Preview of Epcot 2026 Food & Wine Festival - BOGP 2957

Be Our Guest WDW Podcast

Mike and Rikki kick off Labor Day weekend with a preview of Epcot's 2026 Food & Wine Festival, celebrating its 30th anniversary. Rikki share

Key takeaways

• The 2026 Epcot Food & Wine Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary with nostalgic menu items from past years.
• Festival booths have expanded into Future World and World Celebration areas, offering more options beyond World Showcase.

Main topics

• 2026 Epcot Food & Wine Festival preview
• 30th anniversary celebration with retro menu items

Notable quotes

"It was hot though. You know, that's the really hard part about Food & Wine starting at the end of August is like, it's always so blazingly hot."

Conclusion

The 2026 Epcot Food & Wine Festival offers a nostalgic and expanded ex

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Happy Friday, everybody. Thank you so much for downloading or streaming the Be Our Guest podcast. Ricky joins me on today's show and we talk about the Food and Wine Festival that is back around here for 2026, celebrating 30 years of the festival over at Epcot. Ricky was down for the first day of the festival just last weekend. We talk about some of her favorite eats at the booths around the festival. We talk about... The great acts are going to be at the eat to the beat concert series this year. Why dining packages are so important and why the festival has moved over the last few years from world showcase up to the old future world. You're going to get some of those booths right away as you enter the park and some of the activities you can do while you're over at Epcot to have some more fun as well. Don't forget today's podcast always brought to you by the magic for less travel. We're standing by to help you plan amazing Disney adventures for no additional cost to you. Check out the details today over at themagicforless.com. Please also use that Amazon affiliate link as you shop online. That one extra click supports everything we do throughout the year. It's brguestpodcast.com slash Amazon. And thank you so very much to our Patreon supporters. You're the all-stars that make this show possible. We could not do this show without your support. You can support us just $5 a month. And when you do that, you get a bonus show called Mike in the Midwest. Come over this weekend. We'd sure love to have you. Patreon.com slash Be Our Guest Podcast. Speaker 1 (1:26) Ready to take a trip to the world? You found the Be Our Guest Walt Disney World Trip Planning Podcast. This is where your memories come front and center on our podcast stage. Speaker 2 (1:44) Welcome to episode 2,957 of the Be Our Guest Walt Disney World Trip Planning Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Rallman from BeOurGuestPodcast.com and one of the senior agents over at the Magic for Less Travel. Happy Friday to you. And it's a good Friday because Labor Day weekend is upon us here in the United States. Three-day weekend for a lot of us. So get ready to kick back and grill. If you need grilling tips, come over to the clubhouse. Hit up Dennis. He is the master of the grill. He could grill. I mean, I don't even like you could take a tennis ball and Dennis could grill that and it would look good. And I'm sure it would taste awesome. Like that man knows how to grill. I salivate anytime I see one of his posts on socials or in the clubhouse. It's amazing. I wish I live close to Dennis. I just have to pop by all the time, but hopefully you're getting ready for baby. One last hurrah at the swimming pool. And you know me. It's college football kickoff weekend. It's glorious. I mean, I've got to find the button. Hang Speaker 1 (2:49) on. Speaker 2 (2:52) It's hallelujah season. We've made it. It's glorious. And on top of that, I'm getting on the Disney Treasure tomorrow. I mean, it's so good. It is so good. We'll have the podcast for you because we're recording ahead of time. We don't miss shows. But I am super happy. And thanks to Jimmy, my good colleague over at The Magic for Less, taking care of my guests. So if you're one of my guests, you're in good hands. Jimmy at TheMagicForLess.com. He's there. And he's checking all my emails. So you're good. We got everything covered. Shows are going to go out. Everything goes on. But I'll be on the treasure going to the Western Caribbean. Hopefully the remnants of Dolly are not out there anymore. And we're all good. Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Jamaica, Castaway Cay, a lot of sea days. So follow along at BRGS Mike, especially in the clubhouse. We'll have fun so we can all talk and have a good time. But Ricky's here. We're going to talk about food and wine. Which I can't believe it's already food and wine season again. I mean, the festivals never stop. And this one just goes back around and around and around. So Ricky's here. Happy Friday, Ricky. Any big plans for Labor Day weekend? Speaker 3 (3:56) So we are actually headed back to St. Louis for the weekend. It's just a short little trip. We're going to be there, you know, basically Saturday through Monday. And we're just going to see the in-laws, see her cousins and just have like a little nice time there. So that's going to be fun. Speaker 2 (4:14) Nice. Jeff City, I'm guessing. Mid-Missouri. Speaker 3 (4:17) Yeah, Jeff City. Yeah, that's where we're headed. Yeah. Speaker 2 (4:19) All right. So we are going to talk a little food and wine festival today. We're going to kind of jump back in there because I can't believe food and wine is back again. These festivals just keep rolling. So you went down this past weekend, got to do a bunch of stuff. We talked about the Halloween party on Wednesday, kind of just gave some not really thoughts on the party, gave some thoughts on the party. We kind of talked about why the one party didn't sell out, gave some ideas on that. But I mean. One party not selling out in four years, not a big deal, but we kind of talked about that. You can talk about that as well, but let's focus on Food and Wine Festival for folks that are going down. So you spent some time in Epcot. So give us initial thoughts of your time over at the festival. Speaker 3 (4:58) So yeah, I did opening day of Food & Wine and you know, it's a lot of fun like getting there for opening day, the atmosphere, it's really great getting to experience that. It was hot though. You know, that's the really hard part about Food & Wine starting at the end of August is like, it's always so blazingly hot and you know, you're trying to eat all these really hot foods while you're walking around World Showcase. And you're just like, I don't want to eat any of these things. I don't want to eat cheddar cheese soup and a filet slider. I don't want to eat hot, you know, seafood roll. Like, there's just so many things that you're like, I really, really, really want to try this, but I can't because I don't want to eat it. It's so hot outside. So, like, that's kind of the only downfall of food and wine starting this early. And, of course, you know, it doesn't cool off until... well maybe late October so like it goes on for a really long time where it's still just blazingly hot but this year there's a ton of great food options and they're celebrating the 30th anniversary of the festival this year which is kind of cool because they brought back a lot of different foods from like the past so like they've brought things back from 1996 when the festival first started and they you know they brought other things back that they introduced throughout the years that have kind of gone away. So like that part's really cool that they're like really celebrating this 30th anniversary of the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, which is really great. So yeah, I had a really great time overall. It was great once, let's put it this way, it was great once it rained and it cooled the day off at that point. Like that part, then walking around World Showcase, I was like. Okay, I can manage this. But, you know, in the middle of the afternoon, it's definitely a choice to walk around. And I made the choice to walk around World Showcase. But it's definitely a choice to walk around World Showcase at that point. But thank gosh for the rain. Let's just put it that way. It's Speaker 2 (6:57) kind of like we talked on Wednesday. Like, you know, with the Halloween party in August and food and wine in August, it's almost, I don't know, I think of like food and wine festivals. Because, I mean, everybody has them. We have them here in the Midwest. You know, a lot of hotels, places have them. But it always seems like a fall thing. And a fall thing to me seems like late October, November-ish. And I think that's when this is best enjoyed. But it was in July for a while, you know, so at least it's not in July anymore. But it runs till November 21st. You still have plenty of time to do it. And it doesn't cost you anything extra to enjoy it. That's kind of the good thing. It's just an additional experience at Epcot. Except for the food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, you don't have to partake. You know, you can just go buy a snack your way, drink your way around. Speaker 2 (7:39) So it is nice and you got the, you know, you got the concerts. We'll talk about Eat to the Beat here in just a minute and talk about some of our favorites there, some new ones, some returners. But it is, I mean, that's kind of the cool thing about Epcot is they've made it a festival park where you go in and all of a sudden you're there and you got a little extra to your day. But you're right. I mean, it's hard to eat cheddar cheese soup or, you know, some of these things when it's just smoking hot. It's best enjoyed cool. Speaker 3 (8:03) It's so hard to eat cheddar cheese soup when it's a hundred degrees outside, not gonna lie. But, you know, kind of one of the nice things over the course of the last few years is they've added some additional booths into that world, I guess now world nature area, world celebration area. And, you know, all of those, world discovery. And so they've added all these, you know, different booths that, you know, weren't, they aren't really like country related because you know obviously before with the festival when it first started it was really more country related and now like you have different things um that are different uh like regional or you know style of cooking or something like that Speaker 2 (8:49) thematic like they started that a few years ago they had like an espn booth kind of like a sports food Speaker 3 (8:55) there's a fry booth yeah Speaker 2 (8:56) yeah you know like the entire booth yeah sign me up for that i saw the picture i'm like let's go yeah Speaker 3 (9:03) and an entire booth surrounded around dumplings you know uh sign me up Speaker 2 (9:07) for Speaker 3 (9:07) that Speaker 2 (9:07) too they talking to mike rollman yeah so Speaker 3 (9:09) stuff like that you know like i like that they are they are making it so that it's not just country specific but it's thematic specific as well which really kind of increases the experience and it allows them to try things that are again