Greetings, World Travelers, and hello from a beautiful day at EPCOT! We had perfect weather today at the park, so we decided to check out what was new here while trying some of the new food booths at the Festival of the Arts. Let’s get started!

We checked in on a couple of construction projects in the morning. While there has been a lot of activity at the Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind building, there hasn’t been any visual progress lately.

Work has also been ongoing at the Innoventions East building, with new black metal framing going in.

The Harmonious Barge was conducting screen tests this morning on both sides of the barge. No new structures were out on the Lagoon though.

The window maintenance in The Seas Pavilion is finally completed. This window in the salt water aquarium was closed for several weeks, but has been reopened.

The most exciting moment of our day was finding the construction walls down from around the entrance to the France Pavilion expansion and replaced with planters. For more pictures and video, check out our article here.

While riding the Skyliner, we caught a glimpse of these buildings being delivered behind the park. It looks like these will be a part of the expansion in the Italy Pavilion.

Though not construction, we have been following the updates on this developing situation closely. The Donald animatronic was removed from Gran Fiesta Tour a few days ago following a malfunction, and was replaced with a memorial of sorts bearing his sombrero. Today, even that was removed, leaving an empty place where he should have stood. We hope he returns soon! For more pictures and video, check out our article here.

We found Alice in the Tea Garden at the United Kingdom Pavilion with her “Characters Off The Page” portrait placed in the garden with her. We love that these experiences are being modified rather than done away with.

Last week, we saw this pin booth closed with it’s signage removed prior to the opening of the Festival of the Arts. Today the booth was open, and was still selling pins, but under a “Festival Market” sign. We’re glad to see it’s still around.

We got the check out the Expression Section today, and paint a few squares on the paint-by-number mural.

While we were perusing the new Festival of the Arts menus, we noticed one offering at the L’Arte di Mangiare booth in the Italy Pavilion had been covered with masking tape. The Arancini is temporarily unavailable from this food booth, but will return soon.

Everything looked delicious in the cold case at Karamell-Kuche in the Germany Pavilion, but we were sad to see that the Gingerbread Salted Caramel Cookie Sandwhich was no longer available. We’ll miss that delicious snack!

While we noticed that the crowds were a little light today, seeing Frozen Ever After have a 25 minute wait time around midday was a clear benchmark for us that it was a quiet day at EPCOT today.

We found some fun merchandise for you today. The first piece was this youth Spirit Jersey featuring “Baby Yoda” with the phrase “Protect. Snack. Attack” across the back. We found this piece at Mission Space Cargo Bay for $49.99.

We found a fun long sleeve women’s shirt featuring a line drawing of Belle and the phrase “la belle vie” at Plume et Palette in the France Pavilion for $44.99.

At Mouse Gear, we found this fun hat featuring the phrase “You Say Cat Lady Like It’s A Bad Thing”, which matches the shirt in the Disney Cats collection, for $27.99.

We also found this youth sweat pants set at Mouse Gear featuring Minnie Mouse. The top retails for $39.99 and the pants retail for $29.99.

New gift cards are available now for the Festival of the Arts, and feature a fun design commemorating the Festival’s 5th Anniversary.

We found Mickey on his World Tour as we were circling World Showcase today. We love the character cavalcades!

We had a wonderful day at EPCOT today, and we hope you enjoyed coming along with us. Have a magical day!

Noelle Burk