Epcot Food Festival: Epcot Center's Canceled Attractions Part 46

Epcot Center's Canceled Attractions

Epcot is now known for its multiple elaborate seasonal festivals. From Food and Wine, to Flower and Garden, and even the most recent addition the Festival of the Arts. With all of these festivals, one of the main elements is food, either unique concoctions by Disney, or international flavors not featured on a regular basis in the park.

Today for Epcot Center's Canceled Attractions we are looking at the development of the festivals at Epcot. Be sure to check out the rest of the series so far here.

Initially, there was a plan for Epcot to use one of the expansion pads in the World Showcase for a collection of small restaurants or booths to quickly incorporate multiple additional countries into the park on a permanent basis. This did not have a constant location proposed for it, but one of the ones that were mentioned was the eventual location of the International Gateway that is now also the home of the Epcot Skyliner station. 

This eventually ended up forming the inspiration for the food festivals of Epcot. The small take out places of this plan would form the inspiration for the booth style format of the various seasonal festivals of the park.

This would have been an interesting idea that might have worked well. There are not enough spots on the World Showcase to feature all of the countries of the world, and this plan would have brought a variety of cultures culinary best to the park in at least a minor way.

Honestly what ended up happening was probably the best of all worlds. Epcot got to include a rotating slate of additional countries into the park at least seasonally but did not need to give up a spot along the World Showcase to do it.

Today, at least before COVID19, there was a festival in Epcot on more days than there were not. The booths just didn't end up all in the same place.

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out the rest of the Epcot Center's Canceled Attractions series here. Be sure to come back next week when we explore the never built dark ride from the World Showcase.