This is, quite literally, the worst thing I’ve ever done…
That said, I promised I’d do it… So here goes nothing…
As we were planning for our annual, comprehensive Food & Wine Festival tasting, one of our tasters made a joke about how no one actually reads our painstakingly-crafted and incredibly-expensive-to-create reviews.
That quip quickly snowballed into our team spitballing ways to increase the popularity of these reviews. One of the methods proposed? Convey our thoughts on each dish exclusively by means of a single emoji.
My response? “Ok, I know this was a joke, but what if…“
Needless to say, that was a mistake. A mistake that I regret to a degree I didn’t know possible. A mistake that resulted in the creation of this repulsive monstrosity—the first ever Food & Wine Festival emoji review.
After a great deal of reluctance from my fellow tasters, I convinced them to work the selection of an emoji for every last dish at Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s Food & Wine Festival into our review workflow.
It was slow going. As it turns out that picking a single emoji to describe your impressions of a dish is actually very, very difficult. I assumed that we’d progressively get faster as the two-day tasting process wore on; but, alas, that hope was misplaced.
There’s a good chance the addition of emojis to the review process nearly doubled the time each booth took. This alone made this whole idea a humongous mistake.
That said, I was insistent that we continue. I was convinced it would at least be mildly interesting to see what emojis our tasters came up with to describe the wide array of offerings at the festival. Frankly, I was wrong on that account as well.
Despite this content being literal trash, after all of the time and effort that went into it, it deserves to be seen in all of its gruesome, horrific glory. Below you’ll find every dish at the 2019 Busch Gardens Williamsburg Food & Wine Festival presented alongside six emoji—one from each taster—describing their impressions of the dish.
Normally I’d ask you to enjoy the content you’re about to consume, but—spoiler alert—you won’t because it’s very, very bad. In fact, you know what? Don’t even scroll any further. Just actually read Part I and Part II of our actual Food & Wine Festival Review. Nicole legitimately does a great job writing and presenting the only comprehensive BGW F&WF review out there, I promise! Plus, whoever does the formatting on those articles… Whew, he deserves a raise—that’s some impressive work!
Ugh. Enough stalling. I know your sick curiosity has brought you this far—much like my own drove me to create this—so whatever. Just take it. But this is the only one you’re ever gonna get. We are never, ever going to do this shit again.
Huge thanks to Nicole, Belsaas, Gavin, Renee, and Thomas for putting up with all of this emoji review bullshit. This article is solid proof that it doesn’t work so, needless to say, this will never be inflicted upon any of you again.