I’m here at World Showcase during the 2019 Flower and Garden Festival.
It is one of the many festivals that take place here at Epcot every year.
Today the park sees more days with a festival than it does without but that wasn’t
always the case.
There was a time when the concept was still new, and that was back in 1984.
That summer EPCOT Center was still just under two years old.
The park was new and different and exciting, but it wasn’t what you’d traditionally
think of when you thought of a theme park.
It was more of a perpetual World’s Fair than another Magic Kingdom.
And while today that’s a strength that many feel sets Epcot apart from its surrounding
parks, it initially caused a problem for Disney.
As it turned out, Florida locals visiting Walt Disney World didn’t feel the need to
revisit Epcot the way they did with The Magic Kingdom, and while Disney never formally released
the figures, they did admit in a 1984 Orlando Sentinel article that resident attendance
at EPCOT Center fell off after the first year it was open.
It was a problem they needed to fix, and they decided to try and fix it with a festival called WorldFest.
WorldFest was initially a year long event that kicked off in September of 1984 to coincide
with the grand opening of the new Morocco pavilion.
The idea was that every month would be dedicated to a single country in World Showcase, featuring
food, music, and performances from that specific nation.
Just in time for Oktoberfest, the month of October was dedicated to Germany.
The celebration continued with Italy in November, the UK in December, China in January, Canada
in February, France in March, Japan in April, Mexico in May, and the US in June, July, and August.
As for Norway, there was nothing for Norway. The Norway pavilion wouldn’t actually be built for
another four years.
Beyond just musical performances, food, and merch, special guests sometimes attended the
opening ceremonies of that month’s celebration.
For instance Carol Thatcher, daughter of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, attended the UK
ceremony, and actor/comedian Pat Morita, most famous for his role in The Karate Kid,
attended the Japan pavilion ceremony.
The hope was that by changing up the celebration every month, they would give locals enough
of a reason to keep coming back. And while they kept the numbers to themselves once again, they claimed
that they heavied up on a local TV and print advertising campaign
that was supposedly their largest to date.
Did it work?
Again, Disney was tight lipped when it came to numbers, however the event was successful
enough that it was extended past the summer of 1985 and through the first half of 1986.
They just started to cycle through the nations of World Showcase again.
Eventually the festival unceremoniously came to an end with France being the focus in May of 1986.
WorldFest did help to bring more locals to the park, but in a way it faced the same issue
that Epcot did before the festival began.
After running through each country once, it’s hard to get people to pay to come back for
the second run through.
So while Epcot’s WorldFest came to an end, the challenge to win over guests did not.
The late 1980s and early 1990s saw multiple attempts to pull people into Epcot and World
Showcase, including some bizarre ones like a Barbie themed stage show and a sci-fi water
Splashtacular.
It was the challenge that came with building a place that was so atypical from what people
had come to expect from a theme park.
In 1994 Disney would introduce the International Flower and Garden Festival and shortly after
that they’d expand to the Food and Wine Festival.
Since then we’ve also gotten the Festival of the Arts and the Festival of the Holidays.
Today Epcot sees some of its busiest days during festivals.
It keeps World Showcase in a state of change, and it all started with WorldFest.