EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival 2018

Have you ever been to a festival at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Center? More and more of the calendar year is being set aside for festivals at EPCOT. The 2018 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival wraps up Memorial Day weekend. We were at the festival earlier in the spring and had a great time.

EPCOT Center (now referred to as Epcot Park) was inspired by Walt Disney's plans for a real Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. His concept was for EPCOT to be a city that folks would live in as a laboratory for new technology & city planning concepts. The city center was to include a large shopping/attraction area themed to various nations of the world. There would also be an industrial park with corporate research & development facilities that had attractions open to the public. At the industrial park folks would be exposed to new technological developments and at the city center folks would be exposed to cultures of the world. After Walt Disney's death the industrial park concept morphed into a "Future World" themed area and the international shopping center morphed into a "World Showcase" themed area of one theme park.

Another way to think of EPCOT is as two enormous theme parks pushed together. You typically enter through “Future World” a collection of pavilions celebrating life with the world around us…communication, land, sea, imagination, technology, transportation, & space. This part of the park is anchored by the majestic geodesic sphere called “Spaceship Earth” (what our Toddler Son and many others refer to as “The Golf Ball”). Spaceship Earth is a slow moving ride through the giant sphere themed as a time travel adventure to witness the history of communication technology.

The striking modern architecture of "Future World"

The second area is called “World Showcase” (with a secondary entrance from adjacent EPCOT Resort Area Hotels). World Showcase is several pavilions representing countries of the world arranged around an enormous lagoon.  The pavilions are a combination of shops, restaurants, and attractions themed to the various countries. As you walk the edge of the lagoon you find locations for various festival activities. The year is divided into several festivals so there is usually always something unique going on.

In November we went to EPCOT during the “Festival of Holidays” and tried the festival food samplers for the first time and really liked it. So for the “Flower & Garden Festival” we were looking forward to those sample kitchens you find set up around the World Showcase. Our favorites seem to be whatever they come up with at the Mexico Pavilion. We also love to try what is on hand at the Chinese Pavilion.

Three happy chappies with snappy serapes!

For this trip we were able to secure a fast pass for Soarin’ Over the World, but the tiered system only allows you one of the headliners. If we wanted to ride Test Track or Frozen Ever After we would have to take our chances with the standby lines. We set our sights on Frozen and made it to the park for rope drop. In fact we were right up there beneath Spaceship Earth as the Jamitors (Custodian themed trashcan band) performed for us. To our surprise they lowered the rope but then asked us all to wait until they told us it was okay to go. Everyone was well behaved even though there was no longer a physical barrier between the throngs of people and the rest of the park. Finally they let us past and we joined the fast walk stampede to the Norway Pavilion.

Waiting for the "Jamitors" to let us in...

Frozen Ever After took the ride infrastructure of the former Maelstrom Attraction (a journey through Norwegian Folklore) and made it into a journey to visit the characters and settings from the Frozen movie. You load on Viking longboats and travel to see Olaf, Anna, & Elsa while traveling forwards & backwards over a series of waterfalls inside caves and night settings. We rode it for the first time in November, enjoyed it and we're looking forward to riding it again.

Elsa is holding her hand out and telling you "Wait right here, the wait for Frozen Ever After is 120 minutes long"

When we got to the Norway pavilion first thing that morning the line was already outside of the building. The sign overhead the entrance said 10 minutes…as soon as we reached the sign it jumped to 70 minutes! Once inside the building the line came to a stop, the boats stopped loading and we began hearing a periodic announcement that there was a technical issue and the wait may be longer than expected. The line was obviously not moving at all and we were not sure whether to leave and try our luck somewhere else or push through in hopes that once things were up and running again the wait wouldn’t be too long. Meanwhile our precious early park time was fading away. Many people did chose to leave but we pushed through and after waiting about 30 minutes we were on the ride. Altogether not too bad but had there not been a technical delay it might have only been a 10 minute wait. For the remainder of the day the standby line would be from 70-120 minutes. With Frozen out of the way and a Soarin’ fast pass already secured we were free to enjoy the Festival .

Spike the Bumblebee

Teenage Son loved Spike's Pollen Nation Exploration Scavenger Hunt. For $5.99 you purchase a souvenir map and sticker set. As you locate "Spike" (he is the occasional honey bee nemesis of Donald Duck) in the various gardens you place the sticker and the proper pavilion on the map. Once completed you redeem the map (simply show the map to a castmember at a specified location) for a set of patches. Mom & Teenage Son did two maps so they could receive two different patch sets. Playing along with the hunt gets you a real up close look at the various garden displays and topiaries of your favorite Disney characters. 

Soarin' was a favorite of ours since it originally opened as Soarin' over California at Disney's California Adventure in 2001. The hang glider themed ride in front of the gigantic movie screen is exhilarating. On our first trip to EPCOT in 2015 they were still showing the original California based film including the finale set at a Christmas decorated Disneyland. Our first ride on the new Soarin' over the World version was on a trip to Disney California Adventure (when they remodeled the park they dropped the " 's " from Disney) in 2016. It is a minor but very welcome addition that the California version of the film ends with a flyover of Disneyland and the Florida version of the film ends with a flyover of EPCOT. Thankfully they have not added 3-D glasses to the attraction, something that seems totally unnecessary. We miss the original version, especially at EPCOT as it was a chance to "visit" our home state of California, but we love the new film too. Flyovers over the real Matterhorn & Neuschwanstein Castle are wonderful allusions to the original Disneyland.

We really enjoyed meeting Baymax from the film "Big Hero 6". The boys got to give him a big hug (after removing all pins...no sharp objects around the marshmallow like "Home Healthcare Companion"). After that we walked across the hall and met Joy & Sadness from the Disney*Pixar film "Inside Out". Joy was very sweet and escorted Toddler Son to the photo area. Sadness was so funny, at one point she was laying on the floor despondent just like in the movie...and then later she pantomimed crying for us. The whole interaction was delightful. We also had a chance to meet Daisy at the front of the park in front of a great Spaceship Earth mural.

A tear from Sadness

The band Starship was playing in front of the American Adventure so that was a treat hearing "We built this City" belted out over World Showcase. Also Steve Harvey was filming his talk show in front of World Showcase Lagoon. He was there for 2 days and in that time he filmed a whole week of shows. As we left the park that night we met two ladies who were carrying swag bags from the show. They told us they requested free tickets to the show and the tickets included complimentary admission to EPCOT for the day...sounds like a great deal!

Steve Harvey filming his talk show on the shores of World Showcase Lagoon

It is probably heresy for Disney Bloggers to admit it but we are not huge fans of the EPCOT Fireworks/Lagoon show "IllumiNations", so when that show starts we tend to hit the busses and beat the rush of folks leaving the park. Of course it's probably just us, or perhaps we've never found the "right" viewing location. Overall we tend to watch fireworks from a distance and do not care for waiting a long time for a really good viewing spot.