Good morning from Epcot! We’re less than a month away from the 2019 Food and Wine Festival, and not much further from the beginnings of some major changes to the park. Let’s see what’s happening today while the park is still slow and things are still open!

The Camera Center will be closing on September 8th with several other things around Future World. Say goodbye to the last vestige of the pre-smart phone theme park experience.

I love Epcot first thing in the morning. It’s a ghost town everywhere except Soarin’ and Test Track.

They’re hard at work on the expanded pathways over between Imagination and World Showcase.

It’s starting to take shape! They have less than a month to get this all ready for the Food and Wine Festival.

They even brought in a crane for some of this!

We’re finally seeing some evidence of work happening at the old Wonders of Life building, soon to be an all-new “Play” pavilion.

Some other work walls went up recently, over at what’s left ofInnoventions West.

The walls block off the forrested area that borders the Western wall of the building.

It goes down by the Coral Reef restaurant as well.

We know that the Innoventions West building is slated for demolition. I would assume this is the first part of that; probably removing the trees and such.

As long as they don’t remove any of these classic Epcot-style palm trees, I’ll be a happy man.

Taste Track disappeared not too long ago. It feels kind of empty over here by the Cool Wash without it.

It’s not slated to return to Food and Wine this year.

Over in The Seas pavilion, I spotted more new carpet!

This one has a sort of ocean-bottom, sandy look to it. I thought it looked cool. The cast member I spoke with wasn’t a fan. To each his own, I suppose.

They do a dolphin enrichment program here in the mornings. You can watch them teach dolphins to match photos to videos of the same item.

They get it right about 70% of the time, which is impressive.

World Showcase

They added some more artwork to the scrim covering the rocks in Canada.

Something simple like this makes all the difference.

All the signs for O’ Canada have been covered up, as it had its last show on July 31st.

This theater will be used for merchandise and such during the 2019 Food and Wine Festival. The new O’ Canada premieres in January.

This nice outdoor seating area in Japan had been behind walls last week.

Turns out they were replacing the wood on the deck. It looks nice!

So, a week ago, I noticed that one of the register counters in Germany was completely missing. Looks like it’s back.

No idea where or why it went away, as it doesn’t look like they repainted it or anything. Oh well.

Work is steady at the site of Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure in France. They’re finishing up the details on the outer wall that faces the water way.

The back wall of Impressions de France is getting a lot of work too. You can see our most recent update on this project right here.

Merchandise

They added another hat to the Disney “Junk Food” line. This one has Timothy Mouse from Dumbo! I found this in Mouse Gear.

I don’t think this is new, but it caught my eye. It’s so shiny!

Mickey Mouse over here looking like Liberace.

Here’s a shirt for the kid in your group with the biggest attitude. If you want to make their mood worse, make them wear a shirt in public about how bad their temper is.

They also redesigned the World Showcase Passports! You can see our full coverage of that in our article here.

That’s everything from Epcot for today! Are you excited for Food and Wine? It’s right around the corner, and trust us, we’ll be there to cover every crumb of it.