by Beth Keating
Review
DisneyBizJournal.com
January 16, 2024
I broke one of my cardinal rules of Disney fandom this week – Never, ever go to the opening day of an EPCOT Festival.
The crowds swell to astronomical levels, lines at food booths are numbingly long, and every third guest is running around with a camera and microphone. I’d rather just wait a few days and go after the first weekend is over. By Monday, the craziness dies down, and you’ve got a comfortable stroll through a far-less-crowded park, and your choice of plates at the food booths can be measured in moments instead of hourly increments.
But…. Figment popcorn bucket.
And I weighed my need for that popcorn bucket against the self-preservation need of avoiding opening day of the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts. Figment won, because I was afraid that his pavilion bucket would sell out the first day and I’d be out of luck. So, off we went to opening day, arriving shortly after rope drop, mobile ordering Figgy’s house, and gathering up my chunk of pristine plastic about 25 minutes after checking in.
The process for acquiring this year’s souvenir popcorn bucket ($30.00) was remarkably smooth, especially for the opening hour of the festival, and the cast members had the situation well in hand. You’ll mobile order on the My Disney Experience app, select a pickup time, and pay right on the app. When you get the notification that your bucket is ready for pickup, you’ll check in at Figment’s Inspiration Station at the Odyssey building, and pick up Figment and his pavilion at a station inside. Once our notification popped up on our phone, it was less than five minutes to stroll through the pickup line and sling a popcorn bucket over a shoulder.
That was the high point of the day. The rest of the day was a slow, downhill slide. The weather on opening day was miserable, on and off rain throughout the day, and went from cooler than normal for Florida in the morning, to muggy and humid later in the afternoon.
The line for coffee? An almost 30 minute wait…for a black, iced coffee from a kiosk (not even the Starbucks’ counter.) We managed one Food Studio that day, waiting 25 minutes for two plates, that were not especially “hot” by the time we’d walked to a miraculously open table. We’d originally circled six prospective booths that were of interest, but for us, opening day was “one and done.” We made plans to return a different day when the food lines would be less daunting.
The one Food Studio we did visit on opening day was “Cuisine Classique” (located in World Discovery near the Test Track side of the Creations Shop). There, we ordered both of the selections, the Beef Wellington, and the mussels.
The Beef Wellington ($8.75) was the better of the two dishes, though not as good as in previous years. The Red Wine Demi-Glace was phenomenal – if only I could replicate that at home! Dark and a touch salty (in a good way), it turned out to be the thing that elevated the dish as a whole. Served with Mushroom Duxelles, Prosciutto and Puff Pastry, the beef was just okay, a bit on the chewy side for Beef Wellington. The Wellington itself was made as one larger piece in the booth, and then sliced into thinner serving portions just before being plated. Unfortunately, the sliced sections weren’t sliced thick enough to maintain their shape very well, and we ended up smushing the various components together on our forks in order to get the flavors the way they were meant to be served. On the plus side, dipping the bite into the demi-glace was heavenly. The accompanying perfectly mashed potatoes were also excellent, dished up with the tiniest of miniature carrots and miniscule baby radishes. We’d have enjoyed a few more forkfuls of their fluffiness.
The second option, the “Cast Iron-Roasted P.E.I. Mussels with Sautéed Tomatoes, Garlic and Fresh Herbs” ($8.00) was a bit on the disappointing side. While served with a decent number of mussels and two (Figment-wing shaped?) toasts, the ten or twelve shellfish were somewhat difficult to pop out of their shells with a plastic fork, so just a fair warning if you are dining atop a trash can, festival-style. We really had to work to get a few of them detached. Flavor-wise, the vegetable component had a nice touch of background heat, but the broth wasn’t really a “broth” in the typical sense. Ours had a pretty thick layer of oil floating on top as we dug through the mussels. While some diners seemed to be reveling in their seafood, as folks who grew up on Long Island with gigantic bowls of mussels at our fingertips, this rendition didn’t wow us, and we’d say skip it for other more satisfying offerings elsewhere.
We were planning a stop at the “Artist’s Table” in the American Pavilion for the Duck and Dumplings, and “Goshiki” for the Sushi Donut and Wagyu Bun in Japan, but those lines were double the length of the line we’d been in earlier in the day at Cuisine Classique, and we decided to pack it in, and come back to eat another day.
By mid-afternoon, there were even lines to view the artwork in the artists’ tents, not to mention secondary lines to purchase items, and then even more lines to meet the visiting artists and get their signatures. Time to head for the trams…
The EPCOT International Festival of the Arts runs through February 19, 2024.
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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.
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