We are excited to share our favorite Festival, the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts. We were on hand for the first day of the festival and have loads to report on, so grab your favorite paintbrush or drink and join us as we cover the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts.
Festival of the Arts is quite a unique event versus the other three EPCOT events in that you get a great mix of food, entertainment, theming, and art! To that point, our favorite aspect of this event is interacting with the artists. We could be biased as we have a talented artist in the house, but we like interacting with people in their crafts and asking questions about pieces they made or their style while creating pieces. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel when we post or VLOG about this event. We interviewed some artists, and you don’t want to miss that!
Another fantastic aspect of the Festival of the Arts is our favorite dragon, Figment! He is at the center of everything for the festival, including a new popcorn bucket! This year’s popcorn bucket is themed after the imagination pavilion at EPCOT, where Figment lives. Also, as expected, a slew of new Figment-inspired merchandise made its way to EPCOT.
The Food
As with any Festival there is plenty of food to try out and we did a couple of loops of World Showcase to try some of our favorites and some new ones. Below you will find a lot of the menus we took a picture of and of course a picture and quick thoughts on the food we ate.
The first stop is The Craftsman Courtyard Studio to pick up the grilled pork belly. This dish is at the exact location where the porchetta was for the Food and Wine Festival. This dish tastes the same, which is excellent. However, we were not a fan of the bread. We like our garlic bread a little softer. The taste of the pork belly, though, is top-notch and highly recommended!
Moving over to the Pop Eats studio we got a favorite of ours to make at home which also happens to be part of the “wonderful walk of colorful cuisine”. Eating any five choices from the options will get you a reward for turning in. Our selection from pop eats was the tomato soup with the grilled cheese. This combo is a great comfort food option and tastes exactly like how you would expect it to!
Making our way around the festival, we already knew we would target the Vibrante & Vivido Encanto Cocina studio to get the Chorizo and Potato Empanada. This item tastes excellent and is highly recommended as a must-try. It is also included on the “wonderful walk of colorful cuisine,” so you can get your stamp, or even all five stamps at once if you like!
After three hearty dishes, it was time for a bit of dessert, and we turned to the Deconstructed Dish studio, which had moved and lost an item from last year. The deconstructed French onion soup was one of our favorites. However, we still got our Deconstructed Key Lime Pie for dessert and a stamp for the “wonderful walk of colorful cuisine.”. This dish is very photogenic and tasty!
Heading back into the world showcase we circled World Showcase two times before heading to dinner at the Painted Panda studio to order the whole menu which consists of, General Tso’s Chicken Shumal, Char Siu Pork Bun, and Sesame Balls. The Painted Panda studio smells so good when you pass it and the items for us tasted good but did not really blow us away. We felt that the pork bun missed the taste mark as it was really sweet. Our favorite item of the three was the Sesame Balls which have red bean paste in them, yummy!
For our last dessert we went over to Deco Delights and grabbed the Neapolitan Dessert Trio which features a chocolate tart, vanilla bean cheesecake and strawberry mousse. All of these work and this is a great dessert to end your day, and it so happened that this was our final stamp for the “Wonderful Walk of Colorful Cuisine” For completing that we were given Acai slushie and a color palate sugar cookie as a reward!
Final Thoughts and Conclusion on EPCOT International Festival of the Arts
As we head out of the festival article we want to emphasize on the activities that are available to everyone at the Arts festival. There is chalk art both professional and amateur meaning you can join in. There is the Disney on Broadway series which we will showcase on our YouTube channel (so be sure to subscribe there) There is the acts of gravity performance during the day! All of this happens in the middle of EPCOT which is already a legendary theme park in itself!
As we close out our review of this wonderful festival, I want to acknowledge some artists who took the time to talk with us. Rob Kaz, Tom Matousek, Ryan Riller and Tim Rogerson. Not only are they engaging, but they allow us to ask them questions about their craft, and it creates excellent conversations and experiences. We have some of their stuff displayed in our home and my work office. Please visit them on their IG accounts and check them out.
So what do you all think? Will you make the trip to EPCOT and check out the Festival of the Arts?
Very good article… very informative thanks
Thanks for reading!