Good morning, Epcot! What do you have in store for us today? Let’s take a look.
The other half of the Leave-a-Legacy monuments are finally coming down! Don’t expect it to be a quick job, though, these walls will probably be up for a while as they work on redesigning the front of the park.
Merchandise
The latest in the “I Heart Gaming” pin line is Talespin.
Let’s hop over to Mouse Gear. I love the details and character in this store. I hope we don’t lose all of it when it gets redesigned next year.
It’s August, and you know what that means; Halloween! In addition to several returning Nightmare Before Christmas items, we also found a couple of new ones.
We originally spotted these ears in Disneyland, and now they’ve made it to the East Coast.
They also redesigned the hidden Mickey house and kitchenware line. You can see all of it in our article here.
Future World
Ralph and Vanellope were popular today! You can still meet them daily at ImageWorks in the Imagination pavilion.
Over in The Seas, the carpet replacement on the second floor is almost finished.
The only holdout is the room above Turtle Talk. I’d imagine it’ll be replaced soon.
The first floor hasn’t been touched yet.
Speaking of updates, over in The Land, the classic attraction “Living With the Land” got a surprise upgrade.
They replaced the old film projectors (right before the greenhouse) with new digital projectors, as well as brand-new footage and narration. It looks wonderful!
World Showcase
Poor Canada. Unless you want to overpay for steak, there’s nothing going on here at the moment. With O’ Canada closed, it’s a quiet little pavilion.
The theater is going to be used as space for the 2019 International Food and Wine Festival. All the old “O’ Canada” signs have been replaced with ads for the festival.
This is as far into the pavilion as you can go at the moment. They stationed a friendly Cast Member here to remind people that the show is closed.
There’s a lot of work happening on the facade in the meantime.
“Marc Angers and Friends” are no more. Please welcome to the Mill Stage the “Blueberry Grass Band”! I haven’t stuck around to watch them yet, but I’ll make a note of it.
Over in the UK, in addition to the cute Winnie the Pooh stuff they’ve had for some time now, I also found…
…this adorable mug!
Across the street in the Tea Shop, I found this interesting new concoction.
It’s supposed to be tea you can brew cold. Interesting! I’m curious how the traditional English feel about this.
Over in France, there’s a lot of construction noise on the other side of this wall.
They’re hard at work getting the path to the new Ratatouille attraction ready. It should open next spring.
I covered some of the recent apparel additions to the Germany pavilion recently. They added another hat!
This area will be crawling with beer fans once the Food and Wine Festival starts at the end of the month.
Here’s something inconsequential that, nevertheless, has been bugging me for ages. This wall hanging in China was the backdrop for Mulan back when she met inside. Back then, it said “Disney’s Mulan” at the top.
When she moved back outside, they took the “Mulan” down and it just said “Disney’s” for like, probably a year. They finally fixed it.
Guess who’s back–back again? Larry Dotson is showing off his artwork in the Norway pavilion.
They moved him to a different corner this time, however.
Where he used to meet is now the candy/foodstuff wall.
I also found in Norway an addition to the recent line of Norway merchandise: this fun throw blanket.
You can see the rest of the new Norway stuff in this post.
That’s all from Epcot for today. Who knows what we’ll see next time? Only one way to find out: keep reading!
Cold tea! Appalling. We don’t even drink Twinings in England, most people have Tetley or PG Tips.
Agree Samantha. Looked at all the fancy, so called English teas on offer earlier this year, none seen in our local supermarkets in UK. Will stick with PG Tips with boiling water poured on the tea bag IN A TEA POT a circular movement of the tea pot to help soak bag and start brewing (as I have read the Queen Mother used to do but of course she would have used tea leaves and a strainer) and left to brew for 5 minutes. Dash of milk in cup first before pouring, small spoon of sugar if desired – none of that brewing in a cup. When staying in Florida we buy Liptons tea bags in the red and yellow box. You can keep all the beer, wine, fancy cocktails and alcohol at the Food and Wine festival, don’t think Walt would have wanted this for his family theme park. More money grabbing will price a lot of families from the Disney experience.
You do realize the Food and Wine Festival has been going on for more than 20 years. I hardly say that’s a money grab suddenly threatening to price people out of going to EPCOT. Especially when you consider the alcohol (and the food for that matter) is all priced separately and no one is required to purchase anything. It’s offering adults interesting in food and drinks the opportunity to enjoy an experience they might not otherwise have. Walt might not have wanted alcohol at the Magic Kingdom, but he himself drank alcohol every day. Scotch. Clearly he didn’t have a problem with drinking.
By the way, the tea pretension can just stop. Considering Twinings is a company established and based in England, there are obviously plenty of people there who drink it. Perhaps not those who purchase their tea exclusively in the grocery store, but that is not indicative of the entire population.
No tea pretension from me – I’ll leave that to the ones who drink the ‘posh’ tea. Henry was curious about how the ‘traditional’ English felt. Twinings has been established since 1706 so obviously has a following, especially around London where people can visit the 300 year old tea shop and taste the tea prior to purchasing. We do have the new cold infuse varieties for putting into sports or water bottles for those who want the pretentious flavours. Water keeps me hydrated and the savings bring us back to WDW for another long holiday.
I think it really depends on where you’re from in the UK to be honest – everyone I know drinks Ringtons or Twinings. PG Tips and Tetley are at the complete opposite end of the scale for us
Maybe does depend on where you come from in UK. Being ‘north of the Watford Gap’ I am quite comfortable with PG Tips, Tetley and Yorkshire tea, but we also have people with educated palates who prefer more expensive varieties.
Nobody puts Larry in a different corner.
Traditional English person here :) we’re not super blown away by the new cold twinnings infusions, they’re nice but we’re not majorly into iced tea over here. They haven’t been super popular and a lot of stores have them at discounted prices. They’re basically the same as fruit cordial/squash juice.
We were perusing the upstairs viewing windows after the Nemo ride and notice what seemed to be a……dead sea turtle at the bottom of the tank?? 😳 I wonder if anyone else noticed.
Did you report it to an employee?
I think I’ll miss the old carpeting in the seas pavilliin. It seems to feel a lot cooler than the new sand color. At least in the pictures. I’ll check it out in October and see . :)