Salutations from EPCOT on a sunny Saturday! It’s a hot one today, even for Florida, but that won’t stop us from tracking down some new merchandise, a reopened festival booth, and a lot of gazing at the new Lucite pylons added within the entrance complex. Let’s see what the park has to offer today.
We’ll start today’s experience with… the EPCOT Experience! Plenty of guests were taking in this show, which depicts an artist’s concept of what EPCOT may eventually become.
Until the time that EPCOT does become that concept, there’s a lot of work to be done. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind’s exterior work for solar panels has been fairly slow-moving as of late.
The Play! Pavilion is seeing more aggressive progress, with crews present even on the weekends as they overhaul the exterior of the dome.
Meanwhile, Space 220, which is roughly 9 months delayed at this point, still has its entrance walkway hidden behind walls despite other groundwork that has been completed recently.
The one project to rule them all, the transformation of the Innoventions Plaza into World Celebration, has also been crawling along rather slowly. Certainly, the stoppage of construction work during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting financial impacts, have caused many projects to slow or cease altogether.
Thankfully, the project which appears closest to completion seems to be continuing at a relatively unencumbered pace. The France Pavilion expansion, home to Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, has inched closer to its (yet to be announced) opening date.
Enough with the projects that aren’t yet open — let’s talk about a reopening. Islands of the Caribbean, one of the Taste of EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival 2020 booths, had been closed for most of the past week. The booth reopened today, though, and Cast Members advised us that they would only be operating on Saturdays for the foreseeable future.
Unlike the Islands of the Caribbean booth, Cool Wash has yet to reopen since the park began welcoming guests again on July 15th.
Heading elsewhere in Future World to the Imagination Pavilion, Joy could be found outside frolicking in the grass. For a moment she was fishing in the small pond, and quickly caught (and released) a fish. Like most fish tales, we never actually saw her catch.
Inside the pavilion, there sadly hasn’t been any new Figment merchandise since the release of the shoulder plush last weekend, but it always brightens our day to see a display full of various Figment items.
Finishing up our Future World time, for now, we checked in at The Land Pavilion and noticed Awesome Planet had quite the line. Given the limited space in the queuing area, and the large size of the auditorium, most guests should be able to get into the next showing.
In World Showcase, the Mexico Pavilion is continuing its new practice of having guests line up outside the building in order to better control capacity.
Temporary tape markings are used for spacing guests, and the line continues into the foyer of the pavilion.
The koi in the Japan Pavilion recreate the experience of being in the Mexico Pavilion before order was brought to it, with creatures bouncing around aimlessly.
Our final stop in World Showcase, the Norway Pavilion was home to new merchandise, which joins other recent additions like a Spirit Jersey and Viking-themed mug. This particular shirt carries similar imagery to the Spirit Jersey, making for a nice pair.
In the Viking department, new short-sleeve and long-sleeve shirts have arrived, featuring the same design as the aforementioned mug.
Finally, we end our day back at the entrance of the park, and with the sun shining bright we couldn’t help but appreciate the new Lucite pylons which were installed earlier this week.
The retro-inspired pylons harken back to a time in the “good old days” of EPCOT, and we hope they’ll usher in a similar time in the near future.
Thanks for joining us on our adventures through EPCOT today. Are you excited to see the return of this classic EPCOT symbol to the park? Let us know in the comments!