Germany Pavilion – Epcot World Showcase | Back To The Magic 2013
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[Today’s photographs can be found on my Flickr and the whole collection of days can be found here.]
Germany Pavilion
August 20th, 2013
Continuing on from my trip report for Day 7 – I Can Show You The World lets continue to Germany!
On our way towards Germany, we passed a model railway, and stopped to watch the trains go around the tracks for a few minutes before locating Biergarten for our ADR.
Like Italy, Germany has only eateries and shops. The only entertainment is the oompah band in Biergarten – but, it was a very busy pavilion, with lots of hustle and bustle – you could almost be in a market square in Germany!
We were a little early for our reservation, but not early enough to carrying on touring to the next pavilion, so we just hung out in Germany for a while. I really like the buildings in this pavilion, and if you are eating and drinking your way around Epcot World Showcase you’ll have a good time in Germany! You can grab a beer and a pretzel…
…or go into Karamell-Küche and buy something covered in caramel. They use Werther’s Original Caramel to cover apples and strawberries, plus you can buy an assortment of candy treats too.
There were a couple of different shops, one sold Christmas decorations – so that’s where I did a lot of hanging out whilst waiting for our reservation time! I didn’t buy anything though (please, don’t all faint at once!) In Germany, they appear to put pickle decorations on their Christmas trees! And toadstools! I wish I’d bought some decorations now!
Another shop was selling cuckoo clocks, toys and books.
You can buy beer steins and crystal jewellery and glassware. It’s quite the shopper’s paradise in this pavilion!
It was then time for us to go and check in to Biergarten. We were all looking forward to the Oktoberfest!
Because you sit on tables with other people, you have to wait for the whole party to be present. On our table, there was a guy on his own and a couple with their two kids.
We were given a pager and when it buzzed we were grouped together and led the way into the restaurant.
Biergarten is a very dimly lit restaurant, but not so dark you can’t see where you are going. It is a huge hall with different levels of seating. We were shown to a table on the lower area right near to the stage. Our waiter took some drinks orders and explained the buffet. He was a quiet lad, so couldn’t quite hear him over the noise of the restaurant, but we’d be finding out what the food was when we would go to serve ourselves!
Buffets at Walt Disney World restaurants seem to have two sections of the same dishes, so if you find one area is a bit crowded, go to the other side where it might not be so bad! Where the salads and cold buffet food was, it felt cramped as the area was on the small side for the amount of people there, but in the end we all managed to grab ourselves some German goodies to start off our Oktoberfest meal.
Biergarten serves lunch and dinner, and there are slightly different items on them. We went for dinner, and among the cold stuff were various salads: green, potato, cabbage, bean, beetroot. There was also some sausages and soup, and the most delicious pretzel rolls.
There was so much choice we didn’t know where to begin when it came to the hot buffet items which included chicken, pork, spaetzel and bratworst – with various sauces and condiments, as well as vegetable dishes. There was also a carvery chef. You can see why we were spoilt for choice!
During our meal the band came out to perform, in the park guide it is called Oktoberfest Musikanten, or as I like to call them, the oompah band!
They were very entertaining and we were encouraged to join in and wave our glasses in the air – a lot of fun! They also invited you to do the polka on the dance floor in front of the stage…a lot of kids went up to have a boogie.
The guys also played various instruments…the alpine horn, cow bells (needed more of that) and a glockenspiel.
Don’t you just love their lederhosen and socks?!
Compared with the savoury buffet, the desserts were a bit uninspiring, and they were well picked over by the time we got to dessert. I picked a few different items to try out including black forest cake and apple strudel.
We were all well and truly stuffed by the time we paid the bill ($118 + tip) and we waddled out of there! We all had a good meal at Biergarten and the entertainment was fun. We would definitely go back again!
By now, it was early evening and we carried on with our tour of the World Showcase. On the way to China, which was the next pavilion around the lake, we saw that Snow White would be appearing. Having never met her before, we decided to sit down and wait for her. There was only a couple of people in the line in front of us, and we didn’t have to wait too long. She had a chat with Liam before posing for photographs and signing our autograph book.
We then moved on towards China, passing through the Outpost which is an African themed area. Liam bought himself a drink here, but we didn’t really spend much time looking around. Time was pressing on, and I knew we’d have to be bagging a spot for IllumiNations soon! We still hadn’t done China, Norway or Mexico (nevermind Canada and the UK, which we’d at least seen briefly before!)
Read about the previous day: Day 6: Tidal Wave – Typhoon Lagoon + Dinner at Bahama Breeze
Read about the Epcot World Showcase Pavilions: France | Morocco | Japan | The American Adventure | Italy | Germany | China | Norway | Mexico | United Kingdom | Canada | IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth
Read about the next day: Day 8: A Swim on the Wildside: Aquatica + Banana Beach Cook Out + Wildside Bar & Grill « Coming Soon!