At the risk of that subject line sounding like a proposition…
A typical trip with our DD5 and DS5 ends with my wife and I having a glass of wine (or two or three…) in our hotel room after the kids have finally gone to sleep. Now, sometimes, on such trips, I’ll bring up a couple glasses of wine from the hotel bar. But I much prefer to pick up a bottle or two at a local store – keeps the costs down and keeps the wine flowing if necessary.
In about a month or so (okay who am I kidding…in 46 days), we’re taking our first family trip to WDW (super excited). We’re doing a split stay at Contemporary Resort and AKL. We will not have a car.
Is there anywhere on sight I can go to buy bottles of wine? Or am I just stuck paying the big hotel mark up and bringing glass by glass to the room? Recommendations? Ideas? Thanks!
Ok, I am not a drinker so I do not know the possibilities here, but maybe you can ship some wine in advance to your hotel before you get there, or place an order with:
As @Jedilogray recommended, you can order bottles of whatever type you like through a grocery delivery service. The gift shops also sell bottles of assorted alcohol, but in a limited variety, so you may be stuck with a type of wine that you don’t like very much.
As stated by others, some of the hotel gift shops do sell bottles of wine for around $20 or so. I believe you can also buy wine bottles in EPCOT at the France Pavillion. My wife and I brought our own small supply in our checked luggage. We purchased 3 small waxed cardboard containers that held about 500 ML (about 3 glasses) at $5 each. They travelled well and we had no leakage problems. I did take the precaution of wrapping them in plastic just in case. We were flying Southwest, so we could check up to 4 bags at no extra cost. We took 3 with the 3rd bag containing extras such as the wine, some snacks, ponchos, cooling towels, etc. As long as you check the bags you won’t have a problem going thru airport security.
You can buy wine in the France, Italy and Germany pavilions at Epcot. Germany has a really nice selection, especially of white wines. I had a very good liebfraumilch there, as well as a nice gewürztraminer.
If you do buy wine in the Epcot pavilions, be aware they won’t deliver it to the resort for you (they won’t do that for any food or drink that you purchase), so do it close to the end of your day or else you’ll be carting it around with you all day!
Right now, our Epcot day is planned for later in the week, so that probably won’t be an option for the first part of the trip (the CR part). But maybe for the end part.
I’m assuming when discussing hotel gift shops, you mean wine sold with other food and drink items – like a small grocery section of the gift shop. Not souvenir bottles of wine.
Like @jmj5713, we also bring a few bottles with us to save money. I bought wine travel bags on Amazon, and have used them several times with no issues at all, including for a bottle of sparkling wine. I might not do this if I had to pay a check bag fee, though. I looked into buying from a grocery delivery service or other mailing option, and you definitely end up paying more than just buying them either at Epcot or in the hotel.
Unless you planned on placing a grocery order, I’d just buy a bottle at Fantasia Market (in the Contemporary) and/or downstairs at The Mara in AKL (that’s where I saw some nice looking South African wines for sale!)
We do this exact same thing. The three options on property, apart from getting it at the bar as you said, are Garden Grocer, the hotel gift shop, and Epcot, as people have mentioned. My thoughts on each:
Garden Grocer: very limited selection of mass market wines – Yellow Tail, Beringer, things like that. Pricing is slightly marked up, but fair. They have a sprinkling of slightly higher end but still freely available wine, bottles that would ordinarily cost you $15ish at your local grocery store, but the markup is more dramatic.
Gift Shop: Most of the wines you find in the gift shop are bottles that you’d find for $10-12 elsewhere, but they tend to be a bit more unusual. Nothing really out of left field, just not the brands that you’ll see everywhere. Markup is probably the highest here of the three options.
By far, the most interesting wines can be found at Epcot, and the markup doesn’t seem to be as horrible as at the gift shop. The higher end bottles, if you are so inclined, are hardly marked up at all. Depends upon what you like, of course, but I’d say France has the best all-around selection.
We went the gift shop route at both CR and AKL. As noted here, selection was limited but fine. Paid about $21 for a Kendall-Jackson Cabernet at CR, and about the same for a House of Mandela Cabernet at AKL. Thanks again for all the help!
(Circling back on some of these very helpful forum responses, now that we have returned from a spectacular trip.)