Festival Flip! | Epcot Becoming Episode 5 | National Geographic

Festivals at EPCOT are in the DNA of the park. It's truly the transformation of the park through those festival seasons that keep guests coming back. EPCOT festivals have continued to evolve since starting back in 1994 with the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival. We have added the EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival, the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays, and our newest festival, the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts.

Bringing all four uniquely themed festivals to life in one calendar year takes an army of festival flippers, often working under the cover of night. It really is a lot of work behind the scenes and after hours to be able to install a festival. Our average kiosk weighs about four tons, and they are brought in on a 65-ton crane. It is an orchestra getting these kiosks in the park in a very short period of time.

We call it, internally, "row, row, row your boat" because there is one step followed by another step followed by another step to get everything all set up. It's always difficult to transition from one festival to another, and it's really changing the look of the entire park. During the International Flower and Garden Festival, over 50 intricate topiaries and gardens, dreamed up by the horticulture team, come to life.

We really do a lot of behind-the-scenes planning, nurturing the plants to get them all to bloom correctly at the start of the Flower and Garden Festival. It takes hundreds of hours to put the topiaries together. Some are so big they require a crane to put them in the flower beds. We work overnight watering, planting, pinning, and trimming, so they look their very best every day.

We are very collaborative as a team, and so we get to be creative as we think about the four festivals at EPCOT. Just in the food and beverage organization, we've got over a thousand cast members that are working to make the magic happen. We cannot have a festival without having all of our kitchen equipment working. We have about 4,000 pieces of equipment that it takes to operate the Food and Wine Festival.

We have so many wonderful entertainment aspects across all four festivals. We want to ensure that our guests are getting the best experience that they can. Let's take stock of where we are right now. We are currently working on the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts food and beverage menus. Cuisine Classic is at site 40 this year. Yeah, so new twists on classic dishes. And you can’t go wrong with Beef Wellington. A caramel, chocolate mousse, and a liquid nitro.

Oh, yeah! A lot of our best ideas are unexpected. Sometimes you can throw something out like a pickle milkshake, and everybody's like... What? I am going to start out with a liberal amount of vanilla ice cream into this blender. Okay, a little pickle solution in there. The pickle milkshake is part of EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival. Oh, that looks perfect. It is topped with whipped cream, Oh... garnished with some chocolate pearls that look like mustard seeds, and a fresh sprig of dill.

Alright. Clink! Those are ingredients that you probably wouldn't have ever thought would go together. Delicious. Yeah, I think it's excellent. Once the recipes are perfected and the menus are set, final taste testing begins. We are going to sample the dishes that we are going to offer during the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts.

First, Beef Wellington. We have as many as 35 or more food offerings. So today, that's what we get to taste and see if it hits the mark. It’s so good! While we’re sleeping, a lot of things are happening in this park. Turn the end towards me, to the left. Tonight, we are installing the main entrance planter for the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts.

Let's go about three more feet. We do everything from menu signs to murals on the walls. Every visual art piece you see, we design and manipulate to match the overall feel of the Festival of the Arts. There's so much activity happening overnight to transition from one festival to another. We rely on the experience and expertise of all those individual teams to produce an amazing event.