We continue from Refreshment Port and Flavor Full.

Citrus Blossom situates itself on the Canada side of World Showcase across from Refreshment Port and Pineapple Promenade. Disney typically reuses the same booths for each seasonal Festival, but gives them a different name to help differentiate the offerings. For example, Canada is “Canada” during Food and Wine, “Yukon” during Festival of the Holidays, and “Northern Bloom” during Flower and Garden. Citrus Blossom remains…Citrus Blossom all year. At least it makes some thematic sense, unlike a booth called “The Blizzard” or something, that only served hot cocoas when temperatures were above 85 degrees in June. They can give that a shot closer to Canada.

This is where you’ll find the popular Orange Bird Sipper with the Orange Cream Shake either inside the vessel (not recommended) or in a plastic cup on the side (recommended). While it may now be hard to believe, there was a time when lines to order one of these little guys would be 40 or 50 people deep, necessitating a nighttime return when waits dissipated. With the late arrival, you would have also benefited from not having to lug the souvenir cup around all day, though if I had to carry around a piece of plastic for the rest of my life, it would probably be this precious little guy. Those crowds are typically nonexistent, though lines are typically longest from 12 to 2pm, particularly on weekends. Note that there is a slight difference in this year’s cup design as the Orange Bird gingerly holds a slice of orange. It seems a little messed up considering you’d have to think the wedge of cool citrus at one time belonged to a friend or colleague, and our orange mascot is carrying around a memento from some sinister act, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s hard to look past the rosy smile and playful beak, even if he is a serial killer in real life.

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We continue from Flavor Full.

Refreshment Port is the permanent building on the right as you head towards Canada. For the last few years, it’s offered an assortment of Festival-exclusive dishes for the various seasons. Citrus Blossom is across the way with Northern Bloom just ahead and the Honey Bee-stro and Pineapple Promenade nearby. You can pretty easily collect food and drink from those kitchens and share them at one table in the vicinity alongside anything you might pick up here. There are some nice tables lining the water as long as your eyes ignore the monstrous floating barges in the water.

Somebody at Disney thinks “poutine” is anything with french fries as the base of the dish, so the miffed Canadian crowd will have to take the title and ingredients of the dish up with them. The House-made Italian Sausage and Pepper version is $9 and may be the first time that we’ve seen a vegetarian option. The Starcut Ciders Cidre Colada Hard Cider is also available. The Cutwater drinks are “new” to the Festival, but can be purchased in cans around property, largely at resort quick services and Sunshine Seasons. They at least pour them nicely into cups instead of just flipping the tab and handing you the can.

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We continue from Honey Bee-stro.

Flavor Full returns for another year along the path that connects World Showcase with Future World next to the Imagination Pavilion. Of course, just about everything around the Outdoor Kitchen looks different than last year with all of the construction going on nearby. Since the skyline today, we’ll leave a little of what’s no longer standing there by using a picture from a couple of years ago. And I also don’t have to paste in a new photo.

The important part, assuming you’re interested in one of the items, is its location. I just tend to pass it before it opens, which doesn’t make it look like a very exciting operation. You get what you pay for. Later in the day, the area is a lot more alive with cast members actively grilling the vegetables and putting everything together. The Honey Bee-stro is ahead on the left. That’s where you’ll find many of the tables in this area, so consider walking your food and drink a little ways ahead for a more comfortable experience than the top of a trash can might offer. On the other hand, there’s something to say for the traditional glossy brown “table top.”

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We continue from Pineapple Promenade.

The Honey Bee-stro (get it…like a French bistro…I am dying of laughter here…) returns with even more punny hilariousness for its fourth year. I doubt it features much on the French side of the culinary landscape, but a lack of killer bees would be okay, too.

Ah yes, a better time, with the monorail and the people circa about a year ago. But the 2020 picture does a nice job of showing the Bee-stro’s exact location and foreshadows our next Kitchen, Flavor-Full, which is located just about where the picture ends on the right. Helpful, I know. The one positive(?) this year with the monorail not running (yet) is that the photographers won’t have to camp out and wait for it to pass along above the flower beds for pictures with a little additional kinetic energy. It’s always funniest when the monorail is down and we just stand there eyeballing each other suspiciously for a half hour, pretending like our phones are blowing up. Or you can yell, “MONORAIL!” at us and it basically turns us into a pack of Dug the Dogs chasing squirrels. But not this year! Probably!

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Pineapple Promenade is one of a couple of kiosks that I neglected to photograph this year, as I was too busy shaking my fists at the menu prices and figuring out what on earth we were getting from the five booths in the vicinity. So you’ll just have to deal with what last year looked like for a second. Since nobody is really ordering anything, the more things change, the more they stay the same anyway.

Festival Day is always a little hectic. I also stood there contemplating for some time whether I would go to a Pineapple Promenade given the opportunity. Outside of Epcot, nobody has ever invited me to a pineapple promenade. You could easily say people haven’t invited me to a lot of things, including many events where one would assume my position would be, or should be, included, if not required, so that doesn’t prove much. If I were to make my own pineapple promenade, we might look at it for 30 seconds before going back inside. After all, neither of us probably needs our feet or shoes stuck with fruit spikes that I imagine had been a great defense mechanism against predators until humans came along and just used a knife and then some whacky specialized machine to cut them down. So it’s a no on the homemade Pineapple Promenade for the foreseeable future, but Epcot’s remains, without much of a pineapple barrier in your way as you make your purchase.

On the other hand, a late springtime stroll along the promenade of the Dordogne in France might be nice, or perhaps the splashy-splash of the Barcelona Waterfront, or meandering the the beaches in Nafplion, Greece with the rich blue and green hues of the water glistening from the walkway. I have enough trouble trying to convince anybody to come over as it is. Something tells me that a man-made, treacherous maze of spiky fruit wouldn’t be a good way start to a fresh series invitations. “So I have these Pineapples…about 400 in all….and they’re all on the ground…”

All three food items return alongside the ever-popular Frozen Desert Violet Lemonade and Dole Whip with Fanta poured around the base of the cup if you really want to throw caution to the wind. We also see a mashup of alcoholic offerings.

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