Hey, everyone!
Chrissa here and the Epcot International Festival of the Arts started this week,
and I was able to go over the weekend.
So if you are interested in knowing what this thing is all about,
I'm going to go over all of the fun details starting right now.
The Epcot International
Festival of the Arts is Epcot's first festival of the year
starting on January 14th and runs until February 21st,
and the entire festival is included in the price of admission.
We got there right as the park opened on Saturday morning
and I was excited to be able to get started for the day.
If you head to the right, right after you walk under Spaceship
Earth, the first festival of the arts activity that you'll come across as this
gigantic mural at the expression station, where you can leave your creative
mark on one of the biggest paint by number wall murals I have ever seen.
And this is what it looked like at the beginning of the day when we walked in.
So if you have a guess as to what this could be?
Let me know down in the comments below.
This wasn't quite open yet when we walked by, so I'll have to come back
a little bit later in the day to come and check it out.
One of the biggest attractions of this year's art festival
is not a new ride or even an attraction.
And if you're a diehard Disney fan,
you probably already know what I'm going to say.
And it has caused people to stand in lines like this for hours.
And this line isn't even the half of it.
It actually wraps around the entire lake.
So you probably are wondering what that is, right?
And well, it's this guy.
It's the Figment popcorn bucket, and it is pretty stinking cute.
It is all the rage of this year's art festival and you will see them
everywhere.
If you are planning on getting a figment popcorn bucket for yourself,
you'll want to be prepared to stand in line for at least a couple of hours.
I even heard that there were a few people that stood in line
for up to seven hours to get one, so be prepared.
And by the way, if you are finding this information
helpful, I would love it if you could hit that
like button and subscribe if you would like to get more ideas
like this to do in my beautiful state of Florida.
But let me get into my favorite thing that I love about
any of the Disney festivals, and that is the food.
If you ever had the opportunity to go to any of the Disney festivals,
you'll know that there is some amazing food.
And even if you're not an adventurous eater,
you'll be able to find something throughout the day
that you'll want to try.
On this trip, we decided to do the Wonderful Walk
of Colorful Cuisine on Saturday, and if you follow me
on Instagram or Facebook, you probably already know this.
What it is is a tasty stroll around Epcot, and you get to try
five vibrant featured dishes one that correlates
with five different colors red, green, yellow, orange and pink.
What you do is you use your festival passport as a guide
to look for a specialty notated menu items
and then track your progress by collecting stamps after each purchase.
And then at the end of the day, you get to claim your reward.
So at the beginning of the day, we were determined to finish this walk
and we set off to get our first dish, which happened to be
the beautiful vanilla donut that you can find at the Donut Box.
This is served with strawberry sugar, strawberry ice cream,
fresh strawberries and strawberry gele and a look at how beautiful this is!
Is this not the prettiest donut dish that you've ever seen?
If every dish today
is going to be this beautiful then we are in for a treat because wow!
this is really pretty.
Next, we made our way to the Deconstructed Dish
near the Port of Entry for the deconstructed key lime pie.
Which featured a flexible key lime pie curd, key lime mousse,
graham cracker cake and meringues, which I loved.
After that, we made our way over to Canada to grab
the braised beet carpaccio that came with mustard vinaigrette,
pickled clamshell mushrooms, golden beets and crostini.
While we were at the Canada Pavilion we also picked up the roasted bone marrow
with onion marmalade, pickled mushroom, mache lettuce and bone marrow snow.
Which was also really good.
Next on our wonderful walk was the house
made chorizo and potato empanada
with turmeric aioli and annatto aioli, which you can pick up at Vibrante
& Vivido, which is located between Morocco and France.
And for the last dish, we picked up the pan seared scallops with vanilla
butternut squash puree, buttered cauliflower puree and lime foam
that was at the Artist's Table in American Adventure.
Once I tried all of these wonderful dishes,
I headed back to the Deco booth to pick up my prize,
which happened to be this festival themed sugar cookie and a smoothie.
Which I didn't catch
what kind of smoothie it was, but it was delicious all the same.
And if you know, let me know in the comments below.
One of the other fun things to try while walking around the world
is the amazing drinks that each booth features.
And since I'm allergic to alcohol, I asked my friend Melissa to grab
some shots of Some beautiful drinks that she picked up along her way
around the world.
And this is the beautiful sea butterfly that you can pick up from China,
which is a butterfly pea flowere-infuse cocktail with Smirnoff
vodka, light rum, lychee syrup and magic boba pearls.
So thanks so much to Melissa for sending these over.
The most
wonderful thing about the festival is that while you're walking around
and trying all of this delicious food and drinks, you can stop and take a look
at this amazing art that is sprinkled throughout the world showcase.
And there are so many artists to choose
from that you won't help yourself from stopping by every once in a while.
And we've been known ourselves to go home with our print or two.
One of my other favorite things at the art festival is the chalk art
that you can find on the walkway walking towards the port of entry.
I think the chalk art is always so fun, and it's pretty amazing
that artwork that they create.
If this artwork inspires you and your kids, you can head over to the land
where you can create an art masterpiece with you and the entire family.
In addition to the delicious foods and the art booths, there are also
a number of interactive art installations like this mural that we walked
by at the beginning of the day, and I did get a chance to go back
and add my squares to this mural, which wasn't quite done
at the end of the day, but we were able to pick up a slip of paper
that would show what it would look like once it was completed.
So did you guess, right at the beginning of the day?
Let me know.
There is also the Animation Academy at the America Gardens Theatre.
Where you can learn to draw a Disney character from an animation artist.
Keep in mind that the Animation Academy only happens a couple times a day,
so if you do want to go and catch this, make sure that you check the show times
at the beginning of the day.
And there are even these interactive, artful photo ops that you can step into
if you ever wanted to know what it would feel like to be a part of a masterpiece.
If you're looking for
even more entertainment while you're making your way around the world
this year, there are several performing artists around Epcot.
We were able to catch a few of them as we were making our way around.
So if you do want to catch them, you'll be able to see the times next
to the stage.
One exciting performance this year is Disney on Broadway,
which is located at the American Gardens Theatre.
Here, you'll be able to sit back and sing along with show
stopping numbers from legendary Disney musicals.
Every two weeks, Disney will invite a different pair of Disney Broadway
stars to perform some of the songs that they helped make famous.
Plus, of course, a few of your favorites sprinkled in throughout their performance.
While we were there, we were able to catch Kerry Butler, who was beauty from Beauty
and the Beast and Telly Leung, who played Aladdin in Aladdin.
If you're looking to bring home a bit more of the art festival with you
outside of the amazing pieces of art, there's also festival
specific merch that you can find available throughout the park.
But the bulk of it will be in the creation shop at the beginning of the park.
And before I get going, I want to let you guys know
that I started a Facebook group called the Florida Travel Crew.
So if you're looking for a great group of people to bounce your Florida
ideas off of, or would just like to be a part of future videos like this one?
I'll leave the link to it in the description below.
Look forward to seeing you there.
If you're wondering what else there is to do while you're in Epcot for the day,
you'll want to check out my overview that just popped up on the screen.
Until next time, everyone!
I hope you have an amazing day and go out and enjoy some Florida sunshine.