Walt Disney World has quietly added a closure warning for Rose & Crown at EPCOT, indicating the popular table service restaurant and bar will close for a lengthy refurbishment in 2027. Here are dates & details, plus the corresponding construction permit and our thoughts about this project.
For starters, this closure underscores that sometimes the Walt Disney World calendar is wrong or posts bulletins prematurely before final details have been cemented internally. It’s unclear why this keeps happening, but it’s become such a recurrent thing that this type of bulletin has become a somewhat unreliable and inconsistent source, despite being an official one.
The saga started October 6th, when Walt Disney World posted a refurbishment bulletin for the Rose & Crown Dining Room, stating that the restaurant would close on February 15, 2027 and reopen in Spring 2027. At that time, Disney indicated that the Rose & Crown Pub and Yorkshire County Fish Shop would remain open as alternatives during the Dining Room’s closure period. However, this announcement quickly changed.
The following next day, Walt Disney World changed the bulletin to indicate that both Rose & Crown Dining Room and the Rose & Crown Pub would be closed for refurbishment starting January 11, 2027, with reopening expected at a date later in 2027. One day later, Walt Disney World removed the refurbishment warning message completely, suggesting no closure would happen after all.
As it turns out, the second refurbishment bulletin was the correct one, and it’s now been up for over 24 hours and the first construction permit has been filed, so we should be safe in sharing it:
Starting January 11, 2027, the Rose & Crown Dining Room and Rose & Crown Pub will be temporarily closed for planned maintenance. Both locations are expected to reopen later in 2027.
There are a few things worth noting about this bulletin…
First, there’s no reason to believe Yorkshire County Fish Shop will close at this time. To the contrary, it will likely be needed to pick up the slack, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see items or drinks added to the menu at Yorkshire County Fish Shop. Alternative, it’s possible a temporary bar or something is set up elsewhere in the United Kingdom to minimize the impact of lost booze sales.
Second, there is no end date or even a time frame. Don’t misread “later in 2027” as “late 2027,” as they’re two very different things. Technically, “later in” means any date starting January 12, 2027. That’s only one day later, but that’s how the word works. (Probably safe to say Rose & Crown is not reopening in January, though.)
By contrast, “late 2027” would usually mean October 1, 2027 or beyond. Assuming the first bulletin had the general contours of the project scope correct but the dates wrong, Rose & Crown should still return sometime between Spring and Summer 2027, as opposed to January 12th or December 31st.
Third, Walt Disney World Facility Asset Management (FAM) filed a new Notice of Commencement permit on October 14, 2026 for an address that resolves to Rose & Crown. As basic background, FAM typically handles routine refurbishments and maintenance, whereas Imagineering handles more creative projects.
Gulf Coast Utility Constructors is listed as the contractor, with the nebulous “general construction” listed as the scope of work. This part tells us nothing. Finally, the construction permit carries an expiration date of June 29, 2027.
Unless otherwise specified, the default expiration is one-year from the date filed. The default 1-year timeline is never noteworthy, but shorter or longer ones always are, as they’re extended or reduced purposefully.
This tells us that Walt Disney World anticipates the project continuing into summer. It could potentially be done earlier or later; this permit is only one part of the equation. Whereas we’d have a more firm deadline if this were running up against Candlelight Processional or EPCOT festival ‘season,’ this project is probably going to end sometime during Diet EPCOT. That makes it more difficult to reverse-engineer a date, but at least we know June 29, 2027 is the likely reopening target.
Given the above, there’s every reason to take this at face value and assume it’s planned maintenance or an actual refurbishment as opposed to the restaurant going seasonal or closing temporarily due to a lack of demand, which we previously speculated was the case with Coral Reef.
If a restaurant were to go seasonal at EPCOT, it would most likely happen in the summer, when no festivals are occurring. This closure starts before the 2027 EPCOT Festival of the Arts, and will likely encompass both Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Presidents’ Day. That’s a really busy time for the park, and one during which it sells dining packages for the Disney on Broadway concerts.
Not only that, but it’s safe to say that the Rose & Crown Pub is a high-revenue location year-round. I have zero visibility into specifics, but if someone told me this venue were one of the top performing in all of Walt Disney World, I’d believe it. On top of all this, Rose & Crown is one of the few restaurants to do fireworks dining packages. All told, that’s a lot of lost revenue for one location.
Suffice to say, there’s no reason to close this restaurant and bar unless absolutely necessary. Walt Disney World will also have a strong incentive to do whatever needs to be done as quickly as possible, so Rose & Crown can reopen and turn that money-printing machine back on. Even during Diet EPCOT, Rose & Crown is still one of the busier venues in World Showcase.
Walt Disney World has not indicated what the refurbishment will entail, and it’s been a while since we’ve been to Rose & Crown, so I can’t really speculate. What I do know is that Rose & Crown previously closed for refurbishment from February 15th through March 20, 2021.
That was purportedly for back of house work impacting the kitchen. When the restaurant reopened, there were no guest-facing changes in the Dining Room itself, so a kitchen project makes sense. I also wonder whether that work was fully completed, as another project ~6 years later is fairly soon by World Showcase standards.
It also seems worth pointing out that Rose & Crown has been serving its post-reopening COVID cutback menu for the last 7 years. While plenty of locations have seen their menus scaled back during that time, most have recovered to at least some degree. Meanwhile, Rose & Crown still only has 2 appetizers, 4 entrees, and 2 desserts. I can’t help but wonder if this is due to lingering limitations with the kitchen. (This sad menu is also why we haven’t been back in a while.)
Ultimately, that’s everything we know about the Rose & Crown Dining Room and Pub refurbishment from January 11, 2027 through an unknown date later in 2027. Just based on what we’ve seen thus far, my assumption is that the restaurant needs back of house work that will take it out of commission for multiple months.
My best guess is that there was internal debate about whether they could ‘get away’ with only taking the Rose & Crown Dining Room offline through Spring 2027, but it was determined that the Rose & Crown Pub would also have to close. In so doing, the scope of the work might’ve expanded to encompass a refresh of the guest-facing spaces. That in turn might’ve extended the duration of the project, resulting in the June 29, 2027 target date referenced in the new permit.
This is all highly speculative, but it’s supported to at least some extent by the available evidence and recent refurbishments we’ve seen at other restaurants. The only real surprise here is that it’s not a phased project, as that’s Walt Disney World’s preferred approach with split venues of this nature. Perhaps that was originally the plan, and the decision was made to consolidate the closures into a single project for whatever reason.
The bottom line is that we wouldn’t make any plans to dine or drink at Rose & Crown for the first 6 months or so of 2027. Although that’s a lengthy closure that has the potential to impact a lot of Walt Disney World trips, I’m cautiously optimistic about this refurbishment.
Rose & Crown seems stuck in the past, and not in the good way that you’d expect of a World Showcase restaurant. It feels caught in the COVID era, and in need of a shot in the arm. Hopefully this refurbishment finally fixes that, and the restaurant reopens with a new and expanded menu (or just the old full one). We’ll keep you posted.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of Rose & Crown? Disappointed that it’s going to close for refurbishment starting January 11, 2027? Or optimistic that Walt Disney World could breathe new life into this restaurant with a refurbishment and a new menu (or restored old menu)? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions? Hearing your feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts or questions below in the comments!
