Walt Disney World’s flagship competition is now underway with the beginning of the 2024 EPCOT Worldwide Meals & Wine Pageant. Not solely is that this the 12 months’s greatest occasion, but it surely’s the primary since 2019 with a wall-less EPCOT due to the completion of the overhaul. Given all of that and the completion of CommuniCore Corridor and World Celebration, expectations have been excessive for the 2024 foodie fest.
Earlier than we get going, it’s price noting that it is a evaluate of the 2024 EPCOT Worldwide Meals & Wine Pageant as an entire. It looks like the World Marketplaces suck up the entire oxygen with regards to protection of this occasion. We imagine it is a mistake. We’ll even be updating our meals sales space opinions and posting new ones over the course of the approaching days, however the World Marketplaces usually are not the totality of the occasion. Or not less than, they shouldn’t be.
Each single EPCOT competition of the 12 months has meals cubicles. The entire different ones additionally provide one thing else. Protection of these different occasions additionally focuses on the opposite highlights, and for good motive–it may be a variety of enjoyable and compelling! Loads of Walt Disney World followers and out-of-state Annual Passholders e book journeys throughout these festivals simply to expertise what they’ve to supply.
Anyway, should you’re solely involved with the World Marketplaces and don’t care about what else these occasions usually provide, this evaluate isn’t for you. It’s best to as an alternative await the person meals sales space opinions and better of record. Spoiler alert: the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant is definitely fairly good whenever you’re singularly targeted on the snacks and drinks!
In reality, the lineup of meals cubicles and menus on the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant addresses certainly one of our greatest points with the occasion in the previous few years–that it was skewing too far within the path of crowd-pleasing, consolation delicacies. I’m a agency believer that you want to meet company the place they’re, however on the similar time, it is a meals competition. The brand new additions from the previous few years would’ve been the equal of Cannes Movie Pageant solely screening motion pictures from the Boss Child franchise.
The World Marketplaces on the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant thread the needle significantly better. Sure, there are nonetheless the fundamental cubicles with boring menus, however there are additionally attention-grabbing and bold ones. (Sadly, given the lengthy traces on the former, it’s comprehensible why Disney goes this route–giving the individuals what they need.) In any case, it’s not the delicacies on the occasion that’s the difficulty. It’s all the pieces else.
For the 2024 EPCOT Worldwide Meals & Wine Pageant, the iconography, in-park picture ops, decorations, and logos are all just about unchanged from final 12 months…which have been unchanged from the 12 months earlier than…and 12 months earlier than…and so forth. In reality, this very same visible fashion has been used yearly because the 2020 Style of EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant. Therefore these being re-microwaved leftovers as an alternative of microwaved leftovers. (Technically, they’re re-re-remicrowaved leftovers!)
Shows, logos, graphics, and so forth., all used to vary each single 12 months of the EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant. The recent look was one thing we at all times appreciated, particularly as a distinction to Weight loss program EPCOT. 5 years of largely similar stuff for Walt Disney World’s longest seasonal occasion feels extremely drained at this level.
They didn’t precisely nail these visuals so properly in 2020 within the first place. It’s not as if the workforce can’t prime what was executed again then and is selecting to not mess with perfection. The graphics are high-quality, however nothing particular. Worse but, there aren’t lots of them on show all through the park.
The 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant was speculated to be the park’s popping out celebration. For the primary time since 2019, the middle of EPCOT is lastly with out building partitions (properly, minus those round Take a look at Observe, however these are totally different). World Celebration has changed the Large EPCOT Grime Pit, CommuniCore Corridor & Plaza are open, and the overhaul is “completed.”
A part of the promise, not less than so I assumed, concerning the reimagined central backbone of the park is that it may turn into a canvas for seasonal occasions. Our World Celebration & CommuniCore at EPCOT Evaluation: Higher Than a Grime Pit & Partitions, I Guess? lamented simply how boring the World Celebration Gardens and CommuniCore Corridor regarded.
One little bit of solace to that was that bland planters and clean areas may simply be reworked for festivals. We simply had but to see that as a result of the overhaul wrapped up through the summer season, which was “Weight loss program EPCOT” season this 12 months. This made a point of sense, and definitely defined all of the uninteresting and drab areas all through World Celebration.
Sadly, now the flagship 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant is right here and the park doesn’t look all that a lot totally different than it did throughout Weight loss program EPCOT this summer season. I’m really pretty assured that it had extra decor again through the 2020 Style of EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant.
There’s no show behind Spaceship Earth, nothing in that bizarre planter (above is the way it seems to be proper now), no Chef Figment topiary (or any topiary, for that matter), and there are not any installations in any way previous the planter proper on the entrance entrance. And that one is precisely the identical because it’s been for the previous few years. I may actually share a photograph from final 12 months and also you wouldn’t know the distinction.
I’m not anticipating Flower & Backyard Pageant 2.0 right here, but it surely’s wild to me that nothing has been executed with any of those planters. Most of them are simply easy inexperienced areas, and whereas they’re higher than concrete and Nineteen Nineties datedness, they’re nonetheless bland and begging for extra ornamentation and installations. As an alternative, you can stroll from Spaceship Earth to the entrance of World Showcase with out understanding {that a} competition is even taking place.
Then there’s CommuniCore Corridor. Oof.
Some followers implored the skeptics to “wait and see” how this flex area would look as soon as a competition rolled round. From our perspective, this was at all times ludicrous. The inside seems to be like a hospital cafeteria or conference middle flex area or airport terminal, and no quantity of dressing it up modifications the underwhelming inside design.
However perhaps these followers have been on to one thing and CommuniCore could be put to such nice use that we’d overlook that? In spite of everything, the idea artwork (above) regarded very totally different and rather more formidable than the completed product that opened in June.
One way or the other and in opposition to all odds, CommuniCore Corridor is worse through the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant than it was throughout Weight loss program EPCOT.
As anticipated, CommuniCore Corridor is residence to the Macatizers sales space, together with a large overflow queue and seating for this market. That’s high-quality, I assume. Not perfect, however no matter.
The issue is that the opposite half of CommuniCore has been taken over as a short lived merchandise location, promoting EPCOT Meals and Wine Pageant objects. This very a lot seems to be non permanent, on par with the makeshift merchandise facilities for runDisney occasions. Nothing right here is purpose-built for the placement. It seems to be like racks you’d see at Walmart or Kmart or wherever.
By itself, that’s a foul look. It’s downright pathetic as in comparison with idea artwork exhibiting installations and displays for festivals. Then once more, I feel most affordable followers had way back given up on such lofty ambitions for this flex area.
What provides insult to harm is the abject greed in considering there was adequate area in right here for (one more!) merchandise spot. This area may very well be all seating for Macatizers, and it nonetheless wouldn’t be sufficient. The tables listed here are at all times full, and that may be true even when there have been twice as many.
What’s really superb to me is that CommuniCore Corridor is objectively worse than any competition area used at EPCOT within the final decade. That’s proper, the brand new purpose-built competition venue that took 5 years and untold tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to deliver to life, is inferior to previous makeshift areas even from a competition perspective.
The entire issues it promised have been squandered. There’s the “state-of-the-art present kitchen” that Disney teased “could even entice a number of particular culinary company.” It’s now getting used to place the ending touches on mac & cheese. There’s the “dynamic area to anchor” EPCOT Festivals and occasion area “restricted solely by the boundaries of creativeness.”
CommuniCore Corridor is as an alternative now getting used for merchandise racks, as one more method to juice memento gross sales and attempt to beat final 12 months’s numbers. If that is what boundless creativeness seems to be like, I’m completely high-quality with the present administration leaving Journey Into Creativeness alone for now.
From a visitor perspective, CommuniCore Corridor just isn’t superior to the retrofits executed with the Odyssey or Wonders and even the World ShowPlace Pavilion. If something, I favor all of these present venues. The Odyssey has extra home windows and good views. The Wonders pavilion is way bigger and has a bunch of quirky area that, up to now, was used for enjoyable and random functions.
World ShowPlace is completely large, and when utilized in 2020, it had much more to supply–a number of cubicles, tons of seating, areas to decompress, and indoor leisure. Walt Disney World acquired artistic and put all three to make use of brilliantly for occasions.
CommuniCore isn’t artistic on any stage–the one superb factor about it’s {that a} venue created particularly for festivals is worse at internet hosting them than those above. By no means thoughts the truth that it’s probably not even functioning as a competition middle, however slightly, a glorified meals & merchandise sales space.
By way of different stuff, none of it has returned for the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant. This consists of culinary seminars, demonstrations, meals with movie star cooks, and different particular occasions. These have been on hiatus since 2019–the final regular 12 months of the occasion–and we had hoped that they’d return now that CommuniCore Corridor is open.
It’s unhappy to see that none of that is again. As defined in EPCOT’s Meals & Wine Pageant Is Stale. Right here’s What We Need Disney to Change, the occasion actually wants a shot within the arm. That is speculated to be EPCOT’s flagship competition, however has turn into the weakest occasion of the 12 months with the least substance.
As an alternative, the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant is mainly simply the World Marketplaces, Eat to the Beat concert events, a scavenger hunt, and merchandise. Once more, although, all of that is current at different occasions. There’s nothing to tell apart this from any of the opposite EPCOT festivals. The entire relaxation have “one thing else” that makes them distinct attracts.
Nonetheless, I’m guessing lots of you’ll not care. That’s completely high-quality! We all know loads of Walt Disney World followers who love EPCOT’s Meals & Wine Pageant. It’s their favourite occasion of the 12 months as a result of they take pleasure in revisiting acquainted favorites and have a sure sentimentality concerning the longest-running competition.
Accordingly, you could wish to take my perspective on the 2024 EPCOT Worldwide Meals & Wine Pageant with a grain of salt should you’re an enormous fan of this occasion. Particularly should you solely care concerning the delicacies and are moderately glad with this 12 months’s menus. (And once more, we’re! That is in all probability one of the best 12 months for meals since not less than 2021. My greatest grievance on that entrance is that a number of of the menus are smaller.)
Meals & Wine has been my least favourite of the EPCOT festivals for some time, which is usually as a consequence of all the pieces except for the meals & drinks. For years, I’ve felt this occasion has been substantively missing and much too reliant on individuals spending cash on meals and alcohol, slowly eliminating the “edutainment” elements of the competition that make it enjoyable and spherical out the occasion.
Nonetheless, it boggles my thoughts that Walt Disney World fully phoned in all the pieces besides the World Marketplaces on the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant. Once more, should you merely don’t care, that’s high-quality. For a lot of followers, EPCOT’s Worldwide Meals & Wine Pageant is all concerning the…meals & wine.
The factor is, simply as I can acknowledge that not each fan has the identical considerations or priorities as me, those that don’t care ought to be capable of respect the identical. Again once we have been out-of-state Annual Passholders residing within the Midwest, we may very well be enticed to e book lengthy weekend journeys for particular occasions like this.
We did that often for EPCOT festivals, Star Wars Weekends, and different themed occasions. I can say with full certainty that, however for this weblog, I’d not be drawn to the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant. It might be safely skippable. Whereas I received’t faux that everybody is like us, I do know there are a not-insignificant variety of out-of-state followers who do assume equally.
By Disney’s personal admission, the parks are seeing a slowdown and the corporate’s ahead steering suggests decrease attendance and resort bookings into 2025. And that is after final summer season and fall have been already slower than the prior-year. On condition that, I’d assume that Walt Disney World would possibly wish to put the nominal quantity of effort into making the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant an even bigger draw.
It’s not like new banners, a Chef Figment topiary, huge shows, and different visuals would break the financial institution. It’s really baffling how an organization that routinely wastes large quantities of cash can be so low cost and penny-pinching, even in downright counterproductive methods! If Walt Disney World someway doesn’t have the money to spend on decorations, perhaps they may accomplice with a kind of sponsors they’re at all times touting and convey again interactive experiences (RIP Cranberry Lavatory) and different attention-grabbing elements of the occasion.
To finish on a constructive observe, I’ll say that it’s good having the entrance of the park free from building partitions. Regardless that a bunch of the lighting results within the World Celebration Gardens are busted, it’s fulfilling to spend time on the entrance of the park within the night. The stay music in CommuniCore Plaza provides an important power. The sunshine reveals on Spaceship Earth are glorious, as at all times. As I’ve stated earlier than, the completed product is nicer than a dust pit.
Total, what’s nonetheless lacking from the 2024 EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant firmly cements this as our least favourite occasion of the 12 months at EPCOT, and by a reasonably broad margin. Regardless of that, Meals & Wine nonetheless generates way more protection than any of the opposite occasions at EPCOT and appears to have extra diehard followers. I’m nonetheless not completely positive why that’s, however Walt Disney World hype constructed over time often takes years to undo (for instance, Le Cellier remained common for a number of years after the Disney Eating Plan eroded its worth).
My honest hope is that somebody at Walt Disney World acknowledges this earlier than it’s too late, and stops attempting to take advantage of Meals & Wine to the purpose that it turns into passe and unpopular. This competition may very well be a lot extra, and has been up to now. With EPCOT’s overhaul now completed, there’s completely no excuse for the occasion to proceed being a shadow of its former self.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Are you excited for the 2024 EPCOT Worldwide Meals & Wine Pageant? Disillusioned that the look of the occasion is just about similar to the previous two years? What do you consider the lineup of World Marketplaces? Upset that there’s nothing when it comes to “edutainment” or something particular to separate this from any of the opposite EPCOT occasions? Any questions we can assist you reply? Listening to your suggestions–even whenever you disagree with us–is each attention-grabbing to us and useful to different readers, so please share your ideas under within the feedback!