Until January 6th, guests at Epcot can enjoy El Mariachi Coco de Santa Cecilia in Mexico at Epcot. The group is performing songs from Coco including the beautiful ‘Remember Me’ and the heartwarming ‘The World Es Mi Familia’ at the outdoor character greeting location.
Each night, a celebrity narrator tells the biblical tale of a savior born to a virgin in Bethlehem at the Epcot Candlelight Processional. All the while, gorgeous choral pieces are woven into the production as an orchestra and choir provide an inspirational backdrop with songs of hope and joy. While the event is always quite special, it was extra so special this weekend as Disney Legend Kurt Russell narrated the amazing offering. Russell has appeared in films such as Sky High and Stargate (as well as some live-action Disney classics) and recent features including The Hateful Eight, Fast and Furious 8, and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. You can enjoy Sunday’s 5pm show in its entirety (with multiple angles) below:
Released today at Epcot, there is now a “Thank the Phoenecians” baseball cap for sale, based on the line of dialogue in Spaceship Earth.
The hat retails for $21.99. And yes, this is a design that fans have been selling online for years, unofficially of course.
The hat was discovered in MouseGear.
If you want a reservation at a Disney-owned restaurant at Walt Disney World, you currently have to call 407-WDW-DINE or use the Disney website/mobile application to do so, but in the near future, it appears guests may be able to use OpenTable.
OpenTable allows people to make reservations for restaurants just about anywhere, in fact, several 3rd-party restaurants at Disney Springs use the service as well as the DisneyWorld.com system. Disney would add the restaurants to OpenTable as well in hopes of gaining more attention with diners in the Orlando area, as the app showcases nearby restaurants when you open it.
OpenTable does have the capability of requiring a credit card hold for restaurants, so the same reservation parameters that currently apply at Disney restaurants would still be in place if this happens.
There is no set time frame for this service to roll out, but it should be fairly soon if it clears all of the appropriate channels.
The American Adventure at Epcot will be closed for refurbishment from January 5, 2018 to February 5, 2018.
No word yet on whether this is simply a maintenance refurbishment or if any show scenes or film will be changed during this time.
The 2018 Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival will feature seven new and 17 total artists for the Garden Rocks concert series.
This is the 25th year of the Garden Rocks series and will feature rock, pop, country, R&B and dance artists from the 1960s through the 2000s.
Popular acts in the upcoming lineup include Smash Mouth, Rick Springfield, Lonestar, Village People, and STARSHIP starring Mickey Thomas.
Here’s the full lineup for the 2018 Garden Rocks series (subject to change without notice):
Performances begin at 5:30, 6:45 and 8 p.m. and are located at America Gardens Theatre every Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday at the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival.
All concerts are included with Epcot admission.
In addition to all the artful offerings scheduled for the Epcot International Festival of the Arts, guests can enjoy some new and returning live entertainment during the event and beyond.
Matboukha Groove – With a name that means “cooked,” this returning act spices up the promenade with a unique and entertaining fusion of World Music styles. Catch Matboukha Groove’s Epcot encore at the Morocco stage January 1st through July 1st, 2018.
Groovin’ Alps – Grab your lederhosen and get ready to dance along with this high-energy German percussion band. This brand-new group brings the sounds of the mountains to Epcot with Bavarian folk tunes played on items found on a dairy farm. Find Groovin’ Alps in Germany from January 10th through March 27th, 2018.
Bodh’aktan – Returning to once again rock Canada’s Mill Stage with the fun of kilts, jeans, sweat and beards, Bodh’aktan mixes Quebecois, folk, and polka to make fantastic rock and dance music. Join the party January 12th through the 28th, 2018!
The new SpectacuLAB show recently debuted inside of (what’s left of) Innoventions in Future World at Epcot, right across the way from the Colortopia exhibit. Check out a full recording of the show below:
SpectacuLAB is saved by a pretty interesting final third of the show, but otherwise is a fairly boring and poorly put together offering. The seating arrangement is terrible as well, with a seemingly endless number of even rows in the space, making it near impossible for anyone not in a middle-aisle seat to see any of it. Well, at least kids can sit on the floor, so they may end up taking something away from this thing.
SpectacuLAB is now performing daily at Epcot, but Innoventions is slated for demolition in the not-too-distant future.
Sure, the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival has been giving guest floral and topiary displays for over 20 years now, but what if it was something you could experience daily at the park?
As part of the ongoing expansion project for Epcot, an idea being kicked around is the “Gardens of Wonder”, which would be a series of displays at each pavilion that would capture the essence of that pavilion (Future World and World Showcase alike) and feature a Disney character or characters connected to the theme. These floral and topiary displays would welcome guests to each experience.
For example, Wall-E and Eve in topiary form would welcome guests to Mission: Space, while Anna and Elsa would do so in Norway. The idea is that every pavilion in World Showcase and Future World would receive one of these small gardens. It does make some sense based on the amount of green we see in concept art for the further development of Future World, so natural displays like these will be a big part of the park going forward. However, it would be intriguing to see how these would be maintained all year long, as opposed to just during a 3-month festival.
Concept art of the new look for Future World at Epcot
This idea has not been approved as of yet, and some recent shakeups in the new creative direction of Epcot may lead to this idea getting scrapped, but only time will tell.
For the second annual Epcot International Festival of the Arts, the collaboration with Disney Theatrical will return, bringing an exciting showcase of favorite music and Broadway talent back to the America Gardens Theatre stage. Over the six weeks of the festival, guests can enjoy different pairings of phenomenal Broadway talent in concert singing the award-winning music of Disney on Broadway.
You can see performances from last year’s amazing concerts below:
