Walt Disney World has announced new additions for the 2025 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival, including the end date and a sneak peek at the new topiaries, resort hotel-inspired food booths, and much more. We have all of that, plus commentary about the springtime event.
For starters, the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival will run from March 5 to June 2, 2025 at Walt Disney World. The start shifts slightly later, but the duration of the festival is more or less unchanged. Like last year, the event is a full month shorter than it was from 2021 through 2023, but consistent with historical precedent up until 2020.
Also like last year, it’s likely that the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival will start around Labor Day weekend, leaving a roughly 3-month window of Diet EPCOT…or a new summer festival. We’re not holding our breath on that this year, but Walt Disney World does need something at EPCOT to offer counter-programming to Epic Universe for locals. But that’s beyond the scope of this post. For everything else you need to know about the event, see our Ultimate Guide to the 2025 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival Guide. This post exclusively covers what’s new to the festival for 2025.
During the 2025 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival, guests can explore lush gardens, sample sweet and savory bites with refreshing sips (for a fee, of course!), and shop new merchandise collections featuring Orange Bird, Spike the Bee, and more. Starting at sunset, a vibrant spectacle of light will be shown on Spaceship Earth, with the Beacons of Magic returning for another seasonal display.
More than 200,000 bedding plants are added to the gardens of EPCOT for the Flower & Garden Festival, including an additional 60,000 bedding plants that create the iconic floral designs that make up the World Celebration East & West Lakes. Plus more than 70 topiaries, featuring a delightful array of Disney characters as well as other figures and whimsical items, will fill the park.
Disney Horticulture and Walt Disney Imagineering work together to design, build and grow topiary displays. Starting over a year ago, this process began with artists developing sketches, Imagineers designing 3D models, skilled welders molding frames, and horticulture specialists choosing plant materials.
Here’s a rundown of what’s new for the 2025 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival–starting with those topiaries!
New Topiaries
A brand-new topiary display featuring characters from Moana will greet guests at the park entrance. Make way for Moana, Maui Heihei, and Pua will be added to the collection of elaborate plant sculptures that have become a festival staple. Crafted with an artist’s careful eye and the horticulturalists’ loving care, these new topiaries will be the perfect welcome to guests walking into the park for a full day of floral fun.
Plus, Phineas and Ferb topiaries make their grand return! Other topiaries appearing at the 2025 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival include characters from Inside Out, Figment, Miguel & Dante from Coco, and Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy.
For details about other great gardens and topiaries at the 2025 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival, view the event guide in the My Disney Experience app—available starting February 27, 2025.
New Gardens
The new Playalong Bay Play Garden pays homage to one of Walt Disney World’s famed resort pools, Stormalong Bay at Yacht & Beach Club, mixing fun for the whole family with adventure on the high seas. This new nautically inspired playground will be located between the Imagination pavilion and the entrance to World Showcase.
Other gardens will celebrate fashion, community, camping, fragrance, and Inside Out 2.
New Food Booths
Near the Playalong Bay Play Garden, you’ll find two new Outdoor Kitchens with menus full of seafood goodness: Yacht Grub and Beach Grub. These are the first food booths inspired by Walt Disney World resort hotels at Flower & Garden. (And to the best of our knowledge, any of the EPCOT festivals.)
If you’re wondering where returning favorite Outdoor Kitchens Florida Fresh and EPCOT Farmers Feast will be (and we very much were–those are two of the best booths!) – they will be in new locations at CommuniCore Plaza at the servery window and inside CommuniCore Hall, respectively. Phew.
We love the idea of Yacht Grub and Beach Grub. It’ll be interesting to see if Walt Disney World actually does menus inspired by these resorts, or if they just wanted puns that work with the garden. Either way, this is a great idea going forward. There are several resort hotels with fan-favorite foods that could be featured at EPCOT festivals.
This was seemingly teased last year with the Zebra Dome (by a different name) at Food & Wine. But could you imagine an Animal Kingdom Lodge booth with Sanaa bread service, African Potjie from the Mara, Wild Boar or Venison from Jiko, and Zebra Domes?! With AKL not exactly easily accessible, this would be a huge win for guests with limited time–or exposing new fans to the greatness of AKL’s culinary scene.
As for Yacht & Beach Grub, I’ll keep my expectations low: I just want the Oreo Bon Bons for dessert, and maybe truffle fries as a side. That seems like low-hanging, crowd-pleasing (not) fruit to go along with the seafood.
New Merchandise
Celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival from head to toe with a matching shirt and shorts set or a bright new spirit jersey, both featuring everyone’s favorite citrusy friend, Orange Bird, and the 30th anniversary logo.
For fans of Spike the Bee, you can pack your garden party odds and ends inside a cute Lug Bag that’s sweeter than honey. You’ll feel right at home touring around the park with a Spike the Bee Shoulder Plush. There’s also an Alice In Wonderland collection, and probably other stuff, who knows.
Merchandise isn’t my jam, so I don’t have strong opinions about most of this stuff. (Okay, except one–how are those Lug Bags so expensive?! They’re glorified phone cases. I thought Spirit Jersey pricing was bonkers, but this takes the cake.)
Oh, and I also unironically love the orange Orange Bird shirt and shorts. I know it’s “the style” to wear matching stuff like this, but as someone who is decidedly unstylish, the shorts will suffice for me. Walt Disney World did a pair of Orange Bird sweat shorts several years ago as part of a similar product line, and I still wear them around the house.
New Magic Shots
PhotoPass has some creative new ways to sprinkle extra pixie dust over guest photos via special Magic Shots that offer a bouquet of cool returning effects, as well as two new shots – including the new Figment Topiary Magic Shot above.
I appreciate that Walt Disney World continues to add PhotoPass Magic Shots, especially the kind that feature physical props or effects, and not just character overlays in post (although those are fun, too). We find ourselves using PhotoPass more and more now with Megatron because it’s just easier, so I have a newfound appreciation for the service.
Next up, invest in some new cameras and lenses. I assume Disney has a corporate alliance with Nikon, so use that to get new bodies and glass. It’s been way too long since the last upgrade and major improvements have been made. (Some of the old equipment is also in really rough shape, both aesthetically and optically.)
New Grooves
Also returning for the 2025 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival is the popular Garden Rocks Concert Series in the America Garden Theatre. See Garden Rocks Concerts at the EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival: Dates, Lineup & Dining Packages for everything you need to know and the full lineup. Along with familiar favorites, there are five new performers:
- March 30-31 – Queensrÿche (NEW)
- May 11-12 – Maverick City Music (NEW)
- May 23-24 – The Outlaws (NEW)
- May 30-31 – The Cat Empire (NEW)
- June 1-2 – We The Kingdom (NEW)
New Gallery at CommuniCore Hall
There’s a new exhibit getting ready to bloom at CommuniCore Hall! Here’s exactly what Walt Disney World said about this: “Get a bee’s eye view at CommuniCore Hall, with a new gallery that is larger than life! Grab a bite at EPCOT Farmers Feast and learn more about how Disney’s Horticulture team brings topiaries, flower towers and more to the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival.”
Does this mean it’s going to be themed to Spike the Bee, we’re all going to shrink down to his size, and everything is going to be enormous. If so, cool. But I also question whether there’s the space inside for huge displays. Also, why would Disney spend the money fabricating larger-than-life ‘making of’ stuff for Flower & Garden when they already have the regular sized-stuff sitting around somewhere?
Either way, it sounds cool. And this is certainly an improvement over having CommuniCore Hall function as a glorified merchandise location along with an uninteresting food booth. Speaking of which, EPCOT Farmers Feast is typically among our favorite booths of Flower & Garden. I’m both excited to see it have the larger kitchen and also a little nervous that putting it in this space will result in a more crowd-pleasing or boring menu. It was near-perfect before!
Ultimately, the lineup for the 2025 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival sounds solid. While I’d love to get back to having the Fab Five characters at the front entrance, at least Moana is a big improvement over Wish. Somewhat surprised that isn’t Inside Out 2, but topiaries take months to develop, so this was probably set in motion last spring when internal expectations were that Moana 2 would outperform Inside Out 2. Not like either were slouches, and Moana ties nicely to Journey of Water just around the corner.
My only complaint is the same one I had last year (year before that, etc.), which is that Figment should be the park’s unofficial mascot and ambassador for all festivals, not just Festival of the Arts. I’m definitely biased, but more Figment would mean a more popular event with fans, which in turn would help sell even more Figment merchandise (…and in turn increase the odds of a new attraction!). In any case, we’re really looking forward to the 2025 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival. The first couple months of this festival are among my favorite of the year at EPCOT.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Are you excited to experience the 2025 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival? Thoughts on the resort hotel-inspired garden or food booths? Looking forward to the new topiaries from Moana at EPCOT’s entrance or the return of Phineas and Ferb? Opinions on anything else covered here? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
