Santa Claus is moving his meet and greet location to CommuniCore Hall for the 2025 International Festival of the Hollidays at EPCOT.
Santa Claus Moving to CommuniCore Hall
For the last few years, Santa Claus has met guests inside the Odyssey Pavilion during the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays. According to the Walt Disney World website, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas will move to CommuniCore Hall for the 2025 season.
The meet and greet is scheduled to take place from November 28 through December 24, which is most of the dates for the festival, minus a few days after Christmas. The times for the Santa meet and greet are 11 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2 p.m., 3:30 p.m., and 5 p.m.
Santa moved to the Odyssey Pavilion, located between Test Track and the Mexico Pavilion, in 2022. Prior to that change, he could be found outside at The American Adventure.
For a full list of all the holiday characters and storytellers, check out all the offerings available at this year’s festival.
Festival Overlays at CommuniCore Hall
After years of changes and delays, CommuniCore Hall opened in the summer of 2024. As we said in our initial review, CommuniCore Hall is a necessary functional space, providing extra food service locations and seating, but there’s nothing special about it. It’s basically a big gray box.
For the first few festivals, the area was adorned with some decorations and sold festival merchandise. Disney also added more seating. In recent months Disney has been transforming the area into a more seasonal-style exhibit space with decor and activities themed to the current EPCOT festival.
For the 2024 EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays, Disney added a light-up gingerbread Spaceship Earth and some Christmas trees; however, the theming ended there.
Theming was increased for the 2025 EPCOT International Festival of the Arts with a Disney on Broadway exhibit. CommuniCore Hall also celebrated 30 Years of the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival this year with a Disney Horticulture Gallery. Later in 2025, Goofy took over the space for Cool Kid Summer.
With Santa Claus moving to CommuniCore Hall for the 2025 festival, it is likely that Disney has plans to create a themed space for guests to meet and greet the holiday figure.
What do yo think of this change? Let us know in the comments and on social media.
For the latest Disney Parks news and info, follow WDW News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.