Mark Ashman/Disney, via Associated Press

The Magic Kingdom Park at Disney World in Florida is about to get even more enchanting, for those 21 and older. Next month, it is ending its 41-year-old policy of no alcohol by serving wine and beer during dinner hours at Be Our Guest, its new “Beauty and the Beast”-theme restaurant. The park’s executives have realized, apparently, that no French meal is complete without a glass of Chablis or Bordeaux.

“Our research tells us that guests expect to order beer and wine at a dining experience like this, and having a selection of wine and beer from France and Belgium complements the theme of the restaurant and its French-inspired cuisine,” said Bryan Malenius, a Disney spokesman. (Alcohol is served at other areas within the theme park.)

The Be Our Guest restaurant will be part of Fantasyland Forest, which features a castle like the one seen in “Beauty and the Beast.” A team of chefs has developed a French-inspired quick, casual lunch menu and a more elegant table-service menu for the evening. During dinner, a selection of French wines, and French and Belgian beer will be offered.

Abstainers can take home a castle-themed souvenir goblet when they order a “L’Amour Vrais” (true love), filled with a nonalcoholic beverage.

Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesThe sunflower maze, called “the Spiral.”

Mini Golf, Big Ideas At Big Stone Mini Golf in Minnesota, 13 holes feel more like a tour through a sculpture garden. (The New York Times)

Get Lost: Too many map apps helping you orient to your surroundings? How about a guide to getting lost? (Whiskey, Ink, and Lace)

Documentary about a man who travels the US using only Craigslist: In an extreme version of The Frugal Traveler, a man spends a month traveling across America, with no money or contacts, and entirely dependent on the jobs and goodwill of the people he finds on craigslist. (Reddit /r/travel)

A spectacular Taoist festival While the Chinese still observe Ghost day and regularly burn small gifts for their ancestors during the annual cleaning of the family tomb, the Taiwanese have preserved a Taoist tradition long dead on the mainland: the burning of the (life-size) Wang Yeh Boat. (BBC Travel)

Every Step You Take… Google has just released a travel app called Field Trip that follows you around and suggests where you should go. (Jaunted)

Wintery Conditions Hamper Search For Glacier National Park Hikers Two hikers are missing after a trip in Glacier National Park. (ABC News)

The Busan International Film Festival

Asia’s largest film festival is under way in Busan, South Korea. With 304 films showing on 37 screens, guest appearances by Asia’s biggest movie stars and a live performance of “Gangnam Style” by the goofy rapper (and overnight international sensation) Psy, the 2012 Busan International Film Festival (BIFF)  is set to be the glitziest in its 17-year history.

The opening film last week was the world premiere of “Cold War,” a dynamic police action thriller set in Hong Kong from the  directors Longman Leung and Sunny Luk. “Television,” a satire on religion and tradition by the  Bangladeshi director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, will close out the festival on Saturday. Sandwiched between  these two are 300 films from Korean and international directors, including Jennifer Lynch (“Chained”), Agnieszka Holland (“In Darkness”) and anime master Kamiyama Kenji (“Ghost in the Shell S.A.C. Solid State Society 3D”).

One of the highlights of the festival is “Comrade Kim Goes Flying,” a North Korean romantic comedy about a female coal miner pursuing a lifelong dream of becoming a trapeze artist. Others include a retrospective of eight vintage Korean movies, four of them by the director Shin Sang-ok. Shin was kidnapped in 1978 under orders from Kim Jong-il, and brought to North Korea to direct films that would help sway international opinion about the Worker’s Party. He made seven of these, with the dictator serving as executive producer.

Other Korean standouts have included Hur Jin-ho’s adaptation of “Dangerous Liaisons,” set in 1930s Shanghai and starring Zhang Ziyi and Jang Dong-gun; and a screening of “Pieta,” a film by Kim Ki-duk, which received the Golden Lion award for best picture at the Venice Film Festival last month.

The 10-day festival is drawing stars of the Asian film scene promoting their latest movies. They include Tony Leung, Aaron Kwok, Ryo Kase and Zhang Ziyi, best known to Western audiences for her star turns in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Memoirs of a Geisha.” Tang Wei, the Chinese star of Ang Lee’s 2007 film “Lust, Caution,” opened the festival – the first non-Korean ever to do so.

A trip to Europe, long a safe bet, seems less predictable these days. The debt crisis has led to strikes and the closings of the type of small restaurants and boutiques that tourists count on. So what can you expect if you make it across the ocean? Contributors in some of the hardest hit countries — Ireland, Greece and Spain — give an indication.

Parknasilla Resort & Spa

Ireland’s ‘Zombie Hotels’ Beckon Visitors With Cheaper Rates

Whoever coined the term “zombie hotels” probably won’t win any prizes for marketing. But the hotels, relics of the Celtic Tiger era in Ireland, are probably the biggest real benefit for any visitor to Irish shores.

Hundreds of them opened during the boom years, from 1997 to 2007, fueled by lavish tax breaks and the expectation of increased demand from home and abroad. The snag was that if they ceased renting rooms, they would still owe money that had helped them get off the ground.

So despite the economic nose-dive, many have kept their doors open even if they are making little or no profit, forcing prices down across the sector. What is bad news for hoteliers is good news for everyone else.

Thanks to these so-called zombies, whose occupancy rates hover around 62 percent, tourists can now expect to pay a fraction of the cost for lodging that they might have a few years ago. In recent studies, hotel prices in Ireland rank among the cheapest in Europe, with average rooms in Dublin now costing about 80 euros (about $100 at $1.26 to the euro); 70 euros ($89) elsewhere in the country.

In 2013, the Irish government is hosting an initiative called The Gathering, in an attempt to encourage everyone to invite friends and relatives to visit. Because of the zombies, there has probably never been a better time to go.

Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press

Upside of the Euro Crisis: Lower Prices Are Luring Tourists Back to Greece

The sign on a clothing shop on Ermou Street in Athens reads “10 euro crisis special.” All along this main shopping drag near Parliament, similar discount signs abound.

As Greece’s economic troubles deepen, many prices are declining, including those for hotels. That seems to be drawing tourists back, just as concerns that Greece could abandon the euro kept many away during the summer.

The marble streets of Plaka and shops in the winding Monastiraki tourism areas near the Acropolis were startlingly empty a month ago, but they have snapped back to life. Restaurants and bars were bustling on a recent Saturday night; shoppers browsed jewelry stores and the streets were dense with crowds. But step on to any side street, and every third store is closed for business, covered by a thicket of graffiti.

Still, Greeks are going about their lives, settling into a rhythm occasionally interrupted by strikes against a government austerity plan and transportation slowdowns. Like the shuttered stores, the inconveniences are merely something for tourists to figure their way around, although there may be more to come.

Pascal Guyot/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For Tourists in Spain, Signs of Worsening Economy

One sign of spain’s economic woes intruded late this summer at a flamenco club in El Puerto de Santa María, a beach town in the south.

The dancer was stomping his feet and circling his arms on the stage. Then he reached for the microphone and started to sing. It was weird that he was singing, and it wasn’t right. Flamenco dancers aren’t supposed to sing. It ruins their rhythm. It destroys their mystery.

Between songs, the dancer addressed the crowd. “He is sorry for his singing,” my friend translated for me. “He says that he is dancer, but with the crisis he is a singer, too.”

As the dancer did double duty, it brought to mind other signs that Spain’s economy seemed worse than the year before. Bullfights were canceled; bullrings were half-empty.

Or take the chiringuito (beachside restaurant) at Redes. The place, perched on a bluff overlooking the crowded beaches on the Bay of Cádiz, was so mobbed last summer that the wait for a table was an hour or more. This year, there was no wait on many days, which was great until the grilled fish and sautéed clams came and the realization kicked in: it’s not much fun to eat on a beach in Spain all alone.

Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York TimesSTAYING POWER Pamela Downing, left, and Habiba Ali at the Hotel Wales.

A Suite Called Home Two women have outlasted a change of ownership, renovations and even the arrival of key cards at the Hotel Wales in Manhattan. They have no plans to check out soon. (The New York Times)

Eddie Huang Gets His Own Show Vice.com has announced that Eddie Huang, provocative blogger and food industry iconoclast, will host a new show on their site called, “Fresh Off the Boat.” It’s essentially a younger, more obscene version of “No Reservations,” that delves into the grungier side of street food. (The New York Times)

Big Spaces for Big Art at the Edges of Paris An area on the Île Seguin will be among the sites for FIAC, the mid-October Paris art fair. It is only one of several new art spaces on the Paris periphery. (The International Herald Tribune)

Maps for your Smartphone The debut of Apple’s new maps have caused some snickering, but they do offer an excuse to look at maps that are as good, or even better, than Google’s. (The New York Times)

Hotel worker: TripAdvisor Review Cost Me My Job While many travelers find online sites like TripAdvisor.com helpful, some hotels point out that not every anonymously authored review has the guests’ best interest in mind. (NBC News)

Kickstart This Nowhere, a long-form travel magazine edited by our contributor Porter Fox, is being reintroduced as a Tablet magazine. Oh, and it just was chosen as Kickstarter’s Project of the Day.

We’ve posted an article about how New Zealand, where the “Lord of the Rings” movies were filmed, has become a destination for vacationers searching for hobbit holes and other vestiges of Middle-earth. We asked on Twitter if you had ever traveled somewhere because of a book, TV show or movie. Here are some of your replies:

Andrew Councill for The New York Times Jefferson bust, National Museum of American History, above.

Relais & Châteaux, a Paris-based global network of more than 500 luxury hotels and restaurants, is revisiting French tradition by introducing its “Routes du Bonheur” to the United States.

The concept, which means “Road to Happiness,” originated in the 1950s with the brand’s French hoteliers, who offered travel itineraries with stops that included properties and sights from Paris to the south of France. The brand has recently tapped its American members to suggest routes of their own.

Itineraries include one from Thomas Keller, owner and chef at the French Laundry, in Yountville, Calif., who offers a four-night journey through California wine country; and another from Patrick O’Connell, owner of the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, whose five-night trip from Washington (Jefferson Inn) to Charleston, S.C. (Planter’s Inn), includes the Smithsonian.

“The point is to show travelers that they can have that feeling of a European countryside vacation right in America,” Mr. O’Connell said.

Michal Cizek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Above, a street artist performs for tourists on the streets of Prague.

Most insiders’ tours in cities offer an overview short on luxury and long on dive bars. But Pragulic, a new company in Prague, is offering an underground tour that goes one step further: It is led by homeless guides, who weave in their own tales of life on the streets while taking groups through the city’s historic center and outlying districts.

“It’s controversial, but that controversy has helped us,” said Katarina Chalupkova, a 25-year-old graduate student at Charles University who conceived of the idea this year with two classmates.

The tours — eight in all, including two night walks — offer a different view of Prague, and of life, Ms. Chalupkova said. The routes are left entirely up to the guides. While most hit the city’s main attractions, the walks often include some of Prague’s darker corners, shedding light on the city’s homeless population.

“It’s not just a business,” Ms. Chalupkova said. “There’s a social motive there, too.”

The tours cost 200 koruna (about $10, at about 19 korunas to the dollar), half of which goes directly to the guides. They are conducted in Czech, but translators are available.

Your bags are packed, your boarding pass is printed, but you don’t know one word of the language of the country where your passport will get its next stamp.

You would be the ideal customer for the mobile version of Fodor’s Travel Phrases, which includes 400 essential phrases for 22 languages. The company began selling individual language apps for $1.99 on iTunes last week. It is also expanding its stable of free City Guides apps, adding Montreal, Chicago and others, this year.

Fodor’s migration of content to mobile devices does not come at the expense of its print products.

Amanda D’Acierno, Fodor’s vice president and publisher, said the company will continue to print 75 to 85 guidebooks each year. “It’s a nonlinear experience,” she said of flipping through a guidebook, “and it’s hard to browse on an app.”

She added: “There’s also the reality of batteries dying and not being able to hook up your device. A guidebook is like a security blanket when you go away.”

Laura Segall for The New York TimesKlee Benally protesting an expansion by the Arizona Snowbowl.

Pure as the Driven Snow? This season, the Arizona Snowbowl in Flagstaff will become the first ski resort in the world to use 100 percent sewage effluent for its artificial snow. The treated water meets the standard just below drinking water, according to the United States Forest Service. The most vocal opponents are not skiers, but a Navajo tribe that says the plan amounts to desecration of the mountains. (The New York Times)

@American Airlines The carrier was the subject of a New York Times opinion piece by Gary Shteyngart, who recounted a horrific trip from Paris to New York, which read in part: “You, American Airlines, should no longer be flying across the Atlantic. You do not have the know-how. You do not have the equipment.” The same day that piece went online, an American Airlines flight from Boston to Miami had to be diverted to Kennedy when a row of seats become unbolted midflight. (The New York Times, ABC News)

Screening Shortened, for Planes Workers at Kennedy Airport say that the federally mandated inspection of planes for weapons, explosives and drugs between flights is becoming increasingly rushed and less thorough. (The New York Times)

Oops, That’s My Gun in That Bag Ever wonder who goes through security with a gun? More than 1,300 last year, a number that has been steadily rising, according to the T.S.A. People simply forget they have them in their carry-on, a spokesman for the agency said. (The New York Times)

Where Obama and Romney stand on travel issues At this point in the election season, President Obama and Mitt Romney have been examined from nearly every possible angle from issues as far-ranging as immigration to micro-brewing. This latest comparison was probably inevitable. (USA Today)