With the creation of the International Festival of the Arts in 2017, Walt Disney World's Epcot began offering a specialty festival for nearly every season.
This year's edition, a Taste of Epcot International Festival of the Arts, joins older festivals dedicated to flowers and gardens, food and wine and the year-end holidays as overlays on the permanent attractions at Epcot.
Since the arrival of Covid, the festivals have had a "taste of" tacked onto their names, denoting a more limited offering due to the pandemic.
Still, this year's festival includes plenty of Disney's trademark creativity in the three focus areas of culinary, visual and performing arts. It's all "mixed in an entertaining way that's fun for the whole family," as one Disney cast member, Mark Daniel, said during a preview for the media held in early January.
A menu board at the Pop Eats! food station in Epcot, part of the Taste of Epcot International Festival of the Arts Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
Let's start with what I thought was a sterling example of that approach: Pop Eats. For adults and art buffs, there's the clever Disney take on pop artist Andy Warhol's iconic Campbell's Soup Can as a theme at one of the 20 festival booths positioned around Epcot's World Showplace. For kids, there's the simplicity of tomato soup and grilled cheese.
Although not as numerous as during the food and wine festival, the booths provide more than enough culinary variety to stimulate the imagination. Pressed for time, I missed the harissa-roasted rack of lamb with baba ghanoush, picholine olives, toybox tomatoes, preserved lemon and pomegranate offered at the Mosaic Canteen near the World Showcase's Morocco pavilion.
But I made up for it at the el Artista Hambriento (the Starving Artist) booth near the Mexico pavilion, where I had a scrumptious chile relleno. Only the fact that I was driving stopped me from sampling the intriguing Frida carrot margarita, a dark orange concoction in a martini glass, served with a bubble of smoke applied over the top.
Disney chefs prepare dishes to serve as part of the Taste of Epcot International Festival of the Arts Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
These festivals are a chance for Disney chefs to stretch, and not all of the experiments turn out to be Michelin quality. For example, I was served a Kalimotxo, a drink made in the Basque country in Spain with red wine and cola. "It's a kind of classic drink from that region," said Kevin Downing, Chef for Festivals at Epcot.
However, the Disney version was mixed with Pibb Xtra, a switch only fans of the Dr. Pepper-like cinnamon/cherry soft drink will love.
At the press event, we sampled several of the performances that are incorporated into the arts festival. At the World Showplace Events Pavilion, an acrobat did aerial stunts in "Art Defying Gravity," while in "Visual Arts in Performance," a painter made a character portrait of the Disney canine Pluto in about 15 minutes while bopping and grooving to pop music tracks.
Disney's nine-person Voices of Liberty, an a capella group, demonstrated a new songbook ranging from high school choir-type material to more sophisticated arrangements, featuring bell-clear harmony. And at the Canada Mill Stage, the JAMMators used unconventional percussion instruments (pots and pans, paint cans) to entertain.
Artists work on sidewalk chalk drawings at the Taste of Epcot International Festival of the Arts Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
The visual arts component of the festival occupies the Future World area of Epcot as well as the World Showcase. There are chalk drawings on the sidewalks, for example, and a mosaic-like Paint by Number Mural on a wall that hides some of the park's new construction.
Visitors can climb into a booth-like reproduction of famous paintings such as "The Birth of Venus" and "Starry Night" and have their photos taken.
There's an art-themed scavenger hunt organized around the Epcot mascot Figment, and at the America Gardens Theater, older kids and adults can take lessons in drawing Disney characters from an animation artist.
Something I didn't get to see but wish I could is a gallery of jazz paintings and other artwork inspired by the new Pixar animated feature film "Soul," which was released on Christmas Day. The Soul gallery opened Feb. 1 at the American Adventure, and the entire festival is on at Epcot through Feb. 22.