A Gastronomical Magical Adventure At Epcot...

In my experience, the lines at the festival booths are shorter during the day than they are in the evening, and shorter on weekdays than weekends. The worst WDW crowd I EVER encountered was at Epcot on the final weekend of the Food and Wine Festival three years ago. But your trip is long before the final weekend, so you shouldn't run into crowds that huge.

My strategy for navigating the F&W Fest is this:

First, I make a list highlighting things I most want to try. Everything is color coded: top items in bold red text, next best bold blue text, next after that in bold green text, and things I might try if I've run out of the good stuff in non-bold plain black text. I've attached a PDF of the 2012 file for your perusal.

Everything on the list is organized in booth order, going clockwise around the World Showcase. So, for our first tour of the booths, we go to the lagoon, hang a left, and start eating as we make our way past Mexico, then China, etc. and focusing exclusively on the top tier (red-letter) choices on the list. When we're full, we're done (for that meal at least). But on our next time around, whether it be dinner later that evening or a different day later that week, we go in reverse order, counterclockwise around the World Showcase, to be sure we hit booths we missed first time around. When we've tried all the red-letter items, we move on to blue-letter items, once again touring both clockwise and counter clockwise. Same with green-letter items. And if we do F&W often enough to even get to the items in plain black text, same thing - but by that point we might be revisiting favorites, and might never get to the last-tier items.

It's a bit complicated, but during our first F&W visit we pigged out on whatever we encountered first and then missed out on stuff we would've rather tried. This way we know we've tried the stuff we'll like best.

I agree with Amy 100%!

I always hear reports of Friday and Saturdays being very crowded and rowdy but in the past 3 years of me going I haven't experienced anything awful.. The only bad aspect was on the Saturday of our trip the Italy booth's line was RIDICULOUS! So we skipped it that day and came back on Sunday and it was more than manageable.

The booths in the front tend to be more crowded but really the lines move so quickly its not noticeable. Our plan of attack is usually to do Mexico first and make our way around to Canada. We have in the past gotten a margarita while at Mexico so we can enjoy it while we wait in line in other booths. We've also done with the same with the Singapore Sling which is at the (obviously) Singapore booth that was located right outside of Norway last year, but it was up by Germany the year before so you never know where the booths without normal World Showcase countries will be.

It will definitely be busier in the evening so if you really want to avoid most crowds go in the afternoon on a weekday.

My main advice is don't stress. One of the reasons I love F&W is because it just adds something extra to World Showcase which I already adore. We take our time, doing the things we want to do even when F&W isn't there and as we meander we stop at the booths that tickle our fancy. I feel like trying to go in with high expectations and structure just leads to disappointment when the booths are busy and the crowds are large. Have fun. After all you're in Disney

CCP can I steal your menu plan?????? with around 60 food and drink items I think I need to prioritize!!!!

I always hear reports of Friday and Saturdays being very crowded and rowdy but in the past 3 years of me going I haven't experienced anything awful.. The only bad aspect was on the Saturday of our trip the Italy booth's line was RIDICULOUS! So we skipped it that day and came back on Sunday and it was more than manageable.