The Items We Found at Disney This Week, July 16, 2021

When the team is in the parks and at resorts, we love to duck into shops to see what the latest merchandise is — or just things that catch our interest. That goes extra when it is as hot as the surface of the sun for the first day of the EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival. Here’s what we spotted this week with new merchandise for the festival.

One of the sponsors for this year’s festival is Corkcicle. And I’ll be the first to admit, they make really nice looking products, like this stemless wine glass for $30 or a water bottle for $40.

But what really frustrates me about this brand is this nugget on their web site:

Are Corkcicle drinkware products dishwasher safe?

All of our stainless steel drinkware products must be hand-washed. This includes most of our Canteens, Tumblers, Stemless, and Mugs. Our Hybrid Canteen’s glass body is dishwasher safe, but the steel base should be hand-washed.

Hard. Pass. Maybe I’ll pretend that it is some sort of magnanimous reason why I’m using the dishwasher instead of washing things by hand based on commercials that tell me how much water I save that way. But let’s be honest — I’m lazy. Dishwasher or done. So, be aware that if you buy any of these products and toss them in the dishwasher, they may have become very expensive single-use items.

Moving on . . . One of those “This is cute and I’ll never use it” is the $25 cutlery set, which includes a fork, knife, and spoon, along with a reusable straw and a straw brush. It wraps up into a neat little pouch for easy carrying. I’m sure a lot of these sell, but does anyone actually use them? Let me know in the comments.

This year’s festival artwork is very colorful and I do like it for artwork’s sake. I don’t know if I’d want merchandise with it, but if you do, there’s an abundance of items available.

It wouldn’t be a Disney day without a spirit jersey. At the normal $75 price point, the front features that festival artwork as seen above, and the back is full of “Celebrating”.

And because nothing says Florida in July, you can also pick up a festival sweatshirt. for $50. (Do we know yet if merchandise development will be moving to Florida with other California jobs? Maybe they’ll realize that sweatshirts + Florida + July isn’t a good idea….)

And speaking of things that make you go whaaaa…. Florida grows a lot of fruit. Locally, depending on time of year, I can go pick my own citrus of many varieties or peaches. I can get Florida pears, cherries, nectaries, watermelon, and so on. You know what doesn’t grow in Florida AT ALL? Apples. Don’t believe me? From PickYourOwn.org, check out line 1:

Yes, apples DO NOT GROW in Florida. So you know what that means? Disney’s going to roll out an entire line of apple-themed merchandise.

There’s shirts and spirit jerseys and ear headbands! Apples!!

Also in that line is a rolling pin designed to give you the neat patterns to the crust that show your EPCOT and Mickey spirit. Honestly, I don’t roll out too much stuff most of the year, but even if I did, I can’t imagine this would be easy to keep clean. Nice idea, but no.

We’ll have more coverage of merchandise throughout this incredibly long festival in the weeks to come. Meanwhile let me know what you think of these items. Also let me know if you hand-wash your dishes at home, because I’m really curious if there’s a market for non-dishwasher-safe items.