Southern California

Weekend: Disney Food & Wine Fest Opens

The month-long demos-and-more to-do starts its tasty run at Disney California Adventure.

Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival: While "Disney" and "food" are two common search terms, it isn't every day that one of the parks presents a full slate of sup- and sip-themed to-dos, complete with chef demos and special tastings and out-of-the-ordinary events. But the Food & Wine Festival, which runs from April 1 through May 1, presents a number of nom-nom happenings made for foodies, from beverage seminars to festival marketplaces to ways to get to know Golden State gourmet grub. How to join? Well, first you'll need to pay admission to the theme park, and that's California Adventure, do note. Other details, dates, deliciousness? They're right here. 

Montrose Brew Fest: Montrose's Honolulu Avenue is one of Southern California's great small-town-y streets, the kind of thoroughfare that shows up in TV shows and films playing a village in the Midwest. But we're lucky to have it, right here, and even luckier when a homegrown craft beer festival pops up on a nice spring Sunday. That Sunday is April 3, there is VIP and general admission, and a few eatsy spots will be purveying in food, like Zeke's Smokehouse. Honolulu strolling plus fine sips and good food? That's a solid Sunday afternoon right there. 

Tomatomania! Not too far from the Montrose shindig, and full of juicy, seedy splendor, is Tomatomania!, one of the few (and most flavorful) events to boast its own exclamation point. Here's what that excited punctuation is all about: Heirloom tomatoes, and the growing of them, and the appreciation of them. This is a tour that's currently making the rounds 'round California, but it is stopping at Descanso Gardens on Saturday, April 2 and Sunday, April 3. 

Big Bear Skiing: While it is quite clearly April on the calendar, and various flowery things are all abloom, there's still some flakeage going on up the mountains, like the six inches that both Bear Mountain and Snow Summit received near the end of March. Could the first weekend of the first full month of spring be one you spend on your snowboard? Winter won't last forever (in fact, it is officially done, though the snow-making skies haven't heard just yet). Kids under 12 ski free, by the by.

Bubblefest: As yearly events go, the ones that rev up both parents and kids with wonder and joy, the ones that deal in soapy shenanigans of a science-cool nature, you can't get much bigger, or bubblier, than this Discovery Cube favorite. The Santa Ana-based exhibit and entertainment extravaganza always falls over spring break, or near it, and has for two decades. But alas: It will soon pop, just like a big soap bubble floating above a bathtub. Want to eye it before it floats away? Blow your bubbles here.

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