Walt Disney World
fine-tunes Epcot’s expanding festival lineup.
There’s not always a festival going on at Epcot, but visitors could be forgiven for thinking so. This year the theme park was scheduled to be in fest mode for 231 days, a record.
Part of that is because the park expanded spring’s Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival to 90 days and fall’s Epcot International Food & Wine Festival to 75. But 2017 also marked the inaugural Epcot International Festival of the Arts, a 24-day event spread over six weekends.
Now we are amid the Epcot International Festival of the Holidays, a new name for the park’s Christmas Around the World, which began six days after Food & Wine wrapped up. We asked Dave Kesting, general manager of Epcot festivals, if Walt Disney World is headed for year-round fest feasts, what’s up for the holidays and more.
On the notion of all festival, all the time:
“I don’t know if it will ever become year-round, for a couple of reasons. Summer is really just hard, outside in Florida. It’s not conducive to a great festival offering.”
On giving each event distinct personalities, missions and menus:
“Each one is very distinct. We don’t cross paths, even though that lobster roll is popular and people love it and we sell a lot of it … you’ll only see it there [at Food & Wine]. You’ll only see things core to the festival that they’re in. We want them to come back. You’ve got to try something new.”
On scaling down the size of the food portions at the holiday fest:
“People loved the flavors last year, but they would get one or two entrees to share and they were done. They weren’t able to experience it all.”
On swapping out the Hanukkah storytelling in favor of Mostly Kosher, a musical group:
“We were finding that it was a great storytelling and a wonderful offering, but maybe only 10 or 12 people could experience it at a time. So now, bringing the story to life with music, it reaches a much broader audience and made people more interested in the story as well.”
On adding an arts festival:
“The January-February time frame? Perfect. … We just knew we were missing a gap. While the Festival of the Arts is completely different than Festival of the Masters, there was pent-up demand for Disney art. They loved the food already and we provided a whole unique set of entertainment. So that was a nobrainer.”
The Epcot International Festival of the Holidays, including Candlelight Processional, runs daily through Dec. 30. The Epcot International Festival of the Arts returns for a second run — expanding to an everyday format in 2018 — from Jan. 12 to Feb. 19.