Epcot

It was a fun run, but this was the final weekend for the first annual Epcot Festival of the Arts, (see my review and full coverage here.) In just a little over a week we'll be jumping right into Epcot's next big event, the Flower & Garden Festival! Gardens, topiaries and many food booths are already starting to show up all around Future World and World Showcase. Plus, a couple children's playgrounds are being constructed as well. Flower & Garden starts March 1, 2017, see my previous article for complete food menus and event information.

Also going on in the park, you can now purchase prints of all of the fantastic paintings featuring Figment from the "Brush with the Masters" scavenger hunt at the arts festival. Prints can be ordered through the Disney Art of Animation On Demand kiosks at Epcot and Disney Springs. You can choose an optional frame and your artwork is delivered to your home within a couple weeks. And finally, we check in on the construction of Choza Tequila, the new food stand opening soon at Mexico in World Showcase. Once open, you'll be able to get hand-crafted margaritas and classic Mexican cuisine like tacos, empanadas, chips and fresh guacamole. Check out the video and photo report below and stay tuned for more theme park updates!

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Back in November, Bob Chapek, the Disney Parks Chairman, announced that Epcot will be getting a "major transformation" that will be making the park "more Disney, timeless, relevant, family-friendly" while also keeping the original vision alive. He told his team of Imagineers to "dream big" when thinking of ideas. As many blue sky bloggers have been openly wishing for for years, we may actually see Epcot be fixed in our lifetimes. Rumors have the budget for this park-wide update to be something like $300-400 million, with a large part going towards Future World in particular.

Future World is in a strange place right now. Rides that were originally informative have become thrilling. Buildings that were meant to show off technologies of the future have become business sponsored expo halls and character meet and greets. The Health Pavilion is rotting away, only being used a couple of times a year for festivals. And Universe of Energy wins the award for most awkward ride re-skinning of all time, forever trapped in 1996, and featuring an outdated 1970s view of dinosaurs.

Last September "The Sum of All Thrills" closed at Innoventions, the last fun thing left to do in that building. Innoventions West is permanently closed already, and East has only two small exhibits remaining. It's only a matter of time before they close as well and the original CommuniCore buildings are completely gutted to make room for something, who knows what. Check out the video and photo report below for the current state of things as well as some of the many rumors floating around the Disney-sphere about what we might see materialize in the near future at the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.