Ultimate Guide to 2019 Epcot Food & Wine Festival

This ultimate guide to the 2019 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival provides tips, recommendations, and our thoughts about the annual Walt Disney World foodie event! This year, Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival runs August 29 until November 23, 2019, starting on the exact same date that Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens and ending right before the start of Christmas season. (Last updated May 9, 2019.)

Lasting 87 days, the 2019 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival will be the longest in Walt Disney World history. During the popular event guests can eat and drink their way around the World Showcase and parts of Future World. From marketplace tasting booths to the Back to the Basics series (included with Epcot admission) to hands-on tasting culinary demos with chefs and mixologists to the popular Party for the Senses and a lot more, there’s tons to do at Epcot during Food & Wine.

We’ve updated this with what’s known thus far about the 2019 special event. While not all of the details for the 2019 Epcot Food & Wine Festival have been released, most of the planning basics will remain the same. Last year, we attended Food & Wine Festival dozens of times, spending more money than I even want to think about in the process. We tried every single snack at the event, and did booth by booth reviews, which you can find in our index of Epcot Food & Wine posts.

New & Returning for 2019

Walt Disney World released some new information about this year’s Epcot International Food & Wine Festival on May 9, 2019. The announcement mainly concerned entertainment, but also included brief info about the 30 Global Marketplace food kiosks throughout Future World and World Showcase.

While the full lineup has yet to be confirmed, we’d expect ~90% of the booths from last year to return, with 3-4 new booths, which is pretty standard for the event. In the announcement, Disney teased a couple of new items: the Kenyan Coffee Barbecue Beef Tenderloin in the Africa Marketplace and the plant-based Cottage Pie at Earth Eats.

On the entertainment front, the Disney du Jour Dance Party will return to Future World will expand to become a daily offering. Sundays through Thursdays, a DJ will perform; on Fridays and Saturdays, Radio Disney personalities pump up the mix with live performances. On opening weekend, Meg Donnelly from the Disney Channel original movie “Zombies” will appear. Watch for more weekend celebrity headliners to join the lineup.

Other returning family activities include the Remy’s Ratatouille Hide & Squeak scavenger hunt and the Family Play Zone. The popular Candy Sushi interactive experience will also return, offering guests the chance to learn how to roll sweet sushi treats with a Disney Chef in this hands-on offering at 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. daily in the Land pavilion.

The popular Eat to the Beat Concert Series will also return and run through November 19, 2019–with a total of 249 concerts in all. Some of the new concert acts will include Sawyer Brown (“Thank God for You”); Lauren Daigle (“You Say”); Boyce Avenue (“Anchor”); and Kris Allen (“Live Like We’re Dying”). Festival favorites are back, including Plain White T’s, Sugar Ray, Hanson, Sheila E. and Boyz II Men, among many others.

You can even guarantee your concert seats by booking an Eat to the Beat Dining Package for breakfast, lunch or dinner at one of many Epcot restaurants. We typically view this package as unnecessary unless there’s a really popular act or you want prime seats. Unlike Candlelight Processional, the other Epcot performances don’t tend to be as popular.

On May 15, 2019, bookings will open for the following:

• Party for the Senses at World Showplace Events Pavilion – This sensational event featuring chefs and vintners from around the world. This is held select Saturdays through November 9, 2019. 
• Sunday Brunch with the Chef – This brunch is hosted by celebrity chefs including Cat Cora, Andrew Zimmern, Buddy Valastro and others. This is held select Sundays through November 17.
• “Mix It, Make It, Celebrate It!” – A hands-on workshops allowing guests to rub shoulders with visiting chefs, bakers, mixologists and other pros. Held select Mondays and Thursdays through November 14.

At the Epcot Food & Wine Festival, there’s something for every budget. While you can enjoy some events without spending anything, it’s very easy to spend a lot of money, particularly as you graze around the marketplace booths. Once you start looking at the special events and celebrity meals, well, the sky is the limit on how much you can spend during the Epcot Food & Wine Festival!

We’ve done the Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival many times every year for the past decade-plus, spending more money on snacks than we care to think about. Last year, we spent several days in Epcot during August, September, October, and November, grazing the marketplaces and partaking in the Food & Wine festivities. We covered our favorite and least favorite things in our new Best Of and our Worst Of posts last year.

All in all, we have had a good time. Weather-wise, August is definitely the least pleasant month for the event and November is the best experience, but after grazing the booths the first three months, we’re usually a bit “over it” by the end. (However, if we were planning only one trip, it’d be in November.)

Beyond that, a few things stuck out that are worth noting. First, and I say this every year, but it’s true once again: by and large, your money doesn’t go very far. Portions don’t seem smaller than last year, nor do prices seem higher, but both were already pretty bad last year, so it’s not like this should be construed as a positive thing. You’ll definitely want to seek out a few sizable dishes, which we highlight in the aforementioned Best of Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival post.

Second, crowds are bad on the weekends, which includes long lines at the cash registers and at food pick-up. In the past we’ve cautioned about long lines on the weekends for the more popular booths, which is especially true during peak times in October and November. This compounds the effect of being out in the sweltering heat and humidity.

Third, some of the best booths are in Future World. To be fair, there are great items scattered around all of the booths, but the best pound for pound options are those found in the “Next Eats” section of Future World. This included the best booth of Food & Wine, Flavors from Fire, along with stand-outs like Coastal Eats, Earth Eats, and Active Eats.

Finally, and most importantly, food quality remains high. The last couple of years the food lineups have been really strong, and I would say that last year’s Epcot International Food & Wine Festival surpassed the previous year’s event in terms of quality. From the quality of the snacks to the booths themselves (some, like India, are gorgeous!), everything is incredibly well done. It almost makes the higher prices and smaller portions a bit more palatable. Almost.

For those looking to splurge on special events during Food & Wine, the slate of celebrity chefs might be of interest. These visiting chefs host a variety of daily demonstrations, Party for the Senses grand tasting experiences, beverage and cheese seminars, and other events, all of which are a big part of the festival. Celebrity chefs include Cooking Channel host Tiffani Thiessen and Richard Blais, along with returning favorites like Alex Guarnaschelli, Robert Irvine, Masaharu Morimoto, Buddy Valastro, Art Smith, and Carla Hall, plus many others.

On the other (cheaper) end of the spectrum, there’s the Back to Basics series, special book signings, Eat to the Beat concerts, cultural adventures, culinary scavenger hunt with Remy, and Festival Passport, all of which are included with Epcot park admission. Suffice to say, F&WF doesn’t have to be expensive if you have the right approach.

Although this article will provide tips for the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, there are a lot of things we recommend doing in the fall. Read our Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and our When to Visit Walt Disney World posts to get an idea of what else to do this time of year. Fall is the perfect time to visit Walt Disney World! Well, my personal “perfect” time of year is Christmas (nothing beats Christmas at Walt Disney World for me!), but fall is a close second.

If you’re looking for what’s new for the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival or what our recommend plan of attack is for the festival? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s our look at what’s new, what we recommend doing, and strategy for keeping your sanity at the Epcot Food & Wine Festival!

World Showcase Snack Marketplaces

For most Walt Disney World guests, the Epcot Food & Wine Festival is the Global Marketplaces. They are the little snack kiosks added throughout World Showcase with snack size portions available for purchase. While this is just one element of Food & Wine Festival, it’s the only element that most guests experience.

Food & Wine Festival Events

In addition to the booths at the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, there are a lot of events. Some of these are regular things like seminars that are offered in the Festival Welcome Center on a daily basis, and are easily accessible to the average guest.

Other offerings are premium special events (the use of both ‘premium’ and ‘special’ is basically Disneyspeak for ‘super-duper expensive.’) that are relatively unknown to the average guest and often sell out far in advance. We aren’t really fans of super-duper expensive stuff, but we are fans of words like free and low-cost.

Here’s a look at what Food & Wine Festival has in store for these events…

No-Cost Seminars – Although most Epcot Food & Wine Festival seminars became upcharge events out of necessity a few years ago (thanks to locals who camped out for hours before them!), there still are a few free seminars during the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. More seminars are held on weekends; check the daily schedule for more info.

Other events include tastings and various sponsor-driven events throughout World Showcase and in the old Odyssey Pavilion (the “Festival Welcome Center”).

Low-Cost Culinary Demonstrations – The low-cost culinary demonstrations are our favorite aspect of the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. At $15 each, they offer a lot more than the free seminars, and a lot of times the samples you receive at these seminars are a better value than what you’d receive if you simply went around to booths and ordered items. In addition to the samples, you receive some basic background information and some entertaining presentations.

These seminars, in general, definitely are not geared to the same level of foodie audience as the special event meals, nor are the samples of the same caliber, but you get what you pay for. We have done several of these, and they generally offer the best value at the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. These low-cost seminars offer a good primer to the topic covered, plus pretty good samples. We plan on reviewing more of these seminars this year, but for now check out our older seminar review to get an idea of what to expect.

Disney has a schedule of the culinary demos, and advance booking info on its Food & Wine Festival Culinary Demos page.

Premium Special Events

The Epcot Food & Wine Festival features a number of special events, many of which are quite pricey. Like, over $100 per person in price as the starting price. Reviews for these events are often prefaced with “despite the cost, we enjoyed it…” (or something along those lines), so if there’s one that strikes you as being interesting and you have disposable income, consider giving it a try. Not all of them cost quite that much, but they aren’t cheap.

Here are just a handful of the many premium special events:

• Interactive culinary adventures in the Disney resorts encourage guests to ask the experts, taste and cook alongside our chefs at select Deluxe Walt Disney World Resorts.
• “Sunday Brunch with the Chef” is a 2-hour event featuring a breakfast buffet hosted by a culinary TV personality, and includes a sparkling wine toast as well as a meet-and-greet photo opportunity with the celebrity chef.
• The “Mix It, Make It, Celebrate It” hands-on workshop gives guests the opportunity to learn from professional chefs in cake decorating, garnishing, cocktail mixing, and other culinary activities.
• Party for the Senses returns for select dates in September, October, and November.
• “What’s Cookin’ With…” features some of the country’s top celebrity chefs, beginning in the morning with a delightful plated brunch and sparkling wine toast. This starts with a demo, followed by the chefs answering questions from the audience and sharing their anecdotes.

For a comprehensive list of the Premium Special Events along with reviews and additional information, check out Walt Disney World’s list of different special events or call 407/WDW-FEST (939-3378). You can also find pricing, dates, and booking details there.

Personally, these don’t interest me at all. Well, they do…but not for those prices. While I would consider myself somewhat of a foodie and I’m sure the dishes prepared at them are excellent, it seems to me that you’re paying a significant premium over what something comparable would cost in the real world. I think there’s not just the standard Disney premium here, but also scarcity pricing, in that many of these events are extremely small, and Disney knows there are enough guests with significant disposable incomes who won’t balk at high prices to fill the events. That’s just my take, and again, it’s an outsider perspective, as I’ve never done any of these.

Special Entertainment & Eat to the Beat! Concerts

The Eat to the Beat concert series is presented nightly at the American Gardens Theater across from the American Adventure in Epcot’s World Showcase. The Eat to the Beat Concert Series will run August 29 through November 19, 2019, concluding a few days before the rest of the festival in order to set the stage for the return of the park’s beloved Candlelight Processional during the holiday season.

During these Eat to the Beat concerts, popular bands from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s perform some of their greatest hits for the Food & Wine Festival crowds. These concerts are included with Epcot admission, and take place three times per evening, at 5:30 p.m., 6:45 p.m., and 8:00 p.m. While free, this year Disney is offering an Eat to the Beat Dining Package that includes reserved seating.

No, you’re not going to find current big-name artists like ZZ Top or whatever the kids are listening to these days, but it’s a free concert in Epcot. You can find the full line-up and performance dates on Disney’s Eat to the Beat schedule page.

In addition to the “Eat to the Beat” Concert Series, there are authentic performers throughout World Showcase, added to help entertain the huge crowds that Food & Wine Festival draws.

Summary & Conclusion

If you like food, the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival should be a lot of fun for you. You don’t need to be a foodie to enjoy it, as there’s really something for everyone. I’ll level with you: Food & Wine Festival used to be our favorite event of the year at Walt Disney World, but rising prices, long lines, and being around too many wasted college students have put a bit of a damper on it.

We’ve done Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival multiple times each of the last several years and have generally enjoyed our experiences. In part, this is because we picked weekdays to visit, and had great luck with getting excellent food from the marketplace booths.

The biggest downside to Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival is that it’s almost all outdoors, and in August, September, and sometimes October, the heat and humidity make this tough. Try to balance your day out with plenty of AC breaks, so it isn’t too bad. November is generally much more pleasant.

Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival can be a great event and you don’t have to break the bank doing it, but it can also be expensive, crowded, hot, and unpleasant. Planning makes all the difference in the experience you have. If you take away nothing else from this post, remember that.

Additionally, there’s a ton to do. Even if you went to Epcot every day of Food & Wine Festival, you couldn’t experience it all (but you would go broke trying!). We mention cost here a lot, and for good reason: you can spend a ridiculous amount of money without really trying. Just grazing the various booths for an afternoon can set you back a lot of money.

This isn’t meant to scare you away from the Food & Wine Festival. It can be a tremendous amount of fun if you plan ahead, avoid the hordes of people on the weekend, and get lucky with mild weather. It’s the second best time of the year at Epcot, after the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival, in my opinion. World Showcase feels like an actually living, breathing World Showcase during the festival, with a culinary focus.

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? If you’re interested in learning more about hotels, our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page is a good place to start. For where to eat, try out our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews page. If you want to save money on tickets or determine which type you should get, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at unconventional things you should take on your trip. Once you arrive at the parks, our Walt Disney World “Ride Guides” are great for determining what to do and when to do it. For overviews of all of these topics and so much more, the best place to start is our comprehensive Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide to make the most of your experience!

Your Thoughts…

Have you done the Epcot Food & Wine Festival at Walt Disney World? What did you think? Any favorite marketplace booths or culinary demonstrations you’d recommend? Ever had any negative experiences? Have any tips of your own to share? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!