New Epcot festival pushes the arts
The new Walt Disney World Epcot festival includes Tarzan, caviar, Mary Blair, a Roy Lichtenstein-inspired drink and a sakebarrel cracking. You could appropriately call the Epcot International Festival of the Arts a stew or a medley or a collage.
At any rate, there will be a lot to sample when the event debuts Friday. It will run for 24 days over six weekends.
“It’s going to be everywhere from Future World all the way through World Showcase,” said Dave Kesting, general manager for World Showcase West and festivals. “We really want people to be immersed in all of the arts.”
More than 50 visual artists will be represented during the festival’s run, and, in some ways, the event will be a work in progress.
“They are producing new and original art every single day that they are out here at the festival,” Kesting said. “They have 30 original pieces that they created before the festival started, just for this festival alone. You’re going to see a lot of different artists, some that you know, some that are brand-new to our guests.”
For instance, Disney Legends Mary Blair and Herb Ryman have galleries in the festival center, located in the former Odyssey restaurant.
Blair accompanied Walt Disney on his trip to South America “when they were trying to get this Epcot concept developed in their minds,” Kesting said. “They used her art and her paintings to really be the baseline and inspiration concept for World Showcase.”
Ryman, who created the original drawings for Disneyland, did concept art for Epcot, Kesting said.
In addition, there is a paint-bynumbers scenic wall created by young Epcot visitors and an artwork-inspired scavenger hunt involving Figment, Epcot’s animated dragon.
The performing arts are represented by Broadway actors in concert, including Josh Strickland, who was the original title character in “Tarzan,” and Ashley Brown, the original on-stage Mary Poppins. The singers, grouped in twos, do selections from four shows, three times a night at the America Gardens Theater.
“Every night, every weekend is going to be a little bit different,” Kesting said.
As with other Epcot festivals, culinary arts have a role. Seven Food Studios give nods to artistic styles. There will be a “Pop’t Art” sugar cookie with modern-art icing, a multicolor cake wedge that makes me think of artist Piet Mondrian and a Roy Lichtenstein-inspired beverage with cranberry-filled pearls.
“The pearls just pop in your mouth and float up and down like a lava lamp,” Kesting said.
And there’s a scallop dish that resembles “The Lady in the Red Hat,” a work by Renoir.
“It’s spectacular,” Kesting said. “It looks just like the painting.”
The portions are a sampling size, and the prices are similar to those found at the International Food & Wine or the International Flower & Garden fests, he said.
“We did take the opportunity to do some a little higher-quality items. You’ll be able to experience caviar for the first time out here at Epcot,” he said. “Some of the techniques that we’re doing for this festival, we only do in our signature locations — we’ve never done in a festival setting before.”
Some Epcot guests have a hunger for high-end menu items, he said.
“Not everyone is going to go for those items, but we were really surprised at Food & Wine when we served Dom Perignon for the first time at $32 a glass, that we would sell 200 glasses a day. It shocked us.”
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