The EPCOT Flower and Garden Festival
The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all - Mulan
The EPCOT Flower and Garden Festival happens every year at Walt Disney World and this year it runs February 28th through May 28th, 2018. The festival celebrates the arrival of spring with topiaries of your favorite Disney characters, floral arrangements around the park, food, exhibits and more. The price of admission is included in a standard EPCOT ticket. While there are things to do in all areas of the park, the concentration of activities pertaining to the festival happen in the World Showcase where the countries are set. Each year my family comes to town during the spring, so we make it a point to go.
Last year some of my favorite highlights were the key lime pie they were serving, the walk through butterfly exhibit and the Winnie and the Pooh topiaries since I was working at Crystal Palace at the time.
Outside the butterfly exhibit
Pooh and Tigger hanging out in the U.K.
This year was just as beautiful as last year. The entrance to the park, where the ball sits, has a collection of topiaries of the original gang including Mickey and Pluto.
Once inside, the topiaries continue with Donald and his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie doing some gardening.
We also swung by the butterfly exhibit and ran into Daisy with the Chipmunks, Chip and Dale, butterfly catching!
In future world, go past the ball and make a right, we made sure to ride Soarin' and Living with the Land before continuing the topiary hunt. If you are coming to Epcot, I highly recommend riding Soarin'. The ride emulates a hang glider journey over the world with incredible scenes including elephants on the African plains, the Great Wall of China, Neuschwanstein Castle, and the Eiffel Tower, before settling back in Epcot to watch the fireworks front row. The ride typically has a long line so I suggest a fastpass and warning: if you are prone to motion sickness I do not recommend this ride since it can make you ill. While you are in the area you can also check out Living with the Land. It is a boat ride through EPCOT's greenhouses and explains how Disney and others around the world are creating ways to live a more sustainable life. Though not a high thrills ride, it is a cool way to look behind the scenes of Disney's sustainability efforts.
The "hidden" Mickey in Living with the Land
On the other side of future world, go past the ball and make a left, you can ride Test Track and Mission: Space or check out the topiaries such as Stitch, Buzz Lightyear, and Cars. Mission: Space is another no go for motion sickness sufferers but Test Track is a high speed attraction where you get to design a car in the queue and the ride tests your speed, agility, etc. performances based on your selections. Like Soarin', this one is usually a high wait time however, in EPCOT the fastpasses are set up slightly different than Magic Kingdom so you are only able to pick between Test Track and Soarin and then you can pick two other attractions from a separate list. We always choose to fastpass Soarin' since there is no single rider line whereas, Test Track does have a single rider line that is typically a shorter wait than the standard queue.
Stitch and Buzz in future world
Once inside the world showcase, we ran into many familiar faces pictured below.
Captain Hook and Peter Pan
Tinkerbell
Snow White and the 7 Dwarves
The Lion King gang
Timon and Pumba
Lady and the Tramp
Beauty and the Beast
Along the way, we stopped by the booths set up for the festival to try the food from around the world. While these do cost extra, some of the desserts we found were super delicious, like the key lime meringue pie.
According to my grandpa and aunt, I would not recommend the potato cheddar biscuit they tried!
In total, we spent 12 hours in the park and felt that we accomplished everything there was to do for EPCOT and the Flower and Garden Festival. It is always nice to spend time with your loved ones in your favorite place!
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