in the past with two releases: The Good Dinosaur and Inside Out, Cars 3 and Coco, and now Onward and Soul. So statistically, maybe I’m just not a fan of Onward so that I can be a fan of Soul.
But in all seriousness, I didn’t hate everything about Onward. There were some funny moments, and I think even Pixar’s worst is always an entertaining time. There are definitely people who will like this. But for me, it just feels like another tired attempt for Pixar to play it safe and stick to their patented Pixar-style punch-you-in-the-gut emotional coming of age stories based on half-baked “What if?” ideas.
I would love to see them do something different, and take a massive risk. With the massive budget and solid teamwork they now have, I’m surprised they’ve stuck to this format for so long. The Pixar Sparkshorts on Disney+ are an interesting first attempt at this, but none have really stood out to me on their own, and they definitely feel like something that a small team makes every month or so on their lunch breaks.
Pixar used to be known for pushing the medium of animation forward with compelling new takes. Their films were a fun break from the typical cliches of family animation. Now they’re essentially pushing out Disney’s B-stories that don’t get the bigger spotlight. And sequels.
So is Pixar truly taking a step backward with Onward? It depends on how much you’re able to relate to all of their stories – for me, not a whole lot. Or how much an emotional ending is enough to convince you you liked the movie on your way out of the theater. Again, not much here for me. Maybe it just depends on how much you’re able to enjoy a kids’ movie without thinking about it too much. And clearly I can’t.
Join us for another fun vlog as we review the new City Works Eatery at Disney Springs. This is the newest restaurant at Disney Springs, located next to the new NBA Experience. With over 90 craft beers on tap, City Works Eatery and Pour House makes for a fun addition of American sports-bar style flair to your vacation.
City Works currently has nine locations across the country in cities and towns including Fort Worth, Tex.; Frisco, Tex.; King of Prussia, Pa.; Lake Buena Vista, Fla.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Schaumburg, Ill.; Tysons, Va.; Wheeling, Ill.; and Vernon Hills, Ill. With 90 local and global beers on tap, the restaurant offers a wide range of rare and unique craft selections. All locations are open for brunch, lunch and dinner, and prices range from $13-$20 for lunch and $15-$28 for dinner.
City Works will have 30-40% of its draft beer taps dedicated to local breweries and eight wines on draft. It will also offer a seasonally changing cocktail menu and a fully stocked bar, plus a whiskey list. Guests can enjoy Happy Hour specials, including $2 off well drinks, local craft beers and glasses of wine, and $7 bar bites Monday through Thursday 3-6 p.m. Drink specials also are available 10 p.m.-midnight.
The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner Monday through Thursday 11 a.m.-midnight, Friday 11 a.m.-1 a.m., Saturday 10:30 a.m.-1 a.m. and Sunday 10:30 a.m.-midnight. It also offers brunch dishes on the weekends 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
There’s a new great romantic classic to watch on Valentine’s Day this year. The Photograph is one I’m excited to review.
Regardless of me being graciously invited to this screening, I would have no doubt made plans to see this film on my own. The Photograph features Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield, two stars whose work has never been shy of amazing in my eyes. That fact alone was enough to sell me on it.
Luckily there was so much more in store.
A NEW ROMANCE
If you’ve seen any trailers for The Photograph, then you’ll know the basic plot – a reporter profiling a man in Louisiana finds there’s more to the story than he initially thought.
I’ll cut right to the chase, The Photograph isn’t anything incredibly groundbreaking. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be. For someone who’s always enjoyed this type of movie, The Photograph really worked. It’s the kind of movie that helps you remember what’s important, what’s worth committing to, and what’s worth sometimes leaving behind.
The romance genre is ready for another powerhouse like The Notebook, and I think The Photograph could fill that position. If nothing else, I at least appreciate the growing list of romantic films named after everyday items.
Of course it wouldn’t be a review by me if I didn’t mention the soundtrack, and this one was nice. There’s not very much in the way of a score (though what was there I did enjoy), but the actual songs used throughout really add to the overall mood. It’s something to get you in the mood that you can just vibe to, and felt very natural.
A GRAND PERFORMANCE
As I hinted at before, I’ll see literally anything with LaKeith Stanfield. And I’m a big Issa Rae fan too. Their performances in this were top notch.
The connection they had was genuine, and you felt as if they had actually been through this, and were experiencing this in real time. I honestly would not have been surprised if I had walked out of the theater, opened twitter, and saw they were actually dating. They felt that real.
And they weren’t the only ones! Rob Morgan and Chanté Adams have great chemistry too. Their characters add a surprising amount of depth that I didn’t anticipate, but certainly appreciated.
To top it off, when the movie was funny, it was funny. The whole cast felt like they had experience in comedic roles for the stage – that is to say, the pacing of the comedic moments felt really great, which is something that usually I can’t say for mainstream comedy.
THE PHOTOGRAPH
Overall, expect to laugh, expect to cry, and expect to enjoy it. There are some movies I see where I just get to enjoy them, and writing a review for The Photograph was one of those times. January is always a fun time at the theaters because it’s right after the heavy awards season, and movies can just be movies for fun. And this one was certainly fun.
The Seven Seas Food Festival will begin soon at SeaWorld Orlando!
Coming this spring, guests will be able to experience a festival of fun, food, and music at SeaWorld Orlando. Every weekend during the event, concerts will be held at 6pm at the Bayside Stadium.
THE LINEUP!
· March 7 – AJR
· March 8 – Dylan Scott
· March 14 – Hunter Hayes
· March 15 – Joe Nichols
· March 21 – YES and Alan Parsons Live Project
· March 22 – Edwin McCain
· March 28 – Gin Blossoms
· March 29 – Village People
· April 4 – Jesse McCartney
· April 5 – Gretchen Wilson
· April 11 – Scotty McCreery
· April 12 – Jeremy Camp
· April 18 – Everclear
· April 19 – Grand Funk Railroad and BLUE ÖYSTER CULT
· April 25 – Vanilla Ice and C&C Music Factory
· April 26 – Chris Janson
· May 2 – Billy Ray Cyrus
· May 3 – Sean Paul
All of these performances are included with the price of admission! But for the most exclusive experiences, reserved seating can be purchased online. Additionally, there’ll be a plethora of fun new food items at the event, and the full menu can be viewed on SeaWorld’s website.
The SeaWorld Orlando Seven Seas Food Festival begins February 7th, and lasts Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through May 3rd.
Of course, be sure to keep an eye out for the new ICEBREAKER attraction coming this year as well!
Earlier this week we got some exciting new details for the upcoming Food & Wine Festival at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay coming this spring. From concert dates to fun new food items, here’s what we know so far!
DATES!
The fun begins with a Passholder exclusive event!
Feb. 28: Pass Member Exclusive Preview with “Eaglemania: The World’s Greatest Eagles Tribute Band!”
This exclusive event is available ONLY for Pass Members to preview the all-new menu of sips and samples at the 6th Annual Food & Wine Festival.
Be sure to visit Busch Gardens’ website to learn more or purchase your Annual Pass to gain access to this VIP opportunity!
Additionally, we’ve received information with more concert dates during the festival!
Feb 29: Collective Soul
March 1: The Commodores
March 7: Chase Bryant & Danielle Bradbery
March 8: Rachel Platten
March 14: Ezra Ray Hart
March 15: THREE DOG NIGHT
March 21: LOCASH
March 22: Fitz & The Tantrums
March 28: Home Free
March 29: Taking Back Sunday
April 4: Third Eye Blind
April 5: KC & The Sunshine Band
April 11: 38 Special
April 12: Micah Tyler & Austin French
April 18: Lee Brice
April 19: Clint Black
April 25: El Gran Combo
April 26: Toad the Wet Sprocket & The Verve Pipe
Fans of these groups will be excited to know that there are VIP packages available for each act “including reserved concert seating and a 5-item Food & Wine Festival Sampler Lanyard.” And new for 2020, you can upgrade to the Unlimited Food & Wine Festival VIP Seating Package for the ultimate concert-going experience. This new opportunity includes VIP seating for EVERY concert of the 2020 festival!
NEW TREATS!
This year’s event highlights a tasty new dining lineup too! Designed by the award-winning new Executive Chef of Busch Gardens Ernie Reyes, the festival’s menu features 25 NEW food items, and over 80 wines, beers, and cocktails. Here are just a couple of the new dishes to expect:
· The ALL-NEW Chef’s Corner cabin: featuring three signature dishes carefully crafted by the park’s head chefs – arroz con pollo, pork belly taco with kimchi slaw, and pork tenderloin with champagne watercress sauce.
· NEW Iconic Coaster Cocktails: including Iron Gwazi Gimlet, Falcon’s Fury Lemon Drop, and Tigris Tea
· NEW Pick-A-Barrel tasting: create your own flight of liquors and wines from around the world
Guests can also already view the entire remaining menu online, and decide ahead of time what their must-eats are. From there, guests can also upgrade or purchase their Food & Wine Festival Sampler Lanyard. Busch Gardens writes that “Guests can purchase a 5, 8 or 12-item sampler lanyard to use at each festival cabin to explore sample-sized dishes and drink offerings with ease, starting at just $32. Pass Members can purchase an exclusive 15-item sampler for the same price as a 12-item sampler and SAVE 20%!”
COMING THIS SPRING!
The 2020 Food & Wine festival at Busch Gardens begins this spring, running every weekend from February 29-April 26. While you’re there, be sure to check out the incredible new IRON GWAZI attraction opening Spring 2020.
Best Way to Play:
Visit Busch Gardens Food and Wine Festival and year-round events is with an Annual Pass that includes 12 months of unlimited visits,FREE parking, FREE Serengeti Safari, merchandise and dining discounts¹, and special limited-time perks throughout the year. Or for a limited time, buy a Busch Gardens Tampa Bay 2020 Fun Card and an Adventure Island 2020 Fun Card FREE – Florida families can take advantage of this limited timebuy-one-get-one FREE offer and get unlimited year-round park admission to TWO until December 31, 2020².
¹All events and attractions listed are included with park admission. Upgrades, specialty food and beverage items are sold separately.
²Some restrictions apply; Blackout dates may apply
