Every year since 1994, Disney World’s EPCOT theme park has thrown the Flower and Garden Festival. Throughout the park, guests can enjoy specialty foods, topiaries, merchandise, music, and photo opportunities.
The festival started as a way to admire handcrafted topiaries throughout EPCOT and carefully arranged gardens within the park. The festival currently focuses on food, flowers, and showing different ways to educate people about flowers and the animals that use the flowers as homes or food.
EPCOT has the Butterfly Garden, currently by the ride Journey Into Imagination With Figment, where guests can visit butterflies in a floral habitat. Visitors can see the metamorphosis of butterflies as well as them pollinating multiple species of flowers. Within the park guests can also see a variety of topiaries that depict different disney characters and animals including pandas and birds. Some of the depicted characters are Tinkerbell, Captain Hook, Bambi, and The Family Madrigal. The topiaries are made out of a variety of flowers, which are carefully polished and cared for by cast members.
The festival offers a variety of different food options made from different vegetables and flowers. Food booths can be found around the entire park, but most are in the World Showcase. The World Showcase is a variety of countries, depicted through different pavilions, that offer a variety of foods that can be traditionally found within the country it represents. All guests based on their dietary needs can enjoy the food, due to the festival offering vegan, vegetarian, and meat options.
Many Disney employees that work at the pavilions are from the country that is represented by the pavilion. Disney offers a cultural representative program where adults (over 18) can sign up to come over to the United States for a year and share their countries traditions, culture, history, and language with guests to make a more immersive experience for guests throughout the theme parks.
This year the festival runs from February 28 through May 27, 2024. Special merchandise can be purchased throughout the festival, along with a variety of different booths that sell different pots, plants, and seeds.
