by Beth Keating
Theme Park Life
DisneyBizJournal.com
June 12, 2024
The walls have finally come down at EPCOT – at least for the next few days until Test Track begins its scheduled revamp on June 17. Thankfully, those walls will be tucked over to the side of the park, and won’t create an ever-changing maze of pathways for guests at the front of the park. The removal of the CommuniCore walls brings to completion Disney’s years-long re-envisioning of EPCOT.
The new CommuniCore Hall opened its doors to park guests on June 10, amidst the debut of the summertime ¡Celebración Encanto! stage show on the (also brand new) outdoor stage, headlining the newly completed CommuniCore Plaza and gardens. A new attached Mickey & Friends meet and greet area also began welcoming visitors, and the “Festival Favorites” booth started dishing up new snacks to parkgoers. The just-unveiled area is located behind Spaceship Earth, alongside the World Celebration gardens (not far from Walt’s “Dreamer’s Point” statue), bookending the gardens with the Creations Shop.
CommuniCore Hall, the anchor of the new area, is an extra-large, indoor, air conditioned space (did I mention air conditioned?) that will eventually serve as an exhibition room for festivals, with a demonstration kitchen available for events as well. For now, it’s a great place for guests to recharge at the tables and banquette seating scattered about the room. The outside of the building is covered in geodesic triangles that look sleek in the daytime, but really come alive at night when they light up in a vibrant array of colors, staying in theme with the changing hues of Spaceship Earth’s nighttime display.
If you’d like, you can grab a snack out front at the built-in Festival Favorites quick serve, where Disney will host a rotating array of goodies that fans have enjoyed at previous EPCOT festivals. Take that snack inside to one of the tables and enjoy the cool air for a while.
Right now, the Festival Favorites counter is serving cheese stuffed arepas with cilantro-lime crema ($5.25); cheese stuffed arepas with chicken and avocado ($6.50); coconut Tres leches ($5.00); and a selection of smoothies and beverages. You can get nice, cold cups of (free) ice water there as well, which you may need if you’ve been dancing at the Encanto show on the plaza.
The stage show, airing until September 6, is a fun-filled fiesta celebrating the Disney animated film Encanto. And animated is a good word for this performance – there’s lots of dance moves going on! ¡Celebración Encanto! plays several times a day (check your My Disney Experience app for showtimes), and is a combination sing-along and dance party. Guests get to answer trivia questions, dance with the cast members, and even use props to help act out songs from Encanto. During the finale, kiddos can come out on the paved walkways to dance with surprise characters. But we won’t talk about that… hint, hint.
The ¡Celebración Encanto! was a much more kinetic undertaking than it originally looked on TV during the media previews. On debut day when we were there, a few hundred guests surrounded the stage, and the cast members leading the production were high-energy, and giving it their all dancing in the hot Florida sun. They also were cheerfully interacting with the kiddos, teaching them the dance steps, and leading them through a series of activities from prop-wrangling on stage, to stepping up on boxes to show off their strength. While I am not the demographic this show is going for, not having traveled with small fry in tow, it was a memory-maker for sure with all the parents pointing cell phones at their participating offspring. ¡Celebración Encanto! is a day-time only show, but at night, the stage is taken over by a Latin band for some live music on the outdoor plaza.
Lastly, there’s a new Mickey & Friends meet and greet area on the far corner of the CommuniCore building. Brightly colored backgrounds welcome guests in an indoor setting, where the murals have easter eggs honoring the various rides of EPCOT, as well as some of the characters you’ll be meeting. Right now, it’s members of the Fab 5. Mickey, Minnie and Goofy were there yesterday, but it’s easy to see that the cast of friends doing the greeting could easily be swapped out for special events and holidays. Yesterday, the wait times consistently hovered around the 35-minute mark, not a bad wait time comparative to other locations (and the fact that there were three characters to see). That time may go up once guests realize that the spot is open, but for now, it’s a quick (and cool) way to meet Mickey in the parks.
And if you should need to find it while you are in this end of the park, there’s a great new bathroom attached to the CommuniCore building, complete with an adjacent water bottle refill station. Always great to know where the best ones are, especially on crowded days!
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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.
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