In early 2017, The Walt Disney Company introduced their latest offering to the public. This event, the Epcot International Festival of the Arts, is one that the corporation’s PR release proudly proclaimed as the “ultimate cultural celebration as food, art and entertainment.” They trumpeted the six-week event as an imperative for theme park tourists. Anyone who failed to attend this daily gathering would regret it for the rest of their life.
The statement sounds hyperbolic; it has a basis in fact, though. In 1996, Disney fans had the chance to attend something special, something that would become a staple of Epcot visits for more than 20 years. Anyone who had that opportunity but passed surely regrets it today. The beginnings of this event were humble, but it honored Walt Disney’s vision for the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. It also became the blueprint for a business model the company employs more and more each year. This is the story of how Disney introduced the concept of the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, the turning point when park planners realized that they could increase attendance via annual exhibitions.
Homage or outright theft?
Image: Disney
Here’s an odd trivia note. The idea of a food and wine event wasn’t Disney’s. For that matter, the idea of a *Central Florida* food and wine exhibition didn’t come from Disney, either. Foodies know that the most famous event on the culinary calendar is the Food & Wine Classic, held annually in Aspen, Colorado. Food & Wine Magazine was only a few years old when they hosted the first iteration of their titular gathering in 1982. In the decade that followed, its success attracted the attention of imitators. The concepts of food and wine are universal, after all.
In 1994, one of the copycats was a winemaker. ABC Liquors wanted to highlight their recent name change. Their marketing team determined that the best way to get their new name out in the public eye was by holding a wine tasting event. They called it the Vintage Grand Tasting, hosting the two-day exhibition at a Hilton Inn in Lake Buena Vista. Tickets were $45 for the main showcase, and it included hors d’oeuvres and desserts to accentuate the wine flavors. The first year for this event was 1994.
Honoring the founder
Image: Disney
Disney executives understandably paid careful attention to the reception to the Vintage Grand Tasting. It checked all the boxes they had in identifying new ways to boost attendance at Epcot. Better yet, it was also symmetrical in design with the stated concept for the park. When Walt Disney unveiled Epcot to the public, he indicated that a primary goal was the equivalent of a permanent World’s Fair site.
In the annals of Disney history, nothing pleased the founder as much as the time he spent constructing Pavilions for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. He loved watching the harmonious interactions between citizens of all countries. Uncle Walt aspired to build Epcot as a place where everyone was welcome. He understood that benefits extended beyond international inclusion. Foreign cultures meant different merchandise and foods, business opportunities that Epcot park planners could mine on a daily basis.
Prior to the mid-1990s, Epcot hadn’t recreated this premise effectively. When the Vice President of Operations at the time, George Kalogridis, learned of the Vintage Grand Tasting, he studied it carefully. Ultimately, he felt comfortable that he could extend the concept to Epcot. Kalogridis was so confident about his projection that he planned the first Epcot International Food & Wine Festival as a month-long event. It was a bold proclamation for something that Epcot had never attended before. They’d cede lots of park space to an event that theme park tourists might not embrace. In that situation, Epcot would look ridiculous. It would be a black eye for the company.
Playing the long game
Image: Disney
Thankfully, the doomsday scenario wasn’t the outcome.
You know the rest. In 1996, Epcot hosted its first event. While the first year seems modest in comparison to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival we know now, it was a daring gambit with long-term dividends. Disney persuaded a few celebrity chefs like John Ash to host cooking exhibitions, using these demonstrations as a key selling point.
The real purpose of the event was to introduce 23 marketplaces, booths offering global cuisine at modest prices. It was something the World Showcase already offered via its international restaurants. The pop-up stores were more temporary in nature, though. They could offer unique foods as limited time options. Disney fans felt compelled to rush to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival while they could. They had no idea if they’d ever have the option again. It was the Disney equivalent of “act now while operators are standing by”…and it worked on a grand scale.
The expansion of the exhibition
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2017 marks the 22nd edition of the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. Disney announced the dates before clean-up was completed on the 2016 version. It lasts a record-setting 75 days and, for the first time ever, the event will begin in August. Originally planned as a way to boost attendance during the offseason of fall, it’s now expanded to include Labor Day weekend, too.
The modern version of the exhibition includes more than two dozen booths reflecting the cuisines of over 20 countries. Some special offerings like the Chocolate Studio and Wine and Dine Studio also enhance the festivities. In 2002, they added ancillary appeal to the party, introducing the Eat to the Beat concert series. As many as 25 bands have performed a trio of nightly concerts over the course of the festival. While many of them are artists whose glory has faded, it’s still a way to see Boyz II Men in concert for the price of Epcot admission. By now, Disney earns so much in revenue during the exhibition that they can easily afford to pay (formerly) popular bands. It’s another inexpensive marketing option for a multi-month party.
Similarly, Disney has vastly increased the number of celebrity chefs that attend. The last couple of years, they’ve even hosted new episodes of The Chew onsite. The Epcot International Food & Wine Festival has become such a rainmaker for the company that the former offseason, September through the first half of November, has become one of the most popular times to visit Walt Disney World. Locals marvel at how crowded the park is during a time they used to consider the best time to visit.
What’s better than one annual event?
Image: Disney
Here’s another trivia note for you. Epcot’s International Flower & Garden Festival pre-dates its more storied fall sibling by two years. It’s true. In 1994, Disney introduced this triumph in botany. Each March, cast members prune vegetation until it looks strikingly similar to scenes and characters from Disney movies. If you love taking pictures at Walt Disney World, the International Flower & Garden Festival is a shutterbug’s dream come true.
Over time, park planners realized that they could combine the best parts of the fall event in the spring one. Today, the flower exhibition includes 13 booths that Disney calls Outdoor Kitchens. They’re basically the same food and wine booths that you’d see at the World Showcase in September. It’s a way for Disney to entice theme park tourists to visit at a different time of the year.
Two is better than one, but four is better than two
Image: Disney
In recent years, Disney has (somewhat shamelessly) added another seasonal event. Disney has always done the holidays right, decorating all their theme parks and resorts in spectacular fashion. Nobody shows yuletide joy like Team Mickey. What changed with the introduction of Holidays Around the World at Epcot is that they monetized the joy of the season by merging it with the established concepts of The Epcot International Food & Wine.
Now, you get all the holiday lights of December plus some decadent Christmas desserts. For more than a month, foods like the Caramel Kiss, a powerful combination of Werther’s caramel and a hot spiced wine, are available at food booths. Meals are on sale, too. The American pop-up stand fittingly offers turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, a holiday tradition. Hungry visitors seeking more international flavors can enjoy duck confit or shredded beef tamale. The latter dish is a staple of the Feast of Three Kings, a Spanish tradition on Three Kings Day.
Image: Disney
While an optimist would view Holidays Around the World as a more official Epcot celebration of a holiday it already embraced, a realist has a differing point of view. Disney has effectively added another several weeks of World Showcase food booths to an event that they’d already made the longest ever in terms of days of operation. Any differing opinions on the subject fell apart with the introduction of the previously mentioned Epcot® International Festival of the Arts. It’s yet another temporary exhibition that celebrates different cultures around the world. And it does this by offering more food booths.
On weekends in January and February, Epcot’s World Showcase once again features unique foods of the world. Since this event isn’t tethered to any holidays or specific themes, the various menus are much more open-ended in style. The only consistent element is that each dish is a celebration of the arts, meaning that they’re all gorgeous in appearance. During this exhibition, theme park tourists are encouraged to eat with their eyes prior to chowing down on the actual food.
Image: Disney
From the Disney perspective, however, what matters isn’t the food. Epcot now hosts four different exhibitions each year. In 2017, they’ll total 225 days worth of “special events” out of 365 possible days. Epcot has reached a point where more than 61 percent of the time, they have food booths open to the public.
The popularity of the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival, a gambit that had no realistic expectation of succeeding, has fundamentally altered the nature of the World Showcase. This one event has changed the way that potential Disney visitors perceive the back half of Epcot. It’s now precisely the living, breathing entity that Walt Disney envisioned. Well, it is 61 percent of the time. That’s why we shouldn’t feel surprise each time Disney announces yet another Food & Wine-esque month long exhibition.
