The Walt Disney World Resort today announced the dates for its next Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. But the bigger news might be that Disney is calling this the "Epcot International Food & Wine Festival" - finally dropping the "Taste of" qualifier that Walt Disney World has used on its Epcot festivals since the parks reopened during the pandemic.
The 2021 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival will start July 15 and run through November 20 this year, almost completely filling the culinary gap between Fourth of July barbecues and Thanksgiving Day feasts. Details are still to come, but the event will continue to feature dozens of global marketplaces serving food and drinks from around the world, plus musical performances, new merchandise, and the Remy’s Ratatouille Hide & Squeak scavenger hunt.
Of course, Remy has an even bigger production coming this fall at Epcot, with the October 1 debut of the Remy's Ratatouille Adventure trackless dark ride in the expanded France pavilion in World Showcase. That's also the official start date of Walt Disney World's resort-wide 50th anniversary celebration.
In the meantime, the Taste of Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival runs through July 5 at the park.
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Well, festivals do get people in the parks. Look at how many SeaWorld and Busch Gardens offer now.
They do get people in the parks, but will they be as effective when they're never ending. How would anyone know if the Festivals are juicing attendance if there are few days outside of the busiest parts of the year that have festivals?
The Sea World parks offer a number of food festivals, but they rotate throughout the year with changing menus, entertainment, and theming. Disney is planning to keep the same festival going for over 4 months (for a festival that consistently ran for @8 weeks for the first 15 years of its existence). When a festival runs for that long every single year, it starts to lose its luster and aspects that make it special. What was a tool for Disney to encourage visits during what used to be a slow time of year is now spreading across such a large part of the calendar that any impacts on attendance would be dubious to discern.
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Is it really still a festival if it runs for over a third of the year? Disney has been stretching seasonal events a little bit every year, but usually just a week here or there. This expansion to JULY minimizes the uniqueness of the event. At this point, EPCOT will just be one big year-round continuous food festival with a short break for the busy Holiday and early summer seasons and some change-ups thrown in the late winter/early spring for the Arts and Flower and Garden.
Laments and farewells for what was the greatest theme park idea of the 20th Century.
I guess fans should get ready for the MNSSHP to start on the Fourth of July.