Jenna's Magical Adventures

        This year’s Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot is extremely short and only running from February 28, 2024 – May 27, 2027. In previous years, it lasted until the beginning of July. You still have plenty of time to check out all that this festival has to offer! These are my top recommendations to check out if you are limited on time.

1) Top 5 topiaries – This year, they have more beautiful topiaries than ever before. New this year is a Coco topiary outside of the Mexico pavilion, It is truly stunning and I love all of the marigolds. I also loved the Encanto themed topiary. It is a repeat from last year and is located in the World Showcase Plaza. My other favorites include the Bambi themed topiaries near the lagoon near the UK pavilion and the Figment topiary in the new section of World Celebration. I also loved the Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Chip, and Dale topiaries near the bridge to the World Showcase.

2) Top 5 food items – My mom and I constantly checked the Walt Disney World site to finally see menus for the Flower and Garden Festival booths. My recommendation would be to look through the menus and pick the top 5 items you want to try. Despite an injury, I was still able to try almost everything I wanted to. My top food items were: La Isla Fresca’s Impossible Jamaican Beef Patty ($6.50), Trowel and Trellis’ Farmhouse Meatball ($6), Hanami’s Steamed Bun ($8.50), and Brunchcot’s Biscuit and Gravy ($6.75).

3) Top Gardens – There are so many beautiful gardens and places to check out during Epcot’s Flower and Garden Festival. My favorite gardens are the tropical garden in Mexico, the butterfly house near the Imagination Pavilion, and the bonsai tree garden in Japan.

4) Festival Market Booths – There are so many festival marketplaces throughout Epcot, but different booths may have different merchandise. When you see something you like, either purchase it or remember exactly where you saw it. While I wasn’t able to go back and get everything I wanted, I did have to go back and forth for awhile to find a booth that had what I wanted. It was a booth selling lives plants, and while I am so happy for my souvenirs from there, I did waste a lot of time and steps to find it again.

5) Concerts – While I always love the free concerts, I have never found myself planning a Disney trip based on the Epcot Festival concert schedule. As your trip gets closer, check out who will be playing at the festival while you are there. During this trip, my mom and I realized Rick Springfield would be playing. While we had heard of him and enjoyed his music, it wasn’t really a necessity for our trip. We got to see some of his concert and listened to his performance, and that was enough for us. When Daughtry played in 2017, we knew it was important to my mom so we got to the American Pavilion early and found good seats. The also offer dinner packages which guarantees a good seat.