One of my favorite Disney World events is back!
The 2018 Epcot International Festival of the Arts kicked of this past Friday, and runs through February 19th. I’m hoping this post will give you a “flavor” of what you can expect should you be visiting Walt Disney World soon.
Decorated flower beds greet you at the entrance to Epcot, along with a reminder of the social-media hashtag Disney is hoping you’ll use for the event.
The large paint-by-numbers mural is back this year, where each guest who wants to participate is given a dab of paint and instructions on which squares to fill in.
Festival photo ops abound. This one is located just before the bridge leading from Future World to the World Showcase.
Here’s another one, located inside World Showcase itself. If you ever wanted be included in a work of art, here’s your chance lol.
Living sculptures are located near the Future World fountain.
Like the other Epcot festivals, this one provides a wide array of individual food, dessert, and beverage items for your consumption. These are sold at various kiosks located around World Showcase, as well as in the Odyssey Building, which is serving as the Festival’s headquarters.
Above is the menu for the Decadent Delights kiosk, located near the entrance to World Showcase.
(As usual, click on any of these pictures for a larger view.)
The Deconstructed Dish menu.
Meet the Deconstructed Reuben. A returning offering from last year, I found this quite good, even though I’m not a huge fan of corned beef. The pickles and other garnishes provide a nice counter balance to the mellow flavor of the beef itself.
The Deconstructed Strawberry Cheesecake. Yum.
These kiosks have become more or less permanent fixtures now with all of the festivals Epcot sees in a year.
The Wild Mushroom Risotto at the Masterpiece Kitchen was good, but probably not worth the $9.00 price tag. Higher prices seem to be a theme of this year’s festival, unfortunately.
Triple Chocolate Mousse @ $9.25. Again, this was very good, but the price tag leaves a bit of sticker shock.
The menu for the France kiosk…
…as well as Morocco,
Japan,
America,
… and Italy.
I somehow missed getting a picture of the kiosk located near Germany. The Braised Short Rib is very good, with the balsamic glaze providing an acidic balance to the rest of the dish.
Above is the menu for the kiosk near China.
And here’s the menu for Mexico.
We tried the Atole de Fresa and Mexican Concha Bread. An “okay” dessert if you’re looking for something that’s not overly sweet.
Speaking of overly sweet, those Pop’t Art sugar cookies shown at the bottom of the above menu run the risk of sending you into a high blood-sugar coma.
Consider yourself warned.
The Painter’s Palate is located inside the Odyssey building.
A nice little art display is also located here.
These posters based on Disney attractions are pretty cool.
And we’re done!
One final note: If you’re using RideMax to plan your day at Epcot during the festival, my advice would be to set your desired starting and end times in RideMax, but with no scheduled “breaks” in the plan. If you just include a few attractions, this should leave you with a large block of “free time” in the plan, which you can use to visit the kiosks and displays for the Epcot International Festival of the Arts.
Bon Appétit!
