Things To Do In SW Florida

The Epcot International Food & Wine Festival fast is approaching at Walt Disney World with new locations and a slew of new menu items.

The event, which begins Aug. 29, will have a couple of global marketplaces based in a newly constructed building, CommuniCore Hall. There we’ll see Macatizers dishing up four varieties of macaroni and cheese and Festival Favorites bringing back some, well, festival favorites.

There won’t be a new country represented around World Showcase this year, but a new marketplace named Bramblewood Bites will be located in the stretch between World Showcase and the Imagination pavilion.

Three longtime marketplaces – Mexico, Italy and Flavors of America – will have all-new food menus, although the American one has gone all all-American with all-beef hot dogs.

Disney: New ‘Cars’ rides will go on Tom Sawyer Island

Naturally, there will be returning standards, including the cheese soup at Canada and waffles in Belgium. Today we’re looking at the new solid foods only. Ahead: bison, eel, squid ink rice, Italian machos, grilled bushberry and more. read more

Visit Orlando’s top executive defended the tourism marketing giant’s work and financial practices from what she described as “some inaccurate inferences” in a critical comptroller’s memo last week to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and county commissioners.

“There has been no misuse of any funds,” Visit Orlando President & CEO Casandra Matej said in a rebuttal memo to Comptroller Phil Diamond. “Every dollar, whether public or private, goes to our mission to inspire, promote, and grow global travel to Orange County for economic and community benefit, which by all measures has been extremely successful resulting in robust TDT collections.”

Diamond said Monday that his auditing team never accused Visit Orlando of misusing funds, but instead questioned some practices. The memo — which Diamond called an interim report for an audit requested by the board earlier this year — said that Visit Orlando had failed to provide complete details of how it spends millions in public money, had engaged in lobbying activities without county permission, and has wrongly treated interest on tourist-tax money as if it were privately donated. read more

Two military veterans were awarded free homes in a new Orange County community Monday, arriving in a motorcade as hundreds of onlookers waving American flags cheered for them.

”This is truly life-changing for us. It’s basically like giving a golden ticket to veterans,” said retired U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Kaia Santana.  “You’ve elevated our quality of life and showed that we matter, that our service mattered, that sacrifice means something to somebody and that we are seen and appreciated.”

Santana was injured on a military base in Iraq in 2005. She and her husband and three children will share the two-story home with a backyard pool.

Santana and retired U.S. Army Sergeant James Burse were awarded the homes through the Building Homes for Heroes, a national program that began after 9-11, and the home construction company Pulte Group’s Built to Honor program. Both programs aim to provide free homes to injured veterans and first responders.

The veterans’ new homes sit next to each other in Pulte’s EverBe community, located east of Orlando International Airport. read more